Technically Stacksteads didn't start until you passed Queen Street, the picture above shows Lee Mill Cooperative store this was the no 3 store and was opened in 1867. Like most it had its own clogging department.

 

Previous to the late 1930's the land between Queen Street and the gate house of Fern Hill House was nothing more than pastureland. At the time of the loom riots in 1826 the house belonged to the Ormerod family. Later it was home to William Mitchell, J.P at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 it was thought the house would be suitable for use as a military hospital. Fern Hill opened its doors to its first patients from the 2nd Western Hospital Manchester on Sunday November 16th 1914. 

 

 

 

 

Looking very much the same as it does today the row of houses on the right are those that stand facing the Farholme Tavern and shops. Acre Mill lodge was known as the "Suicide Lodge" warm watered it was the lodge people chose when they wanted to end their lives. A cobbled  lane leading off Acre Mill road pictured below once took workers to their place of work  in  James Ashworth's woollen mill. Today there are no remains of the houses that once stood down this lane known as Moss Row  but the area is still known as Shade End.

 

 

Acre Mill woollen Mill had the honour of being the last woollen mill in the Bacup Borough. The mill was in the Ashworth family for over 100 years. James Ashworth died at his residence Spring Hill house in 1867. The house was demolished and the houses of Spring Hill estate were built in 1935 by Thomas Coates Ltd. Miles Ashworth  lived at Holme Bank the large house next to the cemetery  dying in 1889 aged 61 he left £8,000 for public purposes after his widows death.

 

 

 

 

 

Opened in 1862, the Cemetery was run by the local burial board and had 3 chapels the Catholic chapel pictured above at the entrance to the cemetery. The other two chapels being Church of England and Nonconformist.  were for the Church of En the Cone for the Catholics, one for Church of England and one for Nonconformists. The first person to be buried in the new cemetery was a Hannah Haworth of Britannia aged 46 and married.

 

 

 

 Central buildings were built in 1890 by the same man who built many of the areas houses and shops including Brearley Street, and Herbert Street, James Brearley. Up the lane past Acre Mill Sunday School was a farm  known as Huttock End Farm eventually this farm was demolished to make way for the houses that now make up Hammond Avenue, Osbourne and Hill Crest estates.

The first house on Hill Crest being opened in 1948 four years later in April 1952 two of the first bungalows to be built on Hammond Avenue were opened the first of 36 to be erected.
 

 

Huttock End Lane pictured above was popular with many of the Irish families that had moved into the area to find work in the quarries and on the railway. A newspaper report of 1869 paints a very bad picture of Stacksteads describing it as "not a very safe or pleasant place to live and that the well disposed inhabitants of Stacksteads were in fear of their lives”. At this time the population of Stacksteads was made up mainly of what at the time were called “low Irish families" who were described as far from peace-loving and law-abiding. A house called Ivy Cottage stood in what is now the War Memorial garden at the bottom of the lane.

 

 

In 1789 the turnpike trust road was built Todmorden through Bacup, Stacksteads, Booth Fold, and Newchurch and on to Haslingden. The road from Stacksteads through to the Glen was constructed in 1826. At that time the Toll Bar at Stacksteads was built to catch traffic on all roads in the area. The toll house was demolished in 1881. On the 1848 OS map the name Stackstead only appears twice, referring to a cotton mill and nearby Stacksteads Knoll. The picture of Toll Bar above was taken in 1934.