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Monkey Town: The History of Heywood

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'The Old Mills of Heywood' Project

Explore the history of Heywood's old workplaces.

Popular Pages

Heywood Utd 2 Manchester Utd 0: Early Football in Heywood

Heywood might not have a famous footballing tradition, but the sport was clearly a big part of town life back in the 1880s. The FA Cup had started back in 1871, a new national league was being formed, and a number of local clubs dreamed of competing at the highest levels of the national game. The Heywood teams of that time never did hit the heights of footballing success, but they did brush shoulders with some legendary names and often managed to hold their own with their championship-winning neighbours Bury. During some early seasons home games at Bamford Road would normally attract a few thousands fans, and they even hosted the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United - and won. Bury FC vs Heywood Central, Gigg Lane, 8 February 1890, Lancashire Junior Cup quarter-final replay. 9,000 spectators saw Bury win 4-1. Bury had lost 5-4 against Heywood FC in a league match one week earlier. Heywood teams in the Lancashire League 1889-95 Back then (as now) Heywood was a...

The Lost World of Green Booth

(Greenbooth is in Rochdale but is covered here because reservoir was built by the Heywood and Middleton Water Board.) The old village of Green Booth now lies deep beneath the waters of the Greenbooth reservoir to the north of Heywood. For younger Heywoodites this conjures images of a Biblical inundation, leaving an underwater village unwillingly trapped in time. In reality, the village of Greenbooth was already dead when the Heywood and Middleton Water Board built the reservoir and submerged it in the 1960s. Green Booth village (Greenbooth Memories). Although the place now has the one-word name 'Greenbooth', it was originally called Green Booth, with Green Booth Woods being on the slopes. The area has some significant history, as it was visited quite often in the 1750s by John Wesley , the famous founder of the Methodist Church. He stayed just up the hill at Blomleys, where he established a small Methodist chapel. A weaving mill was built at Green Booth during the ...

Welcome

This is the story of a small, south-east Lancashire town called Heywood. A place that is also rather affectionately (or disparagingly) known as ' Monkey Town ’. On the surface, Heywood might not appear to have as notable a history as its mid-sized neighbours Bury, Middleton and Rochdale. And they in turn do not have the great historical impact of the twin Lancastrian giants of Manchester and Liverpool. Look closer, however, and even in a small town like Heywood you will find connections to most of the major events and epochs in British history - from the Ice Age, the Bronze Age, the Romans, The Danelaw, Medieval England, the Civil Wars, the Industrial Revolution, and the World Wars... connections that show how the big stories of the nation were experienced by ordinary people living in the smaller corners of the country. 'Bamford Hall', Annie Grace Fenton.

The 'Old Mills of Heywood' Project

Click here to view the interactive map! A-Z listing of mills and old workplaces: A-B C-E F-H I-N P-R S-U V -Y The aim of this project is to record details of as many of the mills, factories and works of early Heywood as possible. These will include all the cotton mills that once dominated the town, as well as other significant factories and works such as woollen mills, roperies and iron works. Many of these places are now lost to history - although a surprising number still survive - and together they represent the rich industrial heritage of Monkey Town. A few of these places are on the outskirts of Heywood, in either Middleton, Bury or Rochdale, but would have been familiar to Heywoodites at one time or another. I welcome any suggested additions or corrections to this information, as this project will remain a work in progress.

The Devil and the Monkey Puzzle Tree

The Monkey Puzzle tree ( Araucaria araucana ) is not a common sight in Monkey Town. The rather exotic spiked trunk and winding branches always caught the attention of local children, and two in particular that stuck in the memory were the trees in a front garden on Heywood Hall Road (which was on the route to Queen’s Park for many people). One well-remembered aspect of these trees was the superstition surrounding them. Some parents actually told their children to be quiet as they passed the tree, various reasons being that they would have bad luck or lose something, or in some cases even grow a monkey’s tail! This led those children who actually wanted a monkey’s tail to shout out as they passed by the trees. Superstitions about the Monkey Puzzle tree can be found throughout Britain. One widely-shared bit of folklore is that the Devil himself sits in this tree and people have to be quiet when walking past or else they will attract the Devil’s attention and get bad luck. In some ...

Hey, Hey, We're Monkey Town

'It is with some diffidence that I venture to make an inquiry in relation to an offensive name which is sometimes derisively applied to Heywood. Is the origin of the name ‘Monkey Town,’ as given to Heywood, known? Is it known when the town was first slandered in this way?’ Old Heywood postcard. So wrote ‘H.B.’ to the Heywood Advertiser in 1908. It is not clear just how offended HB really was, because Heywoodites have long been happy to call themselves ‘monkeys’. But where did this name come from, and when? A well-known bit of self-effacing folklore still doing the rounds is that Heywood men used to have tails, and so the stools and benches in the town's pubs had holes in them for the tails to fit through. The reality, of course, is that the holes were there for carrying the stools. A clue as to where the name came from is in the timing. The first recorded mention of ‘Monkey Town’ came in the 1850s, when Rochdale author Edwin Waugh wrote in his Sketches of ...

Submit a Story

If you have researched any aspect of Heywood history and would like to submit an article to Monkey Town, please contact me.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions:

Michael Baron:

'The Age of the Electric Tram in Heywood'

Neil J Richardson:

'The Story of Michael Rukin and Charles Martin Newhouse'

Alan McCarthy:

'Heywood Spitfires'

This website created by Christopher Dawson.
Member of the Professional Historians Association (Qld).
BA Anthropology (University of Queensland); Grad. Dip. Applied and Local History (University of Queensland).
Back o'th' Moss/Mossfield Primary/Siddal Moor
All original material © C Dawson
dawsonchris@outlook.com