Hyde, United Kingdom

The population of Hyde increased due to the success of the cotton mills during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries; at one stage, there were 40 working mills. By 1872, only 27 remained; half of the remaining mills closed between 1921 and 1939 and there is only one working mill in the town today. There were many mill-owning families, including Sidebotham, Hibbert and Horsfield. The main employers in the mills were the Ashton family, who successfully ran a combined spinning and weaving company; most mills concentrated on one process only. The Ashton family built Hyde Chapel, on Stockport Road in Gee Cross. The Ashton Brothers' Mill has been demolished recently to make way for a housing estate.

St George's Church was built in 1832 as a chapel of ease to St Mary's, Stockport. It was built at the instigation of John Hyde Clarke of Hyde Hall and was the first Church of England place of worship in the town; St George's became a parish church in 1842, with its ecclesiastical parish initially covering the whole township of Hyde. Later additions include the lychgate, boathouse by the canal, hearse house, parish rooms and numerous vicarages. The church has a 110-foot (34 m) tower housing eight bells and a clock.

Newton for Hyde railway station opened in 1841 on the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway. It was in the neighbouring township of Newton, 0.6 miles (1 km) north-east of the Market Place in Hyde. Hyde Central railway station, closer to the town centre, was opened in 1858 on a branch line.

In 1853, construction work on the Catholic St Paul's Church in Hyde began. On 21 June 1854, the church was opened. It was designed by the noted architects Matthew Ellison Hadfield, John Grey Weightman and George Goldie in the Gothic Revival style. In 2013, it was designated a Grade II listed building.

Hyde Colliery was a coal mine in the town; in January 1889, an explosion there killed 23 miners. There was an inquiry held the following month at Hyde Town Hall. The following month, Ardwick AFC (now Manchester City) played Newton Heath (now Manchester United) under floodlights at Belle Vue to raise money for the victims' families. The game was watched by 10,000 people and this was the first floodlit match played by either side.

During the 1960s, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were arrested in their home on the Hattersley estate in Hyde after police found the body of 17-year-old Edward Evans in the house. At their trial, they were found guilty of murdering Evans as well as two other children whose bodies were found buried on Saddleworth Moor several miles away.

Britain's most prolific serial killer, Dr Harold Shipman, had his doctor's surgery in the town where he murdered most of his several hundred victims. The first known victim was 86-year-old Sarah Hannah Marsland of Ashton House in Victoria Street on 7 August 1978 and the last was Kathleen Grundy of Joel Lane on 24 June 1998.

On 18 September 2012, drug dealer Dale Cregan made a hoax emergency call to the police from an address in Mottram in Longdendale, luring police constables Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32, of Greater Manchester Police there by claiming that there had been an incident of criminal damage. When they arrived, he murdered them.