DROYLSDEN, a township-chapelry in Manchester parish, Lancashire; on the Rochdale canal and the Manchester and Sheffield railway, 4 miles E of Manchester-It includes the hamlet of Little Droylsden, and the villages of Fairfield and Clayton; and it has a station on the railway, and a post office‡ under Manchester. Acres, 1, 611. Real property, £25, 121. Pop., 8, 798. Houses, 1, 718. The property is subdivided. Many of the inhabitants are employed in cotton factories. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Manchester. Value, £130. Patron, alternately the Crown and the Bishop. The church was built in 1848; an Independent chapel, in 1860; a Wesleyan chapel, in 1866; and there are Moravian and P. Methodist chapels, and British schools.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))