Milnrow - Geography

Geography

Further information: Geography of Greater Manchester

At 53°36′36″N 2°6′40″W / 53.61°N 2.11111°W / 53.61; -2.11111 (53.6101°, -2.1111°), and 168 miles (270 km) north-northwest of central London, Milnrow stands roughly 830 feet (253 m) above sea level, on the western slopes of the Pennines, 10.4 miles (16.7 km) north-northeast of Manchester city centre, in the valley of the River Beal. Blackstone Edge and West Yorkshire are to the east; Rochdale and Shaw and Crompton are to the west and south respectively. Milnrow, considered as the area covered by the former Milnrow Urban District Council, extends over 8.1 square miles (21 km2).

The River Beal, a tributary of the River Roch, runs centrally through Milnrow from the south through Newhey. The soil is light gravel and clay, with subsoil of rough gravel, and the local geology is carboniferous coal measures. Milnrow's highest point (1,310 feet / 399 metres) is by its east-southeastern border with the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham at Denshaw and Bleakedgate Moor, above the rugged, upland Piethorne Valley and close to Windy Hill. From this point the average height of the land falls gradually towards the direction of Rochdale to the northwest, into a mixture of undulating farmland and suburbia. Milnrow experiences a temperate maritime climate, like much of the British Isles, with relatively cool summers and mild winters. There is regular but generally light precipitation throughout the year.

Neighbouring cities, towns and places.

	Wardle	Littleborough	Blackstone Edge
	Rochdale		Piethorne Valley
		Milnrow
	Thornham	Shaw and Crompton	Newhey

In 1855, the poet Edwin Waugh said of Milnow:

Milnrow lies on the ground not unlike a tall tree laid lengthwise, in a valley, by a riverside. At the bridge, its roots spread themselves in clots and fibrous shoots, in all directions; while the almost branchless trunk runs up, with a little bend, above half a mile towards Oldham, where it again spreads itself out in an umbrageous way. —Edwin Waugh, Sketches of Lancashire life and localities (1855)

Surrounded by open moor and grassland on its northern and eastern sides, Milnrow forms a continuous urban area with neighbouring Rochdale to the west, and, according to the Office for National Statistics, is part of the Greater Manchester Urban Area, the United Kingdom's third largest conurbation.

There are a number of small named-places in and around Milnrow, including Clegg, Firgrove, Gallows, Haugh, Newhey, Kitcliffe, Ogden, and Tunshill. Newhey, at the south of Milnrow by Shaw and Crompton, is the most distinct of these areas, and, with its own parish church and railway station, is invariably given as a separate village. The Gallows public house is said to occupy the land of an ancient execution site; Gallows, a former hamlet at northeastern Milnrow, is named in reference to a baronial gallows. Kitcliffe, Ogden and Tunshill, to the east of central Milnrow, are hamlets that occupy the upper, mid and lower Piethorne Valley respectively.