Castlefield the story Part Three ................. more stories of houses

The existing street plans still show a warren of small streets off Liverpool Road, which were filled with similar small houses to those of Southern Street. Some disappeared when the station complex was enlarged in the 1850s.

But to get an idea of the compact nature of these streets, you just have to visit the area behind Deansgate Station. In a small area which still keeps the original place names of Commercial Street, Jordan Street and Omgea Place, the 1853 Sanitary report records two hundred people living there in what is now a small car park. It was still possible in the mid 1980s to see the levelled walls of the buildings at ground level.

Chorlton-upon-Medlock which also neighbours Castlefield and includes Little Ireland, had a population in 1851 of 35,546 squeezed into 6,951 houses.
The high numbers of people who were buried in the St John’s graveyard can further attest this density of living in Castlefield. Between 1848-51 the burial records show 457 deaths, which is matched by an inscription, which reports that 22,000 lie in the park. Similar data comes from Angel Meadow where 44,000 people were buried between 1789-1816.

The area developed quickly. In the 1790s there are a few houses centred around Bridgewater Street and Deansgate and apart from a few factories most of the land was open fields. By 1831 the area has been completely built up. Residential and commercial properties spread out across and down Liverpool Road, which now ran all the way down to Water Street.

This mirrors what was going on across the city in the same period. What had been a small town of about 9,000 people in 1700 had become a city of 90,000 by 1800, reaching 135,000 by 1821 and 252,000 twenty years later. Chorlton-upon-Medlock which covers the area along Oxford Road from All Saints up towards Deansgate grew as quickly. Here the population went up from 20,569 to 35,546 between 1831-51.

Much of the population growth was from outside the City with people seeking work in the new factories. The census for 1851 shows that the John Street complex had 118 people living in 14 back to back houses with 37% listed as being born in Ireland. Not far from Castlefield was Little Ireland. Of course it can be misleading to draw generalisations from such limited data. In 1851 in Southern Street only one of the 81 people listed came from Ireland, and 51 were born in Manchester. (60%)

Picture: Southern Street, looking south along Southern Street, showing the narrowness of the road, from the collection of Andrew Simpson