Shaw and Crompton

Shaw and Crompton is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines, 2.3 miles (3.7 km) north of Oldham, 3.6 miles (5.8 km) southeast of Rochdale, and 8.7 miles (14 km) to the northeast of the city of Manchester. It is regularly referred to as Shaw.

Historically in Lancashire, Crompton (as it was originally known) and its surroundings have provided evidence of ancient British and Anglian activity in the area. During the Middle Ages, Crompton formed a small township of scattered woods, farmsteads, moorland, and swamp with a small and close community of families. The local lordship was weak or absent, and so Crompton failed to emerge as a manor with its own lord and court. Farming was the main industry of this broadly independent and self-supporting rural area, with locals supplementing their incomes by hand-loom woollen weaving in the domestic system.

The introduction of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution initiated a process of rapid and unplanned urbanisation. A building boom began in Crompton during the mid-19th century, when suitable land for factories in Oldham was becoming scarce. By the late 19th century Crompton had emerged as a densely populated mill town. Forty-eight cotton mills—some of the largest in the United Kingdom—have been recorded as existing in the area. At its spinning zenith, as a result of an interwar economic boom associated with the textile industry, Shaw and Crompton was reported to have had more millionaires per capita than any other town in the world. Imports of foreign cotton goods began the decline in the region's textile industry during the mid-20th century; Shaw and Crompton's last mill closed in 1989.

Shaw and Crompton, which covers 4.5 square miles (11.7 km2), is a predominantly suburban area of mixed affluence with a population of 21,721 in 2001. Its double name has been said to make it "distinctive, if not unique". The legacy of its industrial past can be seen in its six surviving cotton mills, all of which are home to large distribution companies, among them Shop Direct Group's Shaw National Distribution Centre, a major employer in the area.