Travel Chadderton Map

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Chadderton tourist guide map of landmarks & destinations by Walkfo

Chadderton history

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Toponymy

The name Chadderton means “farm or settlement at the hill called Cadeir” It is believed to date from the 7th century when Angles colonised the region following the Battle of Chester. The first known written record of the name is in a legal document relating to land tenure in 1220.

Early history

The study of place names in Chadderton suggests that the ancient Britons once inhabited the area. Remains of Roman roads have been discovered running through the town, and the local road name Streetbridge suggests the Romans once marched along it on a path which may have led to Blackstone Edge. Its first appearance in a written record is in a legal document from around 1220.

Textiles and the Industrial Revolution

Until the mid-18th century, the region in and around Chadderton was dominated by dispersed agricultural settlements. During this period the population was fewer than 1,000, broadly consisting of farmers who were involved with pasture, but who supplemented their incomes by working in cottage industries, particularly fustian and silk weaving. A fulling mill at Chadderton by the River Irk was recorded during the Elizabethan era, and during the Early Modern period the weavers of Chadderton had been using spinning wheels in makeshift weavers’ cottages to produce woollens. Primitive early 18th-century industrialisation developed slowly in Chadderton. However, as the demand for cotton goods increased and the technology of cotton-spinning machinery improved during the mid-18th century, the need for larger structures to house bigger, better, and more efficient equipment became apparent. A water-powered cotton mill was built at Chadderton’s Stock Brook in 1776. The damp climate below the South Pennines provided ideal conditions for textile production to be carried out without the thread drying and breaking, and newly developed 19th-century mechanisation optimised cotton spinning for industrial-scale manufacture of yarn and fabric for the global market. As the Industrial Revolution advanced, socioeconomic conditions in the region contributed to Chadderton adopting cotton spinning in the factory system, which became the dominant source of employment in the locality. The construction of multi-storey steam powered mills followed, which initiated a process of urbanisation and cultural transformation in the region; the population increasingly moved away from farming and domestic weaving in favour of the mechanised production of cotton goods. During this early period of change, Chadderton’s parliamentary representation was limited to two Members of Parliament for Lancashire. Nationally, the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 had resulted in periods of famine and unemployment for textile workers. Nevertheless, despite years of distress and unrest, major disturbances of machine-breaking did not occur until 1826. By the beginning of 1819 the pressure generated by poor economic conditions, coupled with the lack of suffrage in Northern England, had enhanced the appeal of political Radicalism in the region. The Manchester Patriotic Union, a group agitating for parliamentary reform, began to organise a mass public demonstration in Manchester to demand the reform of parliamentary representation. Organised preparations took place, and a spy reported that in neighbouring Thornham, “seven hundred men drilled … as well as any army regiment would”. A few days later, on 3 August, a royal proclamation forbidding the practice of drilling was posted in Manchester. On 16 August 1819, Chadderton (like its neighbours) sent a contingent of its townsfolk to Manchester to join the mass political demonstration now known as the Peterloo Massacre (owing to the 15 deaths and 400–700 injuries which followed). Two of the 15 deceased were from the area: John Ashton of Cowhill and Thomas Buckley of Baretrees. New markets in Europe and South America increased the demand for Britain’s cheap cotton goods. Supplies of raw cotton were exported from plantations in the United States to Manchester. From the markets in Manchester, mill owners from Chadderton and neighbouring towns bought their cotton to be processed into yarn and cloth. Supplies were cut during the Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861–65 as a result of the American Civil War, leading to the formation of the Chadderton Local Board of Health in 1873, whose purpose was to ensure social security and maintain hygiene and sanitation in the locality following the crisis. Despite a brief economic depression, the urban growth of Chadderton accelerated after the famine. The profitability of factory based cotton spinning meant that much of Chadderton’s plentiful cheap open land, used for farming since antiquity, vanished under distinctive rectangular multi-storey brick-built factories—35 by 1891. Chadderton’s former villages and hamlets agglomerated as a mill town around these factories and a network of newly created roads, canals and railways. The Chadderton landscape was “dominated by mill chimneys, many with the mill name picked out in white brick”. Neighbouring Oldham (which by the 1870s had emerged as the largest and most productive mill town in the world) encroached upon Chadderton’s eastern boundary, urbanising the town and surrounds, and forming a continuous urban cotton-spinning district with Royton, Lees and Shaw and Crompton—the Oldham parliamentary constituency—which at its peak was responsible for 13 per cent of the world’s cotton production. These Victorian era developments shifted the commercial focus away from Chadderton Fold to the major arterial Middleton Road, by Chadderton’s eastern boundary with Oldham. Sixty cotton mills were constructed in Chadderton between 1778 and 1926, and 6,000 people, a quarter of Chadderton’s population, worked in these factories by the beginning of the 20th century. Industries ancillary to cotton spinning, such as engineering, coal mining, bleaching and dyeing became established during this period, meaning the rest of Chadderton’s population were otherwise involved in the sector. Philip Stott was a Chadderton-born architect, civil engineer and surveyor of cotton mills. Stott’s mills in Chadderton were some of the largest to be built in the United Kingdom, multiplying the town’s industrial capacity and in turn increasing its population and productivity. The boomtown of Chadderton reached its industrial zenith in the 1910s, with over 50 cotton mills within the town limits. A social consequence of this industrial growth was a densely populated metropolitan landscape, home to an extensive and enlarged working class community living in an urban sprawl of low quality terraced houses. However, Chadderton developed an abundance of civic institutions including public street lighting, Carnegie library, public swimming baths and council with its own town hall. The development of the town meant that the district council made initial steps to petition the Crown for honorific borough status for Chadderton in the 1930s. However, the Great Depression, and the First and Second World Wars each contributed to periods of economic decline. As imports of cheaper foreign yarns and textile goods increased during the mid-20th century, Chadderton’s textile sector declined to a halt; cotton spinning reduced dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s and by 1997 only two mills were operational. In spite of efforts to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of its production, the last cotton was spun in the town in 1998. Many of the redundant mills have now been demolished. Non-textile based industries continued on throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, particularly in the form of aircraft and chemical manufacture at plants in south Chadderton and Foxdenton respectively.

Post-industrial history

During the second half of the 20th century, Chadderton experienced accelerated deindustrialisation along with economic decline. Large areas of Victorian and Edwardian era terraced housing were identified as unsuited for modern needs, and were subsequently demolished. The town’s population continued to grow as a result of urban renewal and modern suburban housing developments.

  

Chadderton map & travel guide with history & landmarks to explore

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Tourist Guide to Chadderton Map

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