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Monkey Town: The History of Heywood

Gallows Tales

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The pages linked below will tell you all about Heywood and capital punishment, and some shocking local murder cases from history:

Link to article about hanging in Heywood, Lancashire.

Are the stories of people being hanged in Heywood really true?

Link to article about a murder in Birtle and the hanging of the murderer

Read about an horrific case of double murder and a hanging that shocked Birtle in 1826.

Link to story of a murder at Plumpton wood, Heywood, Lancashire

A hanging at Strangeways in 1911 featured a prisoner from Heywood and a hangman from Rochdale.

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© and website design: Christopher Dawson MPHA (Qld)

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'The Old Mills of Heywood' Project

Explore the history of Heywood's old workplaces.

Popular Pages

The Devil and the Monkey Puzzle Tree

The Monkey Puzzle tree ( Araucaria araucana ) is not a common sight in Monkey Town. The rather exotic spiked trunk and winding branches always caught the attention of local children, and two in particular that stuck in the memory were the trees in a front garden on Heywood Hall Road (which was on the route to Queen’s Park for many people). One well-remembered aspect of these trees was the superstition surrounding them. Some parents actually told their children to be quiet as they passed the tree, various reasons being that they would have bad luck or lose something, or in some cases even grow a monkey’s tail! This led those children who actually wanted a monkey’s tail to shout out as they passed by the trees. Superstitions about the Monkey Puzzle tree can be found throughout Britain. One widely-shared bit of folklore is that the Devil himself sits in this tree and people have to be quiet when walking past or else they will attract the Devil’s attention and get bad luck. In some

Were People Hanged in Heywood?

There is a widely-held belief among modern Heywoodites that, sometime in the distant past, judicial hangings used to take place behind the Queen Anne Inn. Variations on the story have trials being held inside the Queen Anne, or at the Freemasons public house across the road, and that a tunnel used to connect the two pubs for transporting the condemned prisoners from one place to the other. Some people think that the murder trials were held at the old Heywood police station on Hind Hill Street, although that was not built until the 1930s. The gallows were said to be in a yard behind the Queen Anne Inn, and the last man supposedly hanged there has been identified as ‘Jimmy Dawson’. However, the only Lancastrian James Dawson known to have been executed was born in Salford to a mother from Bury. He was a captain in the Manchester regiment of volunteers and was hanged, drawn and quartered in 1746 at Kennington Common, London, for high treason. Queen Anne Inn (left), Heywood cen

The 'Old Mills of Heywood' Project

Click here to view the interactive map! A-Z listing of mills and old workplaces: A-B C-E F-H I-N P-R S-U V -Y The aim of this project is to record details of as many of the mills, factories and works of early Heywood as possible. These will include all the cotton mills that once dominated the town, as well as other significant factories and works such as woollen mills, roperies and iron works. Many of these places are now lost to history - although a surprising number still survive - and together they represent the rich industrial heritage of Monkey Town. A few of these places are on the outskirts of Heywood, in either Middleton, Bury or Rochdale, but would have been familiar to Heywoodites at one time or another. I welcome any suggested additions or corrections to this information, as this project will remain a work in progress.

General Timeline of Heywood History

This timeline of the history of Heywood is a work in progress. It is intended to be as accurate as possible, and suggested corrections or additions are welcome. Pre - A.D. 1270 7th century: Middleton is thought to have been settled by this time. 1086: Rochdale recorded in the Domesday Book as Recedham. 1164: Heywood family recorded in local area. 1183: Records for Ashworth start around this time. 1197: Reference to Birtle in records. 12th century: Hopwood family recorded at site of current Hopwood Hall. 1210: Reference to hamlets of Lumhalghs (Lomax) and Hep (Heap) in records. 1260: Land at Pilsworth granted to William de Radcliffe. 1270-1600 1260s-70s: Adam de Bury grants land to Peter de Heywood during this time. 1278: William del Bridge granted land near Bury. 1292: Reference to Hoppewode in records 13th century: Bamford family living in Bamford area. 13th century: Peter de Heywood builds Heywood Hall. 13th century: Woollen mill recorded

A Walk Around Market Place in 1848

Cordwainer. The following account is taken from the Heywood Advertiser , 21 December 1888. The writer, Sam Heywood, recalls the scenes around Market Place as it used to be back in the 1840s, and his splendid description of the shops and the personalities of the various shopkeepers gives a great insight into the young town, as it was then. Most of these shops and people are long forgotten, but some places remain familiar, such as the Queen Anne, the Masons Arms, and the King's Arms (then known as the 'New Inn' and used mainly by the Orangemen). No doubt some of the surnames will be quite familiar too. This piece begins after an account of a visit to the Central Baths (then kept by a Ms E. Brierley) on a Sunday morning: 'HEYWOOD MARKET PLACE FORTY YEARS AGO. ‘By a genuine Monkey’ ‘Upon leaving the Central Baths, I received a terrible shock on discovering that another old landmark had been removed from the Market Place. It may be a very small trifle to some pe

Hey, Hey, We're Monkey Town

'It is with some diffidence that I venture to make an inquiry in relation to an offensive name which is sometimes derisively applied to Heywood. Is the origin of the name ‘Monkey Town,’ as given to Heywood, known? Is it known when the town was first slandered in this way?’ Old Heywood postcard. So wrote ‘H.B.’ to the Heywood Advertiser in 1908. It is not clear just how offended HB really was, because Heywoodites have long been happy to call themselves ‘monkeys’. But where did this name come from, and when? A well-known bit of self-effacing folklore still doing the rounds is that Heywood men used to have tails, and so the stools and benches in the town's pubs had holes in them for the tails to fit through. The reality, of course, is that the holes were there for carrying the stools. A clue as to where the name came from is in the timing. The first recorded mention of ‘Monkey Town’ came in the 1850s, when Rochdale author Edwin Waugh wrote in his Sketches of

Submit a Story

If you have researched any aspect of Heywood history and would like to submit an article to Monkey Town, please contact me.

Thanks to the following people for their contributions:

Michael Baron:

'The Age of the Electric Tram in Heywood'

Neil J Richardson:

'The Story of Michael Rukin and Charles Martin Newhouse'

Alan McCarthy:

'Heywood Spitfires'

This website created by Christopher Dawson.
Member of the Professional Historians Association (Qld).
BA Anthropology (University of Queensland); Grad. Dip. Applied and Local History (University of Queensland).
Back o'th' Moss/Mossfield Primary/Siddal Moor
All original material © C Dawson
dawsonchris@outlook.com

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