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Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east; it is south of Manchester and east of Chester. Before the Norman Conquest, Macclesfield was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia and was assessed at £8. The manor is recorded in the Domesday Book as "Maclesfeld", meaning "Maccel's open country". The medieval town grew up on the hilltop around what is now St Michael's Church. It was granted a charter by Edward I in 1261, before he became king. Macclesfield Grammar School was founded in 1502. The town had a silk-button industry from at least the middle of the 17th century and became a major silk-manufacturing centre from the mid-18th century. The Macclesfield Canal was constructed in 1826–31. Hovis breadmakers were another Victorian employer. Modern industries include pharmaceuticals. Multiple mill buildings are still standing and several of the town's museums explore the local silk industry. Other landmarks include Georgian buildings such as the Town Hall and former Sunday School; St Alban's Church, designed by Augustus Pugin; and the Arighi Bianchi furniture shop. The population of Macclesfield at the 2011 census was 51,482. A person from Macclesfield is sometimes referred to as a "Maccite". Macclesfield, like many other areas in Cheshire, is a relatively affluent town. GENUKI provides the following information: Macclesfield was a township and borough in Prestbury ancient parish in the Macclesfield Hundred of Cheshire, England. It became a civil parish in 1866. Since 1974 and the introduction of the Macclesfield District which includes many more communities, it ceased to be a municipal borough and became an unparished area. The original township included the hamlets of Broken Cross, Longmoss, Moss Side (Macclesfield), Sycamore Hill and Whirley Green. The population was 8,743 in 1801, 29,648 in 1851, 34,624 in 1901, 35,999 in 1951, and 49,531 in 2001. (NOTE: There is also a suburb of Manchester named Moss Side.) [edit] History
Before the Norman Conquest, Macclesfield was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia, who also held much of the east of the county. Three crosses survive from this period, originally located in Sutton, and J. D. Bu'Lock speculates that there might have been a Pre-Conquest church. The area was devastated by the Normans in 1070, and had not recovered by 1086; the Domesday Book records the manor as having fallen in value from £8 to 20 shillings. Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester held the manor himself after the Conquest; there was a mill, meadow for oxen, and woodland 6 leagues by 4 leagues. A Norman castle was built at Macclesfield. Macclesfield was granted a borough charter by Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, in the early 13th century, and in 1261 a second charter was granted by the future King Edward I, allowing a market, fair and judicial court. The medieval town stood on the hilltop, centred on the parish church of All Saints,[1] which was built in 1278, an extension of a chapel built in approximately 1220. In 1357, a hall was built in the town for the mayor's court and the borough court (portmote).[2] The town lacked industries at this date and was described as poor,[2] remaining a small market town until the end of the 15th century, with a population numbered in the hundreds. The borough had a weekly market and two annual fairs: the Barnaby fair on St Barnabas day (11 June), the other on the feast of All Souls (2 November). In recent years the Barnaby fair has been reinvented as the Barnaby Festival, a cultural festival in mid-June. The weekly market no longer happens but on the last Sunday of each month the Treacle Market is held, a large market selling locally produced food and handmade items such as clothing, handmade goods and pottery. Macclesfield was the administrative centre of the Hundred of Macclesfield, which occupied most of east Cheshire.[3] The Earl of Chester's manor of Macclesfield was very large, and its boundary extended to Disley. The manor house was on the edge of the deer park, on the west of the town. In the 14th century, it had a king's chamber and a queen's hall, as well as a large stable, and the manor served as a stud farm for Edward the Black Prince. The Earls of Chester established the Forest of Macclesfield, which was much larger than its present-day namesake. It was used for hunting deer and pasturing sheep and cattle. By the end of the 13th century, large areas of the forest had been ploughed because of the pressure of population growth. In 1356, two trees from the forest were given to archer William Jauderell to repair his home.
No proof exists that Macclesfield was ever a walled town. When the settlement was first established and for some centuries afterwards there would have certainly been some sort of ditch and palisade round the western side of the town which was not naturally defended. This was necessary in order to keep out undesirable people and stray animals. No physical trace of a ditch remains though measurements and the shape of certain streets suggest where such a ditch could have been and most of the medieval building were within this area. It is unlikely that the ditch and palisade were succeeded by a wall for no record has been found of a murage tax, which would certainly have been levied to keep the wall in repair. The suffix "Gate" in the names of several Macclesfield streets has been taken to indicate the former presence of a gate in the sense of a guarded opening in a wall, however, this is very unlikely as the term 'gate' is derived from 'gata', Scandinavian for road, which became gate in Middle English. Therefore, Chester Gate, the Jordan Gate and the Church Wall Gate (some sources give the name Well Gate for this gate), are simply referring to the road to/from Chester or the road leading from the church to the well. These names are preserved in the names of three streets in the town, Chestergate, Jordangate and Back Wallgate. A charter of 1595 established a town governing body consisting of the mayor, two aldermen and 24 "capital burgesses", and the powers of this body were increased by a charter of 1684. By the Tudor era, Macclesfield was prospering, with industries including the manufacture of harnesses, gloves and especially buttons, and later ribbons, tapes and fancy ware. Coal was mined from the 16th century. In 1664, the population was around 2,600, making Macclesfield the third-largest town in the county, after Chester and Nantwich, although the town had expanded little from its medieval extent and had fewer large houses than Nantwich and Stockport. By around 1720, the number of households had increased to 925, and this rapid population growth continued throughout the 18th century, reaching 8,743 in 1801. In the 1580s, Macclesfield was one of the earliest towns in the county to have Puritan preaching "Exercises", and it was also an early centre for the Quakers. By 1718 an estimated 10% of the population was Nonconformist. Towards the end of that century, the town had a large Methodist congregation, and Christ Church was the only Anglican church in the county to invite John Wesley to preach.
The population was 24,137 by 1841. Armoury Towers was completed in 1858 and the Bridge Street drill hall was completed in 1871. [edit] IndustryMacclesfield was once the world's biggest producer of finished silk. A domestic button industry had been established in the town by the mid-16th century, although the first mention of silk buttons is not until 1649.[6][7] In the mid-18th century, when metal buttons became fashionable, the silk-button industry transitioned to silk manufacture in mills. Macclesfield's first silk mill was founded by Charles Roe in 1743 or 1744.[1] The mills were initially powered by water, and later by steam.[1] There were 71 silk mills operating in 1832, employing 10,000 people, but a crash occurred in 1851 and many mill-workers emigrated to the American silk town of Paterson, New Jersey.[1] The silk industry remained active in the town in the 1980s, but no longer dominated. Paradise Mill reopened in 1984 as a working mill museum, demonstrating the art of silk throwing and Jacquard weaving. The four Macclesfield Museums display a range of information and products from that period. A short-lived copper-smelting operation was established by Roe in 1750, processing ore from mines at Alderley Edge and Ecton (Staffordshire), and later from Anglesey. The business switched to copper processing and the manufacture of brass in 1767, before closing after Roe's death in 1781. The industry is reflected in some of the town's street names.[1] Between 1826 and 1831 the Macclesfield Canal was constructed, linking Macclesfield to Marple to the north and Kidsgrove to the south. The canal was surveyed for its Act of Parliament by the canal and roads engineer Thomas Telford, and built by William Crosley (junior),[8] the Macclesfield Canal Company's engineer. It was the last narrow canal to be completed and had only limited success because within ten years much of the coal and other potential cargo was increasingly being transported by rail.
Waters Green was once home to a nationally known horse market which features in the legend of the Wizard of Alderley Edge. Waters Green and an area opposite Arighi Bianchi, now hidden under the Silk Road, also held a sheep and cattle market until the 1980s. Macclesfield is said to be the only mill town to have escaped bombing in World War II. After the war, two pharmaceutical companies opened facilities in Macclesfield, Geigy (now part of Novartis) and the pharmaceutical division of ICI (now AstraZeneca). [edit] Research Tips[edit] Definitions
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