Hathershaw Hall is situated in the southerly part of the township, near the village of Copster-hill. The name Hathershaw, implies the wood of adders. The hall is now divided into several small tenements. The Sandersons, or as subsequently written, Sandifords or Sandfords, once a numerous family in this part of the country, and relatives of the Tetlows, of Chamber, are become rare. Robert Sandford, was a descendant of the Sandfords, of Thorpe Salvini, in Yorkshire, and ancestors of the Sandfords, of High Ash, Hathershaw, and Nuthurst; prior to 1515, Roger Sondeforth, D.D., was a joint lessee of lands, in Ancoats, Manchester, which were devised by Hugh Oldham, Bishop of Exeter, towards the endowment of the Manchester Grammar School. Edward Sandyforth, gentleman, contributed £4 to the subsidy levied in the eighteenth year of James the First, 1621. John Sandford, gentleman, and his two brothers, lost a large part of their estates by their adherence to the royal cause during thc civil wars. According to tradition, the great plague, which raged in the town of Manchester, in 1645, reached as near Oldham as Hathershaw, and many were the victims said to have fallen at this place under the dreadful visitation. Whether most of the family was swept away - for it is represented that, during the pestilence, the grass in the yard grew ankle deep - or whether they had fled in the period of the civil wars, are now matters of mere conjecture; but there was an Edward Sandiford, of Oldham, living in 1702. The Sidebottoms have been possessed of the property for a considerable time, about as far back as 1725, if not earlier. The Rev. Samuel Sidebottom, A.M., Rector of Middleton, married Mary, daughter of Alexander Radclyffe, Esq., of Fox-Denton, and is stated to have been of Hathershaw, in 1747; his son, Radclyffe Sidebottom, Esq., of Sutton-court, Chiswick, Middlesex, born in 1736-7, was the father of Alexander Radclyffe Sidebottom, Esq., of London, barrister, the present owner of Hathershaw and other property in Oldham.

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