Sugar Lane, an industry and a campaign

You won’t find Sugar Lane today.  It was off Withy Grove in town and has long since disappeared underneath the Arndale.  

But it was there by 1793 and was one of those typical little streets which provided a home for all sorts of small time businesses.  In the 1850s there was William Longmore the merchant, as well as a quill dresser, tailor, drysalter and twine manufacture and two pubs and a beer shop.  Fifty years later it was still a mix of small light industry specialising in brush and umbrella makers and a few warehouses which was still pretty much what was going on there just before its demolition in the early 1970s.

Looking at pictures of the lane I came across the Sugar Loaf Inn, which was a Wilson’s outlet but I guess must have once been something else given its double fronted shop appearance.  It is the sort of place I would have liked to visit, but never did and I am indebted to the excellent blog site Pubs of Manchester http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/ which is a fund of information on our city’s public houses.

All of which is a prelude to a post on the story of sugar in Manchester.   Now sugar is something we take for granted and yet it is one of those industries with a dark and political history.  It was of course linked to the slave trade, and with cotton and tobacco made great wealth for many at the expense of those taken from their homes and families and delivered to the Americas as slaves.

It would be easy to single out the plantation owners, along with those who directed the slave trade from the cities of Bristol, Liverpool and London as well as other European cities.  But indirectly there were many more who gained from what one 1749 pamphlet described as “this inexhaustible fund of wealth.” They included the ship builders, who built the ships that carried the “African trade” the cotton merchants who traded cotton and the factory owners in whose mills it was spun and woven as well those who ran the sugar refineries.

All the more surprising then that here in Manchester there was a major campaign to abolish the trade upon which so many people profited. The radical Thomas Walker who lived at Barlow Hall had persuaded well known abolitionist Thomas Clarkson in 1787 to preach at the city’s Collegiate Church.  It was a great success, as Clarkson remarked “when I went into the church it was so full that I could scarcely get to my place; for notice had been publically given.  I was surprised, also, to find a great crowd of black people standing in the pulpit.”


The success of that Sunday sermon was followed up by a petition to Parliament which the Manchester Ant Slavery Committee had already planned.  In all over 11,000 people called for an end to the African trade.  This amounted to one fifth of the city’s population reflecting working class opposition to the slave trade and the practical campaigning skills of Walker and the others.*

Which is a good point to mention the talk by Bill Williams at the Chorlton History Group meeting tomorrow.**

Now I had not given much thought to sugar  in Manchester but some people have and so I was more than pleased to come across the site Sugar Refiners and Sugarbakers at http://www.mawer.clara.net/intro.html and a whole section given over to the location of the industry here in the city from at least 1772 http://www.mawer.clara.net/loc-manch.html 

There were according to the site plenty of business's connected with sugar dotted across the city from Chester Street and New Wakefield Street south of the Rochdale Canal and up along Lower Mosley Street and Portland Street and fanning out north to Water Street, Garstone Street and on to Corporation Street, Cannon Street and Hanging Ditch which it has to be said is pretty close to Sugar Lane.

The earliest were operating in the 18th century but most are recorded from the late 1840s and seem to be grocers who sold sugar as  just one of their products.

One was John Fielding at 27 Withy Grove who in 1793 issued a trade token which on one side carried a crest and the words  God Grant Grace and around the rim, Manchester Promissory Half Penny and on the other side Grocer & Tea Dealer Payable at J.N Fielding's.  Such token were common at the time and reflected the absence of low domination coinage.  Another from Liverpool turned up in our own parish churchyard in 1980 and was also dated 1793.

Other high class grocers who dealt in sugar were Isaac Burgon in the late 1850s and early 60s, and John William forty years later.

Picture; Sugar Lane and the Sugar Loaf Inn  m 05929 1965 W. Highham, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*For a more detailed account of the life and political activity see my book Chorlton-cum-Hardy A Society Transformed which will be published in September.
**Manchester's Black People 1750-1926, Tuesday May 1st at Chorlton Good Neighbours, Wilbraham Road St Ninian's Church, Egerton Road South.  There will be a small charge of £2 to cover the cost of the room and refreshments.