Rochdale, United Kingdom

Rochdale was subjected to incursions by the Danes; the castle that Castleton is named after, and of which no trace remains, was one of twelve Saxon forts possibly destroyed in frequent conflicts that occurred between the Saxons and Danes during the 10th and 11th centuries. At the time of the Norman Conquest, the manor was held by a Saxon thegn, Gamel. Rochdale appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Recedham and was described as lying within the hundred of Salford and the county of Cheshire. At that time, Rochdale was under the lordship of Roger the Poitevin. Before 1212, Henry II granted the manor to Roger de Lacy, whose family retained it as part of the Honour of Clitheroe until it passed to the Dukes of Lancaster by marriage and then to the Crown by 1399. In medieval times, weekly markets were held from 1250 when Edmund de Lacy obtained a grant for a market and an annual fair.

John Byron bought the manor in 1638 and it was sold by the poet, Lord Byron, to the Deardens in 1823, who hold the title. Rochdale did not have a manor house but the Orchard, built in 1702 and acquired in 1745 by Simon Dearden, was the home of the lords of the manor after 1823. It was described as "a red-brick building of no architectural distinction, on the north side of the river opposite the town hall" and sometimes referred to as the Manor House. It was demolished in 1922.

Rochdale is a product of the Industrial Revolution, though the manufacture of woollen cloth, particularly baize, kerseys and flannels, was locally important as far back as the 1500s. At that time, the textile industry was rooted in the domestic system but, towards the end of the 18th century, mills powered by water started to appear.

Water power was replaced by steam power in the 19th century and local coal became important. The Deardens who were lords of the manor were among the local coal mine owners. By the mid-1800s, the woollen trade was declining and the cotton trade was rapidly growing in importance. Cotton manufacturing took advantage of new technological developments in spinning and weaving. In 1804, the Rochdale Canal opened, providing the first link over the Pennines between Lancashire and Yorkshire.

During the 19th century, Rochdale became one of the world's most prominent cotton processing towns rising to prominence and becoming a major centre for textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. It was a boomtown of the Industrial Revolution and was amongst the first ever industrialised towns. By the end of the 19th century, Rochdale had woollen mills, silk manufacturers, bleachers and dyers, though cotton spinning and weaving were the dominant industries in the community. Turner & Newall was founded in Rochdale in 1871 to produce cotton-based mechanical packing, and in 1879 it became the first business in the United Kingdom to weave asbestos cloth with power-driven machinery.

The socioeconomic change brought by the success of Rochdale's textile industry in the 19th century led to its rise to borough status and it became an important regional town based upon this economic success.

The Rochdale Pioneers opened the first Co-operative shop in Toad Lane in 1844. The reformer and Member of Parliament, John Bright (1811–1889), was born in Rochdale and gained a reputation as a leader of political dissent and supporter of the Anti-Corn Law League.

By the middle of the 20th century, Rochdale's economy was in decline, reflecting the broader economic situation in other textile manufacturing towns in North West England. This decline was largely driven by the global availability of cheaper textile product offerings from abroad.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Rochdale's lack of a diverse economic base became very apparent, with the closure of numerous textile manufacturing facilities. Textile manufacturing did remain a major contributor to the local economy, even into the 1970s. Regionally, numerous companies still have some connection to the textile industry.