Commercial Areas
We have already discussed the Town Hall area and the covering of the River Roch, but one of the most important parts of any Town Centre is it's commercial area. A place for local and traveling merchants to sell their produce and therefore provide income for the town, paying the council for the privilege to set up stall.
Rochdale is no different from any other town in that it has, at present, a contained area that is solely commercial. This includes department stores of large UK wide chains to the more local family businesses (getting fewer as the years go by!) and of course the market.
After Rochdale received it's market charter in 1251 (one of the first towns in Lancashire to do so.) the market area was on the opposite side of the town to the present site, in Church Lane area. As the centre of population shifted so did the provisions or domestic market to the junction between Lord Street (now known as Lord Square) and Yorkshire Street*.
The view looking up Yorkshire St with the junction of Lord St just passed the market stall on the left.
This is detailed in the Rochdale Manor Survey of 1626 which states "It is vulgarly reported that all the said tenements (at the lower end of Yorkshire Street) are built within theis fourscore yearres upon a waste piece of ground lying open to the streete and formerlie called the New Market and where the market was kepte" (there are no spelling mistakes, that was how it was written!). As Yorkshire Street was developed this had the effect of reducing the market to about a forty yard strip in front of, what is now, Lloyds Bank. Because of this shortage of space, on market days Yorkshire Street was totally congested with an abundance of stalls, some licensed and some set up by 'hawkers and peddlers'.
Lord St viewed from the junction of Yorkshire St taken in the early 1930's.
Something had to be done to regulate the market and to set up some sort of order as well as freeing Yorkshire Street, Still a main thoroughfare, to traffic on market days. A newly established Market Company bought all the markets rights from the Lord of the Manor in 1822. The area that was to be allocated for a market was described as "between Yorkshire Street, Toad Lane, Blackwater Street and Cheetham Street. Despite this new area for market stalls the area outside Lloyds Bank continued to be used. I suspect not through laziness or 'bloody mindedness' but purely because the market traders that had always used this plot feared losing regular custom if people couldn't find their newly re-sited stall. There was always the possibility that in the search for their regular stall customers might come across a better or, more importantly, cheaper stall with the same produce. In 1930 the Rochdale Observer reported, "the small strip of land in front of Mr King's shop (Lloyds Bank) is still occupied on certain days of the week and is a great inconvenience to traffic." This problem has been solved in the present day by the pedestrianisation of Lower Yorkshire Street.
The livestock market remained on its original site by the parish church for another three centuries. This created considerable disruption in the 1800's because cattle were blocking main roads in and out of the Town Centre. In 1858 one of the first 'flexing of muscle' by the newly formed Corporation was to take on the Lord of the Manor and challenged his right to hold fortnightly Markets in Church Lane. This confrontation led to the Corporation, 1872, being granted the power to, "prescribe the streets in which and the manner according to which, the leading or driving of cattle shall be permitted." In the same year The Rochdale Improvement Act stated that the Corporation could utilise waste land for cattle markets. Finally on 6 August 1877 "Cattle Fairground Theatre Street" was officially opened on the land that is now the Police Station at the bottom of Manchester Road. Cattle markets where held here up until 1951 and the land was used by traveling fun fairs up until the mid 1960's when the new police station was built.
Pictured left is the cattle market around 1910
On the south side of the Town Centre is another commercial area, very much reduced in these days of large department stores. It is on Drake Street, which came about in 1810 when the then Vicar of Rochdale, Dr Drake, began selling off and leasing portions of the Vicarage Estate. Drake Street has always been family/local businesses and, with the emergence of UK wide chain stores and out of town shopping centres, has slowly been reduced to probably only 10 (if that) shops on it's length.
Looking down Drake St, towards the town centre. This picture was taken about 1910.
Since the turn of the century Rochdale's main commercial area has moved from other parts of the Town Centre to become a large shopping centre on the north side of the river. I can only assume that not only was this driven by the Corporation and/or the retailers but also by the public themselves, who did not want to have to walk all over the Town Centre when all the shops seemed to be in the same area. This obviously led to shops/businesses in other parts of the Town Centre moving into the Yorkshire street area, where the majority of the town did their shopping.
* So named because it was the main thoroughfare from Rochdale, over the Pennines, into Yorkshire. From the top of John Street it is the A58.
Last updated 15/07/03