Tandle Hill
Tandle Hill is a country park in Royton, overlooking Higginshaw, Oldham and Rochdale. There are about 110 acres of open grassland and dense beech woods and it’s a good place to walk and to photograph the carpet of beech leaves in autumn. Today I only just caught the last of the russet leaves before the trees become completely bare.
Tandle Hill Monument
100 years ago, men from nearby Royton drilled on Tandle Hill before attending the political demonstration in Manchester that was to become known as the Peterloo Massacre. On 16th August 1819, a crowd of sixty to eighty thousand demonstrators marched to Manchester to patriotic tunes played by brass bands. Men and women, dressed in their Sunday best and hand in hand with their children, were peacefully demanding political reform; the Manchester and Salford yeomanry and the cavalry of the 15th Hussars charged into the crowd, killing 18 and injuring more than 600. Two of the dead were from Oldham and one from Saddleworth. A new monument, next to the war memorial at the top of Tandle Hill, marks the event.
