Moorside is a
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
of
Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, wh ...
in
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority, combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: City of Manchester, Manchester, City of Salford, Salford ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
.
It is located in the north east of the township in a semi-rural locality bordering
Saddleworth
Saddleworth is a civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham in Greater Manchester, England. It comprises several villages and hamlets as well as suburbs of Oldham on the west side of the Pennine hills.
Areas include Austerlands, Delph, ...
, contiguous with
Sholver
Sholver is an area of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. An elevated, residential area, it lies near the middle of the Oldham part of the valley of the River Beal, northeast of Oldham's commercial centre, nearly at the northeasternmost ext ...
which lies to the west.
The area has many suburban houses and a few council houses. The centre of Moorside is at Ripponden Road where the Co-op and local businesses are. The biggest church in Moorside is Saint Thomas'.
History
In common with many other districts of Oldham, Moorside saw considerable expansion in the mid-19th century. This was in the main due to the efforts of industrialist Thomas Mellodew & Sons. The Mellodews of Moorside were textile manufacturers (velvet) and had a number of mills in the Moorside area.
Success attended the efforts of Thomas Mellodew and his business soon expanded. He began to purchase property and to erect dwellings until the whole of Moorside village, with the exception of a few houses, became his; the number of houses in his possession varying in estimate between 200 and 300. His interest in industry extended to the quarry at the foot of Besom Hill with its brickworks, which he ran in a partnership with John Clegg and which lasted until 1882.
In the mid-1960s a number of private builders' estates began to appear on Haven Lane, Counthill, Parkfield and Turf Pit Lane. This tremendous increase in population has changed Moorside in its character from a cluster of houses sheltering under the brow of a hill to a large piece of suburbia; the former hill dwellers have given place to a developing suburban community.
[http://www.stthomasmoorside.org.uk/history/local_history.htm, Local history, St Thomas's, Moorside. Retrieved 15 July 2013]
References
Areas of Oldham
{{GreaterManchester-geo-stub