Within the boundaries of the
historic county of
Lancashire, and with little
early history to speak of, Oldham rose to prominence in the 19th century as an international centre of
textile manufacture. It was a
boomtown of the
Industrial Revolution, and among the first ever
industrialised towns, rapidly becoming "one of the most important centres of cotton and textile industries in England." At its zenith, it was the most productive
cotton spinningmill town in the world, producing more cotton than France and Germany combined. Oldham's textile industry fell into decline in the mid-20th century; the town's last mill closed in 1998.
The demise of textile processing in Oldham depressed and heavily affected the local economy. The town centre is the focus of a project that aims to transform Oldham into a centre for
further education and the
performing arts. It is, however, still distinguished architecturally by the surviving
cotton mills and other buildings associated with that industry. (Full article...)
William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 – April 23, 1850) was a major
Englishromantic poet who, with
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the
Romantic Age in
English literature with their 1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered to be The Prelude, an autobiographical
poem of his early years that was revised and expanded a number of times. It was never published during his lifetime, and was only given the title after his death. Up until this time it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was England's
Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
The second of five children of John Wordsworth (b. April 7th 1741), William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in
Cumberland—part of the scenic region in north-west England called the
Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist
Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year. After the death of their mother in 1778, their father sent William to Hawkshead Grammar School and sent Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. She and William did not meet again for another nine years.
Image 12Old meets new at the
Stockport Viaduct; designed by
George W. Buck, it is the largest free-standing brick structure in the UK, built in 1840 when it was the largest viaduct in the world; it features in many
L. S. Lowry paintings. (from North West England)
Image 15Kelloggs in Manchester, looking north along the A5181 next to
GMFRS's Stretford Area Command HQ; the site is the largest producer of cereals in Europe (from North West England)
Image 20Former head office of the
Girobank in Bootle; it closed in 2003; it was taken over by
Alliance & Leicester in 1990; it was established in Bootle in the late 1960s with help from Hugh Baird; it was the first financial institution in Europe to be fully computerised from the start (from North West England)
Image 22Vauxhall's plant in Ellesmere Port exports 88% of its cars, although many of the components are imported, and has made over 5 million since 1962, also making the
Vectra from 1995 to 2008; it makes 686 a day (two a minute, 100,000 a year) and the latest model was designed by
Mark Adams and Malcolm Ward. Three million Astras have been sold in the UK since 1979, and featured on the
Top Gear test track until 2015; the production is split with the
Opel Manufacturing Poland site at
Gliwice in southern Poland; the
Corsa is made at
Opel Zaragoza in north-east Spain, with 3-door versions at
Opel Eisenach; the
Insignia is made at
Opel Rüsselsheim (from North West England)
Image 37A
Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2 (HS 801), built at Woodford (former Avro) and designed in Manchester in the mid-1960s, with XV148 (former Comet 4C) making its
first flight on 23 May 1967, flying from Chester (
Broughton, which had built many
de Havilland fighter jet aircraft) to Woodford; 49 Nimrods were made for the RAF, entering service with
201 Sqn on 6 November 1970, serving until March 2010 with
38 Sqn (from North West England)
Image 53Ineos ChlorVinyls at Runcorn in 2006; the
UK chemicals industry is worth £57bn, with 180,000 people in around 3,000 companies (from North West England)
...that the 1673 history of
Cheshire by Sir Peter Leycester questioned Amicia Mainwaring's legitimacy, leading to a "paper war" of 15 pamphlets with the Mainwaring family?
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Selected picture
Photo credit: Gerry Lynch
The Parish Church of St. Nicholas and the Atlantic Tower hotel near Pier Head. The Atlantic Tower was designed to resemble the prow of a ship and to reflect Liverpool's maritime history.