Northenden
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Northenden is a district and suburb of Manchester, England.
[edit] Geography and administration
Northenden is located in the south end of the city of Manchester, seven miles from the centre, south of the River Mersey, and was incorporated into the City in 1931 along with Baguley and Northen Etchells, all of which were previously in the county of Cheshire. It is within the northern edges of the suburb of Wythenshawe, which is often referred to as the largest housing estate in Europe.[1].
Northenden is now in a small triangle between two motorways (the M56 and M60) and a main dual carriageway (the Princess Parkway). Manchester International Airport is about 4 miles away southwards by road. Regeneration and expansion of the Sharston Industrial Estate next south from Northenden has attracted many new companies and employment.
[edit] History
[edit] Etymology
Its name likeliest came from Anglo-Saxon Norþ-worþign = "northern enclosure".
[edit] Early history
Northenden has a long history, having been mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, and was then a small farming community with a manor house and woodland. There was a weir on the Mersey there in the 14th century (where Mill Lane is now) and a mill was set up to grind corn. The mill belonged to the Tatton family of Wythenshawe Hall, and it was demolished in the 1960s.
As Northenden is on a major (and very old) crossing of the Mersey on the Salt Road from Cheshire to Manchester, it prospered in medieval times. The ford was an important passageway north out of and into Manchester (now Ford Lane), as there was no bridge over the Mersey between Sale and Stockport, until in 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie's army built a troop-bridge out of big poplar tree trunks where the B5095 (Manchester Road, Didsbury) now crosses the Mersey, south of Didsbury, in his abortive attempt to seize the crown of England. The Northenden ford was unusual because its northern and southern ends were not opposite each other, but people using the ford had to wade about 500 feet along the riverbed. The Simon's Bridge was built at the ford in 1901 to help access to Poor's Field, and the rent from this field was used by the church to buy blankets and clothes for the needy.
Distance from Manchester enabled Northenden to avoid the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, and it remained partially rural to this day even though it has the M56 and M60 motorways on either end of the village. The nearest it came to industrialisation was a cottage industry in flax spinning. In the 1980s the area became part of the Mersey Valley Park, and the banks of the river form part of the Mersey Valley Trail.
Northenden is referred to as a village by the locals, but was engulfed in suburban housing estate as the very large Wythenshawe housing estate was built. Northenden rapidly developed a shopping centre along Palatine Road to service the new neighbourhood with all the necessities of life - hotels, shops, schools, churches, small businesses, and service industries. Eventually, Wythenshawe got its own shops and commercial centre, and the motorways bypassed the village, so that it was able to return to the (more-or-less) sleepy village it had always been.
[edit] Places of interest
At Northenden is the largest Jehovah's Witness Assembly hall in the local area, and Northenden contains a large population of Jehovah's Witnesses. The Northenden Social Club is unique in that rather than build a new social club after World War II the townsfolk converted the village air-raid shelter into a new social club; in front of the club is the Northenden War Memorial. The area is maintained by Manchester City Council and villagers in the Northenden Civic Society.
[edit] References
- Derick Deakin. History of the Estate. Wythit. Retrieved on 30 September 2006.
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