Early History

An early type of axe known as a palstave has been discovered on Crompton Moor, providing evidence of Bronze Age human activity.
It is believed that the area was inhabited by Ancient Britons, and that the Brigantes gave the River Beal its name. An ancient track, perhaps of Roman origin, crosses the modern Buckstones Road leading to Castleshaw Roman fort in neighbouring Saddleworth.

In 616 Ethelfrith of Bernicia, an Anglo-Saxon King, crossed the Pennines with an army and passed through Manchester to defeat the Britons in the Battle of Chester.A wave of Anglian colonists followed this military conquest and their settlements are identified by the Old English suffix ton in local place names. Royton, Middleton, Moston, Clayton, Ashton and Crompton are localities northeast of Manchester which may have been founded during that colonisation, suggesting that Crompton as a settlement could date from the 7th century.
Whitfield: during the Middle Ages, this cluster of homesteads was owned by the Knights Hospitaller and was the largest settlement in the area.

During Anglo-Saxon England, it is assumed from toponymic evidence that the township of Crompton formed around a predominantly Anglian community with a few Norse settlers, and within the extensive Hundred of Salfordshire.
Following the Norman conquest of England, Crompton was part of a vast estate given to Roger the Poitevin, the maternal nephew of William the Conqueror. It was unmentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086; the first recorded use of the name Crompton for the township was discovered in legal documents relating to Cockersand Abbey near Lancaster, dating from the early 13th century. The document outlines that Gilbert de Notton, a Norman who had acquired the land from Roger de Montbegon, granted his estate to Cockersand Abbey.

The Knights Hospitaller and Whalley Abbey held small estates in the township. In 1234, about 80 acres of land at Whitfield in Crompton were given to the Hospitallers,a rel igious order that provided care for poor, sick or injured pilgrims to the Holy Land. A medieval cross has been discovered in the ruins of a house at Whitfield.

During the High Middle Ages, Crompton was a collection of scattered woods, farmsteads, moorland, swamp and a single corn mill, occupied by a small and close community of families.
The area was thinly populated and consisted of several dispersed hamlets, including Whitfield, High Crompton, Cowlishaw, Birshaw and Bovebeale.These hamlets were situated above the water-logged valley bottoms and below the exposed high moors.Owing to complicated local arrangements of land tenure, inheritance, and absentee landlords, the local lordship was weak, and Crompton failed to emerge as a manor with its own lord and court.
This slowly facilitated comparative freedoms and independence for the early people of Crompton,which encouraged the influx of families from the neighbouring parish of Rochdale, including the Buckleys, Cleggs, Greaves and Milnes.

During the Late Middle Ages, the Buckley and Crompton families were recorded as the largest landowners in Crompton, owning land and farmsteads at Whitfield and Crompton Fold respectively. The Crompton family has a well-documented history and can be traced back to the time of Magna Carta, appearing in the Assize Roll for 1245. Crompton is indigenous to the township, and first appears as a family name in the 13th century, when the locality's principal landowner, Hugh de la Legh, changed his family name to "de Crompton" (of Crompton), to reflect the estate he possessed. The family owned a large historic house by the name of Crompton Hall, on the site of Crompton Fold. Crompton Hall first appears in historical records as early as 1442, owned by Thomas de Crompton and his family. The original "medieval" Crompton Hall was demolished around 1848. A second Crompton Hall, set in its own prominent forested grounds, was erected by the family—by then an influential and affluent investor in the local cotton industry—but following the death of the last remaining family members, the site was sold and, in 1950, the house was demolished to make way for an exclusive development of bungalows.

Because of the poor soils and rugged terrain, Samuel Lewis said Crompton's inhabitants were "a race of hardy and laborious men".
They have also been described as having a reputation for being a "hardy, frugal and somewhat independent breed",which has been attributed to the tradition of absentee landlords and self-sustenance in earlier times.

There had been a chapel of ease at the hamlet of Shaw since at least the early 16th century, but, due to ecclesiastical arrangements for the parish of Prestwich-cum-Oldham, the inhabitants were obliged to contribute money towards Oldham Parish Church, which in turn had obligation to the mother Church of St Mary the Virgin at Prestwich. On several occasions during the 15th and 16th centuries, the Archdeacon of Chester had to intervene because Crompton's inhabitants refused to contribute towards holy bread and candles used at Prestwich. In 1826, a poll was taken regarding the re-building of Oldham Church. Not one person in Crompton voted in favour of the rebuilding and when a rate was levied to raise money for the new church at Oldham, the people of Crompton refused to pay.

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