LYDGATE’S role in what eventually became the suffragette movement and the backbone of the effort to secure women the vote has been formally recognised.
It may seem like a non-descript field next to what is now Stockport Road but on May 4, 1818, it became the scene of history.
For it was there that radical thinker Samuel Bamford suggested women should be given the right to vote in reformers’ meetings, granting them equal status with their male counterparts.
It was not until 85 years later that Emmeline Pankhurst is credited with forming the Women’s Social and Political Union and was 61 years before Springhead’s Annie Kenney – who has a statue in her honour in Oldham town centre – was born.
But the national importance of the site has now been made formal with the unveiling of a stone by leader of the borough’s council, Cllr Arooj Shah.
And looking on were Helen Walton and Grasscroft’s Danny Brierley, whose discovery and research made people aware of the role ‘that bleak ridge’ played in UK history.
Helen referenced Passages in the Life of a Radical by Middleton-born Samuel in her dissertation, leading to the discovery.
She said: “I was studying for a master’s degree in literature and art and I wrote my dissertation on the way women were represented at Peterloo – my discovery about Lydgate was part of that.
“I looked at Samuel’s book and he had a meeting in this field where he suggested it was a good idea for women to vote alongside men.
“There’s a really nice account of it in his diaries but his only description of the site is of ‘that bleak ridge.’
“Then there’s another document in the National Archive. An informant came to the meeting and he gives a really good description of where it is.
“He describes it as being a piece of waste land next to the church but he tells how Sam Bamford was pointing at the foundations of the pub to illustrate a point about how you need a string foundation – that helped us know the location better.
“The women were slightly embarrassed about the suggestion but that’s the first recorded happening where women were afforded equal rights to men.
“But those ladies wouldn’t have realised that it was significant. It’s a really sweet account, they’re slightly embarrassed and they’re laughing when the vote was taken – they didn’t realise it was the embryo of things beginning to change
“Progress happens in tiny little steps but it’s really important to mark the steps along the way and be proud of them.”
Cllr Shah unveiled the stone, which is likely to be laid outside St Anne’s Church, on Friday, March 8 – International Women’s Day.
And she told Saddleworth Independent how important it is to not let history pass by.
She said: “It was important in history, it’s important today and it’ll be important in the future – we have to acknowledge that.
“The influence and impact it had on people’s lives is huge and can’t always be accounted for.
“If it wasn’t for people like Annie Kenney. Likewise, if it wasn’t for people like Danny and Helen, who unearthed this, we wouldn’t understand the importance of it and the struggles people have had.
“Women across the country owe people like Annie, Marjory and Sarah Lees, Lydia Becker and Olive Claydon.
“There are so many who’ve done so many important things. We owe them to remember what they’re suffering was and how it’s made things possible for us today.
“We still some difficulties for women, so the work isn’t done but progress is always recognised and we need to acknowledge that.
“By putting the memorial in place, we’re ensuring that what went on in this field more than 200 years ago – before the borough of Oldham even existed – will not be forgotten.”
As well as political representatives from Saddleworth, several members of the Love Lydgate group attended the unveiling.
And chairperson Jennifer Greenwood told of their pride in the recognition, as well as the efforts to get it.
She said: “It’s great Lydgate’s been recognised for something like this. It’s a wonderful opportunity to recognise that.
“We’re delighted this special event is being noted with the stone.
“Since Danny and Helen talked to us about it, we’d been trying to get the site recognised. We tried the blue plaque people, Debbie Abrahams, but we couldn’t get it.
“It’s part of our culture and part of our history. We want to celebrate what happened in the past as well as what’s happening now.
“And one thing I know for sure about 1818, meeting there it would’ve been very cold and windy!”
According to your earlier article in 2021, Helen discovered the field was the one just to the north or where this stone is pictured, and the field where a development keeps getting proposed. The picture here is actually taken at the church graveyard, so if laid there will be wrong.
I actually walked up there yesterday morning, (not that I really believe a word of it,) to have a look at it, but I couldn’t find it.