The Giddy Meadow was the name once
given to the small cluster of houses that
made up the village of Bacup at the end of
the eighteenth century. At this time Bacup
was a small and unimportant place, the
population in 1798 stood at approximately
1,426 with 306 houses situated in and
around the areas of Boston and
Hempsteads with a few cottages in the
Newgate area.
Market Street and St James Street were just
areas of agricultural land. The surrounding
hillsides were dotted with farmhouses and
attached cottages where spinning and
weaving took place on handlooms. By 1840
the spinning and weaving once carried out
by families in their own homes had moved to mass production in the 30 mills that had sprung up
along the banks of the River Irwell.
Enclosures and the mechanisation of farming in the Midlands and Southern counties and famine
in Ireland all resulted in the landless people looking for a place to live and, with an abundance of
spare land here, they began to settle in this area.
The population return of 1851 was 10,313, with a rise to 10,965 ten years later. Two years later
in 1863, the population had grown to 14,500 and the houses numbered over 3,300. By 1894 the
population in Bacup including Stacksteads had grown to 23,498, and with a need to provide
accommodation homes were built without a plan, back to back and back to earth and, in some
cases, home was just a one roomed cellar house.
With no backyards, the only door to the world for some faced their neighbours as did the
lavatories and coal places, row upon row of dustbins hugging the walls in monotonous uniformity.
© bacuptimes.co.uk 2004