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Macclesfield () is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East, Cheshire, England. It is sited on the River Bollin and the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east; the town lies 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 Middle Ages town grew up on the hilltop around what is now St Michael's Church. It was granted a municipal charter in 1261. 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 were another Victorian era employer; modern industries include pharmaceuticals, such as Astra Zeneca. 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.
At the 2021 census the population of the parish was 52,496 and the population of the built up area was 54,345. A person from the town is referred to as a Maxonian.
Although "Silk Town" seems to be its preferred nickname, the traditional nickname of Macclesfield is "Molasses Town". This refers to an historical incident when a horse-drawn wagon overturned and spilt its load of treacle onto the street, after which the poor scooped the treacle off the road.
At the time of the Domesday Book, Macclesfield was in the hundred of Hamestan. By the 13th century, the Hundreds of Cheshire had been reorganised, and the town gave its name to the Macclesfield Hundred, which covered a similar area to the old Hamestan Hundred in the east of the county.
Macclesfield was granted a borough charter in 1261 by Edward, Earl of Chester, eldest son of Henry III; Edward later became king as Edward I. Although the 1261 charter purported to create the borough, there was reputedly an earlier charter, possibly granted by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, in the early 13th century. The 1261 charter gave the right to hold a market, fair and judicial courts.Hewitt, pp. 69–70Hartwell et al.., pp. 449–51 The medieval town stood on the hilltop, centred on All Saints' Church (later renamed St Michael's), 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). The town lacked industries at this date and was described as poor, remaining a small market town until the end of the 15th century, with a population numbered in the hundreds.Driver, pp. 43–45, 109
The Cheshire archers were a body of elite soldiers noted for their skills with the longbow that fought in many engagements in Britain and France in the Middle Ages. Battles at which there were sizeable numbers of Cheshire archers include Agincourt and Crecy. In 1277 Edward I employed 100 of these archers from the Macclesfield area as his personal bodyguard, his successor Richard II also employed a bodyguard of these yeoman archers who came from the Macclesfield Hundred and the forest districts of Cheshire.
The borough had a weekly market and two annual fairs: the Barnaby fair on Barnabas (11 June), the other on the feast of All Souls (2 November).Driver, p. 109Beck, p. 72 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.Clayton, D. J. (1990). pages 32, 33. 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.Hewitt, pp. 31, 35 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.
Macclesfield Castle was a fortified town house built by John de Macclesfield in the later Middle Ages. Construction began in 1398, and that year an application was made for a licence to crenellate, or fortify, the building. Two chantry were founded in the town: one in 1422 by the Legh family, and one in 1504 by Thomas Savage.Driver, p. 136 In 1502, Macclesfield Grammar School was founded by Sir John Percyvale.
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.A history of Macclesfield. Macclesfield Borough Council, edited by Clarice Stella Davies, University of Manchester Press, 1961. 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,Streets and houses of old Macclesfield. John Earles, 1915. Republished MTD Rigg Publications, Leeds, 1990. which have several older and listed buildings.
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.Hodson, p. 100 By the Tudor period, Macclesfield was prospering, with industries including the manufacture of harnesses, gloves and especially buttons, and later ribbons, tapes and fancy ware.Beck, pp. 52–53Hodson, p. 149 Coal was mined from the 16th century.Hodson, p. 142 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.Hodson, pp. 93, 95 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.Hodson, p. 109
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.Hodson, pp. 29, 31, 36–37 Towards the end of that century, the town had a large Methodism congregation, and Christ Church was the only Anglican church in the county to invite John Wesley to preach.Hodson, pp. 41–43
During the Civil War, in 1642 the town was occupied for the King by Sir Thomas Aston, a Royalist. In the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Charles Stuart and his army marched through Macclesfield as they attempted to reach London. The mayor was forced to welcome the prince, and the event is commemorated in one of the town's silk tapestries. Retrieval Date: 15 October 2007. Cumberland House on Jordangate is so named after the Duke of Cumberland who stayed there in 1745 when pursuing the fleeing Prince.
The population was 24,137 by 1841.
Armoury Towers was completed in 1858 and the Bridge Street drill hall was completed in 1871.
A short-lived copper-smelting operation was established by Roe in 1750, processing ore from mines at Alderley Edge and Ecton Mines (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.Hodson, pp. 144–45
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), 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.
Macclesfield is the original home of Hovis, produced in Publicity Works Mill (commonly referred to as "the Hovis Mill") on the canal close to Buxton Road. It was founded by a Macclesfield businessman and a baker from Stoke-on-Trent. Hovis is said to derive from the Latin "homo-vitalis" (strength for man) as a way of providing a cheap and nutritious food for poor mill workers and was a very dry and dense wholemeal loaf completely different from the modern version.
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).Tigwell, pp. 15, 55
For national elections, the town forms part of the Macclesfield constituency, which has been represented by Tim Roca of Labour since the 2024 general election.
Macclesfield was also a chapelry from at least the 13th century, when St Michael's Church (originally dedicated to All Saints) was built as a chapel of ease to St Peter's Church, Prestbury. St Michael's formally became a parish church in 1835, when Macclesfield was made a separate ecclesiastical parish from Prestbury.
The Macclesfield township was administered as a ancient borough from at least the time of its 1261 charter. The borough was administered from a guildhall in the Market Place from at least the 13th century. Macclesfield Town Hall was completed in 1824 on the site of the guildhall.
A Macclesfield constituency was created in 1832, covering the borough plus adjoining parts of the townships of Hurdsfield House and Sutton, where the urban area had grown beyond the borough boundaries. The borough was reformed in 1836 to become a municipal borough under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, which standardised how most boroughs operated across the country. As part of the 1836 reforms, the borough was enlarged to match the constituency.
The result of the 1880 general election for the Macclesfield constituency was declared void due to corruption, and no by-election was allowed to be held. In 1885, the constituency was replaced by a much larger county constituency, also called Macclesfield, which took in surrounding towns and villages as well as the borough of Macclesfield.
The municipal borough of Macclesfield was abolished in 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. A much larger non-metropolitan borough of Macclesfield was created instead, which also covered an extensive surrounding area, including the towns of Bollington, Knutsford, and Wilmslow.
In 2009, Cheshire East Council was created, taking over the functions of the borough council and Cheshire County Council, which were both abolished. The area of the pre-1974 municipal borough of Macclesfield had been unparished area since the 1974 reforms; a new civil parish of Macclesfield was created covering the area in 2015, with its parish council adopting the name Macclesfield Town Council.
To the west of the town lies the Cheshire Plain; Macclesfield Forest is to the east, containing Ridgegate and Trentabank Reservoirs which supply the town's drinking water, as well as Tegg's Nose and the Peak District.
According to the 2011 Census, the gender makeup of the population was 31,266 male and 32,688 female. The ethnic makeup of the whole urban area was under 96.2% white and 2.2% Asian; other ethnic minorities were 1.6%. The religious make up of the whole area includes: 66.3% Christian, 0.5% Muslim, 24.8% irreligious and 6.8% not stated.
The Georgian Town Hall was designed by Francis Goodwin in 1823.
Macclesfield is home to an Augustus Pugin church, St Alban's on Chester Road.
The former Cheshire County Asylum on Pavilion Way was designed by Robert Griffiths in Italianate style. It is now converted into apartments.
A railway station was first opened at Beech Lane by the London and North Western Railway on 19 June 1849, which was replaced a month later by Hibel Road station. The current station dates from the modernisation of the West Coast Main Line in the mid-1960s, when the old station buildings were replaced.
The principal operators around Macclesfield are two subsidiaries of Centrebus Group: D&G Bus and High Peak Buses. Fifteen bus routes run within the town and to other locations including Altrincham, Buxton, Congleton, Crewe, Knutsford, Stockport, Wilmslow and Wythenshawe. Only two services run on Sundays: route 58 to Chatsworth House and route 130 to Handforth Dean.
The Northern Chamber Orchestra is the oldest professional chamber ensemble in the North West; its home is the Macclesfield Heritage Centre and presents a series of eight concerts a year, attracting international guest soloists. The Silk Opera Company was created to perform 'The Monkey Run' at Barnaby.
After recent rationalisation, the town now has one museum: the Silk Museum, on Park Lane, which includes paid access to Paradise Mill, a former silk mill. The Silk Museum houses the artefacts brought back by Victorian antiquarian Marianne Brocklehurst and her partner Mary Booth: these were formerly held in West Park Museum, as well as a number of art galleries.
Macclesfield Chess Club is one of the oldest chess clubs in the country, having been founded in 1886.Furness (1988); p. 126.
The 'Macclesfield Literary and Philosophical Society' was formed in 2006, partly in response to The Times' 2004 article.
Local newspapers include the Macclesfield Express Macclesfield Express. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008 and the Community News. Community News Group. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008 Macclesfield residents have access to Macclesfield Forum, an online Internet forum, for informal discussion of local news and issues. Macclesfield Forum. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008 The town is also served by two locally based radio stations: Canalside Community Radio based at the Clarence Mill in Bollington, Canalside Community Radio. Retrieval Date: 16 February 2008 just north of Macclesfield, and Silk Radio, an independent commercial radio station with studios in the town. Silk FM. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008 Local information websites include Visit Macclesfield Visit Macclesfield Retrieval date: 29 September 2015 and the local what's on guide, Canalside's The Thread. The Thread. Retrieval date: 29 November 2012
The last remaining commercial cinema in Macclesfield closed in 1997. Discussions have taken place regarding the possibility of building a multiplex cinema, but attempts to build a cinema have thus far been unsuccessful. In 2005, a small-scale cinema, Cinemac, was set up in the Heritage Centre, which Cinemac. Retrieval Date: 16 February 2008. has since become well established; also based in the Heritage Centre is the Silk Screen arts cinema, Silk Screen Cinema. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008. which gives fortnightly screenings of art-house films.
Amateur dramatics is well represented in the town; the Macclesfield Amateur Dramatic Society has existed since 1947 and performs in its own theatre on Lord Street. The Macclesfield Majestic Theatre Group has been producing musicals since its inception in 1971, initially at the Majestic Theatre (hence the title), but latterly at various other locations after the theatre was converted into a public house by the new tenants. Most recently, shows have been produced at the Heritage Centre, the Evans Theatre in Wilmslow and MADS Theatre on Lord Street. Several members of this society have progressed to the professional stage, most notably Marshall Lancaster and Jonathon Morris.
Gawsworth Old Hall hosts an annual Shakespeare festival as well as many arts and music events throughout the year.
Macclesfield has appeared in film; it was used as the location for Edward Dmytryk' film So Well Remembered in 1947, starring John Mills. Some of the locations are still recognisable, such as Hibel Road. A fictionalised version of Macclesfield's railway station appeared in the 2005 football hooliganism film Green Street. It was also the location of Control (2007), a film about Ian Curtis, the lead vocalist of the Rock music band Joy Division.
The British blues singer John Mayall was born in the town in 1933. Macclesfield was also the home town of Ian Curtis and Stephen Morris of Joy Division, and Gillian Gilbert who, along with Morris, was a member of New Order. A memorial to Curtis is located at Macclesfield Crematorium. Other Macclesfield acts to have gained recognition include the Macc Lads and Marion.
Silk Brass Band, the Macclesfield-based brass band, won the National Championship of Great Britain Third Section Final in 2002. Having been promoted from the third section in 2002, they have since consistently competed in the Second, First and Championship sections of the UK's brass band grading system. Local band the Virginmarys has achieved national and international success.
In literature, Macclesfield is the second principal location of the fantasy novels The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (1963) by Alan Garner.
In 2008, the borough was named as the fifth happiest of 273 districts in Britain by researchers from the universities of Sheffield and Manchester, who used information on self-reported personal well-being from the British Household Panel Survey.
The town is served by both BBC Radio Manchester and BBC Radio Stoke. Other radio stations are Heart North West, Smooth North West, Capital Manchester and Lancashire and Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West. Community based stations that broadcast from the town are Silk Radio and Canalside Radio.
Macclesfield Express is the town's local newspaper which publishes on Wednesdays.
There is also an independent school, Beech Hall School.
Macclesfield Academy is made up of pupils from the former school Henbury High School, and also took in the pupils left over when Ryles Park secondary school closed in 2004. Ryles Park had been in turn an amalgamation of Ryles Park girls school and the oldest state school in the town, Macclesfield Central boys school, which closed in 1975. It is on the site of Macclesfield College and Park Lane Special School as part of the Macclesfield 'Learning Zone', which was opened in 2007. Macclesfield High School was the name originally given to the girls grammar school on Fence Avenue which formed part of the King's School.
Macclesfield Sunday School started in 1796 as a non-denominational Sunday School in Pickford Street, which catered for 40 children. It was founded by John Whitaker whose objective was "to lessen the sum of human wretchedness by diffusing religious knowledge and useful learning among the lower classes of society".
Though chapels set up their denominational schools, the Sunday School committee in 1812 elected to erect a purpose-built school on Roe Street. The Big Sunday School had 1,127 boys and 1,324 girls on its books when it opened.St Alban's Church in Chester Road is an active Roman Catholic parish church. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building. It was designed by A. W. N. Pugin.
Christ Church is a brick-built redundant church Anglican church, located on Great King Street. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II* listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. The church was in use until 1981. It remains Consecration and is used occasionally for services.
An Ebenezer Chapel was established on Rainow Road in 1864. It is now a private residence.
There is a Mormons church located on Victoria Road.
Other churches of architectural merit include:
Macclesfield Wheelers is a local cycling club for activities from pleasure riding to racing. Macclesfield Wheelers Cycling Club. Official website Retrieval date: 16 December 2007 World-famous cyclist Reg Harris produced his eponymous bikes in Macclesfield for three years during the 1960s. The local cycling campaign group is known as MaccBUG (Macclesfield Borough Bicycle Users Group). Macclesfield Borough Bicycle Users Group (MaccBUG). Official website. Retrieval date: 1 October 2007. Formed in 1999, it campaigns for better cycling provision for leisure and utility cyclists.
Macclesfield Harriers & Athletic Club is an active club with over 500 members. The club caters for all abilities and ages. There are sections for road running, track & field, fell running and cross country.
Macclesfield Hockey Club is a community club with 8 senior teams and a thriving junior section. They cater for players of all abilities from the age of 5 upwards. At the first team level, the ladies play in the Regional North Leagues and the men in the North West Hockey Premier League.
In December 2006, Sport England published a survey which revealed that residents of Macclesfield were the third-most active in England in sports and other fitness activities; 29.3% of the population participate at least three times a week for 30 minutes. Active People Survey. Sport England website. Retrieval date: 16 February 2008
Macclesfield parkrun, a free weekly timed 5k run, takes place in South Park every Saturday morning at 9.00am.
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