The Giddy Meadow was the name once given to the small cluster of houses that made up the village of Bacup at the end of the eighteenth century when the first recording of Bacup’s inhabitants was made. The population at this time stood at 1,456 and the number of houses stood at 306 growing to over 3,301 by 1863.

By the time the cotton famine or cotton panic began in 1861 caused by the American Civil War, over 35 mills, a railway, churches, chapels, municipal and other buildings had been built along with several back-to-back and back to earth houses.

The once clear fish-filled River Irwell soon became an open sewer, its river bed filled with ashes from the mills along its banks and from the houses erected to house the men women and children that worked in those mills. A skyline of chimneys belching out smoke 24 hours a day replaced the skylines of clean fresh moorlands and trees.

With no backyards, the only door to the world for some faced their neighbours as did the lavatories and coal places, row upon row of dustbins hugging the walls in monotonous uniformity.