Through Time
2 total works
Hyde is a small industrial town in north-east Cheshire, situated some 7 miles from Manchester. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Hyde relied on the production of cotton for its prosperity. But by 1971, the cotton industry was already dying and with the advent of the supermarket and the building of the M67, small shops struggled to compete, and the mills, along with many houses, pubs and churches, were demolished. As Hyde began to change local historian Lee Brown endeavoured to record as much as he could on film. Despite the overgrown trees, bushes, grass and foliage sometimes getting in the way, Lee aims to show the comparisons of Hyde past and present, and take the reader on a photographic journey through the good times, as well as the struggles in more recent years that Hyde has faced.
'Where do flies go in the winter? Through Denton to Hyde (hide).' This old music hall joke is probably the only reference most people had regarding Denton, apart from hats. The sixteenth century saw the introduction of the felt hat-making industry, to which Denton owed its rise from an obscure hamlet to an important manufacturing town. By 1825, there were twenty-five hatting firms and Denton was the third largest hat-making centre in the North West. It was here that the famous Trilby hat was designed by the Denton Hat Company, which was a best-seller around the world for many years. However, the town boomed in the mid- to late 1950s, as it no longer relied solely on hatting for prosperity. This unique selection of old and new images and informative captions will be essential reading for anyone who knows and loves this town.