Scan and page transcript from:
Historical Sketches of Oldham by Edwin Butterworth
Pub. 1856
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(Saxon) a hill, and hom a slight deviation from holm a meadow; thus bringing us precisely to the derivation previously stated, the meadow on the hill. So fertile of conjecture is the subject of etymology as to be capable of supplying other probable sources of origin for this name. If the name ought to be Aldham it perhaps implies the high border. As the field in the armorial bearing of the Oldham family is charged with the birds of night, three Owls, a humorist would be inclined to assert such an illusive bearing to be indicative of a spot frequented by that moping race, " Which choose their murky bow'r, The district is singularly destitue of any remains apparently attributable to the times of the Britons. The three remarkable mounds or redoubts of earth ranging on the high land to the east of Crompton Hall, in the township of Crompton, can scarcely be regarded as works of the British era, although antiquaries have been disposed to question the authenticity of the traditionary story relative to the formation of these places as a shelter for the adherents of royalty during the period of the civil wars. On the east side of the lawn, a few yards from Chadderton Hall, is an elevation which was formerly a tumulus, or tumuli, but a considerable part of it was taken away in the latter part of the last century, when several relics of antiquity were dug up on the occasion, one of them resembling a spear, of a remote age, and the other remains were disfigured and almost obliterated ornaments, as if they had been used as objects of decoration for the person. A chieftain of British or Roman times was probably interred underneath this mound. The parish affords nothing of a British sound except the beil or beal, the simple British monosyllable Bel or Head, and it may refer to the high and remote sources of the rivulet (rising in the upper parts of the township of Oldham) which it denotes. 7 |
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