Failsworth, a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, Greater Manchester, England, lies 3.7 miles (6.0 km) north-east of Manchester city centre and 2.9 miles (4.7 km) south-west of Oldham. The orbital M60 motorway skirts it to the east. The population at the 2011 census was 20,680. Historically in Lancashire, Failsworth until the 19th century was a farming township linked ecclesiastically with Manchester. Locals upped their farming income with domestic hand-loom weaving. The humid climate and availability of labour and coal led to mass weaving of textiles, as a Lancashire Mill Town (with redbrick cotton mills). A central landmark is the Failsworth Pole. Daisy Nook is a public country park on the southern boundary with Droylsden.

Failsworth derives from the Old English fegels and worth, probably meaning an "enclosure with a special kind of fence".

Early settlement rested on a road that runs today between Manchester and Yorkshire. This Roman secondary road formed part of a network from Manchester up north, probably to Tadcaster near York. The section that ran through Failsworth is still known as Roman Road. It was built above marshland and laid on brushwood with a hard surface. Roman Road has also been known as "Street", a Saxon term meaning "metalled road", indicating that it was also used that later period.

Early sources suggest the area was occupied in Saxon times. The small hamlet of scattered dwellings made of rough local stone, mud and clay with thatched roofs, may have been stood on ground higher than the surrounding marshland. Daily life would have centred on animal husbandry and agriculture.

Unmentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, Failsworth appears in a record of 1212 as Fayleswrthe, a settlement was documented as a thegnage estate or manor comprising four oxgangs of land. Two oxgangs at an annual rate of 4 shillings were payable by the tenant, Gilbert de Notton, to Adam de Prestwich, who in turn paid tax to King John. The other two oxgangs were held by the Lord of Manchester as part of his fee simple. The Byron family came to acquire the whole township in the mid-13th century. Apart from a small estate held by Cockersand Abbey, Failsworth passed to the Chetham family and was then sold on to smaller holders.

By 1663, 50 households were registered. Life centred on natural resources, agriculture and stock farming, with many were employed as labourers to work the land, though tradesmen such as a tailor, a felt maker, a shoemaker, a joiner and a weaver supported them. The earliest record of a place of worship is Dob Lane Chapel, dating from 1698.

In 1774, the 242 Failsworth households contained some 1.400 inhabitants, of whom a high proportion were involved in cloth manufacture. Development of the English textile trade was backed by important legislation between 1500 and 1760: a number of acts were passed to encourage it by the compulsory growing of flax. Grants were made to flax growers and duties levied on foreign imports, though Manchester's extensive linen trade used yarn imported from Holland and Ireland.

In 1914 the regular Daisy Nook Easter Fair ceased with the outbreak of the First World War, but resumed in 1920. On 8 June 2007, a 1946 work by L. S. Lowry entitled "Good Friday, Daisy Nook" sold for £3,772,000, then the highest bid ever paid for one of his paintings. Another painting by Lowry from 1953, "Fun Fair at Daisy Nook", sold for £3.4 million in 2011.