From east to west, Standedge is crossed by five generations of road crossing, the earliest a Roman road from York to Chester and the latest the A62 road.
The Huddersfield Narrow Canal provided a heavily-locked Western connection to wool-weaving towns of the upper Colne valley (Golcar, Linthwaite, Slaithwaite, and Marsden) and across the Pennines to Saddleworth, Stalybridge and Manchester via Standedge Tunnel.