Repairs for historic Clement Royds Street

The historic Clement Royds Street is having some of its stone setts removed and replaced with tarmac

Work has started on repairing a landmark street in Rochdale.

Named after one of the most prominent members of a famous Rochdale family, the historic Clement Royds Street is the widest road in the town and is constructed of stone setts.

Clement Royds was the High Sheriff of Lancashire midway through the 19th century and founded the family banking business in the town at The Butts. He also gave land for the building of St Clement's Church in Spotland.

But over the years, increased and heavy traffic has destroyed the street's setts at two busy road junctions. These are now having to be removed and replaced with tarmac at these heavy-wearing points. The rest of the setts on the street will be retained.

Local councillor for the area, Faisal Rana said: "I campaigned for this special heritage road to be repaired for several months. It has been neglected for far too long. It was in a very sad state at two of its busiest junctions with Spotland Road and at Ashworth Street.

"The engineers said the only way to protect the whole street from heavy traffic in future was to replace the badly damaged setts with tarmac at the junctions. The rest of the street's setts have been saved.

"It's really sad to see some of the setts being taken up but they have almost all been destroyed by cars. When the road was first constructed over a century ago, no-one ever envisaged the huge amount of heavy lorries and sheer volume of cars on our roads.

"The setts just couldn't withstand the wear and tear at these two pressure points and sadly none of them could be salvaged and recycled.

“However I'm really pleased the rest of this historic street is being preserved, hopefully for another hundred years."