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Hyde Town Hall | Bronze figures in front of the Town Hall | |
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Town Hall Tower | The Market Square | |
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Plaque on the Town Hall | Plaque on the Town Hall | |
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Pub sign with six wives of Henry VIII | The Queens | |
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"Hyde Chapel" at Gee Cross | Hyde Chapel Sunday School Rooms of 1889 | |
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The Memorial at Werneth Low | The Public Library |
Pevsner describes Hyde as a Cheshire cotton town. The Town Hall facing the market place was built between 1883 and 1885 by J. W. Beaumont of Manchester. An extension was added with a portico in Greenfield Street in 1937 by J. H. Ward. Hyde Chapel on Knott Lane in Gee Cross is unusual in being built as a Unitarian Chapel in the style usually used for a parish church. It was built between 1846 and 1848 by the architects Bowman & Crowther. It was the first Nonconformist church built in this style. The Free Library was built in 1899 and bears the town's shield with the motto "Onward".
The memorial on Werneth Low, which overlooks the town, is to to the men of Hyde who fell in the Great War. The bronze figures in front of the Town Hall were produced by Stephen Broadbent. The sculpture was unveiled on 28 November 2002 and the celebrates the Chartist movement in Hyde. In the 1840s the Chartists demonstrated for many freedoms which we now take for granted but at the time they were considered dangerous revolutionaries. They wanted universal suffrage for men of 21 and over and a secret ballot. They asked that MPs be paid and that there should be no ownership of property requirement for those standing for election so that the role was not the preserve of rich men. Finally they wanted constituencies to be of equal size and a general election every year. With the exception of the latter provision, which we probably don't want, we now have all these freedoms and in addition votes for women. Hyde can be proud that its citizens played an active role in airing these issues but it took a long time to gain all their objectives.
Tameside has a good website which includes the History of Hyde and the history of Chartism in Tameside
The Buildings of England: Cheshire, by Nikolaus Pevsner and Edward Hubbard, first edition 1971, Yale University Press edition in 2003.