Todmorden

Todmorden is a market city and civil parish in the Upper Calder Valley in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, England. It is 17 miles north east of Manchester and in 2011 had a population of 15,481. Todmorden is at the confluence of three steep-sided Pennine valleys and is surrounded through moorlands with outcrops of sandblasted gritstone. The ancient boundary between Yorkshire and Lancashire is the River Calder and its tributary, the Walsden Water, which run via the city. The administrative border became altered through the Local Government Act 1888 placing the whole of the metropolis within the West Riding.

The city is served through Todmorden and Walsden railway stations. The name Todmorden first seems in 1641. The city had earlier been referred to as Tottemerden, Totmardene, Totmereden or Totmerden. The usually commonplace meaning of the name is Totta's boundary-valley, probable a reference to the valley going for walks north-west from the city. Alternative pointers were proposed, which include the hypothesis "maybe fancifully" that the name derives from phrases for dying: tod and mor, which means "loss of life-dying-wood", or that the name supposed "marshy home of the fox", from the Old English.