Located about 15 miles due south of Manchester, Alderley Edge is nowadays an elegant and fairly affluent village, which has a long history dating back some 4000 years to the Bronze Age. Copper and lead mining has taken place at Alderley Edge since the Roman times. The Edge itself, a hilly outcrop, is now a Site of Special Scientific Interest largely owned by the National Trust. The mineral-rich sandstone of the Edge has been the site of legends and myths for many centuries. The actual village developed after 1842 when the Birmingham and Manchester Railway Company opened a rail station, then known as "Chorley for Alderley Edge". The village developed very much along class lines, divided between the Edge and the Village. The wealthier residents tended to live high up the hill on the Edge, whilst the poor lived below in the Village, where shopkeepers, tradesmen and lower working classes eked out an existence in its now long-gone back streets A beacon topped the Edge since Tudor times initially to warn of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, and later the threat from Napoleon.
