Rhodes is a suburb of the town of Middleton, in the

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...

district of

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. In 2018 it had an estimated population of 2917.

Amenities

Rhodes has a church called All Saints on Manchester Old Road, a primary school called Little Heaton Church of England Primary School on Boardman Lane and a hotel called the Comfort Inn Manchester North on Manchester Old Road. Rhodes formerly had a Primitive Methodist church on Chapel Street.

History

Rhodes was a

chapelry A chapelry was a subdivision of an ecclesiastical parish in England and parts of Lowland Scotland up to the mid 19th century. Status It had a similar status to a township but was so named as it had a chapel of ease (chapel) which was the communi ...

in Middleton parish. From the late 1700s it became the site of a bleaching and

calico printing Calico (; in British usage since 1505) is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than ...

works established by Daniel Burton (1744-1812) in conjunction with his cotton mill nearby in the centre of Middleton. The works passed into the hands of Salis Schwabe (1800-1853) in December 1832, who built up what according to the ''

ODNB The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

'' was "the largest calico-printing complex in Britain, covering an area of 31 acres, famously boasting the tallest factory chimney in the industrial north (some said in Europe), and employing a labour force of more than 750." The chimney, nicknamed the "Colossus of Rhodes", was ultimately demolished brick by brick between 1979 and 1982, and the land around it redeveloped for housing.Damon Wilkinson
'He bought a chimney for £5 and spent years taking it down it by hand'
''

Manchester Evening News The ''Manchester Evening News'' (''MEN'') is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in North West England, founded in 1868. It is published Monday–Saturday; a Sunday edition, the ''MEN on Sunday'', was launched in February 201 ...

'', 17 October 2020

References

Villages in Greater Manchester Middleton, Greater Manchester {{GreaterManchester-geo-stub