How Moses didn't live in Bolton

I imagine Bolton to be a place which is tremendously proud of its heritage and a place where Southerners imagine they're still having trouble up at t'mill.

To get to the point. There's a district of Bolton - not far from here - called Moses Gate. I often wondered how it got its name. I asked Boltonians. They didn't know. I asked people who lived in Moses Gate. They didn't know either. So I made a few enquiries.

The first word was originally "moss" or "mosses," a moss being a patch of marshy or peaty land. "Gate" is an old word for road, as in Churchgate (the road to the church) or Deansgate (the road to Deane). A map dated in the early 1800s names the place as "Moss Gate."

Pity it hasn't anything to do with Moses. It would have made a good blog post.