Post-industrial history

Since deindustrialisation, Shaw and Crompton's population has continued to grow as a result of intensive housing expansion and redevelopment which has modernised much of its former Victorian and Edwardianterraced housing districts. The town has 9,274 residential dwellings, of which one third are Victorian or Edwardian terraces, built for the cotton mill workers of former times. It is considered a popular residential area of relative prosperity, with a variety of housing types. The Buckstones and Rushcroft areas contain modern housing estates and are amongst the most affluent suburbs of the town. They were built as part of an agreement made in the 1950s between the then Crompton Urban District and the County Borough of Oldham councils, to alleviate Oldham's chronic shortage of quality housing. The town has subsequently been described as having "good community spirit and relative prosperity, which, in turn, create popular residential areas".

Alfred Street, Shaw

Shaw and Crompton has been used as a filming location for domestic films and television programmes, including The Parole Officer, Common As Muck, Scott & Bailey and The Fred Dibnah Story, the latter of which documented Fred Dibnah's demolition of the Briar and Cape mill chimneys. The town entered the national media in 2010, 2011 and 2012; for the kidnapping of Sahil Saeed, the mugging and death of Nellie Geraghty (which featured on Crimewatch), and the explosion of a house in Buckley Street respectively. Shaw and Crompton Metrolink station opened as part of Greater Manchester's light-rail Metrolink network on 16 December 2012.