Blackley is a suburban area of Manchester, England. Historically in Lancashire, it is approximately north of Manchester city centre, on the River Irk. History The hamlet of Blackley was mentioned in the Domesday Book. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon Blæclēah = "dark wood" or "dark clearing". In the 13th and 14th centuries Blackley was referred to as Blakeley or Blakelegh. By the Middle Ages, Blackley had become a park belonging to the lords of Manchester.' Its value in 1282 was recorded as £6 13s 4d, a sum approximately equivalent in buying power to £333,500 today. The lords of Manchester leased the land from time to time. In 1473, John Byron held the leases on Blackley village, Blackley field and Pillingworth fields at an annual rent of £33 6s 8d. The Byron family continued to hold the land until the beginning of the 17th century when Blackley was sold in parcels to a number of landowners. By the middle of the 17th century, Blackley was a rural village of just 107 inhabitants. There was gradual residential development in the 1930s to 1960s, where most farmland was built upon. Today, only pockets of the suburb are undeveloped green space, with farmland remaining close to the Manchester Ring Motorway. Blackley has an important history in the chemical industry, starting with the Borelle Dyeworks founded by Angel Raphael Louis Delaunay in 1785 and run by ICI, who expanded it as a research centre for chemicals and pharmaceuticals. There were several other dye and chemical works. Connolly's Ltd made telecommunication cabling, later becoming part of BICC. Governance Blackley, since 2010, has been part of the parliamentary constituency of Blackley and Broughton. The current Member of Parliament is Graham Stringer (Labour), who was first elected in 1997 for the predecessor constituency Manchester Blackley. The candidate of the Conservative Party came second in the general election of 2019, with 24.6% of the vote compared to Stringer's 61.9%. The suburb is split between the local government wards of Higher Blackley and Charlestown on Manchester City Council. The three councillors for both wards are members of the Labour Party. Economy During the 1930s, residential development started to take place in the formerly rural village to provide more homes for Manchester's growing population. It became an area with a mixture of housing: mainly privately owned homes for owner occupation and private renting. In 2014, Blackley appeared on a list