Stockport

Stockport is a town in Greater Manchester, England, about six miles south-east of Manchester, and the main settlement of the wider Metropolitan Borough of Stockport. It grew at the point where the rivers Goyt and Tame merge to form the River Mersey. Most of the town lies in the historic county of Cheshire, with the area north of the Mersey in the historic county of Lancashire. Its first borough charter was granted in about 1220. In the 16th century it was a small town on the south bank of the Mersey known for hemp and rope, in the 18th century it had one of the first mechanised silk factories in the British Isles, and in the 19th century the cotton and hatting trades dominated, with more than six million hats a year exported by 1884; the last hat works closed in 1997. Stockport Viaduct, built in 1840 with 27 brick arches, dominates the western approaches, and the football club Stockport County is nicknamed The Hatters. At the 2021 census the built up area had a population of 117,935.