Mottram in Longdendale is a village in Tameside, Greater Manchester, England, 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Hadfield and 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Hyde. Within the historic county of Cheshire, it became part of Greater Manchester in 1974. Mottram in Longdendale was an ancient parish which covered an extensive area of north-east Cheshire until it was split into smaller parishes in the 19th century. It lies in Longdendale, the valley of the River Etherow, and is close to the border with Derbyshire.

In 1795, John Aikin described Mottram as follows:

Mottram is situated twelve miles from Manchester and seven from Stockport, on a high eminence one mile to the west of the Mersey, from which river the ground begins to rise; half the way being so steep as to make it difficult of access. It forms a long street well paved both in the town and to some distance on the roads. It contains 127 houses, which are for the most part built of a thick flag stone, and covered with a thick, heavy slate, of nearly the same quality, no other covering being able to endure the strong blasts of wind which occasionally occur. Of late, many of the houses in the skirts of the town are built with brick. About fifty years ago, the houses were few in number, and principally situated on top of the hill, adjoining the churchyard, where is an ancient cross, and at a small distance the parsonage house, now gone much to decay and occupied by working people. It is only of late years that the town has had any considerable increase, which has been chiefly at the bottom of the hill, but some latterly on the top...

— John Aikin, A Description of the Country from thirty to forty miles round Manchester (1795)

In the 18th century the River Etherow was known as the Mersey. The River Tame has been a border from the earliest times between the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia. The ancient parish was the most northerly in Cheshire.

Mottram came to prominence as a transport hub. It lies on two pack horse routes used to carry salt from Cheshire to South Yorkshire over the Pennines and carry lime for soil improvement from Chapel-en-le-Frith. It was on the stagecoach route between Manchester and Sheffield. Before the Industrial Revolution, Mottram and Ashton-under-Lyne had been the most significant towns in the area. The manor and manorial court house were in Mottram, but other towns eclipsed Mottram in size and importance. Mottram was active in the early stages of industrialisation, and there were significant cotton spinning mills in Wedneshough Green and the Treacle Street areas of Mottram Moor, and printing and dyeing works on the Etherow at Broadbottom which until recently was part of the parish.

The smaller early mills in Mottram became uneconomic and harder to run. Stalling industrialisation led to social conflict and hunger during 1812 Luddite riots that led to the smashing of labour-reducing machines. The Luddites secretly drilled on Wedneshough Green. In 1842 local Chartists met on the green, and planned the closure of Stalybridge factories in the Plug Riots. By 1860 the population had peaked.

The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway was built in the early 1840s, passing along Longdendale. Broadbottom railway station opened in 1842; it was in the township of Mottram, but at the foot of the hill, a mile south of the village centre. The station was called 'Mottram' between 1845 and 1884, then 'Mottram and Broadbottom' between 1884 and 1954, after which it reverted to just 'Broadbottom'.