Hapton, United Kingdom

In 1328 Gilbert de la Legh, the manager of the cattle farms in the forests, purchased the manor of Hapton and in 1356 his grandson, also called Gilbert acquired Birtwistle. His son John would marry Cecilia one of the co-heirs of Towneley Hall and their grandson John Towneley would later take control of all three manors. In 1482, Sir John Towneley inherited the estate at the age of nine, when his father, also called Richard, died of wounds obtained during the capture of Berwick Castle. He was married to Isabella Pilkington, the daughter of his guardian and later served as a soldier, being awarded a knighthood in 1497. With Royal permission he enclosed the manors of Towneley and Hapton, which he connected with the illegal enclosure of Horelaw Hill. After the King's commissioners re-let the Forest of Rossendale to local farmers in 1507, Towneley in 1514 enlarged his park at Hapton to embrace 1100 Lancashire acres (2,000 acres (810 ha), about half of the township) making it the second largest in historic Lancashire after that of the Earl of Derby at Knowsley. His enclosure of this land seems to have made him unpopular, as an old local legend claims that his ghost haunts the hills.

In his will dated 1627, Richard Towneley (1566-1628) left all his armour at Whalley to his son Richard. The will of Richard's wife Jane, dated 1633, provides the last recorded instance of the Towneleys at Hapton Tower. Parts of the Tower are thought to have been incorporated into other buildings including Dyneley Hall in Cliviger, Browsholme Hall in Bowland and closer to the site at Watson Laithe Farm.

By 1661 the lower part of the Park, north of the Tower extending to Habergham Brook, had been divided into large enclosures and these were subsequently divided into smaller ones that are still worked by today's farmers. The land would remain with the Towneley estate, descending to Caroline Louisa, eldest daughter and co-heir of Colonel Charles Towneley and wife of Montagu Bertie, 7th Earl of Abingdon, who put 2,500 acres in Hapton up for sale in 1923.

Shuttleworth has been occupied since at least the 14th-century. Henry de Shuttleworth died before 1325 holding lands in Shuttleworth of John son and heir of Edmund Talbot. The estate was purchased by the Starkies of Huntroyde Hall in 1734. Shuttleworth Hall is about 1 mile (1.6 km) north-west of the town along the A6068 road toward Padiham. The house dates from 1639 and is a working farmhouse.

Manchester Road appears on a map of 1661, and is likely part of an old route from Padiham over the moor to Haslingden. Although the Leeds and Liverpool Canal opened to Burnley in 1801, the stretch from Hapton to Blackburn was not completed until 1810 and it was 1816 before it connected to Liverpool. A Wharf was situated near the Hapton Bridge presumably to serve Padiham. Accrington Road was the last of the Turnpike trust roads to be built in the local area in 1827. The Castle Clough Works was established as a cotton spinning mill in 1792, where the old road to Shuttleworth crosses Castle Clough Brook, possibly the site of an earlier corn mill.

The present village of Hapton is largely a product of the Industrial Revolution. By the time of first Ordnance Survey map of the area, published in the 1840s, tram roads cross Stone Moor to the north, connecting the Wharf to collieries there, with more coal mines evident near the castle site. The Castle Clough Works was labelled as a dye works, but the rest of the township is still rural. The Hapton Chemical Works was established by Riley and Smalley on the northern side of the canal and east side of Manchester Road in 1842 to provide chemical products for the textile trade. It was taken over by William Blythe by 1915.

Although the East Lancashire railway line was constructed through the township in 1848, the railway station didn't open until the 1860s. Perseverance Mill was built for John Simpson in 1867 and had an attached magneto works. In 1888, Walter and Joseph Simpson established an Electrical Engineering company in Hapton called Simpson Bros. They specialised in the electrification of cotton mills and to promote the new business they installed three electric street lights, making Hapton the first village in Britain with electric lighting. By the 1890s about a dozen streets of terraced houses extended from the mill, along Manchester Road to the station. The chemical factory covered approximately the same area as the village and had its own sidings. The village was large enough in the 1890s briefly to sustain a football club, Hapton F.C., which won the Lancashire FA Challenge Trophy in 1897.