Tameside

The Metropolitan Borough of Tameside is a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in North West England. It is named after the River Tame, which flows through the borough and spans the towns of Ashton-under-Lyne, Audenshaw, Denton, Droylsden, Dukinfield, Hyde, Mossley and Stalybridge. Its western border is approximately 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Manchester city centre. It borders Derbyshire to the east, the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham to the north, the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport to the south, and the City of Manchester to the west. Tameside has a population of 214,400.

The history of the area extends back to the Stone Age. There are over 300 listed buildings in Tameside and three Scheduled Ancient Monuments, which includes a castle of national importance. The settlements in Tameside were small townships centred around agriculture until the advent of the Industrial Revolution. The towns of the borough grew and became involved in the cotton industry, which dominated the local economy. The current borough was created in 1974 as part of the provisions of the Local Government Act 1972. Since then the area has been administered by Tameside Borough Council, which has been judged by the Audit Commission to be "performing strongly".

The history of the area stretches back up to 10,000 years; there are 22 Mesolithic sites in Tameside, the oldest dating to around 8,000 BC; 21 of the 22 sites are in the hilly uplands in the north east of the borough. Evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age activity is more limited in the borough, although the Bronze Age Stalybridge Cairn is the most complete prehistoric funerary monument in the borough. The people in the area changed from hunter-gatherers to farmers around 2500 BC–1500 BC due to climate change. Werneth Low is the most likely Iron Age farmstead site in the borough, probably dating to the late 1st millennium BC. Before the Roman conquest of Britain in the 1st century AD, the area was probably part of the territory of the Brigantes, the Celtic tribe controlling most of what is now north west England.