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Oldham Accommodation
The Saddleworth Museum alongside the canal.
Annie Kenney as a young woman. From a previous exhibition on Annie Kenney at the Saddleworth Museum.Saddleworth Tourist Information Museum Greater Manchester History Photographs UK
Beautiful Saddleworth - start at the Saddleworth Museum and Art Gallery and hear the stories of Saddleworth folk, then bob into one of the many small villages like Diggle or Delph for great real ale and pub lunches, followed by walking in this breathtaking part of the Lancashire Pennines.
Saddleworth and the Diggle Trail
'When God made Yorkshire and Lancashire (as the saying goes by local poet Ammon Wrigley!) he laid aside the precious bits of jewelled earth. And when he had completed the two shires he took the beautiful things he had saved and made Saddleworth to be a little Shire on its own''. Thanks Ammon for that little gem. Putting aside the rather dubious 'God' stuff, I'd say he's pretty accurate.
This part of the country is simply rugged and wild beauty. Original village settlements in this area like Diggle originated on hillsides between the moor and the marshy valley floors, and were also built near and around the River Tame and its tributaries. Check out the Diggle Trail (leaflets from Saddleworth or Oldham Tourist Information Points), taking you past Warth Mills build in 1780, Butterhouse Weaver's cottage and Dobcross Loom Works which now manufactures wooden pallets!
The key attraction in the area is the Saddleworth Museum and Art Gallery. As in Marsden, just over the Yorkshire border, the village of Saddleworth was indeed an isolated spot. At the museum you can find out just how hard it was for settlers to scrape a living in this environment, initially through weaving then as industrialisation took hold how families including children toiled for long hours in the woollen mill.
Saddleworth Museum & Art Gallery, High Street, Uppermill, near Oldham OL3 6HS, T: 01457 874094 www.museum.saddleworth.net
Saddleworth Museum
Here at the Saddleworth Museum you can discover the stories of individual struggles in the area. Many representatives from Saddleworth were at the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 (internal link to radical Manchester page), and their recounts of that event are told in one of the exhibits. It was the woollen industry that thrived in this area, and numerous old looms, carding machines and the like are on show (often demonstrated) in the museum.
Other notables from this area include the Kenney family - perhaps the most well-known being Annie Kenney, suffragette and leading light in the Women's Social and Political Union and the fight for women's suffrage and the vote. One of the past exhibitions shown here at the Saddleworth Museum has been an exhibition on Annie Kenney which was particularly interesting for it's exploration of her family background and the influence of her mother. Her withdrawal from politics after women received only partial voting rights in 1918 is also somewhat intriguing. Check out the informative booklet on sale in the bookshop - 'The Kenney Family of Springhead', by Geoffrey Woodhead.
Annie Kenney, together with Christabel Pankhurst, has somewhat of a run-in with Mr Winston Churchill on 13th October 1905 in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester when she posed the question to Churchill and Sir Edward Grey, 'If you are elected will you do your best to make women's suffrage a Government measure?''.
Critiqued by some historians as being rather passive and totally 'under the thumb' of Christabel Pankhurst, this may have been partially the case, but it's worth digging a bit deeper into the Kenney family and other sisters including Jessie, Sarah Ellen and the two teachers Caroline and Jane. Jessie Kenney became the first women to pass the Postmaster General's !st Class Certificate of Proficiency in Wireless Telegraphy, but the Union did not allow her to take a sea-going position - same old story of perceived threat to male union workers!!
Saddleworth Tourist Information Centre
Saddleworth Museum & Tourist Information Centre, High Street, Uppermill, Saddleworth, Oldham OL3 6HS. Tel. 01457 870336/874093.
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