Cheadle is an historic market town dating back to Anglo-Saxon times, with its own reference in the Domesday Book. It was (and still is, but not for administrative purposes) in the historic Staffordshire Hundred of Totmonslow; nowadays it is part of the Staffordshire Moorlands area. The High Street of Cheadle has many attractive old buildings and is little changed from how it looked in Victorian times, and for a small town has a bustling High Street with independent retailers and a fine market. Of particular interest in the town are the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches both of which are dedicated to St. Giles. The Catholic church, built 1841-6 at the expense of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was designed by Pugin who, in collaboration with Sir Charles Barry, also designed the rebuilt Houses of Parliament. The Catholic Church is one of the finest examples of its type in the Country, particularly for a small town such as Cheadle. The Anglican Church was totally rebuilt in 1837-9 to the design of J. P. Pritchett but incorporating fragments and furniture from the earlier church. There is also a strong Methodist tradition in Cheadle, and in the 19th century it was the various Methodist Chapels around the Cheadle area which taught many of the young boys who worked on the farms or in the Coal Mines to read and write. There is a large modern Methodist Church in the town. Cheadle has had a varied and eventful history. The town was mentioned in the Domesday Book and was a small and unimportant hamlet with a small population. The town grew steadily over the next few hundred years, with the development of industry and agriculture. The historic industries that the town has depended on have been Coal Mining, Agriculture, Brass making and the historic Copper industry in nearby Froghall and Oakamoor. The town and the nearby village of Upper Tean also had a textiles industry in tape weaving. Nowadays the old industry has passed into history and the new employers and industries are the large JCB factory, the several small industrial units on the site of the former New Haden Colliery and the nearby theme park of Alton Towers which employs a lot of people from the Cheadle area. More people now commute to the Potteries for work than in previous years. Cheadle did have a railway station which was originally opened by the Cheadle Railway Company (purchased by the North Staffordshire Railway) in the early part of the twentieth century, after years of petitioning for a connection. It was closed by British Rail in the 1960s for passenger traffic, and for freight traffic in the 1980s as the local sand and gravel quarries which used the station to transport their output to rail moved to road transport. One notable point of interest is that the stone which helped to construct the Thames Flood Barrier in London was quarried from around Cheadle and loaded on to trains at Cheadle station. More on Cheadle