PEEL TOWER
A Monument and its inspiration
Peel Tower
The Peel Tower at Holcombe is one of two monuments erected in the Bury area in memory of
Sir Robert Peel, Prime Minister of Britain 1841 - 46, founder of the modern Police Force and
repealer of the Corn Laws, who was born in Bury in 1788. The other monument is the statue in
Market Place, Bury.
The Tower was erected on Holcombe Hill for a cost of £1,000 (raised through public appeal)
using grit stone quarried from the hill itself (without the permission of the landowner!). It stands
128 ft. high, originally contained 148 steps and at an elevation of 1,100 ft. gives excellent views
over Manchester, Cheshire and North Wales. The Tower was built on a line from the doorstep
of Nuttall Hall (the residence of William Grant, the Chairman of the Appeal Committee) and St.
Andrew’s Church Tower.
The Tower was dedicated the day after the unveiling of the Market Place statue, on Thursday, 9
September 1952. The ceremony was led by Joshua Knowles of Stormer Hill, the owner of
Tottington Calico Works. On the day of the dedication, the East Lancashire Railway ran an
excursion from Salford to Ramsbottom, but unfortunately the ceremony was over by the time
the special train reached Ramsbottom.
The Tower was at first managed by a Trust comprising six local luminaries. In 1868 the
landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, granted a lease in perpetuity on 21 acres of Holcombe Hill,
including the Tower, to the Trustees for 7/6 a year.
The Trustees were permitted to charge for access to the Tower and sell light refreshments.
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By 1929 the Tower was in a state of some disrepair. An appeal was launched to raise £2,500 to
replace the rotted wooden staircase with an iron one and carry out other renovations. A marble
stone inscribed with Peel’s 1846 resignation speech was also erected inside the Tower.
During the 1930’s the Tower was well visited with the Good
Friday Festival being the highlight of the year. At this time the
Tower was being managed by a local hill farmer, Percy
Vickers and his family, providing a useful supplementary
income for an otherwise precarious occupation.
During World War Two the Tower was used as a Home Guard
look-out for enemy parachutists. Seven foot high posts were
also driven into the flat top of the moor to hinder attempted
landings by enemy planes. Other parts of the moor were used
for military training.
By the late 1940’s the steel stairs were badly rusted. The
Tower was closed to the public in 1947 and in 1949 the
Trustees passed the Tower on to Ramsbottom District Council,
under the 1906 Open Spaces Act. In 1950 the outside was repointed.
In the late 1970’s, with the Tower now the property of Bury Metropolitan District Council, interest
in restoring and re-opening the Tower was growing. With grant assistance a new staircase was
built, the outside was pointed and in 1985, after being closed for 38 years, the Tower was once
again opened to the public.
In 1994 Holcombe Moor was bought by the National Trust and it may be that the Trust will have
a hand in the future management of the Tower.
A Walk from Ramsbottom
From the railway station walk up Bridge Street, through Market Place (with
the Urn sculpture) and on up Carr Street. Turn left up Tanners Street,
which turns into ‘The Rake’ and up the hill into Holcombe. At the ‘Shoulder
of Mutton’ pub cross the road and look for Cross Lane. At the next road
fork go right, along Moorbottom Road and soon after right again, up the
track which leads to the tower.
The Peel Family
The Sir Robert Peel story really beings with Peel’s grandfather (also called Robert) who was a
yeoman farmer near Blackburn.
Having an enterprising mind, a large family to support and seeing little profit in his poor quality
land, he experimented with the manufacture and printing of calico in the mid 1700’s. Having
developed a successful method of roller printing, he gave up farming and went into
manufacturing full-time.
Peel’s father (another Robert) moved from Blackburn to Bury in 1770 to set up a cotton printing
business in a disused corn mill on Bury Ground with his uncle, Jonathan Howarth, and William
Yates.
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Although a struggle at first, the business soon ‘took off’. By 1785 Peel and Yates owned a
number of factories and employed 6,800 workers. At its peak the firm employed 15,000 in the
Bury area in printing, dyeing, spinning and weaving.
In 1798, having made a fortune out of new technology and the usual (for that time) abominable
factory conditions, he moved his family to Staffordshire, left his business in the hands of
managers and entered politics. With wealth came a new-found responsibility and he involved
himself in the issue of child labour, helping bring about a reduction in the working day of
children to 12 hours a day.
Sir Robert Peel
Robert Peel was born in 1788, the third child of Robert Snr and Ellen Peel who lived at
Chamber Hall near Bury Ground. The family lived here until 1798 when Peel’s father bought
Drayton Manor in Staffordshire.
He was educated at Harrow (at the same time as Byron) and Christchurch College, Oxford,
where he obtained a Double First in Classics and Maths.
In 1809 at the age of 21 he entered politics, through the influence of his father, who was
determined to see him become Prime Minister.
Irish Secretary
Between 1812 and 1818 he was Irish Secretary: In this role he became popular in England,
taking a firm line on law and order – and unpopular in Ireland for opposing catholic
emancipation.
Home Secretary
Between 1822 and 1827 and 1828 and 1830 he was Home Secretary in the Duke of
Wellington’s Government. In this position he reduced the number of trivial offences for which
the sentence was capital punishment, he improved prison conditions and in 1829 formed the
Metropolitan Police Force. Before this time crime detection rates were very low and punishment
was brutal. The new uniformed police were separate from the military, were armed only with
staves and became popular over time. The idea gradually spread throughout the country with
uniformed police arriving in Bury in February 1840.
The First Ministry
During the parliamentary turmoil surrounding Reform Bills on wider enfranchisement of the
population, Peel was offered the job of Prime Minister but declined. In 1834 he was offered the
job again and accepted. However, he lacked a parliamentary majority and was forced to resign
after four months. The only important thing about this first ministry was Peel’s ‘Tamworth
Manifesto’, in effect the first public election statement of Government Policy.
Peel’s Second Term
Peel’s main ministry was between 1841 and 1846. His aim was to create prosperity by
stimulating trade. His approach was to reduce or remove import and export duties, thus
reducing the prices of commodities and exports; being at the time the world’s most industrially
advanced nation, Britain would benefit and the new prosperity would filter down to the poor too.
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To replace the revenue lost from import and export duties Peel introduced, for the first time in
peace time, income tax.
He helped make London the world’s financial centre through the 1844 Bank Charter Act which
limited the issue of bank notes to the value of the banks’ gold reserves. This was restrictive on
credit but produced long-term security.
On the issue of working conditions, under pressure from the Christian reformer Ashley, Peel’s
government passed the 1842 Mines Act and the 1844 Factory Act. The first made illegal the
employment in mines of women and boys under 10. The second reduced the working hours of
children in factories from 9 to 6½ hours and those of women and children aged 13 - 18 to 12
hours. Ashley pushed for 10 hours, but Peel argued that Britain would not survive foreign
competition on a 10 hour day.
1842 saw the second chartist petition containing 3.3 million signatures for giving the vote to all
adult males. This coincided with a period of much working class discontent over conditions and
wages. Peel’s reaction was to promote limited reforms and, with the help of the new police
forces, imprison or deport many of the protestors.
The campaign for the repeal of the Corn Laws was gathering pace led by the industrialists
Cobden (from Stockport) and Bright (from Rochdale). Import duties on agricultural products
raised the price of food but Peel was under pressure from landed Tories to retain the duties to
protect the prices of home-grown produce.
Peel was gradually converted to the cause of repeal but hoped to put it off until after the next
election.
However, in 1845 potato blight struck in Ireland, rain devastated the grain harvest and in the
face of famine Peel decided the duties on imported grain had to go, to lower the price of bread.
Strong objectors to repeal remained amongst the Tories so Peel offered his resignation to the
Queen. However, the Whigs were just as divided on the issue, so Peel shuffled his Cabinet and
managed to get enough support from two divided parties to get the Repeal Bill through in June
1846. The potato famine led to a crime wave in Ireland and the Government introduced a
Coercion Bill to deal with it. The Bill was defeated by a coalition of Whigs, Radicals and
disgruntled Tories and Peel resigned.
In 1850 Peel was badly injured in a riding accident and died soon after.
HOW TO GET TO THE TOWER
By Train
At weekends you can take the East Lancashire Railway from Bury or Rawtenstall to
Ramsbottom (Tel. 0161-228 7790) and walk from there.
By Bus
For service details to Holcombe and Ramsbottom, Tel. 0161-228 7811.
By Car
There is a car park for the Tower on Lumb Carr Road (B6214) to the south of Holcombe village.
Further Information
Bury Tourist Information Centre
Ramsbottom Heritage Centre
National Trust
Bury Metropolitan Borough Council
0161-253 5111
01706 821603
01282 770353
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Bury Metropolitan Borough Council
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