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". 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. 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. 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. 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. The
Knights Hospitaller and
Whalley Abbey held small estates in the township. In 1234, about of land at Whitfield in Crompton were given to the Hospitallers, a religious order that provided care for poor, sick or injured pilgrims to the
Holy Land. A medieval cross has been discovered in the ruins of a house at Whitfield. During the
High Middle Ages, Crompton was a collection of scattered woods, farmsteads, moorland, swamp and a single
corn mill, occupied by a small and close community of families. The area was thinly populated and consisted of several dispersed hamlets, including Whitfield,
High Crompton, Cowlishaw, Birshaw and Bovebeale (above Beal). These hamlets were situated above the water-logged valley bottoms and below the exposed high moors. This slowly facilitated comparative freedoms and independence for the early people of Crompton, The Crompton family has a well-documented history and can be traced back to the time of
Magna Carta, appearing in the Assize Roll for 1245. Crompton is indigenous to the township, and first appears as a family name in the 13th century, when the locality's principal landowner, Hugh de la Legh, changed his family name to "de Crompton" (of Crompton), to reflect the estate he possessed. The family owned a large
historic house by the name of
Crompton Hall, on the site of Crompton Fold. Crompton Hall first appears in historical records as early as 1442, owned by Thomas de Crompton and his family. The upland geography of the area constrained the output of crop growing, and so prior to industrialisation the area was used for grazing sheep, which provided the raw material for a local woollen weaving trade. Wills and inventories from the 15th and 16th centuries suggest most families were involved with small scale
pasture, but supplemented their incomes by weaving
woollens in the
domestic system and selling cloth,
linen and
fustians to travelling
chapmen for the markets in Manchester and Rochdale. The most affluent were those involved in cloth and linen, and their wealth was comparable to that of the merchants of Manchester and
Salford. In the second half of the 18th century, the technology of
cotton-spinning machinery improved, and the need for larger buildings to house bigger, better and more efficient equipment became apparent. The profitability of cotton spinning meant that open land that had been used for farming since antiquity, was utilised for purpose-built
weavers' cottages. The introduction of the factory system led to an increase of the township's population; from 872 in 1714 to 3,500 in 1801, mostly as a result of an influx of people from
Yorkshire and
Lancashire looking for employment in the cotton mills.
Luddites rioted in the township in 1826, smashing 24 power looms at Clegg's mill at High Crompton in protest against their worsening standard of living. had become scarce in the 1860s, there was a mill building boom in Shaw and Crompton, giving rise to the area as major
mill town.
Shaw and Crompton railway station and a goods yard was opened in 1863, allowing improved transportation of textile goods and raw materials to and from the township. Neighbouring
Royton had begun to encroach upon the township's southern boundary, forming a continuous urban cotton-spinning district with Oldham,
Lees and
Chadderton—the
Oldham parliamentary constituency—which was responsible for 13% of the world's cotton production. The demand for cheap cotton goods from this area prompted the
flotation of cotton spinning companies; the investment was followed by the construction of 12 new cotton mills from 1870 and 1900. In the post-war economic boom of 1919–20, investors did not have the time to build new mills and so were prepared to pay vastly inflated sums for shares in existing companies. Many mills were refloated at valuations of up to £500,000 (£ as of ), or five times what they had cost to build before the war, The number of cotton mills in the township peaked at 36 in 1920. The
Great Depression, and First and Second World Wars each contributed to periods of economic decline in Shaw and Crompton. Although the industry endured, as imports of cheaper foreign
yarns increased during the mid-20th century, Shaw and Crompton's textile sector declined gradually to a halt; said to have over-relied upon the textile sector, cotton spinning reduced in the 1960s and 1970s, and by the early 1980s only four mills were operational. In spite of efforts to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of its production, the final cotton was spun in Shaw and Crompton in 1989, in Lilac and Park mills. built for the cotton mill workers of former times. It is considered a popular residential area of relative prosperity, with a variety of housing types. The Buckstones and
Rushcroft areas contain modern housing estates and are amongst the most affluent suburbs of the town. They were built as part of an agreement made in the 1950s between the then
Crompton Urban District and the
County Borough of Oldham councils, to alleviate Oldham's chronic shortage of quality housing. The town has subsequently been described as having "good community spirit and relative prosperity, which, in turn, create popular residential areas". and
The Fred Dibnah Story, the latter of which documented
Fred Dibnah's demolition of the
Briar and Cape mill chimneys. The town entered the national media in 2010, 2011 and 2012; for the
kidnapping of Sahil Saeed, the mugging and death of Nellie Geraghty (which featured on
Crimewatch), and the
explosion of a house in Buckley Street respectively.
Shaw and Crompton Metrolink station opened as part of Greater Manchester's light-rail
Metrolink network on 16 December 2012. Until the 1990s, Shaw and Crompton was the home of
Osram, the multinational lightbulb manufacturer, which occupied Duke Mill and was a significant employer in the area. The "Pennine" bakery produced around 500,000 loaves a week and distributed them to major multiples and independent retailers throughout Greater Manchester,
Cheshire, and
Derbyshire. Located on Glebe Street, it employed around 200 staff and produced a wide range of Warburtons bread products. In August 2012 the building was bought by UDUNK who propose to redevelop the building as commercial units for up to 6 businesses. Until the early 2020s Shaw and Crompton was home to
Shop Direct Group's
Shaw National Distribution Centre, which was one of the UK's largest warehouse distribution centres. The company occupied three former cotton mills and state-of-the-art purpose-built storage and sorting facilities on a complex within the town. In 2007, the site became the retail company's only packing and distribution centre for non-bulk items. At its peak it employed nearly 1,000 staff, making it the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham's largest private employer. == Governance ==