Hyde Through Time

This fascinating selection of photographs traces some of the many ways in which Hyde has changed and developed over the last century.

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Hyde is a small industrial town in north-east Cheshire, situated some 7 miles from Manchester. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Hyde relied on the production of cotton for its prosperity. But by 1971, the cotton industry was already dying and with the advent of the supermarket and the building of the M67, small shops struggled to compete, and the mills, along with many houses, pubs and churches, were demolished. As Hyde began to change local historian Lee Brown endeavoured to record as much as he could on film. Despite the overgrown trees, bushes, grass and foliage sometimes getting in the way, Lee aims to show the comparisons of Hyde past and present, and take the reader on a photographic journey through the good times, as well as the struggles in more recent years that Hyde has faced.