Church of St Thomas, Lees

The Church of St Thomas is an Anglican parish church on West Street in Lees, a village in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. It is an active church in the Diocese of Manchester and is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II* listed building.

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Lees, Greater Manchester

Lees is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, amongst the Pennines east of the River Medlock, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east of Oldham, and 8.2 miles (13.2 km) northeast of Manchester. In the 14th century, when John de Leghes was a retainer of the local Lord of the Manor, Lees was a conglomeration of hamlets, ecclesiastically linked with the township of Ashton-under-Lyne. Farming was the main industry of this rural area, with locals supplementing their incomes by hand-loom weaving in the domestic system. At the beginning of the 19th century, Lees had obtained a reputation for its mineral springs; ambitions to develop a spa town were thwarted by an unplanned process of urbanisation caused by the rise of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution. Lees expanded into a mill town in the late-19th century, on the back of neighbouring Oldham's boom in cotton spinning. Lees Urban District had eleven cotton mills at its manufacturing zenith.

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Lees railway station

Lees railway station opened on 5 July 1856 at Lees, Lancashire, when the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR) opened the branch from Greenfield to Oldham. The station was located to the south-east of St. John Street, where it crossed the railway. There were two running lines with platforms on the outer sides connected by a footbridge. The main building was to the south of the line and was accessed by a ramp running down from the road over-bridge. To the south east of the station was a goods yard with a goods shed and between the station and the goods shed was a coal depôt. The goods yard was able to accommodate most types of goods including live stock and was equipped with a ten ton crane. Services Initially services ran to Oldham Mumps (L&NWR) and to Greenfield with some of these continuing to Delph. From 1 July 1862 trains were extended from Oldham Mumps to Oldham Clegg Street, later that year the L&NWR closed its Mumps station replacing it with Oldham Glodwick Road. By 1866 the station saw fourteen services in each direction (four on Sundays) of which three continued to Delph (none on Sundays). By 1922 the number of services had increased to about thirty-nine each way (there was some variation on Saturdays) of which eighteen continued to Delph (none on Sundays). In 1939 the LMS service was about the same with around thirty-eight services each way, with even more variation on Saturdays, twenty-one of which continued to Delph (except on Sundays). The station closed to passengers on 2 May 1955, when the Delph Donkey passenger train service to Delph via Greenfield was withdrawn. The station closed to goods traffic on 16 December 1963. The line remained open until 13 April 1964. Not far from the station, to the north east, was Lees Engine Shed which was open from 1878 to April 1964. Currently the line is a cyclepath and there is no evidence of the station remaining.

Oasis Academy Leesbrook

Oasis Academy Leesbrook is coeducational secondary school located in the Oldham in Greater Manchester, England. It is part of the Oasis Community Learning. It opened to pupils in September 2018. It moved to its new site on 9 November 2020. It has not had its first Ofsted inspection.

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Breeze Hill School

Breeze Hill School was a mixed-sex comprehensive secondary school for 11- to 16-year-olds in Oldham, Greater Manchester, England. It was a specialist Humanities College, and served over 750 students. Bernard Phillips was the last headteacher of Breeze Hill School before it merged with neighbouring Counthill School to form the Waterhead Academy. Since the school lay in the heart of Oldham's Pakistani Asian community, since the late 80's Early 90's Asian population growth in the local area led to the majority of students being of Asian decent when the school finally closed.

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