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Stalybridge

Stalybridge is a town in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, with a population of 23,731 at the 2011 Census.

Historically divided between Cheshire and Lancashire, it is 8 mi east of Manchester city centre and 6 mi north-west of Glossop.

When a water-powered cotton mill was constructed in 1776, Stalybridge became one of the first centres of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. The wealth created in the 19th century from the factory-based cotton industry transformed an area of scattered farms and homesteads into a self-confident town.

Early history
The earliest evidence of human activity in Stalybridge is a flint scraper from the late Neolithic/early Bronze Age. Also bearing testament to the presence of man in prehistory are the Stalybridge cairns. The two monuments are on the summit of Hollingworthall Moor 153 yd apart. One of the round cairns is the best-preserved Bronze Age monument in Tameside, and is protected as a scheduled monument. A branch of the Roman road between the forts at Manchester (Mamucium) and Melandra Castle (Ardotalia) is thought to run through Stalybridge to the fort of Castleshaw.

The settlement was originally called Stavelegh, which derives from the Old English stæf leah, meaning "wood where the staves are got". The medieval Lords of the manor took de Stavelegh as their name, later becoming Stayley or Staley. The lordship of Longdendale was one of the ancient feudal estates of Cheshire and included the area of Stalybridge. Buckton Castle, near Stalybridge, was probably built by one of the earls of Chester in the 12th century. William de Neville was the first lord of Longdendale, appointed by the Earl of Chester between 1162 and 1186. The lordship of Longdendale included the manors of Staley, Godley, Hattersley, Hollingworth, Matley, Mottram, Newton, Tintwistle and Werneth; the manor of Staley was first mentioned between 1211 and 1225.

The first records of the de Stavelegh family as Lords of the Manor of Staley date from the early 13th century. Staley Hall was their residence. The present hall was built in the late 16th century on the same site as an earlier hall of the Stayley family which dated from before 1343.

Sir Ralph Staley (descendant of the de Stavelegh family) had no male heirs but an only daughter, Elizabeth Staley, who married Sir Thomas Assheton and united the manors of Ashton and Staley. Elizabeth and Thomas had two daughters and no sons. Margaret, the eldest of their two daughters, married Sir William Booth of Dunham Massey. The younger daughter Elizabeth was widowed and without children, and continued to live at Staley Hall until her death in 1553. In her will her share of the lordships of Staley and Ashton were left to the Booths.

The manor of Staley remained in the possession of the Booth family until the death of George Booth, 2nd Earl of Warrington on 2 August 1758. Upon his death, the Earldom of Warrington became extinct. His only daughter, Lady Mary Booth, the wife of Harry Grey, 4th Earl of Stamford, inherited all the Booth estates. The manor of Staley was owned by the Grey family until the extinction of the Earldom of Stampford on the death of Roger Grey, 10th Earl of Stamford in 1976. At this point, the family estates were dispersed. Stamford Street, Grey Street, Groby Street, Stamford Park, Stamford Golf Club and the two Stamford Arms public houses in Stalybridge are all named after the Grey family.

Industrial Revolution
As Stayley expanded in the 18th century, it reached the banks of the River Tame. After the construction of a bridge in 1707, the settlement was commonly referred to as Stalybridge, meaning the bridge at Stayley. By the mid-18th century Stalybridge had a population of just 140. Farming and woolen spinning were the main means of subsistence at this time.

In 1776, the town's first water-powered mill for carding and spinning cotton was built at Rassbottom. In 1789, the town's first spinning mill using the principle of Arkwright's Water Frame was built. By 1793, steam power had been introduced to the Stalybridge cotton industry; by 1803 there were eight cotton mills in the growing town containing 76,000 spindles. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal was completed in 1811 and still runs through the town.

The rapid growth of industry in Stalybridge was due to the introduction of machinery. This was, however, met with violent opposition. After the arrival of the Luddites in the area the doors of mills were kept locked day and night. Military aid was requested by the mill owners and a Scottish regiment under the Duke of Montrose was sent to the town. It was led by Captain Raines who made his headquarters at the Roe Cross Inn. Gangs of armed men destroyed power looms and fired mills. The disturbances in Stalybridge culminated with a night of violent rioting on 20 April 1812.

The social unrest did not curb the growth of Stalybridge. By 1814, there were twelve factories and, by 1818, the number had increased to sixteen. The Industrial Revolution led to a rapid increase in the town's population in the early part of the 19th century. The population of the town by 1823 was 5,500. In the following two years, partly because of an influx of Irish families seeking better wages, the population rose to 9,000. Stalybridge was among the first wave of towns to establish a Mechanics' Institute with a view to educating the growing number of workers. Only a year after the establishment of Manchester Mechanics' Institute, Stalybridge founded an Institute of its own. Its doors opened on 7 September 1825 on Shepley Street with a reading room on Queen Street.

On 9 May 1828, the Stalybridge Police and Market Act received Royal Assent, establishing Stalybridge as an independent town with a board of 21 Commissioners. Every male over the age of 21 who was the occupier of a rateable property under the act was entitled to vote at the election of the Commissioners. On 30 December 1831, Stalybridge Town Hall was officially opened. In 1833, the Commissioners set up the Stalybridge Police Force, the first of its kind in the country. By this year, the population of the town had reached 14,216 with 2.357 inhabited houses.

In 1834, a second bridge was built over the Tame. It was downstream of Staley Bridge and constructed of iron.

The second Chartist petition was presented to Parliament in April 1842. Stalybridge contributed 10,000 signatures. After the rejection of the petition the first general strike began in the coal mines of Staffordshire. The second phase of the strike originated in Stalybridge. A movement of resistance to the imposition of wage cuts in the mills, also known as the Plug Riots, it spread to involve nearly half a million workers throughout Britain and represented the biggest single exercise of working class strength in 19th century Britain. On 13 August 1842, there was a strike at Bayley's Cotton Mill in Stalybridge and roving cohorts of operatives carried the stoppage first to the whole area of Stalybridge and Ashton, then to Manchester, and subsequently to towns adjacent to Manchester, using as much force as was necessary to bring mills to a standstill. The movement remained, to outward appearances, largely non-political. Although the People's Charter was praised at public meetings, the resolutions that were passed at these were in almost all cases merely for a restoration of the wages of 1820, a ten-hour working day, or reduced rents.

In writing The Condition of The Working Class in England (1844), Friedrich Engels used Stalybridge as an example:

"... multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of [the] confused way of building ... Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined."

John Summers first established an iron forge in Stalybridge in the 1840s. Later, he and his sons developed this into a major business and employed over 1,000 local men in their factory, the largest in the town.

The Ashton, Stalybridge and Liverpool Junction Railway Company was formed on 19 July 1844 and the railway was connected to Stalybridge on 5 October 1846. On 9 July 1847, the company was acquired by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. On 1 August 1849, the Manchester, Stockport and Leeds Railway connected Stalybridge to Huddersfield and later to Stockport. This line later became part of the London and North Western Railway.

The cotton famine
On the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, the Stalybridge cotton mills rapidly ran short of cotton. Thousands of operatives were laid off. In October 1862, a meeting was held in Stalybridge Town Hall that passed a resolution blaming the Confederate States of America and their actions in the American Civil War, rather than U.S. blockades of seaports, for the cotton famine in Lancashire. By the winter of 1862–63, there were 7,000 unemployed operatives in the town. Only five of the town's 39 factories and 24 machine shops were employing people full-time. Contributions were sent from all over the world for the relief of the cotton operatives in Lancashire; and at one point three-quarters of Stalybridge workers were dependent on relief schemes. By 1863, there were 750 empty houses in the town. A thousand skilled men and women left the town, in what became known as "The Panic".

In 1863, the relief committee decided to substitute a system of relief by ticket instead of money. The tickets were to be presented at local grocery shops. An organised resistance was organised culminating on Friday 20 March 1863.

In 1867, Stalybridge was disturbed by the arrival of William Murphy. Records of this man indicate that his sole interest was to sow the seeds of dissent between Roman Catholics, who by this time had grown to significant proportions, and Protestants. He succeeded in this goal only too well for a full year. During 1868, there were a number of violent disturbances and rioting created by this man who described himself as a "renegade Roman Catholic". In his lectures to the public, "pretending to expose the religious practices of the Roman Catholic Church", he became a master at whipping up a crowd into a frenzy. Newspaper reports of the time told of his common practice of waving a revolver in the air in "a most threatening manner". On one occasion, he incited a riot of such proportions that Fr. Daley, the parish priest of St. Peter's, took to the roof of the church to defend it. A man was shot. The parish priest was tried but eventually acquitted at the Quarter Sessions. Following this incident, the community began to settle down and Murphy chose to extend his political activities elsewhere.

In 1867, the Victoria Bridge on Trinity Street was built. Victoria Market Hall was constructed in 1868 and the public baths were opened in May 1870. The baths were presented as a gift to the town by philanthropists and benefactors Robert Platt (1802–1882), born in Stalybridge, and his wife Margaret Platt (1819–1888), born in Salford.

Stalybridge Borough Band was formed in March 1871, holding its first rehearsals and meetings at the Moulder's Arms, Grasscroft Street, Castle Hall. The band was known as the 4th Cheshire Rifleman Volunteers (Borough Band) until 1896. The founder and first conductor was Alexander Owen, who conducted the band until at least 1907.

20th century
The character of Stalybridge altered over the 20th century. At the turn of the century, the cotton industry was still strong, and the population of the town reached its peak in 1901, at 27,623, but as trade dwindled the population began to decline, and despite the intensified employment of the war years, the main industry of Stalybridge continued to fail. There were floods in Millbrook in May 1906.

Mrs Ada Summers was elected first woman mayor of Stalybridge in November 1919. At that time, mayors of boroughs were justices, as well as chairmen of borough benches, by right of office. However, it was not until the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 came into force on 23 December 1919 that women could become magistrates. Sitting ex-officio Ada Summers became the first woman magistrate in the country and was sworn in on 31 December. Ada Summers was, probably, the first woman to officially adjudicate in court. Ada Summers photo appeared in the weekly journal Great Thoughts, 5 June 1920, alongside an interview on "The First Woman JP" on her work. Ada Summers was the widow of a local ironmaster. She was an active suffragist and Liberal and used her wealth and position to support a number of schemes designed to improve conditions in the town. These included a maternity and child welfare clinic, clinics for the sick and poor and an unofficial employment centre. She later became an alderman and was appointed MBE. On 31 May 1939 she was awarded the Honorary Freedom of the Borough.

In 1929, with no room for expansion at Stalybridge, the Summers sheet rolling and galvanising plants were transferred to Shotton in North Wales, having devastating effects on local employment; the new plant later became a component in the British Steel Corporation. By 1932, seven of the town's largest mills had closed and unemployment reached 7,000. In 1934, the borough council set up an Industrial Development Committee for the purpose of encouraging new industries to settle in the town. The committee purchased Cheetham's Mill and rented it out to small firms engaged in a wide variety of enterprises. By 1939, unemployment in the town had almost disappeared.

1939–2000
Stalybridge experienced intensive black-out periods and frequent air-raid warning during the Second World War. Bombs dropped by enemy aircraft mainly landed in open country and there were no civilian casualties. On 19 July 1946, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited Stalybridge. The town's war memorial was extended after the war, to bear the names of an extra 124 men from the town; it was unveiled on 23 April 1950.

In the post-war period council housing was provided by the local authority as separate council estates. The Buckton Vale estate was built between January 1950 and March 1953, and the Stamford Park estate between January 1953 and January 1955; the Copley estate commenced building in August 1954 and the Ridgehill estate in January 1956.

In 1955, after the adoption of the first post-war slum clearance plan, new housing estates were built to replace the slums and, gradually, redundant textile mills were occupied by firms in the various light industries. New applications of engineering principles, the manufacture of rubber goods, plastics, chemicals and packaging materials were all introduced, as well as the addition of synthetic fibres to the textile trade, reducing unemployment. The plastics industry origin and growth are described by Craig and Bowes in "Cotton Mills to Chemical Plants" (2013).

The early 1970s saw the development of private semi-detached and detached housing estates, particularly in the Mottram Rise, Hough Hill, Hollins and Carrbrook areas; the redevelopment of Castle Hall was also completed. The construction of the Buckton Vale overspill estate also took place in the early 1970s.

The early 1980s saw the closure of the public baths after the completion of Copley Recreation Centre. One of the symbols of the late-19th century civic improvement, the baths were subsequently demolished.

In 1991, for the first time since 1901, there was an increase in the population of Stalybridge to 22,295. The 1990s saw the proliferation of Mock Tudor style estates at Moorgate and along Huddersfield Road, close to Staley Hall; this continued into the 21st century with the completion of the Crowswood estate in Millbrook.

21st century
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal, which had been culverted in the early 1970s, was reinstated to the town centre between 1999 and May 2001 as part of a two-year multimillion-pound refurbishment. The canal now runs under the legs of an electricity pylon. The market hall closed on New Year's Eve 1999 and became the Civic Hall in 2001. Four years later, the area designated for retail space became exhibition space. There were plans to reopen the market and let the retail hall out to private contractors, though this came to naught. The town's cinema, the Palace, closed on 31 August 2003, with the last film being American Pie 3: The Wedding. The cinema has since been converted to become Rififi Nightclub and Amber Lounge Bar & Restaurant, which itself was closed down late in 2012 after two violent incidents on the same night.

In 2004, the Metropolitan Borough Council announced that they had granted permission for a developer to build 16 homes next to Staley Hall. A condition of the planning consent was that the hall be restored. As of 2008, the hall is still deteriorating. It is now listed as being in "very bad" condition on the English Heritage buildings at risk register. As of 2015 Staley Hall has been renovated and redeveloped into apartments.

Stalybridge suffered from Storm Angus on 21 November 2016 when 3 in of rain fell on Tameside in five hours. Mottram Road and Huddersfield Road, Millbrook were flooded by water from a stream leading from the Walkerwood Reservoir.

In late June 2018, many properties in Stalybridge were threatened by a large wildfire advancing from Saddleworth Moor. 50 properties in the Carrbrook area of Stalybridge were evacuated on 26 June as the wildfire advanced towards them.

In December 2023, during Storm Gerrit, a tornado caused damage in the Millbrook and Carrbrook areas of Stalybridge.

Civic history
The Municipal Borough of Stalybridge received its charter of incorporation on 5 March 1857, having been formed from part of Ashton-under-Lyne parish in Lancashire and parts of Dukinfield and Stayley parishes in Cheshire. The Royal Charter declared that the council should consist of a Mayor, 6 Aldermen and 18 Councillors. The Borough was divided into three wards: Lancashire; Staley and Dukinfield. A list of Burgesses was published on 21 April 1857 and the first election of councillors was held on 1 May 1857. The contesting parties were the "whites" and the "yellows". The council met for the first time on 9 May and elected the first six Aldermen, from among those councillors the first Mayor, William Bayley, was elected.

The Arms of Stalybridge were granted by the College of Arms after the town received its charter of incorporation. The arms incorporated features from the coat of arms of the Stayley, Assheton, Dukinfield and Astley families who had all been land owners in the town. The motto, absque labore nihil, means "nothing without labour".

Under the terms of the Public Health Acts 1873 and 1875 Stalybridge corporation, like other municipal boroughs governed under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, was designated as the authority governing the urban sanitary district.

The borough, both on the Lancashire and Cheshire sides of the river, was placed wholly within the administrative county of Cheshire in 1889, under the Local Government Act 1888, and Cheshire was adopted as the postal county for the entire town. The town is now part of the SK postcode area.

On 1 April 1936 Stalybridge was enlarged by gaining part of Matley civil parish, which had previously been part of Tintwistle rural district.

Stalybridge was twinned, in 1955, with Armentières, France. In 1974 the area and assets of the Municipal Borough were combined with those of others districts, to form the Metropolitan Borough of Tameside. Stalybridge is currently represented by the occupants of nine of the 57 seats on the local Metropolitan Borough Council. These seats are spread over three wards: Stalybridge North, Stalybridge South and Dukinfield Stalybridge. Stalybridge currently has four Labour councillors and five Conservative councillors. Since 1998 the nine Stalybridge councillors have held meetings on a bimonthly basis, as the Stalybridge District Assembly.

Parliamentary representation
As a county palatine Cheshire was unrepresented in Parliament until the Chester and Cheshire (Constituencies) Act 1542. From 1545 Cheshire was represented by two Knights of the Shire. On the passage of the Great Reform Act of 1832, the area of Stalybridge south of the Tame was included in the North Cheshire constituency.

Between the passing of the Second Reform Act in 1867, and the general election of 1918, the town was represented in its own right through the Stalybridge Borough constituency. Since the 1918 general election the town has been represented in Parliament by the member for the Stalybridge and Hyde county constituency. The current Member of Parliament is Jonathan Reynolds, a former Tameside Councillor.

Geography
At 53.48333°N, -2.04°W (53.483, −2.040) Stalybridge lies in the foothills of the Pennines, straddling the River Tame. The river forms part of the ancient boundary between Lancashire and Cheshire. On the boundary of the Peak District national park. The highest point in the town is the summit of Wild Bank at 1309 ft. Harridge Pike is the second highest peak at 1296 ft. Buckton Hill, the site of the mediaeval Buckton Castle, is another prominent landmark. The town centre itself is situated along the banks of the river between Ridge Hill to the north and Hough Hill 801 ft to the south. Stalybridge Weather Station is staffed by volunteers and has been providing statistics since 1999. The local bedrock is millstone grit, covered by a thin layer of soil over clay, with surface rock outcrops.

Over the course of the 20th century the population of the town declined, after the demolition of the mid-19th century high-density housing. At the 2001 census Stalybridge had a population of 22,568. The town includes the localities of Heyheads, Buckton Vale, Carrbrook, Millbrook, Brushes Estate, Copley, Mottram Rise, Woodlands, Matley, Hough Hill, Castle Hall, Hollins Street, Hydes, Rassbottom, Waterloo, Cocker Hill, the Hague, Springs, Ridge Hill and Heyrod.

Demography
According to the Office for National Statistics, at the time of the United Kingdom Census 2001, Stalybridge had a population of 22,568. The 2001 population density was 4,451 pd/sqkm, with a 100 to 95.0 female-to-male ratio. Of those over 16 years old, 29.2% were single (never married) and 41.6% married. Stalybridge's 9,331 households included 29.1% one-person, 38.3% married couples living together, 9.7% were co-habiting couples, and 12.0% single parents with their children. Of those aged 16–74, 31.7% had no academic qualifications, below the average for Tameside (35.2%) but slightly higher than England (28.9%).

Environment
Much of the upland areas of the town are grouse moors. Boar Flat is part of the Dark Peak Site of Special Scientific Interest, as classified by Natural England. The slopes below the moors, particularly beneath Harridge Pike, are used for sheep grazing by the hill farms. The Stalybridge Country Park centres on two areas. Firstly, the Brushes Valley, with its four reservoirs running up into the Pennine Moors, and secondly Carrbrook, lying in the shadow of Buckton Castle. Linking the two areas, although outside the country park boundaries, is a good rights of way network, and areas of designated access land which take visitors into the Tame Valley, Longdendale and the Peak District. The country park affords views of the Cheshire Plain, Jodrell Bank and on very clear days the mountains of Snowdonia. Buckton Castle and Stalybridge cairn, a round cairn, west of Hollingworthhall Moor are both scheduled monuments.

The town's two parks are the main open spaces in the town centre. Cheetham Park was opened in June 1932 to a crowd of 15,000 people. The park was left to the town under the will of John Frederick Cheetham along with his house, Eastwood, and his collection of paintings, which now form part of the Astley Cheetham Art Gallery collection. The park is landscaped informally with large areas of woodland. Adjacent to Cheetham's Park lies the Eastwood Nature Reserve. Eastwood was one of the first reserves to be owned by the RSPB. It is managed by Cheshire Wildlife Trust. The reserve is a cut-over, lowland, raised mire SSSI, surrounded by a woodland fringe. Characteristic bog plants include sphagnum mosses, cotton grass and cross-leaved heath. Nine species of dragonfly and damselfly have been recorded on the reserve, along with the green hairstreak butterfly. The steep-sided broad-leaved woodland is bisected by Acres Brook and contains several old mill ponds. The geology is shale and sandstone, with a rich variety of plants and animals typical of woodland habitat on an acid soil. Access is from the A6018 Mottram Road. Car parking is available in Stalybridge Celtic FC's car park. The reserve occupies 4.7 ha.

Stamford Park is registered by English Heritage as being of special interest. In 1865, local mill owner Abel Harrison died and his home, Highfield House, and its extensive grounds, on the border with Ashton were bought by the two towns. Neighbouring land was donated by George Harry Grey, 7th Earl of Stamford and 3rd Earl of Warrington. The whole area was landscaped to become Stamford Park and opened by the Earl on 12 July 1873. The former mill reservoir, known as Chadwick Dams, was incorporated into the park in 1891. The reservoir was divided in two by an embankment, with the southern section becoming the present boating lake. This area includes waterfalls cascading over rock faces and gargoyles built into the bridges and walls. The park has tennis courts, bowling greens, a children's playground, The park is the venue for the annual Tulip Sunday Festival.

Music
Stalybridge has an established musical tradition. Stalybridge Old Band was formed in 1809, perhaps the first civilian brass band in the world. The band currently contests in the second section. Carrbrook Brass currently contests in the fourth section and represent the town annually at the Armentières festival. An annual brass band contest has been held in the town on Whit Friday, since at least 1870. Other contests have been held on the same day in the surrounding villages of Millbrook, Carrbrook and Heyrod. There is now an established tradition of holding brass band contests on this day around Stalybridge, Mossley and Saddleworth. Bands travel by coach from all over the United Kingdom, and sometimes from other countries, to contest in as many different locations as possible on the day.

The song It's a Long Way to Tipperary was created in the Newmarket Tavern, by the composer Jack Judge, in 1912, after being challenged to write, compose, and produce a song in just one night;. It was first sung in public by him in the Grand Theatre on Corporation Street on 31 January 1912. On 31 January 1953 a memorial tablet was unveiled by Jack Hylton on the wall of the old Newmarket Tavern, where the song was composed. To coincide with the ceremony a wreath was laid on Jack Judge's grave, by the mayor of Oldbury. Jack Judge is now also commemorated by a statue in Lord Pendry Square outside the Old Victoria Market Hall.

More recently a live folk music tradition has developed in the town. The Buffet Bar Folk Club meets every Saturday at 9 pm and the Free and Easy folk club meet at 9 pm on alternate Thursdays at the White House public house in the town centre. Some members of the Fivepenny Piece who sang traditional North Country music in the 1970s were from Stalybridge. and the band performed songs such as "Stalybridge Station" and "Stalybridge Market". They also took "In Bowton's Yard", the work of local poet Samuel Laycock, and put it to music.

Art
Built as a gift to the town of Stalybridge by John Frederick Cheetham and his wife Beatrice Astley, the Astley Cheetham Art Gallery originally opened to the public as a lecture theatre on 14 January 1901. The space was turned into a gallery to house the Astley Cheetham Collection, bequeathed in 1932. This collection has grown with gifts and donations throughout the 20th century and is one of the most interesting small regional collections of 15th century Italian paintings. The collection of work by Italian old masters includes 'Portrait of a Young Man' by Alessandro Allori. Also, British art of the 19th and 20th centuries is represented by artists such as John Linnell, Richard Parkes Bonington, George Price Boyce, Burne-Jones, Mark Gertler and Duncan Grant. Aske Hall by J. M. W. Turner is also part of the gallery's collection. Alongside exhibitions of the collection, the gallery also hosts a programme of temporary exhibitions by regional artists.

During the earlier part of the 20th century, Stalybridge was artistically captured by the painter L. S. Lowry. Some of his paintings were of the people of Stalybridge. Lowry continued painting pictures until his death in 1976. His house is marked with a blue plaque on Stalybridge Road, Mottram in Longdendale. There is also a statue of him, holding his sketch pad, on a bench near the Stalybridge Road bus stop. Sheila Vaughan is a Stalybridge artist working in oils and acrylic. Her work and that of other Stalybridge artists such as Keith Taylor are displayed at the Peoples Gallery on Melbourne Street.

Literature
As well as being described by Engels, Stalybridge was featured in Disraeli's Coningsby. The children's author Beatrix Potter visited Gorse Hall many times as a child as it was the home of her maternal grandmother. Samuel Laycock (1826–93) was a librarian at the Mechanics' Institute for two years. His poetry presents a vivid impression of the mid-19th century, working-class life, and he drew on his personal experience in the cotton industry. His best-loved poems are "Bowton's Yard" and "Bonny Brid" – both written in Stalybridge. Tim Willocks, author of Bad City Blues, Green River Rising and Bloodstained Kings is from Stalybridge. Dolores Gordon-Smith, author of the Jack Haldean murder mystery series (published by Constable & Robinson and currently by Severn House) and Frankies' Letter (on Kindle) is from Stalybridge and currently resides there. M. John Harrison describes Stalybridge in his short story "The Ice Monkey" as a place "where nothing is clear-cut and there is neither town nor country, just a grim industrial muddle of the two".

Whit Friday
Whit Friday is the name given to the first Friday after Whitsun in areas of northeast Cheshire, southeast Lancashire and the western fringes of Yorkshire. The day has a cultural significance in Stalybridge as the date on which the annual Whit Walks were traditionally held. It is also the day on which the traditional annual Whit Friday brass band contests are held.

Wakes Week
The wakes were originally religious festivals that commemorated church dedications. Particularly important was the Rushcart festival associated with Rogationtide. During the Industrial Revolution the tradition of the wakes was adapted into a regular summer break in the mill towns of Lancashire, where each locality would nominate a wakes week during which the cotton mills would all close at the same time. Stalybridge Wakes occurs in the third week of July. Wakes Week became the focus for fairs, and eventually for holidays where the mill workers would go to the seaside, eventually on the newly developing railways.

Food and drink
Stalybridge has the public house with the longest name in Britain – The Old Thirteenth Cheshire Astley Volunteer Rifleman Corps Inn, which closed in June 2016 but reopened in April 2019 – and also the one with the shortest, Q. The railway station is one of the last in Britain to retain its original buffet, the 1998 refurbishment of which won awards from CAMRA and English Heritage.

The restoration of the canal between 1999 and 2001 attracted new commercial ventures such as riverside cafés and boat trips. The reopening of the canal and the fact that the Tame runs through the town centre resulted in the nickname "Little Venice". Stalybridge has in recent years acquired another nickname, "Staly Vegas"; the nickname became popular and was used ironically after the controversial conversion of premises in the shopping area into nightclubs and bars, the proliferation of takeaways and the refurbishment of some of the more traditional pubs.

The town's traditional foods include Tater Hash (Potato Pie, or Meat and Potato Pie), a variation on Lancashire Hotpot, black peas, today mainly eaten on Whit Friday, and tripe. Stalybridge is the location of the region's last remaining tripe shop.

Media
The Stalybridge Reporter weekly newspaper was established in 1855. With The North Cheshire Herald it now serves the wider district under the name The Tamesider Reporter. Its office, and that of The Glossop Chronicle is at Park House, Acres Lane. The weekly free newspaper The Tameside Advertiser was established in 1979 and is now owned by Trinity Mirror and distributed throughout Stalybridge.

Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North West and ITV Granada. Television signals are received from the Winter Hill TV transmitter and one of the two local relay transmitters (Saddleworth and Brock Bottom ).

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Heart North West, Smooth North West, XS Manchester, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, and Tameside Radio, a community based station.

Other media
The town has been used for location shoots for various film and television series. The most notable of these was the John Schlesinger film Yanks which featured Richard Gere and was released in 1979. The opening sequence of the film features Stalybridge War Memorial on Trinity Street and the US army camp scenes were filmed at Stamford Golf Club in spring 1978. In 1986 the BBC children's TV series Jossy's Giants was filmed in the town. In 2009 the BBC3 Comedy Show We Are Klang was filmed at the Victoria Market Hall, and around the town centre. Scenes from Coronation Street, Making Out, Common As Muck and The League of Gentlemen have also been shot there.

Amenities
The NatWest have a branch in Stalybridge, the branch is located on Melbourne Street. Stalybridge Post Office is located on Trinity Street. The sub-post offices are Ridge Hill and Carrbrook. The police station is located on Waterloo Road but is open only during working hours on weekdays. The fire station is located on Rassbottom Street. Stamford Park offers green space and facilities.

Road
The nearest point of access to the motorway network is approximately 1 mi from the southern boundary of the town at junction four of the M67. The M67 is a feeder to the M60 Manchester orbital motorway and the city of Sheffield. The A635 A road passes through the town and the A6018 commences at Stalybridge. The B6175 and B6176 Huddersfield Road also pass through the town.

Railway
Stalybridge railway station is on the former London & North Western Railway route from Liverpool to Leeds. TransPennine Express services between Liverpool, Leeds and destinations in north-east England run via Manchester Piccadilly or Manchester Victoria, then rejoin the LNWR route line at Stalybridge.

The Stockport to Stalybridge Line only now carries two parliamentary services, one in each direction on Saturday mornings, to avoid closing the intermediate stations Reddish South and Denton.

Buses
Stalybridge bus station is run by Transport for Greater Manchester. The majority of services that serve the bus station are run by First Greater Manchester and Stagecoach Manchester, whilst other operators include Nexus Move and Stotts. There are frequent buses running to Ashton-under-Lyne. Buses also run to Glossop, Hyde, Manchester, Oldham and Saddleworth.

Tram
A tram network operated by the SHMD Joint Board ran lines through Stalybridge from 1904 to 1945, until their replacement by buses. The second-generation tramway Manchester Metrolink currently terminates at nearby Ashton-under-Lyne for connections to the city centre.

Canal

Huddersfield Narrow Canal passing through Stalybridge is part of the South Pennine Ring and runs from the junction with the Huddersfield Broad Canal near Aspley Basin at Huddersfield to the junction with the Ashton Canal at Whitefields Basin in Ashton-under-Lyne. The canal was completed in 1811, but was closed to navigation in 1951. It was reopened in 2001 and is now managed by the Canal and River Trust.

Sport
From the end of the 19th century until 1909 the main football team in the town was Stalybridge Rovers. The club reached the 1st round of the FA Cup in the 1900/1901 season and its players included Arthur Wharton and Herbert Chapman. Today the town's team is Stalybridge Celtic, founded 1909. They are one of four FIFA-recognised teams to be called Celtic. Usually based in non-league football, they are presently members of the National League North, in the sixth tier of English football.

There are two main cricket clubs in Stalybridge. Stayley C.C. play in Millbrook and are members of the Greater Manchester Cricket League. Stalybridge St Paul's C.C. play on Cheetham Hill Road, Dukinfield on the ground formerly used by the now defunct Stalybridge Cricket Club. They are members of the Cheshire League Pyramid, and for the 2008 season are in the first division of the Cheshire Alliance.

Stamford Golf Club on Huddersfield Road has an 18-hole course. The club was incorporated on Saturday 24 August 1901 and was named after the local landowner the Earl of Stamford. It is a member of the Cheshire Union of Golf Clubs.

Priory Tennis Club is situated next to Cheetham's Park on Mottram Road. There are four astroturf courts, all with floodlights. The club is fully affiliated to the Cheshire branch of the Lawn Tennis Association.

The local athletics club is East Cheshire Harriers, founded in 1922 by an amalgamation of Dukinfield Harriers and Tintwistle Harriers. Th club's headquarters were once in Stalybridge but their home is now the Richmond Park Stadium, Ashton-under-Lyne.

A snooker league is operated by the Stalybridge and District Snooker, Billiards and Whist League, which has been in existence since 1910. The league starts around October each year and runs until May.

There are two crown green bowling clubs in the town. One in Stamford Park and one at Carrbrook village bowling green where there is also a pétanque terrain.

In 1901 Joey Nuttall, of Stalybridge, lowered the world swimming record for the quarter-mile by 13 seconds, with a time of 5 minutes 38 seconds. In the same year he asserted his right to the title of the champion swimmer of the world beating three competitors in the 600 yd championship race at Doncaster, covering the distance in 6 minutes 30 seconds to win by a length and a half. His share of the spoil was £10, a cup, and two-thirds of the gate money. By 1901 Nuttall had held the 500 yd world championship for over ten years. Stalybridge has a 25-metre 6-lane pool at Copley Recreation Centre which is home to the Stalybridge Amateur Swimming and Water Polo Club.

In 2006 Stalybridge-born cyclist Hamish Haynes won the UK National Road Race Championship.

Religion
Until the 18th century the Manor of Staley formed part of the parish of St Michael and All Angels, Mottram. The first church to be built in Stalybridge was Old St George's Church, Cocker Hill which was consecrated by the Bishop of Chester on 25 July 1776. The church collapsed on 15 May 1778. After the Industrial Revolution, the rising population and the settlement of people from various parts of the country meant that Stalybridge became a centre for a wide range of denominations and sects. The history of these churches in the town is complex, with some churches having occupied many different sites. The influence of the churches in the town remained strong well into the 20th century and formed part of the basis of Stalybridge's sense of identity.

The first Methodist chapel was erected in 1802 on the corner of Chapel Street and Rassbottom Street. The Baptist chapel on King Street, was opened by the Particular (Ebenezer) Baptists. This chapel was subsequently occupied by the Congregational Church on 3 October 1830. The Particular (Ebenezer) Baptists moved to a new chapel on Cross Leech Street on 28 October 1828.

Churches
St George's is the parish church on the Lancashire side of the river in the Diocese of Manchester. It is known as New St George's and its foundation stone was laid on 24 June 1840. On the Cheshire side, the parish church of Holy Trinity and Christ Church, Diocese of Chester, is on Trinity Street in the town centre, beside the former market hall. The foundation stone of the parish church of St Paul's, Staley, was laid by Stapleton Stapleton-Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere on 2 February 1838. It is in the Diocese of Chester, as is St James', Millbrook. St Paul's Church is on Huddersfield Road and is an active parish church.
 * Church of England

Stalybridge Congregational Church is to be found in a modern building on Baker Street, just off Acres Lane, behind the Organ public house. Its original building, which opened for worship in 1861 and was demolished around the turn of the 21st century, was between Melbourne Street and Trinity Street in the town centre. The Unitarian Church on Forester Drive was established in 1870 and is part of the East Cheshire Union of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches. Stalybridge Revival Church, on Mount Street, formerly known as Stalybridge Evangelical Church, was established in 2009. The church has since moved to Millbrook but retains use of the building on Mount Street.
 * Congregationalist
 * Unitarian
 * Evangelical/Non-denominational

Education
Before 1910, primary education was provided by the church schools. In 1910 the borough opened its own school on Waterloo Road. In 1927, West Hill School, a central school for boys was opened. The central school for girls opened in 1930. Until 1980 secondary modern education was provided by schools in the town itself; and grammar school education by Hyde Grammar School. For Roman Catholic pupils, grammar school education was provided by Harrytown, Bredbury and Xaverian, Rusholme. Catholic secondary modern education was available from 1963 at St Peter and St Paul, Dukinfield.

In 1977 the Local Education Authority appealed to keep its grammar schools rather than be forced by the government to adopt a comprehensive system. The Lord of Appeal Lord Lane was personally critical of Fred Mulley, the Secretary of State for Education and Science for being "far from frank" about his reason for intervening in Tameside and joined in the judgement which found for Tameside and brought a halt to comprehensivisation. However, following the election of a Labour council in 1980 the local grammar schools were abolished and all the secondary modern and grammar schools in Stalybridge, Hyde and Dukinfield became comprehensives.

Primary schools

 * Stalyhill Junior School
 * Gorse Hall Primary School
 * Arlies Primary School
 * Silver Springs Primary Academy (formerly Ridge Hill)
 * Wild Bank Community School
 * St Peter's RC Primary School and Nursery Voluntary Aided by the Diocese of Shrewsbury
 * St Paul's C of E Primary School Voluntary Aided by the Diocese of Chester
 * St Raphael's RC Primary School Voluntary Aided by the Diocese of Shrewsbury
 * Buckton Vale Primary School
 * Millbrook Primary School
 * Trinity Christian School (Christian independent school)

Secondary schools

 * Copley Academy (formerly Copley High School) 11–16 Comprehensive Co-educational
 * West Hill School 11–16 Comprehensive boys' school
 * All Saints' Catholic College 11–18 Comprehensive Co-educational. Voluntary Aided by the Diocese of Shrewsbury. Located in Dukinfield and serves residents of Stalybridge, Hyde and Dukinfield.
 * Trinity Christian School (Christian independent school)

title: Stalybridge


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Broadbottom

Broadbottom is a village in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England. Historically in Cheshire, it stands on the River Etherow which forms the border with Derbyshire.

Description

Home Farm dates from 1604 and Broadbottom Hall from 1680.

There was a 14th-century water-powered corn mill and an 18th-century woollen mill, called Moss Mill, which converted to producing cotton in the 19th century.

Broadbottom has one remaining textile mill that is still operating called Lymefield Mill. The factory mill is next to the River Etherow and is currently occupied by Tiviot Prints Ltd.

Landmarks
East of the railway station is Broadbottom Viaduct that carries the railway line 120 ft over the River Etherow. The official length of the viaduct is 422 ft.

At Summerbottom, there is a row of 18th-century weavers' cottages; they had a communal top floor where the looms were stored.

Hodge Printworks started out as a woollen mill in 1798. In 1805, it was converted into a dyeworks. The dyed cloth was of such high quality that some pieces are still on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 1986, a team of archaeologists excavated the dye vats.

Best Hill Mill was started in 1784 by John Marsland, but closed in 1884. The mill reopened early in the 20th century to make tape and webbing for use in World War I. It closed again in 1930.

Broad Mills was a collection of mills (factories), including a calico printing mill, run by the Sidebottom family. In the 1840s, it ran 25,000 spindles and 1,500 looms; by 1860, there were 1,200 people working there. The mill was bought by the John Hirst & Sons in 1872. In 1889, it became part of Broadbottom Mills Ltd who also owned Lymefield Mill. In 1906, it passed to the Broad Mills Co. Ltd., who worked it until 1934 when they went into liquidation. A fire in the 1940s led to the mills' demolition in 1949. Lymefield Visitor Centre is close to the mills.

Transport

Broadbottom railway station is on the Glossop Line, 10 mi east of Manchester Piccadilly.

Services, operated by Northern Trains, run generally half-hourly between Manchester Piccadilly, Glossop and Hadfield.

Community
Broadbottom Community Association organises events throughout the year for the local residents; their programme can be found on their website. The BCA has published a book about the history of Broadbottom compiled by local resident Mollie Sayer.

Broadbottom Cricket Club plays in the Derbyshire and Cheshire League.

Notable people
Actress Millie Gibson, known for Coronation Street and Doctor Who, hails from Broadbottom.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Broadbottom


text:
Louise Labé

Louise Charlin Perrin Labé, (c. 1522 – 25 April 1566), also identified as La Belle Cordière (The Beautiful Ropemaker), was a French poet of the Renaissance born in Lyon, the daughter of wealthy ropemaker Pierre Charly and his second wife, Etiennette Roybet.

Biography
Louise Labé was born in Lyon, into a family of ropemakers, surgeons, and butchers. Her father, Pierre Charly, was a successful ropemaker, who started a business on rue de l'Arbre sec, at the base of Saint Sébastien Hill in Lyon. When his first wife died in 1515, he married Etiennette Roybet, and had five children: Barthélemy, Francois, Mathieu, Claudine, and Louise. It is presumed that Louise Labé was born at some point between her father's wedding in 1516 and her mother's death in 1523.

Records show that Labé's father, despite his humble beginnings, eventually achieved some social prestige. For example, in 1534, he was summoned before the Assemblée de Consuls of the city of Lyon to approve and participate in the founding of a relief agency for the poor.

At some point, perhaps in a convent school, Labé received an education in foreign languages (Greek, Latin, Italian, and Spanish) and music, specifically the lute.

As a young woman, she was acclaimed as an extraordinary horsewoman and archer. Her early biographers called her "la belle Amazone" and report that she dressed in male clothing and fought as a knight on horseback in the ranks of the Dauphin (afterwards Henry II) at the siege of Perpignan. She was also said to have participated in tournament jousts performed in Lyon in honor of Henry II's visit.

Between 1543 and 1545 she married Ennemond Perrin, also a Lyon ropemaker, a marriage dictated in her father's will, and which established the succession of the rope manufacturing business he was involved in. The business must have been prosperous, since the couple purchased a townhouse with a large garden in 1551, and, in 1557, a country estate at Parcieux-en-Dombes near Lyon.

Lyon was the cultural centre of France in the first half of the sixteenth century and Labé hosted a literary salon that included many of the renowned Lyonnais poets and humanists, including Maurice Scève, Clement Marot, Claude de Taillemont, Pontus de Tyard, and Pernette du Guillet.

The poet Olivier de Magny, passing through Lyon on his way to Rome, fell in love with Labé, and is the likely subject of her love sonnets. Magny's Odes contained a poem (A Sire Aymon) that mocked and belittled Labé's husband (who had died by 1557).

Perhaps inspired by the posthumous publication of Pernette du Guillet's collection of love poems in 1545, Labé began writing her own poetry. On March 13, 1555, Labé received from Henry II a privilège protecting her exclusive right to publish her works for a period of 5 years. Her Œuvres were printed in 1555, by the renowned Lyonnais printer Jean de Tournes. In addition to her own writings, the volume contained twenty-four poems in her honour, authored by her male contemporaries and entitled Escriz de divers poetes, a la louenge de Louize Labe Lionnoize ("Writings of diverse poets, in praise of Louise Labé of Lyons"). The authors of these praise poems (not all of whom can be reliably identified) include Maurice Scève, Pontus de Tyard, Claude de Taillemont, Clément Marot, Olivier de Magny, Jean-Antoine de Baïf, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Antoine du Moulin, and Antoine Fumee. Her contemporaries compare her to Sappho and hail Labé as the Tenth Muse.

Debate on whether Labé was or was not a courtesan began in the sixteenth century, and has continued up to the present day. In 1557 a popular song on the scandalous behavior of La Cordière was published in Lyon. In 1560 Jean Calvin referred to her cross-dressing and called her a plebeia meretrix or common whore. Scholars deliberate carefully over what status to accord to such statements published in a piece of religious propaganda by a writer whose tone has been described as vicious and hysterical, and similarly question to what extent the historian Paradin, writing in 1573, was aiming at neutral objectivity in writing "She had a face more angelic than human, which was yet nothing in comparison with her spirit which was so chaste, so virtuous, so poetic and of such uncommon knowledge that it would seem to have been created by God so that we may wonder at it as something prodigious."

In 1564, the plague broke out in Lyon, taking the lives of some of Labé's friends. In 1565, suffering herself from bad health, she retired to the home of her companion Thomas Fortin, a banker from Florence, who witnessed her will (a document that is extant). She died there in 1566, and was buried on her country property close to Parcieux-en-Dombes, outside Lyon.

Debates on whether or not she was a courtesan and other aspects of her life have not always been of interest to critics who have focussed increasing attention on her writings, especially her verse.

Works and reception
Her Œuvres include two prose works: a feminist preface, urging women to write, that is dedicated to a young noblewoman of Lyon, Clémence de Bourges; and a dramatic allegory in prose entitled Débat de Folie et d'Amour (translated into English by Robert Greene in 1608), which belongs to a long tradition with examples from antiquity through to the Middle Ages, a tradition that had gained contemporary prominence due to the controversial satire, Erasmus' Praise of Folly. The Débat, the most admired of her works in the sixteenth century, was used as the source for one of the fables of Jean de la Fontaine, and was translated into English by Robert Greene in 1584.

Her poetry consists of three elegies in the style of the Heroides of Ovid, and twenty-four sonnets that draw on the traditions of Neoplatonism and Petrarchism. The great theme of her sonnets are the longings, torments and satisfactions of a passionate love which, however noble, is very much of this world, with no metaphysical concepts evoked and no references to a more perfect world than this one. A critic such as Breghot du Lut, writing for the 1824 edition of her works, found that he must apologize to the reader for her explicitness of some of her works; Sainte-Beuve, in 1845, expressed something that was to become a refrain for readers and critics up to this day: despite her work showing that she was highly learned, this does not prevent her from seeming to speak to contemporary readers in a very direct way.

Her poetry was singled out among that of her contemporaries for special praise by Rilke, with Ferdimand Brunetière, in his 1900 article on the Pléiade and Lyonnese schools, writing that her poetry was the first time in French that passion was expressed with such vehemence and naiveté. Modern critics cite her rejection of the more showy or extravagant metaphors and poetic effects employed by poets such as Scève or Pernette du Guillet as one of the key components of her originality and appeal for the modern reader, with Jerry C. Nash writing in 1980

"Labé's lyrical voice is truly one of the best expressions in literature of artful simplicity, of a consistent and masterly synthesis of substance and form, of passion and poetry".

Readers have, from the middle of the last century, commented on how in her verse she presents women in a way that goes against prevailing attitudes about what a woman's nature was or what made a woman either praiseworthy or blameworthy, a feature which makes her appear more in step with modern ideas than her contemporaries were. The frank expression of female desire had previously been confined to comic genres such as fabliaux.

In 2005, Labé's work was included on the programme of a very prestigious exam in France, sparking a flurry of academic publications. The most remarked upon of these was the 2006 book Louise Labé: une créature de papier (Droz); discussed below.

The sonnets have been her most famous works following the early modern period, and were translated into German by Rainer Maria Rilke and into Dutch by Pieter Cornelis Boutens. They have been translated into English, maintaining the exact rhyme patterns of the originals, by poet Annie Finch (published in the same volume with a translation of Labé's prose by Deborah Lesko Baker, University of Chicago Press, 2006), and by Richard Siebuth in a volume published by NYRB (2014).

Marc Fumaroli and Mireille Huchon
In her 2006 book the Sorbonne professor and specialist of Rabelais Mireille Huchon controversially argued that, despite over four centuries of scholarship and biographical evidence to the contrary, Louise Labé was not the author of the works signed with her name but rather that these works were by the Lyonnais poets Maurice Scève, Olivier de Magny, Claude de Taillemont, Jacques Peletier du Mans, Guillaume des Autels, and others, and by the publisher Jean de Tournes. The conservative critic Marc Fumaroli called Huchon's argument "irrefutable" in the literature supplement of Le Monde. Numerous critics and scholars examined Huchon's essay and frequently found her reasoning absurd, judging that her interpretation of the biographical evidence seemed to show inexplicable bias and reliance on unfounded assumptions. The lack of any evidence in support of her thesis was a further reason for the ease with which many dismissed her ideas as mistaken and considered Huchon's work to have made no valuable contribution to scholarship. The list of eminent scholars opposing Huchon include Emmanuel Buron, Henri Hours, Bernard Plessy, Madeleine Lazard, Daniel Martin, Eliane Viennot, and many others. Despite strong objections from most Labé scholars, however, Huchon's audacious thesis has not entirely disappeared from view. The French webpage entitled "Louise Labé attaquée!" ("Louise Labe attacked!") at is collecting published responses to Huchon's book and making them available online. Scholars who disagree with part or all of Huchon's theory include Emmanuel Buron, "Claude de Taillemont et les Escriz de divers Poëtes à la louenge de Louïze Labé Lionnoize. Discussion critique de Louise Labé, une créature de papier, de Mireille Huchon," L'Information littéraire 2, 2006, p. 38-46 ; Henri Hours and Bernard Plessy, "Sur Louise Labé, rien de nouveau," Le Bulletin des Lettres, October 2006, p. 3-5 ; Madeleine Lazard, "Droit de réponse envoyé au Monde des livres, non publié" ; Daniel Martin, "Louise Labé est-elle 'une creature de papier'?" Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance 63, December 2006, p. 7-37 ; and Eliane Viennot, "Notice sur Louise Labé," Théâtre de femmes de l'Ancien Régime, December 2006, p. 377-379.

Works in English

 * Complete poetry and prose : a bilingual edition, Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0-226-46715-3,
 * Louise Labé's complete works, Troy, N.Y.: Whitston Pub. Co., 1986. ISBN 978-0-87875-319-2,
 * Debate of folly and love, New York: P. Lang, 2000. ISBN 978-0-8204-3752-1,
 * Love sonnets, New York: New Directions, 1947.
 * Love sonnets & elegies, New York: New York Review Books, 2014. ISBN 978-1-59017-731-0,

title: Louise Labé


text:
Iconclass

Iconclass is a specialized library classification designed for art and iconography. It was originally conceived by Henri van de Waal, and was further developed by a group of scholars after his death.

Development based on Dewey Decimal system
The Iconclass system is one of the largest classification system for cultural content and possibly the largest for visual arts content. Initially designed for historical imagery, it is now also used to create subject access to texts and to classify a wide range of images, including modern photography. At the moment it contains over 28,000 unique concepts (classification types) and has an entry vocabulary of 14,000 keywords. Like the Dewey Decimal Classification and Universal Decimal Classification systems, it has 10 main "divisions" or points of entry, and these are:
 * 0 Abstract, Non-representational Art
 * 1 Religion and Magic
 * 2 Nature
 * 3 Human being, Man in general
 * 4 Society, Civilization, Culture
 * 5 Abstract Ideas and Concepts
 * 6 History
 * 7 Bible
 * 8 Literature
 * 9 Classical Mythology and Ancient History

Each division has 9 or 10 subdivisions, and so on. It can be consulted with the help of the freely available Iconclass 2100 browser. Iconclass was developed in the Netherlands as a standard classification for recording collections, with the idea of assembling huge databases that will allow the retrieval of images featuring particular details, subjects or other common factors. It was developed in the 1970s and was loosely based on the Dewey Decimal System because it was meant to be used in art library card catalogs.

Usage in data records
The iconclass code represents a concept and objects can be assigned a code indicating that the object depicts that concept. For example, the iconclass code "71H7131" is for the subject of "Bathsheba (alone) with David's letter". The code is built from "7" for bible, "71" for "Old Testament", "71H" the "story of David", "71H7" for "David and Bathsheba", "71H71" for "David observing Bathsheba bathing", "71H713" for "Bathsheba receiving a letter from David" and "71H7131" for "Bathsheba alone with David's letter"

Depicting the iconclass concept
To see all images in the RKDimages database that depict "Bathsheba receiving a letter from David", the associated iconclass code 71H713 can be used as a special search term. On selecting one of these paintings and viewing its record in RKDimages, the code 71H713 can be seen under two sections; under the section for "subject" and under the section for "suggested searches".

The iconclass concept as a subject
Everyone with an account can add to the iconclass hierarchy. Some of these hierarchies are quite detailed, such as for stories of the Old Testament that were popular in the arts during the 17th-century. The problems of using iconclass codes for concepts is that they are a bit too precise. In the previous search example for 71H713 in the RKDimages database, the painting record for Rembrandt's Bathsheba in the Louvre was excluded from the search, because the iconclass code assigned to that painting in the RKDimages database is not 71H713, but 71H7131, and searching for that code will result in other images to be returned.

Usage by organizations
A number of collections of different types have been classified using Iconclass, notably many types of old master print, the collections of the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and the German Marburger Index. These can be matched to each other through the iconclass "hierarchy of somethings" to the current classification structure of the holder's collection. Completed iconclass projects are available, often online, but also published on DVD. Ideally however, iconclass coding is never finished, as it is also possible to keep adding codes to the system to identify more concepts. The system can also be used outside pure art history, though it is most often used in museum websites.

The content of Iconclass is currently maintained by the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (Netherlands Institute for Art History). The online Iconclass browser is developed by the Henri van de Waal Foundation.

title: Iconclass


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Bonaventure des Périers

Bonaventure des Périers (c. 1500 – 1544) was a French author.

Biography
He was born of a noble family at Arnay-le-duc in Burgundy at the end of the fifteenth century.

The circumstances of his education are sketchy, but it is known that he was attached to various noble houses in the capacity of tutor. In 1533 or 1534 Des Périers visited Lyon, then the most enlightened town of France, and a refuge for many liberal scholars who might elsewhere have had to suffer for their opinions. He gave some assistance to Robert Olivetan and Lefèvre d'Etaples in the preparation of the vernacular version of the Old Testament, and to Etienne Dolet in the Commentarii linguae latinae.

In 1536 he put himself under the protection of Marguerite de Navarre, queen of Navarre, who made him her valet de chambre. He acted as the queen's secretary, and transcribed the Heptaméron for her. It is probable that his duties extended beyond those of a mere copyist, and some writers have gone so far as to say that the Heptaméron was his work.

The free discussions permitted at Marguerite's court encouraged a licence of thought as displeasing to the Calvinists as to the Catholics. This free inquiry became scepticism in Bonaventure's Cymbalum Mundi ... (1537) and the queen of Navarre thought it prudent to disavow the author, though she continued to help him privately until 1541. The book consisted of four dialogues in imitation of Lucian. Its allegorical form did not conceal its real meaning, and it was likely printed by Morin in early 1538. In March of that year, King Francis I asked that the book be examined and the Sorbonne confirmed the suppression of the edition in July 1538.

The dedication provides a key to the author's intention: Thomas du Clevier (or Clenier) a son ami Pierre Tryocan was recognized by 19th century editors to be an anagram for Thomas l'Incrédule a son ami Pierre Croyant (Thomas the Incredulous to Peter the Believer). It is considered by some scholars to be the first atheist book in French literature, though its highly enigmatic nature has led to many other interpretations. The book was reprinted in Lyon in 1538, which made many bitter enemies for the author. Henri Estienne called it detestable, and Étienne Pasquier said it deserved to be thrown into the fire with its author if he were still living.

Des Périers prudently left Paris, and after some time settled at Lyon where he lived in poverty, until he reportedly (though this is dubious) committing suicide in 1544 by falling on his sword. In 1544 his collected works were printed at Lyon. The volume, Recueil des Œuvres de feu Bonaventure des Périers, included his poems, which are of small merit, the Traité des quatre venus cardinales après Sénèque, and a translation of the Lysis of Plato.

In 1558 the collection of stories and fables entitled the Nouvelles récréations et joyeux devis was released in Lyon. It is on this work that the claim put forward for Des Périers as one of the early masters of French prose rests. Some of the tales are attributed to the editors, Nicholas Denisot and Jacques Peletier, but their share is certainly limited to the later ones. The book leaves something to be desired on the score of morality, but the stories never lack point and are models of simple, direct narration in the vigorous and picturesque French of the 16th century.

title: Bonaventure des Périers


text:
Étienne Pasquier

Étienne Pasquier (7 June 1529 – 30 August 30 1615) was a French lawyer and man of letters. By his own account he was born in Paris on 7 June 1529, but according to others he was born in 1528. He was called to the Paris bar in 1549.

In 1558 he became very ill by eating poisonous mushrooms and took two years to recover. This compelled him to occupy himself with literary work and in 1560 he published the first book of his Recherches de la France. In 1565, when he was thirty-seven he became famous after giving a speech in which he pleaded the cause of the University of Paris against the Jesuits and won it. Meanwhile, he pursued the Recherches steadily and published other miscellaneous work from time to time.

His literary and his legal occupations coincided in a curious fashion at the Grands Jours of Poitiers in 1579. These Grands Jours (an institution which fell into desuetude at the end of the 17th century, with bad effects on the social and political welfare of the French provinces) were a kind of irregular assize in which a commission of the parlement of Paris, selected and dispatched at short notice by the king, had full power to hear and determine all causes, especially those in which seignorial rights had been abused. At the Grands Jours of Poitiers of the date mentioned and at those of Troyes in 1583, Pasquier officiated; and each occasion has left a curious literary memorial of the jests with which he and his colleagues relieved their graver duties. The Poitiers work was the celebrated collection of poems on flea (La Puce de Madame Des Roches, published 1583; see Catherine Des Roches).

In 1585 Pasquier was appointed by Henry III advocate-general at the Paris cours des comptes, an important body having political as well as financial and legal functions. Here he distinguished himself particularly by opposing, sometimes successfully, the system of selling hereditary places and offices. The civil wars forced Pasquier to leave Paris and for some years he lived in Tours, working steadily on his great book, but he returned to Paris in Henry IV's train in March 1594. He continued until 1604 with his work on the chambre des comptes; then he retired. He lived more than ten years in retirement, producing much literary work and died after a few hours' illness on 1 September 1615.

In so long and so laborious a life, Pasquier's work was substantial but has never been fully collected or printed. The standard edition is that of Amsterdam (2 vols. fol., 1723). But for ordinary readers the selections of Leon Feugbre, published in Paris (2 vols. 8vo, 1849), with an elaborate introduction, are most accessible. As a poet Pasquier is chiefly interesting as a minor member of the Pléiade movement. As a prose writer he is much more accomplished. The three chief divisions of his prose work are his Recherches, his letters and his professional speeches. The letters are of much biographical interest and historical importance and the Recherches contain in a somewhat miscellaneous fashion invaluable information on a vast variety of subjects, literary, political, antiquarian and others.

Recherches de la France
Pasquier's historical work is seen as an important predecessor to modern historiography, although he is indebted to the methods of other important Italian historians. He makes frequent use of primary sources (or contemporary chroniclers) and cites them as he goes along. Contrary to many other historical works of the time, Pasquier sought to create an accurate reconstruction of the past for the present needs of France, which he held to be in a period of crisis.

He looked to define France in terms of its customs and culture and wrote a distinctly national history. He began his story not with the origins of human civilization but with the origins of France in the Gauls. While he lamented his lack of sources on the subject, he tried to extract what he could from things such as Caesar's writings on Gaul.

Pasquier attempted to contrast France with Rome and believed that the history of France is as great as the history of Rome, criticizing the widespread use of Latin, Roman law, etc. Instead, he had great respect for French literature and institutions without glorifying the history of France and its kings in the way of previous chroniclers.

title: Étienne Pasquier


text:
User talk:Bagpuss

Well done with the Guisborough and Gisborough Priory stuff! Are you local? Nevilley 23:21 Jan 6, 2003 (UTC)

Thanks. I indeed grew up in Guis, though for 5 1/2 years now I've been away at uni, so it's not as fresh in my mind as it could be. Bagpuss 14:21 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

I used to live in Lowcross Ave, just off Hutton Lane! Nevilley 22:29 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

I was down on Thames Ave, though my dad's now on Woodhouse Road, near the footie club. I'd guess you went to Newstead School as well? Bagpuss 02:51 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Heheheh. Well sort of. I am a *touch* older then you I suspect! I went to Newstead for my last 2 terms of primary, after Hutton Lowcross (up in Hutton Village) closed down. That was in - ermmmm - about 1967 or 68! Nevilley 08:41 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

It occurred to me after I'd written that that I'd assumed you were about my age - a bit of a silly thing to do. I suppose I arrived around 18 years after you left, having spent my first two years at Kemplah. I didn't even know Hutton Village used to have a school. Bagpuss 18:32 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC)

Yep it certainly did, it's the thing that is now 3 houses facing the "dig field" up above Mr Wilkinson's farm. Down a lane on the L at the point where you would turn R for blue lake. It's here: where the arrow is pointing and I think there is a photo of it on the web somewhere. Small world eh? Nevilley 19:20 Jan 9, 2003 (UTC) Stop press well here is one photo anyway! Naff page but just a quicky.

I think my sister has a friend who lives down there. By the way, why don't you add anything to the Guisborough article? Bagpuss 17:24 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

The first sentence of knot theory is too technical for me. Vera Cruz

I think this must have been before Tarquin changed it. Bagpuss 14:21 Jan 8, 2003 (UTC)

No problem, Bagpuss. Other than that, the article is excellent. JTD 19:49 Jan 29, 2003 (UTC)

Hey, I hardly did anything to it anyhow. Mind you, I must get round to doing more to the topic. Bagpuss

 * Hey. I just noticed the pub quiz article. I like it. I like it when someone fills in an empty link I created. I'll have to take a closer look at the article itself sometime soon, but i'm going to bed in a minute. Cheers. Mintguy 01:04 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)

 * Well, I have extensive experience of pub quizzes, so it seemed a good idea. There may be some inaccuracies as it all came pretty much off the top of my head. Bagpuss

Mintguy, did any of your research into football history cover the offside rule? Bagpuss

 * Yes a little bit, I've put something on the Offside page. Mintguy

 * Cheers. I'm just too lazy to do work if someone else might already have done it. Bagpuss

Do you want to take a look at the first part of my bit about the History of football, it needs another eye looking over it. It's in my User:Mintguy/Sandbox Mintguy

About FootBall, read Camel case, esp. last section. --User:AstroNomer

 * I'd come across that before, but don't quite see the relevance. Still, I'm hardly bothered by its being there, just seems unnecessary. Bagpuss

I ordered a couple of books (in fact three) on football history from www.abebooks.com to aid my research. I was recommended by someone to get a book called The History of the Football Association that was published in 1950 (not the similarly titled book published in the 1990s, which I'm also getting). All second hand bookshops that had it in the UK, had it at about £100, but a US bookshop had it for $25, so I'm getting it shipped over. The other books I'm getting is called Code Wars. Mintguy

Good call in the sin article. I'm glad that you made that change. RK

 * I didn't change much, but thanks. Bagpuss

Crowd violence at hockey games
Just wanted to straighten this out – you added a comment to Hooliganism about crowd violence being common at Canadian hockey games. On what incidents or studies were you basing that generalization?

The sticking point for me may be the description of it as common. Certainly there has been crowd violence at hockey games, but it seems pretty infrequent to me (although it seems to be more frequent in the States, it still seems rare there). There is certainly nothing to match the mass violence which is common in soccer. Both teams' fans still sit together at hockey games.

Anyway, I'm easily persuaded. If I've been missing something I'll restore the point, or perhaps we can come up with something acceptable to both of us. John FitzGerald 16:30, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

 * Just noticed you Bagpuss hasn't been contributing under this name for a while, but it's still a good question.

 * If you're still interested, that was based on reports in the Canadian papers. My comment went a lot further than was justified, but what I think I was thinking was that if some minor violence at cricket matches deserves to be in, then so should stuff at hockey matches.  Bagpuss 23:45, 26 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article Licensing
Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:
 * Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
 * Multi-Licensing Guide
 * Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the " " template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

 * Option 1
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR
 * Option 2
 * I agree to multi-license all my contributions to any U.S. state, county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace " " with "  ". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

User Categorisation
You were listed on the Wikipedians/Ontario page as living in or being associated with Ontario. As part of the User categorisation project, these lists are being replaced with user categories. If you would like to add yourself to the category that is replacing the page, please visit Category:Wikipedians in Ontario for instructions.--Rmky87 02:53, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Workers of the world, unite!
Way back in March 2003, you had asked if anyone knew the source of the quote "you have nothing to lose but your chains" from the Communist Manifesto. It seems to be a natural adaptation of the second-last sentence, bolded below:

 * The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Just thought I'd clear that up. (By the way, small world: I'm also a grad student at McMaster, in computer science.) --Saforrest 16:53, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

 * Cheers. -- Bagpuss 20:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Central Asia
Hi, I'm trying to start some sort of working group to improve the coverage of Central Asia and related topics in Wikipedia. Leave a message on my userpage if you're interested. Aelfthrytha 04:15, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:52, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

title: User talk:Bagpuss


text:
Transcendence

Transcendence, transcendent, or transcendental may refer to:

Mathematics

 * Transcendental number, a number that is not the root of any polynomial with rational coefficients
 * Algebraic element or transcendental element, an element of a field extension that is not the root of any polynomial with coefficients from the base field
 * Transcendental function, a function which does not satisfy a polynomial equation whose coefficients are themselves polynomials
 * Transcendental number theory, the branch of mathematics dealing with transcendental numbers and algebraic independence

Music

 * Transcendence (Adil Omar album), a 2018 hip hop album
 * Transcendence (Alice Coltrane album), a 1977 jazz album
 * Transcendence (Crimson Glory album), a 1988 heavy metal album
 * Transcendence (Devin Townsend Project album), a 2016 heavy metal album
 * "Transcendence" (Lindsey Stirling instrumental), a 2012 instrumental piece
 * Transcendental (album), a 2006 progressive metal album by To-Mera
 * "Transcendence (Segue)", a 2000 progressive metal instrumental piece by Symphony X from the album V - The New Mythology Suite
 * "Transcendence", a 2008 thrash/melodic death metal track by Sylosis from the album Conclusion of an Age

Literature

 * Transcendence (Rosenthal book), a 2011 book by Norman E. Rosenthal
 * Transcendence (Salvatore novel), a 2002 fantasy novel by R. A. Salvatore
 * Transcendence (Sheffield novel), a 1992 science-fiction novel by Charles Sheffield
 * Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time, a 2019 book by Gaia Vince
 * Transcendence: My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji, a 2015 book by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari
 * Transcendent (novel), a 2005 science-fiction novel by Stephen Baxter

Philosophy

 * Transcendence (philosophy), climbing or going beyond some philosophical concept or limit
 * Transcendentalism, a 19th-century American religious and philosophical movement that advocates that there is an ideal spiritual state that transcends the physical and empirical
 * Transcendent theosophy, a school of Islamic philosophy founded by the 17th-century Persian philosopher Mulla Sadra
 * Transcendental idealism, a doctrine founded by 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant
 * Transcendental realism, a concept put forward by Roy Bhaskar
 * Transcendental arguments, a style of philosophical argumentation
 * Transcendental phenomenology, a field of phenomenological inquiry developed by Edmund Husserl
 * Transcendentals, religious and philosophical properties of being

Religion

 * Transcendence (religion), the aspect of a god wholly independent of the material universe
 * Transcendental Meditation, a meditation technique introduced by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
 * Transcendentals, religious and philosophical properties of being

Other

 * Transcendence (2012 film), a Chinese film
 * Transcendence (2014 film), an American film starring Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman
 * Transcendence (band), an American alternative rock band
 * Transcendence (Jellum), an outdoor sculpture by Keith Jellum, in Portland, Oregon, US
 * Transcendent (TV series), a 2016 American reality television series
 * Transcendence (video game), a 1995 science-fiction game by George Moromisato

title: Transcendence