Ince - Township
Originally published by Victoria County History, London, in 1911.
Extract:
The general aspect is unpleasing, it being a typical black country in the heart of the coal-mining area.
The flat surface, covered with a complete network of railways, has scarcely a green tree to relieve the monotony of the bare wide expanses of apparently waste land, much of it covered with shallow 'flashes' of water, the result of the gradual subsidence of the ground as it is mined beneath. A good deal of the ground appears to be unreclaimed mossland. Needless to say no crops are cultivated.
All the energies of the populace are employed in the underground mineral wealth of the district, Ince being famous for cannel and other coal.
The northern part of the township merges into the town of Wigan, the principal features being huge cotton mills and warehouses, crowding the banks of the canals and River Douglas, which here degenerates into a grimy ditch, with never a bush or tree to shade its muddy banks.