"DUKINFIELD, a chapelry in the parish of STOCKPORT, hundred of MACCLESFIELD, county palatine of CHESTER, 6½ miles (N. E. by N.) from Stockport, containing 5096 inhabitants. The village, called by.the . Saxons Dockenveldt, is seated upon a pleasant eminence, at the foot of which, to the northward, runs the rapid river Tame, separating the township from the town of Ashton under Lyne, in Lancashire, as it did the kingdoms of Northumberland and Mercia during the Heptarchy, when strong fortifications for the protection of each at this point were constructed, on opposite banks of the stream, some vestiges of which are still discernible. Thirty years ago the inhabitants of Dukinfield consisted of only a few farmers and day-labourers, but since the introduction of the cotton trade it has become an extensive and flourishing place; there are several cotton factories, worked by eleven steam-engines, equal in power to two hundred and fifty-five horses, which put in motion one thousand four hundred and seventy-five power-looms, and turn one hundred and thirteen thousand one hundred and fifty-four spindles. The mines and quarries wrought in the township yield a considerable profit to the proprietors: there are also extensive collieries, the shafts of some of them being sunk to the depth of one hundred and twenty feet. Iron-ore is abundant, and a furnace has been recently erected for smelting it, an operation that seems to have been carried on in remote times, from the otherwise unaccountable breaks which are frequently met with in the strata of the ore of one particular mine, and the large quantity of scoriæ found in the vicinity. Fire-bricks are made here in great perfection. Many advantages are derived from the Peak Forest and the Huddersfield canals, which pass through the township. One of the wings of Dukinfield hall, an ancient mansion, contains a chapel, founded in 1398, as an oratory, which has been since used as a chapel of ease to StockporL Independents, Wesleyan Methodists, Moravians, and Unitarians, have each a place of worship, and the three last have established schools, that of the Methodists being sufficiently commodious to contain one thousand children; there is also a Roman Catholic chapel. A Sunday school, for children of all denominations, is kept in a neat brick building, erected by subscription, upon land given by the late F. D. Astley, Esq., and containing a well selected library for the use of the inhabitants. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Duckenfield, a distinguished parliamentary officer, and a member of Cromwell's council of state in 1653, was born here." [From Samuel Lewis A Topographical Dictionary of England (1831) ©Mel Lockie]