Shaw and Crompton is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, and lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines. It is located north of Oldham, south-east of Rochdale and north-east of Manchester. Its largest settlement is Shaw.
Historically in Lancashire, the area shows evidence of ancient British and Anglian activity. In the Middle Ages, Crompton formed a small township of scattered woods, farmsteads, moorland and swamp. The local lordship was weak or absent, and so Crompton failed to emerge as a manor with its own lord and court. Farming was the main industry of this rural area, with locals supplementing their incomes by hand-loom woollen weaving in the domestic system.
The introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution initiated a process of rapid and unplanned urbanisation. A building boom began in Crompton in the mid-19th century, when suitable land for factories in Oldham was becoming scarce. By the late 19th century, Crompton had emerged as a densely populated mill town with forty-eight cotton mills, some of the largest in the United Kingdom, in the area. At its spinning zenith, as a result of an interwar economic boom associated with the textile industry, Shaw and Crompton had more millionaires per capita than any other town in the world. Imports of foreign cotton goods saw a decline in the textile industry by the mid-20th century and the last mill closed in 1989.
Shaw and Crompton covers and is a predominantly suburban area of mixed affluence with a population of 21,065 as of 2011. The legacy of its industrial past can be seen in its three surviving cotton mills, all of which are home to large distribution companies, among them is Yodel based at Shaw National Distribution Centre, a major employer in the area.
History
Toponymy
The name Shaw is derived from the Old English word sceaga, meaning "wood". The name Crompton is also of Old English derivation, from the words crom or crumb, meaning "bent" or "crooked" and ton, for "hamlet or village". A local historian stated that "this name aptly describes the appearance of the place, with its uneven surface, its numerous mounds and hills, as though it had been crumpled up to form these ridges". The University of Nottingham's Institute for Name-Studies has offered the suggestion that the name Crompton means "river-bend settlement", which may reflect Crompton's location on a meander of the River Beal.
The dual name of both Shaw and Crompton has been said to make the town "distinctive, if not unique", while preference of Shaw over Crompton and vice versa has been (and to a limited extent remains) a minor local controversy and point of confusion. Today, the single name of Shaw seems to have won preference in the locality.
Shaw was originally a hamlet and sub-district of Crompton, where it appears to have originated as the commercial and ecclesiastic centre because of a small chapel sited there dating back to the 16th century. Before then, Whitfield had been the largest village in Crompton. In 1872, Shaw was noted as one of three villages in Crompton. However, due to Shaw's urbanisation following the construction of a major road from Werneth to Littleborough, and the establishment of a post office sub-district named and situated in Shaw, it came to dominate Crompton. Additionally, a separate ecclesiastical parish was created for the township in 1835, which was given the name Shaw because of the church's location on Shaw Moor, in Crompton. The names merged to form the present day Shaw and Crompton, which boundary markers have used since at least the 1950s.
Early history
An early type of axe known as a palstave has been discovered on Crompton Moor, providing evidence of Bronze Age human activity. It is believed that the area was inhabited by Ancient Britons, and that the Brigantes gave the River Beal its name. An ancient track, perhaps of Roman origin, crosses the modern Buckstones Road leading to Castleshaw Roman fort in neighbouring Saddleworth.
In 616 Æthelfrith of Bernicia, an Anglo-Saxon king, crossed the Pennines with an army and passed through Manchester to defeat the Britons in the Battle of Chester. A wave of Anglian colonists followed this military conquest and their settlements are identified by the Old English suffix ton in local place names. Royton, Middleton, Moston, Clayton, Ashton and Crompton are localities northeast of Manchester which may have been founded during that colonisation, suggesting that Crompton as a settlement could date from the 7th century.