Short answers, pulled from the story.
Scholars agree the last part of the name comes from an Old English word for cleared land among woodland. The first part is disputed: it may derive from an Old English personal name Weorc, an unattested feminine name Weorcgyth, or possibly a Common Brittonic root referring to an ancient forest. Place-name scholar Victor Watts grouped the historical spellings into three types reflecting these different possibilities.
Iron oxide from the old mine workings beneath the village has stained the canal water bright orange for many years. A 2.5 million pound remediation scheme was completed in 2004, but as of 2017 much of the canal around Worsley Delph remains orange.
Worsley Delph was the entrance to the underground coal mines owned by the Duke of Bridgewater. It gave access to an underground canal on four levels, linked by inclined planes. The largest Starvationer boats used to carry coal out through its two entrances, which were built years apart. It is now a scheduled monument.
Francis Egerton, the third Duke of Bridgewater, built the Bridgewater Canal to solve two problems: expensive and inefficient overland transport for coal, and persistent flooding in his mines. Engineer James Brindley suggested routing the canal across the River Irwell into Manchester rather than directly to Salford, which required a stone aqueduct at Barton-upon-Irwell. Construction began in September 1760 and the first boat crossed on the 17th of July 1761.
Worsley New Hall was designed by Edward Blore and built in 1846 for Francis Egerton, the first Earl of Ellesmere. It was visited by Queen Victoria in 1851 and 1857. During the Second World War it housed Dunkirk evacuees, American soldiers preparing for D-Day, and the Lancashire Fusiliers. A fire badly damaged it in 1943 and it was demolished in 1949. The Royal Horticultural Society later restored the garden on the site, opening it as RHS Garden Bridgewater in 2021.
Worsley has produced a range of notable figures including cricketer Johnny Tyldesley, who played 31 Test matches, and his brother Ernest Tyldesley, who played 14. Kenneth Wolstenholme, the TV sports commentator, was born there in 1920. Musicians Tim Burgess of the Charlatans and James Fearnley of the Pogues both have Worsley connections. Comedian Chris Addison grew up locally. Footballers Ryan Giggs and David Beckham have also owned properties in the village.