Blackrod, a village a township, and a parish in Lancashire. The village stands on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, on elevated ground near the river Douglas and the Bolton and Preston railway, 4 1/2 miles SSE of Chorley, and has two stations on the L. & Y.R., and a post, money order, and telegraph office under Chorley. Its site is supposed to have been occupied by the Roman station Coccium, on Watling Street, and many Roman relics have been found. The township comprises 2388 acres; population, 4021. The inhabitants are chiefly engaged in bleachworks and collieries. A fire in a colliery here was extinguished by directing the river Douglas into it. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Manchester; net value, £380 with residence. Patron, the Vicar of Bolton. The church is good, and there is a Wesleyan chapel. A free grammar school, founded in 1568, and now incorporated with one at Rivington, has an endowment producing an income of £260, besides an exhibition of £65 per annum at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and there are charities amounting to £200 per annum.
