Borough of Oldham

Oldham is the administrative centre for Oldham Metropolitan District and the town is set high on the slopes of the Pennines, to the north-east of Manchester. Leaving Oldham for Manchester, as the road drops away, the view is out over the Cheshire Plain, as far as the horizon. On a fine day the distinctive outline of Jodrell Bank telescope can clearly be seen. A mill town, from the early years of the Industrial Revolution, Oldham now encompasses a real assortment of smaller towns and villages, touching the borders of Tameside, Manchester and Rochdale to the west and south. To the east the vista opens out, as the land climbs up to the Saddleworth Moors and Yorkshire, through the old Pennine villages of Saddleworth. Although many of the Saddleworth villages now merge from one into another, with the popularity of the area for its scenic out of town lving, many of them still preserve their individual characterisitcs, and social centres. Saddlworth's main villages are Delph, Denshaw, Diggle, Greenfield, Uppermaill and Dobross

Other than Saddleworth, today's major population centres in the Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council area include Shaw and Crompton, Royton, Failsworth and Hollinwood, Lees and Chadderton in adddition to the Town Centre and its surrounding districts such as Broadway, Mumps, Glodwick, Westwood and Werneth.

The town's origins can be traced back to Danish settlers in the 9th century. In the 13th century much of the land around the town of Oldham passed into the hands of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. The town's prosperity and economy has been linked to the manufacture of cloth from the middle ages and, with the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the industry boomed. Oldham became one of the most important cotton towns in the country; the spinning process being facillitated by the almost permanently damp atmosphere experienced on the western slopes of the Pennines.

Saddleworth, for hundreds of years a group of villages in Yorkshire, has only come under the Oldham banner and become a part of the Metropolitan Borough in the last 30 years. The villages were, for centuries, a centre for the production of woollen cloth. The area can also lay claim to being the birthplace of the Platt brothers who began production of the heavy machinery needed by the textile industry.

The town's coat of arms is that of Hugh Oldham, the Bishop of Exeter and founder of the prestigious Manchester Grammar School. Appropriately, it shows an owl, carrying a rolled text in its beak that shows the letters 'DOM'. Not surprisingly, this juxtaposition of learned owl and letters, together with local pronunciation, has led to many puns on 'Oldham' and 'Owl-dom' over the years!

One of the few roads over the Pennines, from Lancashire into Yorkshire, has always passed through Oldham.The town was on the old Roman Road from Manchester to Yorkshire. It's strategic position and surrounding moorland on which to graze sheep, was important in the growth of Oldham as a textile town; firstly in woollen cloths and later for cotton. The demands of the Industrial Revolution on the growing town were great. Coal was needed for the steam engines; transport was needed to bring in the vast quantities of raw materials needed; transport was also needed to take out the finished goods. It was at this time that the Rochdale Canal was dug, running through Oldham. It was completed in the 1790s but it's real usefulness was shortlived as, hot on the heels of its completion, came the new steam railways.

The name 'Oldham' is always thought to be synonymous with cotton but there is far more to be considered. When coal was needed for steam the town developed its coal mining potential; when machinery for the mills was needed the town became a centre for the production of heavy machinery, initially for textile needs. Oldham's skyline was once a dense thicket of mill chimneys but most of these have now been pulled down and the mills put to various other uses when not also demolished. The town has recently opened a new, and architectually challenging, library to accompany the Gallery Oldham which was opened a few years ago. The Gallery has a full programme of events, workshops and exhibitions to appeal to all tastes.