page_title: Flixton, Greater Manchester
section_title: Industrial Revolution
hierarchical_section_title: Flixton, Greater Manchester / History / Industrial Revolution
caption_attribution_description: English: The River Mersey, running past Flixton. Image taken from the river's south bank, east of Flixton Bridge.
context_page_description: Flixton is a village and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. The population of the ward at the 2011 census was 10,786. It lies about six miles to the southwest of Manchester city centre, within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire. Flixton and neighbouring Davyhulme are considered areas within Urmston.
  Neolithic and Bronze Age artefacts have been found locally and the area may have been inhabited in those periods. Medieval Flixton was a parish within the Hundred of Salford and encompassed the manor of Flixton, along with its church, first mentioned in the 12th century. The parish comprised isolated farmsteads and a manor house. Toward the end of the 17th century its population began to rise, continuing through the 19th century, although at a much slower pace than its neighbours. Flixton was a remote rural area with few transport links and did not witness the level of industrialisation other parts of Manchester saw, but its connection to the railway network in 1873 helped transform the area into a middle-class suburb.
  Flixton is represented in Parliament by Labour MP Kate Green.
context_section_description: Flixton's population remained fairly stable until the end of the 17th century, when, along with other nearby parishes, it began to rise steadily.  It was by that time a small hamlet, with several buildings around the parish church and its parsonage. The 1664 hearth tax returns show that Flixton had 70 heads of household, who were likely engaged mainly in agricultural activities.  Evidence exists to suggest that some areas in the parish were used for textile production, with "yarn croft" in Flixton, Stretford and Warburton indicating the production of flax.  Almost 20 per cent of wills and other documents gathered from nearby areas contain references to textiles, hemp and flax.
  Flixton played an important part in the early campaigns for public rights of way.  The local squire, Ralph Wright, who lived at Flixton House, tried to close a footpath which crossed his land.  This closure was opposed by local people with the support of Archibald Prentice of the Manchester Gazette, which lead to the creation of the "Manchester Association for the Preservation of Ancient Public Footpaths" in 1826. This evolved into the "Peak and Northern Footpath Society" which still exists today.
  
  During the Industrial Revolution many of the townships in the region experienced fairly rapid population growth, although Flixton remained an exception, its population growing by only 22 per cent between 1801 and 1851.  This was in stark contrast to Altrincham (165%), Bowdon (242%) and Stretford (238%), and is attributed to the emigration of villagers to more industrialised areas like Manchester, and the agricultural depression of the 1830s and 1840s.  The domestic production of textiles, popular during the 17th and early 18th centuries in Flixton and other nearby townships, and the newer factory-based system which replaced it, had disappeared in Altrincham by the middle of the 19th century.  Weaving continued in Flixton, although within ten years of the construction of Flixton Cotton Mills in 1851, domestic textile production had ended.  In nearby Urmston, 28 per cent of the township's population was in 1851 engaged in textile work, but the area did not experience the level of industrialisation seen in towns like Ashton-under-Lyne, east of Manchester, where 16 mills were built between 1815 and 1829, doubling the population.  The reasons for this reliance on land rather than industry are unclear.
  Flixton was a remote rural area with few transport links to nearby towns, the rivers Irwell and Mersey for the most part cutting off access to other areas.  To the southwest, Carrington Old Bridge, removed in about 1840, was an old wooden structure too narrow to accommodate carts, which were forced to use a nearby ford.  Another ford existed near Flixton Church and yet another near Shaw Hall. An omnibus service carried passengers to and from Stretford, where the nearest railway station was located, but it was the town's connection on 2 September 1873 to the UK's railway network, through the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (later the Cheshire Lines Committee) line from Manchester to Liverpool, which helped transform the area. A new bridge across the Mersey was built around 1906–1907, replacing the earlier structure nearer to Carrington. Flixton gradually became a middle-class railway suburb of Manchester.
caption: The River Mersey forms Flixton's southern border
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