Urban sprawl
Urban sprawl or suburban sprawl refers to the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for urban planning. In addition to describing a particular form of urbanization, the term relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. In Continental Europe the term "peri-urbanisation" is used to denote similar dynamics and phenomena, although the term urban sprawl is being used by the European Environment Agency. There is widespread disagreement about how to quantify it. For example, some commentators measure sprawl only with the average number of residential units per acre in a given area, but others associate it with decentralization, segregation of uses, so forth. The term urban sprawl is politicized, always has negative connotations, it is criticized for causing environmental degradation, intensifying segregation and undermining the vitality of existing urban areas and attacked on aesthetic grounds.
Due to the pejorative meaning of the term, few support urban sprawl as such. The term has become a rallying cry for managing urban growth. Definitions of sprawl vary. Batty et al. defined sprawl as "uncoordinated growth: the expansion of community without concern for its consequences, in short, incremental urban growth, regarded unsustainable." Bhatta et al. wrote in 2010 that despite a dispute over the precise definition of sprawl there is a "general consensus that urban sprawl is characterized by unplanned and uneven pattern of growth, driven by multitude of processes and leading to inefficient resource utilization." Reid Ewing has shown that sprawl has been characterized as urban developments exhibiting at least one of the following characteristics: low-density or single-use development, strip development, scattered development, and/or leapfrog development. He argued that a better way to identify sprawl was to use indicators rather than characteristics because this was a more flexible and less arbitrary method.
He proposed using "accessibility" and "functional open space" as indicators. Ewing's approach has been criticized for assuming that sprawl is defined by negative characteristics. What constitutes sprawl may be considered a matter of degree and will always be somewhat subjective under many definitions of the term. Ewing has argued that suburban development does not, per se constitute sprawl depending on the form it takes, although Gordon & Richardson have argued that the term is sometimes used synonymously with suburbanization in a pejorative way. Metropolitan Los Angeles for example, despite popular notions of being an sprawling city, is the densest metropolitan region in the US, being denser than the New York metropolitan area and the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of metropolitan Los Angeles is built at more uniform low to moderate density, leading to a much higher overall density for the entire region; this is in contrast to cities such as New York, San Francisco or Chicago which have compact, high-density cores but are surrounded by large areas of low density.
The international cases of sprawl draw into question the definition of the term and what conditions are necessary for urban growth to be considered sprawl. Metropolitan regions such Greater Mexico City, Delhi National Capital Region and Beijing, are regarded as sprawling despite being dense and mixed use. Despite the lack of a clear agreed upon description of what defines sprawl most definitions associate the following characteristics with sprawl; this refers to a situation where commercial, residential and industrial areas are separated from one another. Large tracts of land are devoted to a single use and are segregated from one another by open space, infrastructure, or other barriers; as a result, the places where people live, work and recreate are far from one another to the extent that walking, transit use and bicycling are impractical, so all these activities require a car. The degree to which different land uses are mixed together is used as an indicator of sprawl in studies of the subject.
Job sprawl is another land use symptom of urban car-dependent communities. It is defined as low-density, geographically spread-out patterns of employment, where the majority of jobs in a given metropolitan area are located outside of the main city's central business district, in the suburban periphery, it is the result of urban disinvestment, the geographic freedom of employment location allowed by predominantly car-dependent commuting patterns of many American suburbs, many companies' desire to locate in low-density areas that are more affordable and offer potential for expansion. Spatial mismatch is related to economic environmental justice. Spatial mismatch is defined as the situation where poor urban, predominantly minority citizens are left without easy access to entry-level jobs, as a result of increasing job sprawl and limited transportation options to facilitate a reverse commute to the suburbs. Job sprawl has been measured in various ways, it has been shown to be a growing trend in America's metropolitan areas.
The Brookings Institution has published multiple articles on the topic. In 2005, author Michael Stoll defined job sprawl as jobs located more than 5-mile radius from the CBD, measured the concept based on year 2000
England
England is a country, part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to Scotland to the north-northwest; the Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south; the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. The area now called England was first inhabited by modern humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, but takes its name from the Angles, a Germanic tribe deriving its name from the Anglia peninsula, who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in the 10th century, since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant cultural and legal impact on the wider world; the English language, the Anglican Church, English law – the basis for the common law legal systems of many other countries around the world – developed in England, the country's parliamentary system of government has been adopted by other nations.
The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the world's first industrialised nation. England's terrain is chiefly low hills and plains in central and southern England. However, there is upland and mountainous terrain in the west; the capital is London, which has the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. England's population of over 55 million comprises 84% of the population of the United Kingdom concentrated around London, the South East, conurbations in the Midlands, the North West, the North East, Yorkshire, which each developed as major industrial regions during the 19th century; the Kingdom of England – which after 1535 included Wales – ceased being a separate sovereign state on 1 May 1707, when the Acts of Union put into effect the terms agreed in the Treaty of Union the previous year, resulting in a political union with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The name "England" is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means "land of the Angles"; the Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages. The Angles came from the Anglia peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea; the earliest recorded use of the term, as "Engla londe", is in the late-ninth-century translation into Old English of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. The term was used in a different sense to the modern one, meaning "the land inhabited by the English", it included English people in what is now south-east Scotland but was part of the English kingdom of Northumbria; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded that the Domesday Book of 1086 covered the whole of England, meaning the English kingdom, but a few years the Chronicle stated that King Malcolm III went "out of Scotlande into Lothian in Englaland", thus using it in the more ancient sense.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its modern spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, in which the Latin word Anglii is used; the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars. How and why a term derived from the name of a tribe, less significant than others, such as the Saxons, came to be used for the entire country and its people is not known, but it seems this is related to the custom of calling the Germanic people in Britain Angli Saxones or English Saxons to distinguish them from continental Saxons of Old Saxony between the Weser and Eider rivers in Northern Germany. In Scottish Gaelic, another language which developed on the island of Great Britain, the Saxon tribe gave their name to the word for England. An alternative name for England is Albion; the name Albion referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus the 4th-century BC De Mundo: "Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the ocean that flows round the earth.
In it are two large islands called Britannia. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, i.e. it was written in the Graeco-Roman period or afterwards. The word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins, it either derives from a cognate of the Latin albus meaning white, a reference to the white cliffs of Dover or from the phrase the "island of the Albiones" in the now lost Massaliote Periplus, attested through Avienus' Ora Maritima to which the former served as a source. Albion is now applied to England in a more poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England and made popular by its use in Arthurian legend; the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximate
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million. It encompasses one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United Kingdom and comprises ten metropolitan boroughs: Bolton, Oldham, Stockport, Trafford and the cities of Manchester and Salford. Greater Manchester was created on 1 April 1974 as a result of the Local Government Act 1972. Greater Manchester spans 493 square miles, which covers the territory of the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, the second most populous urban area in the UK, it is landlocked and borders Cheshire, West Yorkshire and Merseyside. There is a mix of high-density urban areas, semi-rural and rural locations in Greater Manchester, but land use is urban—the product of concentric urbanisation and industrialisation which occurred during the 19th century when the region flourished as the global centre of the cotton industry, it has a focused central business district, formed by Manchester city centre and the adjoining parts of Salford and Trafford, but Greater Manchester is a polycentric county with ten metropolitan districts, each of which has at least one major town centre and outlying suburbs.
Greater Manchester is governed by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, which consists of political leaders from each of the ten metropolitan borough councils, plus a directly elected mayor, with responsibility for economic development and transport. Andy Burnham is the inaugural Mayor of Greater Manchester, elected in 2017. For the 12 years following 1974 the county had a two-tier system of local government; the county council was abolished in 1986, so its districts became unitary authority areas. However, the metropolitan county continued to exist in law and as a geographic frame of reference, as a ceremonial county, with a Lord Lieutenant and a High Sheriff. Several county-wide services were co-ordinated through the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities between 1985 and 2011. Before the creation of the metropolitan county, the name SELNEC was used for the area, from the initials of "South East Lancashire North East Cheshire". Greater Manchester is an amalgamation of 70 former local government districts from the former administrative counties of Lancashire, the West Riding of Yorkshire and eight independent county boroughs.
Since deindustrialisation in the mid-20th century, Greater Manchester has emerged as an exporter of media and digital content and dance music, association football. Although the modern county of Greater Manchester was not created until 1974, the history of its constituent settlements goes back centuries. There is evidence of Iron Age habitation at Mellor, Celtic activity in a settlement named Chochion, believed to have been an area of Wigan settled by the Brigantes. Stretford was part of the land believed to have been occupied by the Celtic Brigantes tribe, lay on their border with the Cornovii on the southern side of the River Mersey; the remains of 1st-century forts at Castlefield in Manchester, Castleshaw Roman fort in Saddleworth, are evidence of Roman occupation. Much of the region was omitted from the Domesday Book of 1086. During the Middle Ages, much of what became Greater Manchester lay within the hundred of Salfordshire – an ancient division of the county of Lancashire. Salfordshire encompassed several parishes and townships, some of which, like Rochdale, were important market towns and centres of England's woollen trade.
The development of what became Greater Manchester is attributed to a shared tradition of domestic flannel and fustian cloth production, which encouraged a system of cross-regional trade. In the late-18th century, the Industrial Revolution transformed the local domestic system. Infrastructure such as rows of terraced housing and roads were constructed to house labour, transport goods, produce cotton goods on an industrial scale for a global market; the townships in and around Manchester began expanding "at an astonishing rate" around the turn of the 19th century as part of a process of unplanned urbanisation brought on by a boom in industrial textile production and processing. This population increase resulted in the "vigorous concentric growth" of a conurbation between Manchester and an arc of surrounding mill towns, formed from a steady accretion of houses and transport infrastructure. Places such as Bury and Bolton played a central economic role nationally, by the end of the 19th century had become some of the most important and productive cotton-producing towns in the world.
However, it was Manchester, the most populous settlement, a major city, the world's largest marketplace for cotton goods, the natural centre of its region. By 1835 "Manchester was without challenge the first and greatest industrial city in the world". In the 1910s, local government reforms to administer this conurbation as a single entity were proposed. In the 18th century, German traders had coined the name Manchesterthum to cover the region in and around Manchester. However, the English term "Greater Mancheste
RAF Ringway
RAF Ringway was a Royal Air Force station in Ringway, England, near Manchester. It was operational from 1939 until 1957; the site of the station is now occupied by Manchester Airport. Manchester's first municipal airfield was Manchester Aerodrome, Barton Aerodrome just west of Eccles. Barton Aerodrome was planned to be the main airport for Manchester, but it became clear by 1934 that its small boggy grass airfield was inadequate for the larger airliners coming into service including the Douglas DC-2 and DC-3. A new airport site at Ringway, eight miles south of Manchester city centre, was selected from several alternatives, this was to become the site of the RAF station by early 1940. Construction of the all-grass airfield began in late 1935, the first portion opened in June 1937 for use by Fairey Aviation; the remaining airfield areas and the terminal building were opened for public use on 25 June 1938. Known as Manchester Airport Manchester International Airport, from 1986 it has been designated Manchester Airport.
Construction of a Royal Air Force station, including two large hangars, barrack blocks and ancillary accommodation, began in the northeast corner of the airport during spring 1939, with phased completion during early 1940. One of the hangars was intended for use by No. 613 Squadron, but this unit had been moved south at the outbreak of war. RAF Ringway was therefore used by No. 1 Operational Training Unit, RAF Coastal Command. From June 1940, Ringway became the wartime base for No.1 Parachute Training School RAF, charged with the initial training of all allied paratroopers trained in Europe and for development of parachute drops of equipment. Men and women agents of the Special Operations Executive were trained to jump. Comedian Frank Muir, spent several years at the school in the photographic section taking slow motion film of jumps on a project intended to decrease the frequency of parachutes failing, he recalls the Special Operations Executive training centre, housed in an Edwardian house on the outskirts of the airfield, where he was assigned to take pictures of the agents for identity documents.
There was an additional SOE holding centre in a large house in nearby Bowdon. No.14 Ferry Pilot Pool of the Air Transport Auxiliary was based at Ringway between 1940 and 1945. The veteran ATA aircrews delivered many thousands of military aircraft to operational units, built, modified or repaired at Ringway, Barton and at other northwest aircraft factories and airfields. Over 4,400 warplanes were built at Ringway by Fairey Avro; the aircraft included the Fairey Battle, Fairey Fulmar, Fairey Barracuda, Bristol Beaufighter, Handley Page Halifax and Fairey Gannet. Avro's experimental department, located in Ringway's 1938-built northside hangar between mid-1939 and late 1945, completed the prototype Avro Manchester bomber; this was followed in January 1941 by the prototype of the famous Avro Lancaster bomber. The last warplane prototype to be assembled here was the Avro Lincoln bomber which first flew from Ringway on 9 July 1944. Avro built over 100 Avro York military transport aircraft in the three 1941/42 southside hangars.
Two hangars built in the NW corner of the airfield during 1939/40 for use by Fairey Aviation remain in use, one for aircraft maintenance and the other for ground operations. The other three wartime hangars built for Fairey's were demolished during the 1990s. No. 613 Squadron had its home base at RAF Ringway during 1939 and again from 1946 to 1957 when it flew Supermarine Spitfires and de Havilland Vampire jet fighters in its fighter role as a unit within the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. On the disbandment of 613 Squadron in March 1957, RAF Ringway was closed and its hangars and other buildings handed over for civil airline operations including cargo and maintenance; the two 1939/40-built hangars remained in use until late 1995, when they were demolished to permit construction of the new Terminal 3. By January 2009, the only surviving building from RAF Ringway was the Officers Mess in Ringway Road and until used as the Airport Archive, it was still standing, but disused, in November 2011. It was demolished to make way for a further extension of car parking facilities.
A garden outside Olympic House houses several carved stone memorials to the wartime units based at Ringway and to 613 Squadron. There is a monument in Terminal 1 but now in Manchester Airport railway station, to Alcock and Brown, the pioneers of transatlantic flight.
Population density
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is applied to living organisms, most of the time to humans, it is a key geographical term. In simple terms population density refers to the number of people living in an area per kilometer square. Population density is population divided by total land water volume, as appropriate. Low densities may lead to further reduced fertility; this is called the Allee effect after the scientist. Examples of the causes in low population densities include: Increased problems with locating sexual mates Increased inbreeding For humans, population density is the number of people per unit of area quoted per square kilometer or square mile; this may be calculated for a county, country, another territory or the entire world. The world's population is around 7,500,000,000 and Earth's total area is 510,000,000 square kilometers. Therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,500,000,000 ÷ 510,000,000 = 14.7 per km2. If only the Earth's land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account human population density is 50 per km2.
This includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is excluded population density rises to over 55 people per km2. However, over half of the Earth's land mass consists of areas inhospitable to human habitation, such as deserts and high mountains, population tends to cluster around seaports and fresh-water sources. Thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states and dependencies; these territories have a small area and a high urbanization level, with an economically specialized city population drawing on rural resources outside the area, illustrating the difference between high population density and overpopulation The potential to maintain the agricultural aspects of deserts is limited as there is not enough precipitation to support a sustainable land. The population in these areas are low. Therefore, cities in the Middle East, such as Dubai, have been increasing in population and infrastructure growth at a fast pace.
Cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo and Lagos in Africa fall into this category. City population and area are, however dependent on the definition of "urban area" used: densities are invariably higher for the central city area than when suburban settlements and the intervening rural areas are included, as in the areas of agglomeration or metropolitan area, the latter sometimes including neighboring cities. For instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, the surrounding suburbs excluded. In comparison, based on a world population of seven billion, the world's inhabitants, as a loose crowd taking up ten square feet per person, would occupy a space a little larger than Delaware's land area; the Gaza Strip has a population density of 5,046 pop/km.
Although arithmetic density is the most common way of measuring population density, several other methods have been developed to provide a more accurate measure of population density over a specific area. Arithmetic density: The total number of people / area of land Physiological density: The total population / area of arable land Agricultural density: The total rural population / area of arable land Residential density: The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land Urban density: The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land Ecological optimum: The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources Demography Human geography Idealized population Optimum population Population genetics Population health Population momentum Population pyramid Rural transport problem Small population size Distance sampling List of population concern organizations List of countries by population density List of cities by population density List of city districts by population density List of English districts by population density List of European cities proper by population density List of United States cities by population density List of islands by population density List of U.
S. states by population density List of Australian suburbs by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density Duncan Smith / UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. "World Population Density". Exploratory map shows data from the Global Human Settlement Layer produced by the European Commission JRC and the CIESIN Columbia University
Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service
Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service is the statutory emergency fire and rescue service for the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester, England. Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service covers an area of 496 square miles; the service has 41 fire stations which until 2006 were organised into three territorial Area Commands, each one with an Area Command Headquarters, based at Stretford and Bolton respectively. When the brigade altered the command area's structure they divided the three area commands from South and West to 11 Borough Commands, aligned to the 10 local authorities in the county: Bolton, Manchester, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside and Wigan; the service employs 2,200 personnel, of which 1,200 are frontline firefighters, 403 non-uniformed support staff. The Service's headquarters is located in Salford; the service was created when the county of Greater Manchester came into being in 1974. It had, until recently, been called the Greater Manchester County Fire Service; the change in name reflects the growing number of roles the service now has, many services across the United Kingdom are changing their names to "Fire and Rescue Service".
This change was inspired by new primary legislation for England and Wales, The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004. The service was administered by the Greater Manchester County Council, but when this was abolished in 1986, administration of the service was taken over by a joint authority of the ten Metropolitan Boroughs of Greater Manchester, known as the "Fire and Rescue Authority". Five members are appointed by Manchester City Council, two each by Bury and Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Councils, three each by the remaining seven borough councils of Greater Manchester. In 2017, the service came under considerable controversy on the night of the Manchester Arena bombing due to arriving two hours than the police after the bombing. A report by Lord Bob Kerslake found that the Service deployed units only at 00:15 after conversation was overheard of armed police being sent in to scout the area one-and-a-half hours earlier. Then-Chief Fire Officer Peter O'Reilly apologised for the delay in response, although blaming the Greater Manchester Police for the delay, citing an "information vacuum" from the force and for not liaising with the ambulance and fire services following the bombing.
The service, alongside the Lancashire fire service, were among the first responders to the Saddleworth Moor fire on 24 June 2018, managing to extinguish the fire on the same day, a normal event said to happen on the moor on a hot summer's day, but because of the heatwave starving the land of rain and thus drying the peat, the fire reignited on the next day, soon burning out of control, following a declaration of a major incident the day after that, requiring the evacuation of 50 houses nearby. With the service having never fought a moorland fire on the scale of this fire, mutual aid was sought out from seven other fire services across the north of England, including Cumbria and Wear, Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire, following a request from assistant chief fire officer Dave Keelan, military assistance came to help extinguish the wildfire, of which it was declared three weeks on 18 July. A similar fire on Winter Hill, north of Bolton in Lancashire, breaking out on June 28 and being declared under control on the 16 July, a merger of two previous wildfires that directly threatened, but never affected a transmitting station on the hill, was responded to by both the Greater Manchester and Lancashire services.
Water Ladder: P1 / P2 Light 6x6 Pump: M1 Community Response Vehicle: L1 Hydraulic Platform: A1 Water Incident Unit: B2 Incident Command Unit: C1 Command Support Unit: C2 Fire Investigation Unit: F1 Bulk Foam Unit: S2 Salvation Army Catering Unit: S4 Welfare Unit: S3/S7 Operational Support Unit: C3 Prime Mover: T6 / T7pods: Environmental Protection Unit High Volume Pump High Volume Hose Layer Hose Laying Lorry & Hose Retrieval Unit: W2 Technical Response Unit: Technical Response Pump: R2 Major Rescue Unit: R7 Urban Search and Rescue Unit: R8 Search and Rescue Dog Unit: R9 CBRN Response: Detection and Monitoring Unit: H8 Incident Response Unit: H9 Prime Mover + Mass Decontamination Disrobe: T9 Fire service in the United Kingdom Greater Manchester Police List of British firefighters killed in the line of duty Official website Official photography page Official Vimeo Channel Official YouTube Channel
Bowdon, Greater Manchester
Bowdon is a village and electoral ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England. Bowdon and Hale Barns together are regarded as the wealthiest areas in Greater Manchester, wealthy to Cheshire Golden Triangle towns Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and Prestbury; these towns and the area between them contain some of the most expensive properties in England outside London. Both Bowdon and Dunham Massey are mentioned in the Domesday Book, citing the existence of a church and a mill in Bowdon, Dunham Massey is identified as Doneham: Hamo de Mascy; the name Bowdon came from Anglo-Saxon Boga-dūn = "bow -hill" or "curved hill". Both areas came under Hamo de Masci in Norman times, his base was a wooden castle at Dunham. Watch Hill Castle was built on the border between Bowdon and Dunham Massey between the Norman Conquest and the 13th century; the timber castle most belonged to Hamo de Mascy. The last Hamo de Masci died in 1342; the Black Death came to the area in 1348. Before 1494 the ruins of the castle at Dunham were acquired by Sir Robert Booth.
In 1750, this and the other Booth estates passed to the Earl of Stamford by his marriage to Lady Mary Booth. The 10th and last Earl of Stamford died in 1976, who bequeathed Dunham Massey and his Carrington estates to the National Trust; the development of Bowdon as a residential area began apace in the 1840s, when the landowners of the area sold off parcels of land. The opening of Bowdon railway station in 1849 provided a commuter route to the centre of Manchester, making the clean air and tranquility of the Bowdon Downs more attractive to developers. Terraces and semi-detached houses were built, but by the 1860s and 1870s, the'merchant princes' had built the large houses on Green Walk which are still a defining feature of the ward. By 1878 Kelly's Directory was describing Bowdon as "studded with handsome villas and mansions", around 60% of the residents were business owners. Mains water appeared in 1864, gas lighting by 1865; the Altrincham History Society Tour highlights historical facts about Bowdon: The listed Altrincham/Dunham boundary stone of 1840 is in the garden wall of number 1 Higher Downs at the bottom right.
This indicates the boundary of the ancient Borough of Altrincham with Dunham Massey. The area from the Devisdale across to The Downs was known as Bowdon Downs until about 1750 and was used as a common. 10,000 of Prince Rupert's troops camped here and on Knutsford Heath in May 1644 on their way from Shrewsbury to Marston Moor during the Civil War. In December 1688 Lord Delamer the Earl of Warrington, rallied forces here from his tenants in support of the Prince of Orange, afterwards William III, who had arrived in England; the Altrincham Show used to be held on The Devisdale, Bowdon until 1966. Farmers came from as far afield as Scotland and Norfolk to show cattle. From 1894 to 1974, Bowdon formed an Urban District local government district in the administrative county of Cheshire. Since 1 April 1974, Bowdon has formed an electoral ward and component area of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford. Prior to this Bowdon formed: Bowdon Local Board. Bowdon has formed part of two Poor Law Unions: Altrincham.
Bowdon was in the parliamentary constituency of Altrincham and Sale from 1945 until 1997. Bowdon has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Altrincham and Sale West since 1997. Since its formation the constituency has been represented in the House of Commons by the Conservative MP, Graham Brady; this is one of only a small number of seats in the North West held by the Conservative Party, one of only two in Greater Manchester. Bowdon is in Trafford Metropolitan Borough. Bowdon is covered by the Bowdon electoral ward; the councillors for the Bowdon ward are Sean Anstee, Karen Barclay, Michael Hyman, all members of the Conservative Party. Bowdon is located at the southwest edge of Greater Manchester, it is situated on a ridge. Bowdon is the largest ward in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, comprises several small, rural villages surrounded by open countryside, including Dunham Massey Country Park and other more densely populated residential areas, it has been described as an attractive place to live.
The majority of the ward is owned by the National Trust as part of the Dunham Massey Estate, which serves as a significant communal asset for the residents of the local and wider areas. The estate includes a deer park. Bowdon has a low population density. There are four distinct neighbourhoods of Bowdon: Dunham Massey Warburton Bowdon Bowdon Vale According to a Trafford Metropolitan Council report, the population of Bowdon in 2001 was 8,806. 1730 were under 16 and 1699 were 65 and over. In 2004, the majority of residents described themselves as white. Out of 8414 wards of the United Kingdom, Bowdon ranks as 8,235th in terms of deprivation indicating that only 2.2% of UK wards suffer less deprivation In 1931, 27.6% of Bowdon's population was middle class compared with 14% in England and Wales, by 1971, this had increased to 58.9% compared with 24% nationally. Parallel to this doubling of the middle classes in Bowdon was the decline of the workin
