Todmorden ( ; )See page 828 of John C. Wells's LPD. Also, see 25 April 2008 and 29 January 2010Peter Wright, A Yorkshireman's Dictionary, page 8 is a market town and civil parish in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It is north-east of Manchester, south-east of Burnley and west of Halifax. In 2011, it had a population of 15,481.
Todmorden is at the confluence of three steep-sided Pennine valleys and is surrounded by moorlands with outcrops of sandblasted gritstone.
The historic boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is the River Calder and its tributary, Walsden Water, which run through the town. The administrative border was altered by the Local Government Act 1888 placing the whole of the town within the West Riding.
The town is served by and railway stations.
History Toponymy The name Todmorden is first attested in 1246, in the form Totmardene; other pre-modern spellings include Tottemerden, Totmereden and Totmerden. This is thought to originate in Old English as a personal name, Totta, combined with the Old English words ('border, boundary') and ('valley'). Thus the name once meant 'Totta's border-valley'.The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Based on the Collections of the English Place-Name Society, ed. by Victor Watts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), s.v. Todmorden. The valley in question is thought to have been the one running north-west from the town,Nicolaisen, Gelling & Richards, The Names of Towns and Cities in Britain, p. 181 and the border the one between Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Although, fanciful and historically implausible, alternative etymologies circulate, such as the speculation that the name derives from two words for death: German and French ,Glyn Hughes, foreword in "Todmorden Album 4", (Birch R.) p. 6 or that the name meant 'marshy den of the fox', supposedly from , a word of uncertain origin meaning 'fox' first attested around 1200, moor (which in Old English meant 'marsh'), and den (also attested in Old English to mean an animal's lair).
'Tod' is an informal name for Todmorden, often used in everyday conversation.
Prehistory In 1898, Blackheath Barrow—a ring cairn monument situated above Cross Stone in Todmorden—was excavated and proved to be a site of "surpassing archaeological interest", according to J. Lawton Russell, one of the men who carried out the excavation.Russell's note of the excavations appears in H. Ling Wroth, The Yorkshire Coiners 1767–1783, and Notes on Old and Prehistoric Halifax Various Bronze Age items were discovered, including sepulchral urns, a human skull, teeth and hands.
Russell contended that Blackheath Barrow was primarily a religious site, specifically intended for the "performance of funeral rites", as there was no evidence that it had been settled for domestic use. Of particular interest were the four cairns, positioned at the cardinal points of the compass, and it has been suggested that this indicates "a ritual evocation of the airts, or spirits of the four directions, with obvious correlates in relation to spirits in the land of the dead".
The various finds from the 1898 dig are now housed in the Todmorden Library, on permanent display.
Early history
Settlement in medieval Todmorden was dispersed, most people living in scattered farms or in isolated hilltop agricultural settlements. Packhorse trails were marked by ancient stones, of which many still survive.
For hundreds of years, streams from the surrounding hills provided water for corn and fulling mills. Todmorden grew to relative prosperity by combining farming with the production of woollen textiles. Some yeomen clothiers were able to build fine houses, a few of which still exist today. Increasingly, though, the area's industry turned to cotton. The proximity of Manchester, as a source of material and trade, was undoubtedly a strong factor. Another was that the strong Pennine streams and rivers were able to power the machine looms. Improvements in textile machinery (by John Kay, James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright), along with the development of turnpike roads (1751–1781), helped to develop the new cotton industry and to increase the local population.
19th century In 1801, most people still lived in the uplands; Todmorden itself could be considered as a mere village. During the years 1800–1845, great changes took place in the communications and transport of the town which were to have a crucial effect on promoting industrial growth. These included the building of: (1) better roads; (2) the Rochdale Canal (1804); and (3) the main line of the Manchester and Leeds Railway (1841), which became the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1847. This railway line incorporated the (then) longest tunnel in the world, the Summit Tunnel. A second railway, from Todmorden to Burnley, opened as a single line in 1849, being doubled to meet demand in 1860. A short connecting line, from Stansfield Hall to Hall Royd, completed the "Todmorden Triangle" in 1862, thus enabling trains to travel in all three directions (Manchester, Leeds and Burnley) without reversing.
The Industrial Revolution caused a concentration of industry and settlement along the valley floor and a switch from woollens to cotton. One family in the area was particularly influential on the town; the Fielden family. They created a "dynasty" that changed the town forever by establishing several large mills, putting up assorted impressive buildings and bringing about social and educational change.
A double murder took place at Christ Church, Todmorden on 2 March 1868. The victims' graves lie in the churchyard. Miles Weatherhill, a 23-year-old weaver from the town, was forbidden from seeing his housemaid sweetheart, Sarah Bell, by the Reverend Anthony John Plow. Armed with four pistols and an axe, Weatherhill took revenge first on the vicar and then on Jane Smith, another maid who had informed Plow of the secret meetings. Miss Smith died at the scene, while the vicar survived another week before succumbing to his injuries. Weatherhill also seriously injured the vicar's wife. On 4 April 1868, Weatherhill became the last person to be publicly hanged in Manchester, at the New Bailey prison. Local legend has it that the face of a young woman is sometimes seen in the window of the vicarage, now in private ownership.
20th century Throughout the first decade of the 20th century, the population of the Borough of Todmorden remained constant. The ten-yearly UK census returns show figures of 25,418 in 1901 and 25,404 in 1911. Like the rest of the Upper Calder Valley, Todmorden's economy experienced a slow decline from around the end of World War I onwards, accelerating after World War II until around the late 1970s. During this period there was a painful restructuring of the local economy with the closure of mills and the demise of heavy industry.
On 1 January 1907, Todmorden Corporation became only the second municipality in the British Isles to operate a motor bus service. By the end of that year, the fleet had expanded to five double-deck vehicles: two by Critchley-Norris, two by Lancashire Steam (predecessor of Leyland Motors) and one by Ryknield. In 1931, the service became jointly operated by the Corporation and the LMS railway under the name "Todmorden Joint Omnibus Committee". At its maximum size in the 1940s and 1950s, the undertaking operated 40 vehicles over 50 route miles (80 km) through the rugged South Pennine terrain.
Until 1938, the town was served by no fewer than six railway stations: Todmorden, Stansfield Hall, Cornholme, Portsmouth, Walsden and Eastwood. With the exception of Todmorden railway station, all closed during the middle third of the 20th century although Walsden railway station reopened on 10 September 1990 on a site a few yards north of the original 1845 railway station. In December 1984, a goods train carrying petrol derailed in the Summit Tunnel between Todmorden and Littleborough causing what is still considered as one of the biggest underground fires in transport history.Survivor! The Summit Tunnel. Parry, K.
In 1980, Todmorden found itself at the centre of a celebrated murder enquiry. On 11 June that year police were called to J.W. Parker's coal yard in Todmorden after the discovery of a body, subsequently identified as 56-year-old Zigmund Adamski from Tingley, near Wakefield. The former coal miner had not been seen since setting out on a local shopping trip five days earlier. Although still wearing a suit, his shirt, watch and wallet were missing. A post-mortem established that he died of a heart attack earlier that day, and discovered burns on his neck, shoulders and back of his head. These appeared to have been dressed by a green ointment, which toxicology tests were unable to identify. Adamski's case has never been solved, no suspect was ever arrested and in a television documentary the coroner, James Turnbull, described it as "one of the most puzzling cases I've come across in 25 years". Among the explanations to gain currency was that Adamski was the victim of extraterrestrial abduction, following comments by police officer Alan Godfrey about what he saw on 29 November 1980, described in Jenny Randles' 1983 book The Pennine UFO Mystery. After intense media interest, the Todmorden police force were forbidden from talking further to the press about the case. In 2017, Blurry Photos host Dave Stecco said he believes that Adamski could have been a Nazi before immigrating from Poland.
In the 1980s and 1990s, a prominent lesbian intentional community grew up Todmorden — and subsequently Hebden Bridge — "promot[ing] forms of queer intimacy outside of the nuclear family unit", with "a close-knit community of care" and mutual support, sharing child care and community events, such as a "famous Todmorden Women's Disco" held monthly. The nature of that community has changed with evolving queer politics, away from lesbian feminism and towards "homonormative assimilation".
21st century In 2008, a group of local residents including Mary Clear initiated the Incredible Edible project to raise awareness of food issues and in particular local food and food provenance.Paull, John (2013) "Please Pick Me" – How Incredible Edible Todmorden is repurposing the commons for open source food and agricultural biodiversity, In J. Franzo, D. Hunter, T. Borelli & F. Mattei (Eds.). Diversifying Foods and Diets: Using Agricultural Biodiversity to Improve Nutrition and Health. Oxford: Earthscan, Routledge, pp.336–345. The project has been responsible for the planting of 40 public fruit and vegetable gardens throughout the town, with each plot inviting passers-by to help themselves to the open source produce. The project has attracted publicity, media attention and visitors and the idea has been replicated in at least fifteen towns and villages in the UK. In 2010, Todmorden received a visit from then-Prince Charles (his second visit to the town) to see the project, and it featured in BBC Radio 4 programme Costing the Earth: The New Diggers.
Governance
Todmorden has a complex geo-administrative history. It lies along the historic county boundary of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
Until the boundary reformation by the Local Government Act 1888, the Lancashire-Yorkshire boundary ran through the centre of Todmorden, following the River Calder to the north-west and the Walsden Water for less than to the south before turning south-eastwards across Langfield Common. Todmorden Town Hall, which was presented to Todmorden by the Fielden family and opened in 1875, straddles the Walsden Water; thus, from 1875 to 1888 it was possible to dance in the town hall ballroom, forward and back, across two counties of England.