Ellenbrook, Greater Manchester

The origin of the first element of the name is unknown, but the second element is certainly from Old English broc, a brook or stream. Ellenbrook is situated by the Ellen Brook which becomes the Stirrup Brook in Boothstown.

An ancient stone marked the boundary between the Hundreds of Salford and West Derby, the boundary of Eccles and Leigh ecclesiastical parishes, Tyldesley, Worsley and Little Hulton townships and the metropolitan districts of Wigan and Salford.[1]

Historically Ellenbrook was a chapelry in the parish of Eccles. Though its exact origins are uncertain between 1272 and 1295 the Rector of Eccles granted a licence to Richard de Worsley to have a chantry chapel provided 6d (2½p) was paid annually as oblations.[2] It was an outlying chapel within the parish of Eccles, the nearest churches being at Eccles, Leigh and Deane in Bolton.

The old chapel was demolished and St. Mary's Church was rebuilt in brick in 1725 and was restored in the 1860s, funded by the 2nd Earl of Ellesmere who died before restoration was complete. The chapel's organ, a memorial to the Earl, dates from this time. The church is built in the Norman style and is a Grade II Listed building.[3][4]

The Duke of Bridgewater owned small shallow collieries at Crookes Meadow, Grundy Common and Clays before 1770. Common, Swiney Lane and Millhough were shafts opened between 1810 and 1820.[5] In the 1830s a horse-drawn tramway connected Bridgewater Collieries' pits north of Ellenbrook at New Manchester with the Bridgewater Canal at Boothstown canal basin. In 1861 the London and North Western Railway revived powers granted to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to build a railway from Eccles to Wigan through Ellenbrook railway station which was north of the new Mosley Common Colliery which had extensive sidings at Ellenbrook.[6]