Chetham Miscellanies

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HAUGHTON TOWNSHIP. The township of Haughton is situated about eight miles south east from Manchester, in the Poor-law Union of Ashton-under- Lyne, to which it elects one Guardian, and in the Polling District of Manchester. Its earlier annals are so completely involved in obscurity as to have led to the assertion that the township remained undiscovered until the formation, some years since, of the Manchester and Hyde turnpike road, which first brought it to light. It contained in 1853 fifty-nine county voters. It is bounded on the north by Audenshaw, on the south and east by the river Tame, and on the west by Denton. Haughton derives its name from the Anglo-Saxon Haugh, a hill, and signifies a town or village placed on an eminence; the township being, in point of elevation, higher than any other in the parish of Manchester. The river Tame separates Haughton from the adjacent county of Chester, and the picturesque valley through which it flows is known as Haughton Dale. Its orthography has undergone several transitions ? Outon, Holn- ton, Halghton, Hallerton, and more recently Houghton or Haughton. In England and Wales there are thirty places thus designated. The similarity of the name it bears with West-Houghton which lies on the opposite side of Manchester, and Hoghton near Preston, gives rise to much uncertainty as to the place referred to in the various ancient documents relating to the county. Haughton is named, together with the twin township of Denton, in the record of a trial in the reign of Edward I. with respect to certain disputed privileges claimed by the Abbot of Cokersand, who, resting on a charter granted by King John, attempted, though unsuccessfully, on behalf of himself and his monks, to establish a right of exemption from the payment of all fines and t...