Macclesfield () is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East, Cheshire, England. It is sited on the River Bollin and the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its east; the town lies south of Manchester and east of Chester.
Before the Norman Conquest, Macclesfield was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia and was assessed at £8. The medieval town grew up on the hilltop around what is now St Michael's Church. It was granted a municipal charter in 1261. Macclesfield Grammar School was founded in 1502. The town had a silk-button industry from at least the middle of the 17th century and became a major silk-manufacturing centre from the mid-18th century. The Macclesfield Canal was constructed in 1826–31.
Hovis breadmakers were another Victorian employer; modern industries include pharmaceuticals, such as Astra Zeneca. Multiple mill buildings are still standing and several of the town's museums explore the local silk industry. Other landmarks include Georgian buildings such as the Town Hall and former Sunday School; St Alban's Church, designed by Augustus Pugin; and the Arighi Bianchi furniture shop.
At the 2021 census the population of the parish was 52,496 and the population of the built up area was 54,345. A person from the town is referred to as a Maxonian.
Toponymy The town is recorded in the Domesday Book as Maclesfeld and in 1183 it was referred to as Makeslesfeld.Scholes (2000). page 104. The English Place-Name Society gives its name as being derived from the Old English name, , and field, yielding the meaning "Maccel's open country".
Although "Silk Town" seems to be its preferred nickname, the traditional nickname of Macclesfield is "Treacle Town". This refers to an historical incident when a horse-drawn wagon overturned and spilt its load of treacle onto the street, after which the poor scooped the treacle off the road.
History Before the Norman Conquest, Macclesfield was held by Edwin, Earl of Mercia, who also held much of the east of the county.Bu'Lock, pp. 71–72 Three crosses survive from this period, originally located in Sutton and now in West Park, and J. D. Bu'Lock speculates that there might have been a Pre-Conquest church.Bu'Lock, pp. 80, 84, Plate 18 The area was devastated by the Normans in 1070, and had not recovered by 1086; the Domesday Book records the manor as having fallen in value from £8 to 20 shillings.Husain, pp. 11–12, 34 Hugh d'Avranches, Earl of Chester held the manor himself after the Conquest; there was a mill, meadow for oxen, and woodland 6 leagues by 4 leagues.Husain, pp. 17, 23, 25, 28 A Norman castle was built at Macclesfield.Husain, pp. 99, 101
At the time of the Domesday Book, Macclesfield was in the hundred of Hamestan. By the 13th century, the Hundreds of Cheshire had been reorganised, and the town gave its name to the Macclesfield Hundred, which covered a similar area to the old Hamestan Hundred in the east of the county.
Macclesfield was granted a borough charter in 1261 by Edward, Earl of Chester, eldest son of Henry III; Edward later became king as Edward I. Although the 1261 charter purported to create the borough, there was reputedly an earlier charter, possibly granted by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, in the early 13th century. The 1261 charter gave the right to hold a market, fair and judicial courts.Hewitt, pp. 69–70Hartwell et al.., pp. 449–51 The medieval town stood on the hilltop, centred on All Saints' Church (later renamed St Michael's), which was built in 1278, an extension of a chapel built in approximately 1220. In 1357, a hall was built in the town for the mayor's court and the borough court (portmote). The town lacked industries at this date and was described as poor, remaining a small market town until the end of the 15th century, with a population numbered in the hundreds.Driver, pp. 43–45, 109
The Cheshire archers were a body of elite soldiers noted for their skills with the longbow that fought in many engagements in Britain and France in the Middle Ages. Battles at which there were sizeable numbers of Cheshire archers include Agincourt and Crecy. In 1277 Edward I employed 100 of these archers from the Macclesfield area as his personal bodyguard, his successor Richard II also employed a bodyguard of these yeoman archers who came from the Macclesfield Hundred and the forest districts of Cheshire.
The borough had a weekly market and two annual fairs: the Barnaby fair on St Barnabas day (11 June), the other on the feast of All Souls (2 November).Driver, p. 109Beck, p. 72 In recent years the Barnaby fair has been reinvented as the Barnaby Festival, a cultural festival in mid-June. The weekly market no longer happens but on the last Sunday of each month the Treacle Market is held, a large market selling locally produced food and handmade items such as clothing, handmade goods and pottery.
Macclesfield was the administrative centre of the Hundred of Macclesfield, which occupied most of east Cheshire.Clayton, D. J. (1990). pages 32, 33. The Earl of Chester's manor of Macclesfield was very large, and its boundary extended to Disley. The manor house was on the edge of the deer park, on the west of the town. In the 14th century, it had a king's chamber and a queen's hall, as well as a large stable, and the manor served as a stud farm for Edward the Black Prince.Hewitt, pp. 31, 35 The Earls of Chester established the Forest of Macclesfield, which was much larger than its present-day namesake. It was used for hunting deer and pasturing sheep and cattle. By the end of the 13th century, large areas of the forest had been ploughed because of the pressure of population growth. In 1356, two trees from the forest were given to archer William Jauderell to repair his home.
Macclesfield Castle was a fortified town house built by John de Macclesfield in the later Middle Ages. Construction began in 1398, and that year an application was made for a licence to crenellate, or fortify, the building. Two chantries were founded in the town: one in 1422 by the Legh family, and one in 1504 by Thomas Savage.Driver, p. 136 In 1502, Macclesfield Grammar School was founded by Sir John Percyvale.
No proof exists that Macclesfield was ever a walled town. When the settlement was first established and for some centuries afterwards there would have certainly been some sort of ditch and palisade round the western side of the town which was not naturally defended. This was necessary in order to keep out undesirable people and stray animals. No physical trace of a ditch remains though measurements and the shape of certain streets suggest where such a ditch could have been and most of the medieval building were within this area. It is unlikely that the ditch and palisade were succeeded by a wall for no record has been found of a murage tax, which would certainly have been levied to keep the wall in repair.
The suffix "gate" in the names of several Macclesfield streets has been taken to indicate the former presence of a gate in the sense of a guarded opening in a wall; however, this is very unlikely as the term 'gate' is derived from gata, Scandinavian for road, which became gate in Middle English.A history of Macclesfield. Macclesfield Borough Council, edited by Clarice Stella Davies, University of Manchester Press, 1961. Therefore, Chester Gate, the Jordan Gate and the Church Wall Gate (some sources give the name Well Gate for this gate), are simply referring to the road to/from Chester or the road leading from the church to the well. These names are preserved in the names of three streets in the town, Chestergate, Jordangate and Back Wallgate,Streets and houses of old Macclesfield. John Earles, 1915. Republished MTD Rigg Publications, Leeds, 1990. which have several older and listed buildings.
A charter of 1595 established a town governing body consisting of the mayor, two aldermen and 24 "capital burgesses", and the powers of this body were increased by a charter of 1684.Hodson, p. 100 By the Tudor era, Macclesfield was prospering, with industries including the manufacture of harnesses, gloves and especially buttons, and later ribbons, tapes and fancy ware.Beck, pp. 52–53Hodson, p. 149 Coal was mined from the 16th century.Hodson, p. 142 In 1664, the population was around 2,600, making Macclesfield the third-largest town in the county, after Chester and Nantwich, although the town had expanded little from its medieval extent and had fewer large houses than Nantwich and Stockport.Hodson, pp. 93, 95 By around 1720, the number of households had increased to 925, and this rapid population growth continued throughout the 18th century, reaching 8,743 in 1801.Hodson, p. 109
In the 1580s, Macclesfield was one of the earliest towns in the county to have Puritan preaching "Exercises", and it was also an early centre for the Quakers. By 1718 an estimated 10% of the population was Nonconformist.Hodson, pp. 29, 31, 36–37 Towards the end of that century, the town had a large Methodist congregation, and Christ Church was the only Anglican church in the county to invite John Wesley to preach.Hodson, pp. 41–43
During the Civil War, in 1642 the town was occupied for the King by Sir Thomas Aston, a Royalist. In the Jacobite Rising of 1745, Charles Stuart and his army marched through Macclesfield as they attempted to reach London. The mayor was forced to welcome the prince, and the event is commemorated in one of the town's silk tapestries. Retrieval Date: 15 October 2007. Cumberland House on Jordangate is so named after the Duke of Cumberland who stayed there in 1745 when pursuing the fleeing Prince.
The population was 24,137 by 1841.
Armoury Towers was completed in 1858 and the Bridge Street drill hall was completed in 1871.
Industry
Macclesfield was once the world's biggest producer of finished silk. A domestic button industry had been established in the town by the mid-16th century, although the first mention of silk buttons is not until 1649. In the mid-18th century, when metal buttons became fashionable, the silk-button industry transitioned to silk manufacture in mills. Macclesfield's first silk mill was founded by Charles Roe in 1743 or 1744.Hodson, pp. 109, 149–50 The mills were initially powered by water, and later by steam. There were 71 silk mills operating in 1832, employing 10,000 people, but a crash occurred in 1851 and many mill-workers emigrated to the American silk town of Paterson, New Jersey. The silk industry remained active in the town in the 1980s, but no longer dominated.Tigwell, pp. 15, 17, 68–69 Paradise Mill reopened in 1984 as a working mill museum, demonstrating the art of silk throwing and Jacquard weaving.Paradise Mill website. Retrieval Date: 15 October 2007.Tigwell, p. 140 The four Macclesfield Museums display a range of information and products from that period.
A short-lived copper-smelting operation was established by Roe in 1750, processing ore from mines at Alderley Edge and Ecton (Staffordshire), and later from Anglesey. The business switched to copper processing and the manufacture of brass in 1767, before closing after Roe's death in 1781. The industry is reflected in some of the town's street names.Hodson, pp. 144–45
Between 1826 and 1831 the Macclesfield Canal was constructed, linking Macclesfield to Marple to the north and Kidsgrove to the south. The canal was surveyed for its Act of Parliament by the canal and roads engineer Thomas Telford, and built by William Crosley (junior), the Macclesfield Canal Company's engineer. It was the last narrow canal to be completed and had only limited success because within ten years much of the coal and other potential cargo was increasingly being transported by rail.