Posts by samuelheywoodeverett

There had existed an ‘Old Athletics Grounds’ off Milnrow Road from 1871, the earliest group occupying it being the Rochdale Rifle and Athletics Club. The Rochdale Athletics Company took over the Athletics Grounds in June of 1894, opening its use to a number of sporting bodies including Rochdale Hornets Rugby Football Club. The ground itself…

The 1930’s was a decade of change in the United Kingdom and Rochdale was no exception. Cinema attendance was booming and dancing was all the rage with dances at the Pioneers Ballroom, occasionally at the Town Hall and many others in many church halls and school rooms. In August 1935 there was a dance at…

The statement in 1957 by the Prime Minister of the day, Harold Macmillan, that the country had ‘never had it so good’ reflected the beginnings of an economic upturn, full employment and a rise in living standards. It also coincided with a baby boom, the 1960’s seeing a huge rise in the teenage population. With…

Literacy amongst the working class in the 19th century grew as a result of the demands of industrialisation although parents often had to choose between educating a child and having them go to work. Historians suggest that literacy was at an all-time low around 1820 but rose steadily with the work of charity and Sunday…

Rochdale has a wonderful heritage when it comes to dialect writers and the best four of them are memorialised in Broadfield Park on a monument, agreed by the council in April 1896 and designed by the sculptor Edwin Sykes with bronze portraits by John Cassidy. One of the four writers is John Trafford Clegg, also…

In the mid 1500’s the town of Rochdale had a population of 10,000 most of whom had no education and would count themselves lucky to receive an apprenticeship. The few who could afford to have their sons well educated (and it was mainly sons), sent them to Whalley Abbey whilst poorer families were reliant on…

Although December opened to relatively mild temperatures, early snow had already fallen by mid-November of 1962 with commentators suggesting that it was cold even for that time of year. By December 8th the Manchester Meteorological Office was reporting that the ‘cold spell seems to be growing’ and coupled with fog every day the freezing conditions…

As the decade of the 1930’s opened, boom times must have seemed to be well and truly a thing of a past and by 1932 the number of registered unemployed in the North was as high as 70% in some areas of the North of England. Not until the mid-1930’s did things began to improve…

Due to the extraordinary increase in industrial wealth of the town in the 18th and 19th century it was felt that Rochdale should have a formal town hall to recognise the fact. Before the middle of the 19th century the town had used a number of buildings for its civic activities, a study by Maxim…

Rochdale is famous for many things, for Gracie Fields and for the Rochdale Pioneers to name only two. However, it is with a less attractive but nonetheless necessary domestic institution that Rochdale gave its name, the Pail closet, also known as the ‘Rochdale system’. There were a number of ways in which human waste was…