Fallowfield from field to housing estate in 40 years.

It is hard to grasp just how rural all of south Manchester once was.

Leaving the city and clearing Hulme or Cornbrook a traveller in 1840 would soon have been in fields and by and large it would have changed little from the early years of the 19th century.

And yet within 40 years the land was being parcelled up and handed over to developers who quickly began building houses, and cutting new roads which had been made possible by the provision of improved sanitation, piped water and gas, and given a further push with the establishment of new railway and later tram routes into the heart of the city making it possible to work in Manchester but live in Chorlton, Withington, Didsbury or Fallowfield.

First came the grand villas, then the large semi detached houses with pretentious sounding names, and finally the tall rows of terraced houses catering for the professional and clerical  people.  Lastly the six shillling a week*  two up two downs built for skilled workers and semi skilled.

Just what this meant can be seen in a series of maps that were published in Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs.W.C. Williamson in 1888.  The looks back on Fallowfield’s rural past which for many was by the 1880s a different place.

Pictures; from Sketches of Fallowfield
* Manchester Evening News September 20th 1901