Todmorden, Lancashire

Description
Todmorden, a market and union town, a township, and an ecclesiastical parish in Lancashire, and in the W. R. Yorkshire. The town stands on the river Calder, the Rochdale Canal, and the L. & Y.R., 8 1/2 miles NNE of Rochdale, and 12 from Halifax. It enjoys fine environs surrounded by lofty mountains, presents an irregularly-built and straggling appearance, is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, publishes two weekly newspapers, and carries on extensive manufactures of cotton, fustians, ironwork, and machinery. It has a head post office, a railway station, several banks, a town-hall, Liberal and Conservative clubs, a county police station, an Oddfellows' hall, a statue of the late John Fielden, unveiled in 1875, a handsome church of 1831, an old church now used as a chapel of ease, a Unitarian chapel erected in 1869 at a cost of about £40,000, Baptist, Congregational, Primitive and United Methodist, Wesleyan, and Roman Catholic chapels, a church institute, and two hospitals. Weekly markets are held on Wednesday and Saturday, a cattle market on the first Thursday of every month, and there are two annual fairs, each of three days' continuance. The town-hall is a stone building, erected in 1875 at a cost to the Fielden family of nearly £50,000, and contains a large hall capable of holding 1000 persons. The urban district includes Todmorden and Walsden and Comholme in the parish of Rochdale and Stansfield and Langfield in the parish of Halifax. Acreage, 15,690; population, 24,725. Dobroyd Castle, Todmorden Hall, Stansfield Hall, and Centre Vale are chief residences. The ecclesiastical parishes are Todmorden and Walsden in the diocese of Manchester, and St Paul's, Crosstone, and All Saints, Harley Wood, in the diocese of Wakefield. Todmorden church is in the Early English style, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, and an embattled western tower. A new chancel with vestries was erected in 1885.