[3] Haslingden is the birthplace of the industrialist John Cockerill (1790–1840) and the composer Alan Rawsthorne (1905–1971), and was the home for many years of the Irish Republican leader, Michael Davitt (1846–1906).

The Forest of Rossendale contained eleven vaccaries (cow-pastures) and was poorly populated, with Haslingden being the only town of significance and with a church.

Haslingden benefited in particular with the mechanisation of the wool and cotton spinning and weaving industries from the 18th to the 19th centuries, and the development of watermills, and later steam power.

By the latter half of the nineteenth century, the diversity and wealth of industry earned the area the name 'The Golden Valley'.

Geologists have found that it has a hardness and silica content not unlike granite, and its presence was the main reason for the growth of quarrying in Rossendale.

From the 16th century, after the old Forest of Rossendale was opened up to settlement, farmers raised sheep on the moorlands and made woollen cloth.

Initially this was small-scale and local but towards the end of the 18th century cloth workers came together to work in small groups of houses.

Most of these were small, water-powered buildings; and Haslingden, with its elevated situation, was not a natural place for the development of these early mills.

[11] The long association with wool meant that Haslingden and the other Rossendale towns had expertise with the processes of cloth production, and so were able to switch easily to cotton weaving.

Cotton cloth manufacture quickly became a highly successful industry, and its development was closely associated with its role in the expansion of the slave trade.

Hunger drove men and women to fight back, and mobs attacked the power-looms that were seen to be the cause of the decline in status of the workforce.

[13] Grudgingly a minimum wage was introduced, and through the efforts of reformers, the churches and a few enlightened mill-owners, conditions for factory workers slowly improved.

Father and son eventually left Haslingden and settled in Belgium, where they built up one of the largest industrial and machinery complexes in mainland Europe.

William's beginning are obscure, although it is likely that he worked as a blacksmith in Haslingden before travelling to St. Petersburg, Sweden, and finally to Verviers, near Liège in Belgium.

From the late 1840s a large influx of Irish immigrants forced out of Ireland by the Great Famine of 1846–1852, came to Lancashire and some ended up in Haslingden.

[16] At almost the same time, as a result of the political instability in Italy, Italians came to Liverpool and Manchester and a few families moved on to Haslingden.

Immediately after World War II young women from Germany were brought over to work in the mills, and a few came to Haslingden and stayed.

Initially this tended to mean young men who travelled from Pakistan, and later Bangladesh, fully expecting to return home after building up their savings.

As a result, the town is now home to a substantial and vibrant community of people with a South Asian heritage, mainly Bangladeshi and Pakistani.

Many of the families come from just a few villages: from the Attock and Mirpur areas of north-west Pakistan, and from Patli Union in the Sylhet region of Bangladesh.

This location embraced several public house drinking places, along with the original market, the town stocks, and Marsden Square, where travelling shows pitched their tents.

[28] The Public Hall was opened in 1868 and built by a private company formed by 'gentlemen representing the working classes and temperance movement'.

Emmeline Pankhurst once addressed the people of Haslingden from the stage and, after the Battle of the Somme in 1916, it was a temporary hospital for the survivors of the Accrington Pals who were sent home for treatment.

It followed from a suggestion by the industrialist and Liberal politician Sir William Mather in 1900, given after a prize-giving to students to members of the Haslingden Technical Instruction Committee.

He began working in a cotton mill but at the age of 11 his right arm was entangled in a cogwheel and mangled so badly it had to be amputated.

A regular service from Rawtenstall to Manchester has been proposed, using the Heritage East Lancashire Railway terminus station.

To the north of the town is the Holland's Pies factory, and Winfield's, a large warehouse-style retail development selling footwear and clothing, and promoting itself as a family day out.

Chris Aspin writes of the haunting of Tor View, a house no longer standing that was situated behind the Rose & Crown pub on Manchester Road.

This story was reported in 1956 by Joseph Braddock in his book Haunted Houses, where the author claimed to have had first-hand experiences of the ghost.

The Halo artwork designed by John Kennedy was selected and opened in 2007 and is sited in the hills above Haslingden as the centrepiece of a reclaimed landscape.