Oldham from the air

This is a view that can't be recreated now - Mumps Bridge, Oldham, with the now-gone Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway iron bridge dominating the scene. An Oldham Corporation Crossley double-decker is leaving the town on service 3 towards Rushcroft. A little plume of smoke is coming from its exhaust - Crossleys were known for being a little bit wheezy and smoky in the engine department. It's not clear on the original photo if the traffic lights are working or not, but there is a Policeman on point duty to organise what looks like very little traffic to our eyes. This scene is very much changed today, with the bridge and most buildings we see here gone. But one Oldham Corporation Crossley still exists in the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester, awaiting restoration at the time of writing. If you'd like to know more about the Museum of Transport Greater Manchester and its collection of vintage buses, go to www.gmts.co.uk.

Found this photo at the Cavern at Failsworth Mill a few years back it cost me £1 but for the nostalgia its priceless! This back alley was between One and Three (now the Three Crowns) on Oldham Street and and Bulls Head on George Street (Now the Brewery Tavern) everybody used it as a cut through.

Towns in the North-west make up half of the worst affected areas

Glen Mill PoW Camp, Oldham

An Oldham Borough Police officer photographed on the town's Shaw Road in 1930s or early 1940s. This image is from a set of glass plate negatives produced by the force’s photographers of the period. To see more images from the Oldham Borough Police collection please click the link below. Oldham Borough Police Collection The Oldham Borough Police area is now policed by Greater Manchester Police. From the collection of the Greater Manchester Police Museum and Archives. For more information please visit our website. www.gmp.police.uk

The origins of fish and chips is not entirely clear. Fried fish was first introduced and sold by East End Jews, while chips first took off in Lancashire and Yorkshire. But we may never know who was the first to bring the magical combination together.

Football Magazine article Oldham

Glen Mill PoW Camp, Oldham

For some odd reason, of late, Oldham has been on my mind - something as a Rochdalian one has to guard against mind! - but what with the latest Metrolink developments, and a wonderful pic posted by Tarboat I thought it was time to dig out a c1930 street plan of the town that has altered so much and is being altered. The cutting through of the ring road in the 1960s and '70s changed it much and now the extensive rail network seen here (and that was 'pruned' over the decades) is effectively vanishing as part of the great tram scheme. And those station names! - can any UK town have had such a selection of ringing names? - Werneth, Clegg Street, Mumps and Glodwick? At the time of this plan Oldham was, sadly in many ways, just past the industrial flush of youth - at the start of the 20th century the town was widely recognised as having the greatest concentration of cotton spindles in the world - a staggering achievement. At left, in Werneth, the Hartford Iron Works was still the centre of the massive Platt Brothers enterprise that equipped many mills - including one suspects many overseas mills that began to challenge the town's and area's primacy in cotton.

I have to say that, even allowing for memory, one of the finest pints of beer I ever drank (out of a very many ...) was a pint of draught Oldham Bitter one night in the late 1980s in Hollingwood, Lancs. It was so good I had several, nearly missed the train home and sadly it was amongst the last I had of this fine beer. In 1982 the brewery succumbed to a takeover by Boddingtons in nearby Manchester who, sadly, went into the clutches of the woeful Whitbread empire - thus went not only Oldham Ales but also Boddington's distinctive Mancunian beers. I bought this bottle that night and never did drink it! The label design is a cast-back to an early age of bottled beers, using a merry collection of type and the old "OB" logo.

Passages and walkways, now perceived as negative types of urban space.

Glen Mill PoW Camp, Oldham