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Mossley

Coordinates: 53°30′53″N 2°02′19″W / 53.5147°N 2.0387°W / 53.5147; -2.0387
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This article is about the town in Greater Manchester. For other uses, see Mossley (disambiguation).
Mossley
View of Mossley
Mossley is located in Greater Manchester
Mossley
Mossley
Location within Greater Manchester
Population11,557 (Parish, 2021)[1]
11,410 (Built up area, 2021)[2]
OS grid referenceSD9702
Civil parish
Metropolitan borough
Metropolitan county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townASHTON-UNDER-LYNE
Postcode districtOL5
Dialling code01457
PoliceGreater Manchester
FireGreater Manchester
AmbulanceNorth West
UK Parliament
Websitewww.mossley-council.co.uk
List of places
UK
England
Greater Manchester
53°30′53″N 2°02′19″W / 53.5147°N 2.0387°W / 53.5147; -2.0387

Mossley (/ˈmɒzli/) is a town and civil parish in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England,[4] in the upper Tame Valley and the foothills of the Pennines, 3 miles (4.8 km) south-east of Oldham and 9 miles (14.5 km) east of Manchester.

The town grew up straddling the three historic counties of Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire. It was placed entirely in Lancashire in 1889, and became part of Greater Manchester in 1974. At the 2021 census, the built-up area had a population of 11,410 and the parish population was 11,557.

Toponymy

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Mossley means "a woodland clearing by a swamp or bog". The earliest record of the name here dates from around 1319.[5]

History

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2012 Whit Friday Band Contest in Market Street

Mossley—alongside neighbouring Stalybridge and Uppermill in Saddleworth—helped launch the annual Whit Friday Band Contest, an internationally known brass band event, which began in 1884 in Uppermill.[6]

Public venue

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George Lawton Hall, Stamford Street

George Lawton, the son of magistrate and alderman John Lawton, inherited a family fortune and when he died in August 1949, he left the bulk of his wealth to the people of Mossley. Part of his £77,760 wealth (equivalent to £3,500,000 in 2023) was left to build a public meeting place, the George Lawton Hall, which opened in 1960.[7]

Governance

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There are two tiers of local government covering Mossley, at civil parish (town) and metropolitan borough level: Mossley Town Council and Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council. Tameside Council is a member of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which is led by the directly-elected Mayor of Greater Manchester. There is a Mossley ward for elections to Tameside council, which covers a slightly larger area than the parish.[8]

Mossley Town Council generally meets at the Methodist Church on Chapel Street.[9]

Administrative history

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The original hamlet of Mossley was in the parish of Ashton-under-Lyne in Lancashire, but lay very close to the boundaries with Cheshire and Yorkshire. As the town grew during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, the urban area came to straddle the three counties. To the east, it extended into the townships of Stayley and Tintwistle, both of which formed part of the parish of Mottram-in-Longdendale in Cheshire. To the north, it extended into the township of Saddleworth, which was the part of Rochdale parish which lay in the West Riding of Yorkshire (the rest of Rochdale parish was in Lancashire).[10]

In 1864, a Mossley local government district was established, with a newly-defined boundary that straddled the three counties and four townships. The district was administered by an elected local board.[11][12]

Mossley Town Hall

Mossley was granted a municipal charter on 13 March 1885, which converted the local government district into a municipal borough, with a borough council replacing the board.[13][14][15] The borough council bought Mossley Hall in 1891 to serve as its headquarters, renaming it the Town Hall.[16]

Elected county councils were established in 1889 under the Local Government Act 1888. The 1888 Act also directed that urban sanitary districts which straddled county boundaries, as the borough of Mossley did, were to be placed entirely in the county which had the majority of the district's population. Mossley was therefore placed entirely in Lancashire.[17][12] The borough continued to straddle four townships until 1894, when a single township or civil parish of Mossley was created covering the same area as the borough.[18]

The borough of Mossley was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. The area became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside in Greater Manchester.[19]

No successor parish was created for Mossley at the time of the 1974 reforms, and so it became unparished. A new civil parish of Mossley was established in 1999, with its council taking the name Mossley Town Council. The parish is divided into three wards for town council elections, called Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, reflecting the historic county boundaries.[20][21]

The town's unofficial coat of arms includes Cheshire's sheaf of corn, Lancashire's red rose and Yorkshire's white rose to signify the historic demarcation.

Parliament

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From 1918 to 1950 the town gave its name to the Mossley constituency which returned a Member of Parliament; for most of the period, the MP was Austin Hopkinson, who was notable for being elected as an Independent candidate. The town is now represented by the MP for Stalybridge and Hyde.

Geography

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View of Mossley from near Mossley railway station.
Mossley's proximity to the Saddleworth Moor and the Pennines makes it prone to precipitation.

Mossley lies amongst the foothills of the Pennines, on the western edge of Saddleworth Moor.

Churches

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The eccesiastical parishes correspond to the boundaries of the historic counties:

  • St. Joseph's Church, in the centre of Mossley, is Roman Catholic
  • All Saints' Church is in Micklehurst, aligned to Cheshire
  • St John the Baptist Church is of Yorkshire
  • St George's Church is of Lancashire

Education

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Primary schools

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  • St. Joseph's R.C. Primary School
  • Livingstone Primary School
  • St. George's Primary School
  • Milton St. John's Primary School
  • All Saints Micklehurst

Secondary school

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Transport

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Mossley railway station is sited on the Huddersfield line. Services are operated by TransPennine Express to locations including Manchester Piccadilly, Stalybridge, Huddersfield, Leeds and Hull.[22]

Several bus routes serve Mossley, including (as of January 2025):[23]

A tram network operated by the SHMD Joint Board ran lines through Mossley from 1904 to 1945, until their replacement by buses.[24] The second-generation tramway Manchester Metrolink currently terminates at nearby Ashton-under-Lyne for connections to the city centre.

Media

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Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North West and ITV Granada. Television signals are received from the Winter Hill TV transmitter [25] and one of the two local relay transmitters (Saddleworth [26] and Brock Bottom [27]).

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Heart North West, Smooth North West, XS Manchester, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, and Tameside Radio, a community based station.

The local newspaper is the Tameside Reporter, published on Thursdays.[28]

Twinning

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Mossley's French twin town is Hem, situated near Lille, in the Nord département.[citation needed]

Sport

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Local sport teams include Mossley A.F.C., Mossley Mayhem Softball Club, Mossley Athletic JFC, Mossley Juniors F.C., Mossley AFC Running Club and Micklehurst Cricket Club.

Fairtrade

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Mossley's Town Council passed a resolution in November 2009 to make Mossley a Fairtrade Town. A group of local campaigners and activist have started the Fairtrade Mossley group to make 2010 the year that Mossley becomes a Fairtrade Town.[29]

Notable people

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ "Mossley parish". City Population. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  2. ^ "Towns and cities, characteristics of built-up areas, England and Wales: Census 2021". Census 2021. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 8 August 2023.
  3. ^ "Mossley Town Council : Homepage". Mossley-council.co.uk. Retrieved 28 February 2019.
  4. ^ "Greater Manchester Gazetteer". Greater Manchester County Record Office. Places names - M to N. Archived from the original (http) on 18 July 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2008.
  5. ^ Hanks, Patrick; Flavia Hodges; A.D. Mills; Adrian Room (2002). The Oxford Names Companion. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860561-7.
  6. ^ "Saddleworth and Oldham Whit Friday Band Contests". Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  7. ^ "George Lawton". Open Plaques. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  8. ^ "Election Maps". Ordnance Survey. Retrieved 2 February 2025.
  9. ^ "Agendas". Mossley Town Council. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  10. ^ "Mossley". A Vision of Britain through Time. GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  11. ^ "No. 22823". The London Gazette. 26 February 1864. p. 889.
  12. ^ a b Nevell, Michael (1993). "Chapter 2: An Industrial Society". Tameside 1700–1930. A History and Archaeology of Tameside. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council. p. 17. ISBN 1-871324-08-4. OCLC 53181546.
  13. ^ Holt, Alfred (1974) [1926]. The Story of Mossley; Ancient and Modern. Mossley Civic Society. p. 9.
  14. ^ Nevell, Michael (1993). "Chapter 2: An Industrial Society". Tameside 1700–1930. A History and Archaeology of Tameside. Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council. p. 11. ISBN 1-871324-08-4. OCLC 53181546.
  15. ^ "Mossley Municipal Borough". A Vision of Britain through Time. GB Historical GIS / University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  16. ^ Historic England. "Former Mossley Town Hall (1068044)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 25 February 2024.
  17. ^ Pulling, Alexander (1889). A Handbook for County Authorities. London: William Clowes and Sons. pp. 12, 15, 20. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  18. ^ Annual Report of the Local Government Board. 1895. p. 240. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  19. ^ "Local Government Act 1972: Schedule 1", legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives, 1972 c. 70 (sch. 1), retrieved 15 January 2025
  20. ^ "The Tameside (Parishes) Order 1999" (PDF). Local Government Boundary Commission for England. The National Archives. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  21. ^ "Town History". Mossley Town Council. Retrieved 16 February 2025.
  22. ^ "Timetables". TransPennine Express. 21 May 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  23. ^ "Stops in Mossley". Bus Times. 2023. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  24. ^ "Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley & Dukinfield Joint Transport and Electricity Board 1903-1969". petergould.co.uk. Retrieved 29 March 2021.
  25. ^ "Full Freeview on the Winter Hill (Bolton, England) transmitter". UK Free TV. May 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  26. ^ "Full Freeview on the Saddleworth (Oldham, England) transmitter". UK Free TV. May 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  27. ^ "Freeview Light on the Brook Bottom (Tameside, England) transmitter". UK Free TV. May 2004. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  28. ^ "Tameside Reporter". British Papers. 11 December 2013. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
  29. ^ "Make Mossley Fairtrade; the Fair Trade Campaign for Mossley, Lancashire". JUrang.co.uk.
  30. ^ "Green Fingered George". Green Fingered George. Retrieved 28 January 2021.
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