Early history The earliest evidence of human activity in Stalybridge is a flint
scraper from the late
Neolithic/early
Bronze Age. Also bearing testament to the presence of man in prehistory are the Stalybridge cairns. The two monuments are on the summit of Hollingworthall Moor apart. One of the round
cairns is the best-preserved Bronze Age monument in Tameside, and is protected as a
scheduled monument. A branch of the
Roman road between the
forts at Manchester (
Mamucium) and Melandra Castle (
Ardotalia) is thought to run through Stalybridge to the fort of
Castleshaw. before refurbishment flowing under Staley Bridge, constructed in 1707 The settlement was originally called Stavelegh, which derives from the
Old English ''
, meaning "wood where the staves are got". The medieval Lords of the manor took de Stavelegh
as their name, later becoming Stayley
or Staley''. The
lordship of
Longdendale was one of the ancient feudal estates of
Cheshire and included the area of Stalybridge.
Buckton Castle, near Stalybridge, was probably built by one of the earls of Chester in the 12th century. William de Neville was the first lord of Longdendale, appointed by the
Earl of Chester between 1162 and 1186. The first records of the de Stavelegh family as
Lords of the Manor of Staley date from the early 13th century.
Staley Hall was their residence. The present hall was built in the late 16th century on the same site as an earlier hall of the Stayley family which dated from before 1343.
Sir Ralph Staley (descendant of the de Stavelegh family) had no male heirs but an only daughter, Elizabeth Staley, who married Sir Thomas Assheton and united the manors of Ashton and Staley. Elizabeth and Thomas had two daughters and no sons. Margaret, the eldest of their two daughters, married Sir William Booth of
Dunham Massey. The younger daughter Elizabeth was widowed and without children, and continued to live at Staley Hall until her death in 1553. In her will her share of the lordships of Staley and Ashton were left to the Booths. The manor of Staley remained in the possession of the Booth family until the death of
George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington on 2 August 1758. Upon his death, the Earldom of Warrington became extinct. His only daughter, Lady Mary Booth, the wife of
Harry Grey, 4th Earl of Stamford, inherited all the Booth estates. The manor of Staley was owned by the Grey family until the extinction of the Earldom of Stampford on the death of
Roger Grey, 10th Earl of Stamford in 1976. At this point, the family estates were dispersed. Stamford Street, Grey Street, Groby Street, Stamford Park, Stamford Golf Club and the two Stamford Arms public houses in Stalybridge are all named after the Grey family.
Industrial Revolution As Stayley expanded in the 18th century, it reached the banks of the
River Tame. After the construction of a bridge in 1707, the settlement was commonly referred to as Stalybridge, meaning the bridge at Stayley. The social unrest did not curb the growth of Stalybridge. By 1814, there were twelve factories and, by 1818, the number had increased to sixteen. The
Industrial Revolution led to a rapid increase in the town's population in the early part of the 19th century. The population of the town by 1823 was 5,500. In the following two years, partly because of an influx of Irish families seeking better wages, the population rose to 9,000. Stalybridge was among the first wave of towns to establish a
Mechanics' Institute with a view to educating the growing number of workers. Only a year after the establishment of
Manchester Mechanics' Institute, Stalybridge founded an Institute of its own. Its doors opened on 7 September 1825 on Shepley Street with a reading room on Queen Street. On 9 May 1828, the Stalybridge Police and Market Act received
Royal Assent, establishing Stalybridge as an independent town with a board of 21 Commissioners. Every male over the age of 21 who was the occupier of a rateable property under the act was entitled to vote at the election of the Commissioners. On 30 December 1831,
Stalybridge Town Hall was officially opened. In 1833, the Commissioners set up the Stalybridge Police Force, the first of its kind in the country. By this year, the population of the town had reached 14,216 with 2.357 inhabited houses. In 1834, a second bridge was built over the Tame. It was downstream of Staley Bridge and constructed of iron. A movement of resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the mills, also known as the
Plug Riots, it spread to involve nearly half a million workers throughout Britain and represented the biggest single exercise of
working class strength in 19th century Britain. On 13 August 1842, there was a strike at Bayley's Cotton Mill in Stalybridge and roving cohorts of operatives carried the stoppage first to the whole area of Stalybridge and
Ashton, then to
Manchester, and subsequently to towns adjacent to Manchester, using as much force as was necessary to bring mills to a standstill. The movement remained, to outward appearances, largely non-political. Although the
People's Charter was praised at public meetings, the resolutions that were passed at these were in almost all cases merely for a restoration of the wages of 1820, a ten-hour working day, or reduced rents. In writing
The Condition of The Working Class in England (1844),
Friedrich Engels used Stalybridge as an example: ... multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of [the] confused way of building ... Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined. John Summers first established an iron forge in Stalybridge in the 1840s. Later, he and his sons developed this into a major business and employed over 1,000 local men in their factory, the largest in the town. The
Ashton, Stalybridge and Liverpool Junction Railway Company was formed on 19 July 1844 and the railway was connected to Stalybridge on 5 October 1846. On 9 July 1847, the company was acquired by the
Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. On 1 August 1849, the Manchester, Stockport and Leeds Railway connected Stalybridge to
Huddersfield and later to
Stockport. This line later became part of the
London and North Western Railway.
The cotton famine On the outbreak of the
American Civil War in 1861, the Stalybridge cotton mills rapidly ran short of cotton. Thousands of operatives were laid off. In October 1862, a meeting was held in Stalybridge Town Hall that passed a resolution blaming the
Confederate States of America and their actions in the American Civil War, rather than U.S. blockades of seaports, for the
Lancashire Cotton Famine. By the winter of 1862–63, there were 7,000 unemployed operatives in the town. Only five of the town's 39 factories and 24 machine shops were employing people full-time. Contributions were sent from all over the world for the relief of the cotton operatives in Lancashire; and at one point three-quarters of Stalybridge workers were dependent on relief schemes. By 1863, there were 750 empty houses in the town. A thousand skilled men and women left the town, in what became known as "The Panic". In 1863, the relief committee decided to substitute a system of relief by ticket instead of money. The tickets were to be presented at local grocery shops. An organised resistance was organised culminating on Friday 20 March 1863. In 1867, Stalybridge was disturbed by the arrival of
William Murphy. Records of this man indicate that his sole interest was to sow the seeds of dissent between Roman Catholics, who by this time had grown to significant proportions, and Protestants. He succeeded in this goal only too well for a full year. During 1868, there were a number of violent disturbances and rioting created by this man who described himself as a "renegade Roman Catholic". In his lectures to the public, "pretending to expose the religious practices of the Roman Catholic Church", he became a master at whipping up a crowd into a frenzy. Newspaper reports of the time told of his common practice of waving a revolver in the air in "a most threatening manner". On one occasion, he incited a riot of such proportions that Fr. Daley, the parish priest of St Peter's, took to the roof of the church to defend it. A man was shot. The parish priest was tried but eventually acquitted at the
Quarter Sessions. Following this incident, the community began to settle down and Murphy chose to extend his political activities elsewhere. In 1867, the Victoria Bridge on Trinity Street was built. Victoria Market Hall was constructed in 1868 and the
public baths were opened in May 1870. The baths were presented as a gift to the town by philanthropists and benefactors
Robert Platt (1802–1882), born in Stalybridge, and his wife Margaret Platt (1819–1888), born in
Salford. Stalybridge Borough Band was formed in March 1871, holding its first rehearsals and meetings at the Moulder's Arms, Grasscroft Street, Castle Hall. The band was known as the 4th Cheshire Rifleman Volunteers (Borough Band) until 1896. The founder and first conductor was Alexander Owen, who conducted the band until at least 1907.
20th century The character of Stalybridge altered over the 20th century. At the turn of the century, the cotton industry was still strong, and the population of the town reached its peak in 1901, at 27,623, but as trade dwindled the population began to decline, and despite the intensified employment of the war years, the main industry of Stalybridge continued to fail. There were floods in Millbrook in May 1906. Mrs
Ada Summers was elected first woman mayor of Stalybridge in November 1919. At that time, mayors of boroughs were justices, as well as chairmen of borough benches, by right of office. However, it was not until the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 came into force on 23 December 1919 that women could become magistrates. Sitting ex-officio Ada Summers became the first woman magistrate in the country and was sworn in on 31 December. Ada Summers was, probably, the first woman to officially adjudicate in court. Ada Summers photo appeared in the weekly journal
Great Thoughts, 5 June 1920, alongside an interview on "The First Woman JP" on her work. Ada Summers was the widow of a local ironmaster. She was an active
suffragist and Liberal and used her wealth and position to support a number of schemes designed to improve conditions in the town. These included a maternity and child welfare clinic, clinics for the sick and poor and an unofficial employment centre. She later became an alderman and was appointed
MBE. On 31 May 1939 she was awarded the
Honorary Freedom of the Borough. In 1929, with no room for expansion at Stalybridge, the Summers sheet rolling and galvanising plants were transferred to
Shotton in
North Wales, having devastating effects on local employment; the new plant later became a component in the
British Steel Corporation. The early 1980s saw the closure of the public baths after the completion of Copley Recreation Centre. One of the symbols of the late-19th century civic improvement, the baths were subsequently demolished. In 1991, for the first time since 1901, there was an increase in the population of Stalybridge to 22,295. The 1990s saw the proliferation of
Mock Tudor style estates at Moorgate and along Huddersfield Road, close to Staley Hall; this continued into the 21st century with the completion of the Crowswood estate in Millbrook.
21st century The
Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which had been culverted in the early 1970s, was reinstated to the town centre between 1999 and May 2001 as part of a two-year multimillion-pound refurbishment. The canal now runs under the legs of an
electricity pylon. The market hall closed on New Year's Eve 1999 and became the Civic Hall in 2001. Four years later, the area designated for retail space became exhibition space. There were plans to reopen the market and let the retail hall out to private contractors, though this came to naught. The town's cinema, the Palace, closed on 31 August 2003, with the last film being
American Pie 3: The Wedding. The cinema has since been converted to become Rififi Nightclub and Amber Lounge Bar & Restaurant, which itself was closed down late in 2012 after two violent incidents on the same night. In 2004, the
Metropolitan Borough Council announced that they had granted permission for a developer to build 16 homes next to Staley Hall. A condition of the planning consent was that the hall be restored. As of 2008, the hall is still deteriorating. It is now listed as being in "very bad" condition on the
English Heritage buildings at risk register. As of 2015 Staley Hall has been renovated and redeveloped into apartments. Stalybridge suffered from
Storm Angus on 21 November 2016 when of rain fell on Tameside in five hours. Mottram Road and Huddersfield Road,
Millbrook were flooded by water from a stream leading from the
Walkerwood Reservoir. In late June 2018, many properties in Stalybridge were threatened by a
large wildfire advancing from
Saddleworth Moor. 50 properties in the
Carrbrook area of Stalybridge were evacuated on 26 June as the wildfire advanced towards them. In December 2023, during
Storm Gerrit, a
tornado caused damage in the
Millbrook and
Carrbrook areas of Stalybridge. ==Governance==