for conversion into an orphanage and Poor Law School operated by the Brothers of Charity, a Catholic institute from Ghent in Belgium. Buckley Hall Orphanage officially opened on 19 March 1888 with 28 Catholic boys in residence. Construction of Eclipse Mill at Buckley began in 1899. Geography Buckley lies along the northern edge of both Rochdale, and the Greater Manchester Urban Area, "upon an eminence of ground" at the foothills of the South Pennines. It is located at (53.6312°, -2.1421°), which is north-northeast of Manchester city centre and north-northwest of central London. The A58 road runs southeast-to-northwest along the southern edge of Buckley. The Buckley Brook runs southerly along Buckley's eastern fringe until it discharges into Hey Brook, a tributary of the River Roch. Buckley Brook is so named because it passes through Buckley. There is a mixture of suburbs, semi-rural and rural locations in Buckley—which has no formal boundary—and is fringed by Great Howarth (to the northeast), Low Hill and Smallbridge (to the east), Howarth Cross (to the southeast), Fieldhouse and Wardleworth (to the south), Cronkeyshaw and Foxholes (to the southwest), Nook Farm (to the west), Healey (to the north east), and Birchin Head and rural land (to the north). Foxholes and Fieldhouse have been documented as being a part of Buckley. Governance In the Early Middle Ages, Buckley was governed as a part of the Anglo-Saxon manor of Hundersfield in the Rochdale ecclesiastical parish and hundred of Salford. Following the Norman conquest of England, Buckley fell into Norman ownership, and was governed as a private estate consisting of "messuage and lands" held by the 'de Buckley' family. In 1576, Buckley was described as a "manor", still held by the Buckleys of Buckley, albeit under the overlordship of Sir John Byron, Jr. When Hundersfield was subdivided into townships, Buckley became part of Wardleworth township in the county of Lancashire; east of watercourse of Buckley Brook was Wardleworth's boundary with Wuerdle and Wardle. In 1825, well after the demise of the Buckleys of Buckley, part of Wardleworth was included in the area of the police commissioners who were tasked with the improvement of the encroaching market town of Rochdale. In 1872 the remaining area of Wardleworth became part of the Municipal Borough of Rochdale; Buckley became Rochdale's northeastern boundary with the Wardle Urban District in 1894. Local governance continued on this basis until after the Local Government Act 1972, when