HISTORY, DIRECTORY, & GAZETTEER, of the COUNTY PALATINE of LANCASTER in TWO VOLUMES |
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the necessity was less urgent. From causes with which the public are unacquainted, this expectation has not hitherto been realized; and it may be judged advisable that his majesty's commissioners for building new churches should exercise the powers with which they are invested, of dividing the parish into districts for ecclesiastical purposes.§ The town of Oldham is situated on an eminence, near the source of the Irk, and is washed on the east by a branch of the Medlock. These streams formerly contributed in a material degree to the manufacturing prosperity of the place, and they are still of considerable utility, but the general introduction of steam engines has diminished the necessity for water-power, and supplied its place by a more potent and an unfailing agency. The church is an ancient structure, dedicated to St. Mary; it was built in the year 1476, by Sir Ralph Langley, Knight, person of Prestwich, and the third warden of Manchester.†* The Radcliifes, the Cudworths, and the Hortons have each family monuments within it, and are all, as well as the Asshetons, whose burial-place was Middleton, closely identified with the chapelry of Oldham. The ancient family of the Radcliffes, of Royton Hall, are descended from Nicholas Fitz Gilbert de Radcliffe, youngest brother of Fitz.Gilbert the fourth baron of Kendal, in the time of Henry II. which Nicholas held the manor of Oldham of his nephew William the first lord of Lancaster.** This family of the Radcliffes, long settled in the chapelry of Oldham, became connected, by intermarriage through successive ages, with many of the principal families in the county of Lancaster; and Wilham Radcliffe, Esq. by marriage with Elizabeth Dawson, a Yorkshire heiress, succeeded to the Milns-bridge estate in that county. This William, dying without issue, on the 26th of September, 1795, bequeathed his estate to his nephew, Joseph Pickford, of Althill, Esq. who, in compliance with the will of his maternal uncle, took the name of Radcliffe, and who, for his "exemplary exertions as a magistrate,"*** is resisting the spirit of insubordination which existed amongst the cloth-dressers in the West-Riding of Yorkshire, in the year 1812, was created a baronet, on the 2d of November, 1813. Sir Joseph, on his death, in 1818, was succeeded by his grandson, the present Sir Joseph Radcliffe, Bart. of Campsall Park. The ancient family of Radclife, which spread from the parent stock of Radcliffe Tower, in this county, into the branches of Ordsal, Oldham, Smithells with Edgeworth, Wimmersley, and Todmorden, after having risen nearly to the summit of English nobility in the Earls Sussex of that name, is now almost extinct in Lancashire. The Cudworths, of Wemith Hall, are a branch of the Cudworths, of Cudworth, in Yorkshire; and John Cudworth, by marriage with the daughter and co-heiress of Matthew de Oldham, in the reign of King ............................................................................................................................................. § In an Inquisition, made by order of Parliament, on the 4th of June, 1650, Oldham is called a parish, and the church "Oldham Parish Church," of which the Rev. Robert Constantine was minister, with a stipend of £100 per-annum, paid out of the tithes, amounting to near £140. † Sir Ralph was the second son of Langley, of Edgecroft. This family became extinct ln the reign of Elizabeth; the last of them being Slr Robert Langley, who left four daughters, one married to Reddish, of Reddish; the second to a younger brother of the Lelghs, of Lime, by whom he had Alkrington, now in possession of the Levers; the third to Assheton, of Chadderton, who became patron of Prestwich; and the fourth to Dauntzey, of Agecroft, whose descendants now possess the ancient seat of the Langleys * Deed in the Tower
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