Rochdale and the Vale of Whitworth

William Robertson (1834 - 1924) came to Rochdale in 1860 as a journalist for the Rochdale Observer and fell in love with the town and surrounding area. He devoted much of his time to creating popular histories of the town and its inhabitants. At the heart of the Industrial Revolution, Rochdale had gone through a huge transformation of growth, wealth and politics. On the whole his histories concentrate on life before the upheaval rather than the grind and poverty of factory life that his readers would be all too familiar with. Rochdale and the Vale of Whitworth is a companion to Old and New Rochdale and takes us from Cronkeyshaw, on the northern edge of Rochdale, on a journey through the Vale towards Bacup via Shawclough, Whitworth, Facit and Shawforth, again concentrating on the humour and characters that existed in the oral history of the area.