Facts about Todmorden
General Info
Todmorden is a market town and civil parish in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It is 17 miles (27 kilometres) north-east of Manchester, 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Burnley and 9 miles (14 km) west of Halifax. In 2011, it had a population of 15,481. Todmorden is at the confluence of three steep-sided Pennine valleys and is surrounded by moorlands with outcrops of sandblasted gritstone.
The historic boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is the River Calder and its tributary, Walsden Water, which run through the town. The administrative border was altered by the Local Government Act 1888 placing the whole of the town within the West Riding.
History
The name Todmorden is first attested in 1246, in the form Totmardene; other pre-modern spellings include Tottemerden, Totmereden and Totmerden. This is thought to originate in Old English as a personal name, Totta, combined with the Old English words mǣre (‘border, boundary’) and denu (‘valley’). Thus the name once meant ‘Totta’s border-valley’. The valley in question is thought to have been the one running north-west from the town, and the border the one between Lancashire and Yorkshire.
Although fanciful and historically implausible, alternative etymologies circulate, such as the speculation that the name derives from two words for death: German Tod and French mort, or that the name meant “marshy den of the fox”, supposedly from tod, a word of uncertain origin meaning ‘fox’ first attested around 1200, moor (which in Old English meant ‘marsh’), and den (also attested in Old English to mean an animal’s lair).
