Did You Know?

Rochdale appears in the Domesday Book under the name Recedham Manor and was part of the Salford Hundred.

Dame Gracie Fields CBE, a world-famous actress, singer and comedian, was born and brought up in Rochdale. A statue of her has been erected in town hall square and there is a heritage trail of places associated with her around the town.

In 2010 archaeologists unearthed a ‘mini-Stonehenge’ on the moors of Rochdale. An oval ring of collapsed slabs, and a 30-metre circle of rounded stones, were discovered by a team who believed them to be ancient burial sites dating back as far as 5,000 years.

Rochdale Town Hall finished being built in 1871 and apparently costed only £155,000 to build. It is considered one of the finest Victorian Town Halls in Britain. It is also said that at one point Hitler wanted the Town Hall and requested for it to be taken 'brick by brick' and built in Germany. 

Rochdale sports cars made by Motor Panels and Engineering were produced from 1959 to 1973. The cars are now rare collectors’ items as only an average of 210 cars of each model were made.

Rochdales Parish Church, St Chads, overlooks the Town Hall. There has been a church at this location for over 1000 years. The old stocks are still visible.

A cotton loom machine from Littleborough was converted to weave fiberglass after the decline of the cotton industry. It went on to produce the moulds that were used to make the Concorde airplanes’ nose cone.

Britain’s first automatic tills were tested in Castleton in the early 1980s, before being installed nationally in Asda stores across the country.

The Baum pub in Toad Lane was crowned Britain’s best pub in 2013. The pub and the area around it takes its name from a legend that says the ghost of a white rabbit called the Baum Rabbit haunted the neighbourhood.

Ian Simpson, the architect of the ‘Beetham Tower’ in Manchester (described as the UK’s first proper skyscraper outside London), is from Heywood.

28 men who, in 1844 kick-started the Co-operative movement when they opened a shop in Toad Lane, made Rochdale famous across the world. On August 13 1994, the Co-Operative broke the world record for cooking the largest pancake, marking their 150th anniversary in their hometown.