Saddleworth Museum

One of the best-preserved landscape of the domestic system of textile manufactures is in the extensive parish of Saddleworth, comprising the ancient townships of Delph, Diggle, Dobcross, Denshaw, Greenfield and Upper Mill, that historically was part of Yorkshire, and looked to Huddersfield as the market for its woollen cloth, but lies on the western slopes of the Pennines above the Lancashire town of Oldham to which it is now linked. The townships include many fine houses of local stone with long-light windows that illuminated the working places of weavers, some of them detached and some constructed in terraces. Shore Mill and Brownhill Mill are small late 18th-century buildings that housed powered carding machinery, in which wool carders lived with their families, illustrating the complexity of the transition between domestic and factory production of textiles. The restored Huddersfield Narrow Canal passes through the parish, and is crossed on a skew arch that forms part of a soaring stone viaduct by the Manchester – Leeds railway. Saddleworth Museum illustrates the history of the textile industry and other aspects of the parish.

Saddleworth Museum
Upper Mill
High Street
OL3 6HS Oldham
United Kingdom
+44 (0) 1457 - 874093
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