East Lancashire's connection to original Channel Tunnel plan

THE WEDDING is seldom the problem. It’s afterwards that the in-laws often start to raise a few eyebrows.

Accrington-born and Oxford-educated, Henry Wilson Worsley-Taylor married Harriet Watkin, the daughter of Sir Edward Watkin, of Manchester in 1871, the same year he was called the bar.

It was quite an occasion and the pair quickly moved south and became part of the London social scene.

A few years later Henry became aware of his father-in-law’s Grand Plan.

A life-long enthusiast of the railways spreading all over the country, Sir Edward had not only devised a scheme to build a railway tunnel to France, he was well on the way to making it happen.

Today, with high-speed trains capable of carrying 60,000 people each day, most people have taken the journey and thought little about it. But 140 years ago the idea was ridiculed.

Edward Watkin was certainly a visionary and a pioneer of railway engineering. And he came up with plans for a London rival to top the recently-opened Eiffel Tower.

Henry took on the additional name Taylor to fulfil a requirement which allowed him to inherit Moreton Hall in the Ribble Valley – a grand house no doubt admired by the daughter of one of Britain’s most accomplished men.

An impressive building dating from the 1820s, it was thought to be a “calendar house” featuring 365 windows, 12 chimneys and 7 main doors.

Having been used to house refugees during the Second World War, Moreton Hall suffered the fate of many country houses and was pulled down in 1955. The Lodge can be seen on the west side of the A680 Whalley to Accrington road.

Henry and Harriet spent their early life together in the South of England in a new house called ‘South Laund’; named after Henry’s childhood home, The Laund, in Baxenden.

In his early legal career Henry practised at the Parliamentary Bar, no doubt coming across his father-in-law who sat in Parliament on-and-off for nearly 30 years.

Henry Wilson Worsley-Taylor would follow in the footsteps of Watkin in 1900, when he was elected Member of Parliament for Blackpool. He died in 1924.

Sir Edward Watkin’s vision of a tunnel under the Channel in the 1880s was scotched as the government feared it might be used for an invasion from Europe. It would take another 100 years for the Channel Tunnel to be opened in May 1994 – with relatives of both Henry and Edward on board the inaugural service.

Henry became Sir Henry in 1917 and the title was inherited by his son, John whose daughter, Annette, founded the London Fashion show which became an important part of the international fashion calendar. Her aunt, and John’s sister, Dorothea Worsley-Taylor, of Bashall Eaves, was well known in the Ribble Valley, holding close ties with the Women’s Institute. She died in 2014 at the age of 93.