Browse Sections

• Rochdale 150 
  • Shopping
  • Education
  • The Observer
  • Work
  • Entertainment
  • Sport
  • Housing
  • New rochdalians
  • Motoring
  • Council
• Useful information
• Nostalgia
• Looking back
• Rochdale canal
• Web links
• Family notices
• Property price guide
• Traffic cameras
• Travel news
• Speed cameras
• Rochdale expats
• Obituaries

Facing up to street of legend

18/ 7/2006

DID it really exist? Or was it the stuff of legend - a piece of Rochdale folklore handed down through the generations?

Why did it have such an unusual name and why couldn't you find it on a street map?

Those could have been the questions going through the mind of many a visitor to the town when they were told about 'Two-Faced Row'.

But anybody who ventured to Channing Street in search of the answers would find they were literally staring them in the face.

For Channing Street was 'Two-Faced Row' and a quick look round would swiftly solve the mystery of its nickname.

On a row of 20 stone-built houses there, built in 1874, on each door lintel were two beautifully carved stone faces, one on each side.

No two faces were alike, some solemn some smiling.

The faces began at number eight and ended at 46, all the houses bearing even numbers.

One resident said proudly: "You could go all over the town, even to the Town Hall itself and you would not find better carvings of faces than these."

Mr Ernest Trickett was one of the oldest residents on the street, the 79-year-old having lived there for 54 years.

He said: "It has always been called Two-Faced Row by us who live here."

Another long-standing resident, 74-year-old Mrs A Sharrocks, had moved into the street at the age of 13.

She revealed her mother had been 'scared silly' by the faces.