Turton was a township and chapelry of the civil and ecclesiastical parish of Bolton le Moors in the Salford Hundred of Lancashire.

[6] After the Public Health Act 1875 was passed by Parliament in that year, Turton Local Board assumed extra duties as an urban sanitary district, although the Local Board's title did not change.

[6] Four years later, under the Bolton, Turton and Westhoughton Extension Act 1898, Turton Urban District was greatly enlarged by the addition of the civil parishes of Belmont, Bradshaw, Harwood, Longworth, Entwistle, Edgworth and Quarlton from the former Bolton Rural District, which almost doubled the Urban District's population.

[8] Following the death of Sir Lees Knowles, 1st Baronet, in 1929, his widow, Lady Nina Knowles, presented Turton Tower to the Urban District Council in 1930, which became the council's seat of local government.

[9] The larger rural area, North Turton, became a civil parish of the Borough of Blackburn in Lancashire.