Todmorden ( ; ) is a market town and civil parish in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It is north-east of Manchester, south-east of Burnley and west of Halifax. In 2011, it had a population of 15,481.
Todmorden is at the confluence of three steep-sided Pennine valleys and is surrounded by moorlands with outcrops of sandblasted gritstone.
The historic boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is the River Calder and its tributary, Walsden Water, which run through the town. The administrative border was altered by the Local Government Act 1888 placing the whole of the town within the West Riding.
The town is served by and railway stations.
History
Etymology
The name Todmorden is first attested in 1246, in the form Totmardene; other pre-modern spellings include Tottemerden, Totmereden and Totmerden. This is thought to originate in Old English as a personal name, Totta, combined with the Old English words mǣre ('border, boundary') and denu ('valley'). Thus the name once meant 'Totta's border-valley'. The valley in question is thought to have been the one running north-west from the town, and the border the one between Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Although fanciful and historically implausible, alternative etymologies circulate, such as the speculation that the name derives from two words for death: German Tod and French mort, or that the name meant "marshy den of the fox", supposedly from tod, a word of uncertain origin meaning 'fox' first attested around 1200, moor (which in Old English meant 'marsh'), and den (also attested in Old English to mean an animal's lair).
'Tod' is an informal name for Todmorden, often used in everyday conversation.
Prehistory
In 1898, Blackheath Barrow—a ring cairn monument situated above Cross Stone in Todmorden—was excavated and proved to be a site of "surpassing archaeological interest", according to J. Lawton Russell, one of the men who carried out the excavation. Various Bronze Age items were discovered, including sepulchral urns, a human skull, teeth and hands.
Russell contended that Blackheath Barrow was primarily a religious site, specifically intended for the "performance of funeral rites", as there was no evidence that it had been settled for domestic use. Of particular interest were the four cairns, positioned at the cardinal points of the compass, and it has been suggested that this indicates "a ritual evocation of the airts, or spirits of the four directions, with obvious correlates in relation to spirits in the land of the dead".
The various finds from the 1898 dig are now housed in the Todmorden Library, on permanent display.
Early history
Settlement in medieval Todmorden was dispersed, most people living in scattered farms or in isolated hilltop agricultural settlements. Packhorse trails were marked by ancient stones, of which many still survive.
For hundreds of years streams from the surrounding hills provided water for corn and fulling mills. Todmorden grew to relative prosperity by combining farming with the production of woollen textiles. Some yeomen clothiers were able to build fine houses, a few of which still exist today. Increasingly, though, the area's industry turned to cotton. The proximity of Manchester, as a source of material and trade, was undoubtedly a strong factor. Another was that the strong Pennine streams and rivers were able to power the machine looms. Improvements in textile machinery (by John Kay, James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright), along with the development of turnpike roads (1751–1781), helped to develop the new cotton industry and to increase the local population.
19th century
In 1801, most people still lived in the uplands; Todmorden itself could be considered as a mere village. During the years 1800–1845 great changes took place in the communications and transport of the town which were to have a crucial effect on promoting industrial growth. These included the building of: (1) better roads; (2) the Rochdale Canal (1804); and (3) the main line of the Manchester and Leeds Railway (1841), which became the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1847. This railway line incorporated the (then) longest tunnel in the world, the Summit Tunnel. A second railway, from Todmorden to Burnley, opened as a single line in 1849, being doubled to meet demand in 1860. A short connecting line, from Stansfield Hall to Hall Royd, completed the "Todmorden Triangle" in 1862, thus enabling trains to travel in all three directions (Manchester, Leeds and Burnley) without reversing.