By 1472, Littleborough consisted of a chapel, a cluster of cottages, and an inn, and its inhabitants were broadly farmers who were spurred to weave wool by merchants who passed between the markets at Rochdale and Halifax.

By the mid-20th century, imports of cheaper foreign goods prompted the gradual deindustrialisation of Littleborough, but its commercial diversity allowed it to repel the ensuing economic depression experienced elsewhere in North West England.

Subsumed into the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale in 1974, Littleborough endures as a commuter town with a distinct community; its Civic Trust works to preserve and enhance its historic character, and societies exist to use the surrounding countryside for water-skiing, horse riding and other recreational activities.

[8] Evidence of human activity in the area, dating to at least the Neolithic period, exists in the form of ancient flint tool and arrowhead discoveries.

[4] Rochdale Museum hold an early Iron Age bracelet made of a shale from Kimmeridge in Dorset, which was found in 1929 on Flint Hill, east of Blackstone Edge.

Littleborough is supposed to have been the site of a small station along the Roman road that is routed from Mamucium (Manchester) to Eboracum (York) which skirts the town.

[9] Lying within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire since the early 12th century, Littleborough was a chapelry and component area of Hundersfield, an ancient township within the parish of Rochdale and Salford Hundred.

In Littleborough are the localities and suburbs of Calderbrook, Chelburn, Durn, Featherstall, Gale, Hollinworth, Laneside, Rake, Shore, Sladen, Smithy Bridge, Stansfield, Summit and Whitelees.