Chorley, United Kingdom

Chorley first appears in historical records in the mid thirteenth century as part of the portion of the Croston Lordship acquired by William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, around 1250. The Earl established Chorley as a small borough comprising a two-row settlement arranged along what later became Market Street. It appears that the borough was short lived, as it does not appear in a report of a commission on the Leyland Hundred in 1341. It is most likely that the borough was sacked by the Scots during the Great Raid of 1322, with Chorley being one of the southernmost points reached in Northern England. This led to the construction of a Peel tower, which said to have been located somewhere close to Duxbury Hall.

The manorial history of Chorley is complex. The manor had no single lord throughout most of this period, as it had been split into moieties and was managed by several different families. This led to Chorley having several manorial halls, which in this period included Chorley Hall, which was built in the 14th century by the de Chorley family but was demolished in the 19th or 20th century. Very little is known of Chorley Hall, although, according to what the painter John Bird depicted in 1795, its location to where it once stood is said to have been where The Parish of St Laurence Church of England Primary School now stands, with phantom steps near to the school within Astley Park being the only physical clue to the hall's existence. There is also Lower Chorley Hall, which was owned by the Gillibrand family from 1583 (later rebuilt in the 19th century as Gillibrand Hall). It is believed the borough of Chorley was not a success in this period because of the lack of manorial leadership and the dispersed nature of the small population.

St Laurence's Church is the oldest remaining building in Chorley and first appears in historical records when it was dedicated in 1362. However, it is believed there was already an earlier Anglo-Saxon chapel on the site, which was a daughter foundation of Croston Parish Church. It is believed that the church is named after Saint Laurence, an Irish saint who died in Normandy in the 12th century, whose bones were conveyed to the church by local noble Sir Rowland Standish of Duxbury, an ancestor of Myles Standish (an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military adviser for their Plymouth expedition to the New World).

As happened in many other instances following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, these relics went missing in the turmoil of the English Reformation under the rule of Henry VIII.

Chorley was granted a market charter by Henry VII in 1498 and have since held it every Tuesday. Before the reformation, it would coincide with a fair that was held annually on the feast of St Lawrence.

Chorley, like most Lancashire towns, gained its wealth from the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century which was also responsible for the town's growth. Chorley was a vital cotton town with many mills littering the skyline up to the late twentieth century. Most mills were demolished between the 1950s and 2000s with those remaining converted for modern business purposes. Today only a minority remain in use for actual manufacturing, and the last mill to stop producing textiles was Lawrence's in 2009.

Also, given its location on the edge of Lancashire Coalfield, Chorley was vital in coal mining. Several pits existed in Duxbury Woods, the Gillibrand area and more numerously in Coppull. Chisnall Hall Colliery at Coppull was considered the biggest Lancashire pit outside of Wigan and one of many located in the Chorley suburb. The last pit in the area to close was the Ellerbeck Colliery in 1987 which was located south of Chorley, between Coppull and Adlington.

The town played an important role during the Second World War, when it was home to the Royal Ordnance Factory, a large munitions manufacturer in the village of Euxton about 2 miles (3 km) from the town centre. A smaller factory was also built near the railway line of Blackburn–Wigan in Heapey.