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THE DANES
The town can be dated from 865AD when Danish
invaders established a settlement here with the name Aldehulme. In
1215 much of the lands of Oldham were given to the Knights of St John
of Jerusalem by Roger de Montbegon. Since medieval times, Oldham has
been a centre of the textile industry, though it came into its own,
like many other Lancashire towns, with the onset of the Industrial
Revolution in the latter part of the 18th century.
During the 19th and 20th century it became one
of the world's leading cotton spinning towns. Yet, it often comes
as a surprise to visitors to learn that two-thirds of the borough
is open countryside, untouched by industrialisation, with the wild
splendours of Saddleworth's Pennine moorland on the very doorstep.
The town Arms are the family crest of Hugh Oldham,
Bishop of Exeter and founder of the Manchester Grammar School. It
features an owl holding a scroll in its beak - the scroll carries
the letters "DOM", making a typical medieval name-pun "OWL-DOM",
which is the original pronunciation of the town (and the family's)
name - still reflected nowadays in the local pronunciation of "Ow'dom".
This pun is also repeated in the town's 2 mottos : the older one reads
"Haud (pronounced "owd") Facile Captu" (meaning
"Not easily caught" - a reference no doubt to the canniness
of the local populace), and the later current motto "Sapere Aude"
(meaning "Dare to be wise" - the "Aude" also being
pronounced "Owd").
In
1536 Lawrence Chadderton, after whom the district of Chadderton is
named, was born in Oldham. He was to become the translator of the
King James Bible.
WOOLLEN TEXTILES
Oldham had long been on one of the major routes
from Lancashire to Yorkshire, as it lies on the old Roman road which
linked Manchester to York across the Pennines. Even though this road
had deteriorated to little more than a muddy dirt track, by the middle
of the 18th century it was to assume a growing importance for the
moving and distribution of trade products in the wake of the Industrial
Revolution. In medieval times, Oldham was a centre for the production
of woollen cloth, thanks to large areas of suitable moorland grazing
for sheep which surrounded it.
ROADS & TURNPIKES
As early as the 17th century plans had been
put forward for improving the road network infrastructure, and various
turnpike toll roads had been proposed following the 1734 Turnpike
Act. Few roads were actually realised however, and Oldham remained
largely inaccessible to all but the occasional pack horse trains which
moved wool in a very inefficient and piecemeal fashion. Even 25 years
later, a proper road did not exist between Oldham and neighbouring
Manchester. The first regular coach service to Manchester came into
operation in October of 1790, with a journey time of over 2 hours
and a fare 2s.8d (about 13p), with half fare for travellers on top
of the coach.
CANALS
The Industrial Revolution saw considerable development
of Oldham's industrial base. In 1759, Francis Egerton the 3rd Duke
of Bridgewater had built the first commercial canal to bring coal
from his mines in Worsley into Manchester. Canal fever spread quickly,
as it offered a viable and cheaper alternative to road transportation.
The steam driven machinery of Oldham's many new mills needed Worsley
coal to drive them.
Oldham had coal in abundance, but at that time there was no real mining
development in an industrial sense or on a large enough scale to supply
fuel-hungry steam engines. Inevitably a plan to build a trans-Pennine
canal which would run through Oldham was promoted in the mid-1760s
- this was to become the Rochdale Canal, which, with the later connection
to the Ashton Canal was completed in the 1790s. With the new capability
of receiving raw materials and foodstuffs, and of exporting its textiles,
Oldham came into its own and grew into a major industrial town during
this period. In 1799 a short-lived passenger service was opened between
Manchester and Stalybridge. Within 30 years the railways appeared
and even the new canals could not compete with its speed and efficiency.
COTTON SPINNING
While it would be a truism to say that Cotton
created modern Oldham, it would be a mistake to think this was the
town's only industry. Oldham began to produce its own coal in the
19th century, and perhaps more importantly, it began to develop a
base in the production of engineering machinery - initially for the
textile trade, but later for other industries. The transition from
the production of woollen cloth to the spinning of cotton came about
in Oldham during the 18th century. The Saddleworth woollen trade was
already well established when in the 1740s Manchester merchants began
distributing cotton to surrounding mills for carding, spinning and
weaving.
Many new inventions for the fast processing of cotton were introduced
- most significantly the "flying shuttle" of John Kay, which
instantly made weaving very fast, so that traditional spinning wheel
production could not supply spun cotton fast enough to keep weaver's
looms supplied. That problem had been solved by James Hargreave's
"Spinning Jenny". This revolutionised the Oldham spinning
industry and from 1750 onwards the old romantic cottage industries
of home spun yarns ended and the machines were exiled to the attics
of Oldham. The process became quickly mechanised and mass production
methods, introduced about 1770, overtook traditional ways, and necessitated
workers moving into the new mills and factories to work. Oldham's
first mill was Lees Hall, built about 1778 by William Clegg.
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