Hapton is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Burnley in Lancashire, England, west of Burnley, with a railway station on the East Lancashire Line. At the United Kingdom Census 2011, it had a population of 1,979.
The parish adjoins the Burnley parishes of Dunnockshaw, Habergham Eaves and Padiham and Lowerhouse area of Burnley, the Hyndburn parish of Altham and Huncoat area of Accrington and the Loveclough area of Rossendale.
The Leeds and Liverpool Canal and M65 motorway both pass through the village.
History
The name Hapton is thought to have been derived from the Old English words and meaning the enclosure on the hill.
The civil parish of Hapton is thought to be the amalgamation of three medieval manors. Hapton is linked to the original castle and village that would later develop near it. To the northwest lies Shuttleworth, thought to be the origin of the family better known at Gawthorpe Hall. The third manor was called Birtwistle and its location is uncertain, but has been suggested to have been near the site of Hapton Tower. The ancient township extended from the River Calder in the north, over Hameldon Hill to the Forest of Rossendale in the south.
Castle Clough was once the site of a castle, and Hapton Park was the location of Hapton Tower, built around 1510 by Sir John Towneley (1473-1540).
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 (, 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 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.