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Rochdale Leasing

Did You Know?

A cotton loom machine from Littleborough in Rochdale 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.

Before the recent re-opening of the River Roch, Rochdale held the record for the world’s widest bridge. It stretched from the Lviv Bridge outside Number One Riverside in Smith Street to an opening in The Esplanade.

Rochdale has the highest concentration of canal locks in the north; it houses 91 locks over 32 miles. The highest concentrated area of locks is in Littleborough.

The Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in England. Its largest town is Rochdale and the wider borough covers other outlying towns and villages, including Middleton, Heywood, Milnrow and Littleborough with a population of 223,773 at the 2021 census.

Founded in 1907, Rochdale entered the Lancashire Combination and after securing promotion out of Division Two in 1909–10 they won the Division One title in 1910–11 and 1911–12. They then switched to the Central League, before being invited into the Football League when the Third Division North was created in 1921.

When his trade suffered due to the actions of the radical movement in Rochdale at the time, he briefly moved to London. On his return, he invented the compound cricket ball, which he patented in 1860 and sold throughout the world.

Dame Gracie Fields, DBE, was an English-born, later Italian-based actress, singer and comedienne and star of both cinema and music hall. Born over a fish and chip shop owned by her grandmother in Molesworth Street, Rochdale, Lancashire, she made her first stage appearance as a child in 1905.

Many cloth merchants built large houses for themselves near the river. The earliest surviving one is 17 Yorkshire Street, which was built in 1708 for the Vavasour family.

Rochdale Village was developed under the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income families. The architect, Herman Jessor, was inspired by the Le Corbusier model. Construction soon proceeded at a rapid pace on the new community in Queens.

Waterloo Road returns to its roots in Greater Manchester for a rebooted series airing this year. From series 1 to 7, the show was shot at the former Top Hill School in Rochdale, Greater Manchester - the school was demolished when filming was completed.

.As Shakespeare wrote in Julius Caeser, "There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" and for Lancashire that flood was the Industrial Revolution and for some it was a time of great fortune. Rochdale was forever changed by this tide, but that isn't where its history began.