Now it is always a privilege when I get a guest writer to contribute to the blog and so I was pleased when Richard agreed to write about the work being undertaken to regenerate Angel Meadow that once notorious part of Manchester.
And I hope this will be just the first.
"The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy and most wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel Meadow. It lies off the Oldham Road, is full of cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps and in the very worst states of filth and darkness."
So wrote Angus Reach for The Morning Chronicle in 1849. However, sixty years earlier Angel Meadow was anything but; the area occupied by a burgeoning middle class of Manchester whose Georgian town houses commanded views of the beautiful Irk Valley with its Rolling Meadows and trout-filled river.
In 1788 St. Michael's & All Angels Church was built as the area prospered.
Six years earlier Richard Arkwright had constructed Simpson's Mill- Manchester's first steam-powered cotton mill across the road from the church (today the new Co-op HQ site); an invention which would help to transform not just Angel Meadow and the city, but the whole world as the Industrial Revolution took hold.
By the mid-19th century Angus Reach wasn't the only social commentator to discover that behind the new wealth and prestige of Cottonopolis lay a darker reality, described by Friedrich Engels as "a Hell on Earth" in his Conditions of the Working Classes in England & Ireland 1844.
In Angel Meadow the original Middle Class inhabitants had long since left for the new suburbs and cleaner air, replaced by the poorest migrant workers (many from Scotland and Ireland, fleeing the potato famines and land clearances) living out desperate existences, with life expectancy less than 27 yrs old.
The old elegant Georgian town houses were transformed into cheap lodging houses alongside squalid back-to-back terraces.
A Pauper's Burial Ground had been created adjacent to St. Michael's churchyard and within just 27 years nearly 40,000 bodies had been cast into a vast pit, covered with lime and then heavy flagstones to prevent the bones being stolen for fertiliser.
The demise of Angel Meadow had been compounded by the Leeds-Manchester train viaduct bringing smog and environmental disaster to accompany further aromas from the numerous tanneries, dyeworks and abattoirs located along the banks of the River Irk. Cholera particularly struck hard in Angel Meadow because of the poor sanitation of its residents.
The church graveyard was finally closed for burials in 1854, with approximately 3800 buried within its boundaries; neglected epitaphs which would be covered by moss and abandoned for the next 150 years.
The church itself stood as fortress to moral decline until 1935 as attendance dwindled (artist LS Lowry painted it many times) and the area was depopulated during post-war slum clearances.
And there the gravestones lay until the turn of the last Millennium when regeneration of the old red brick warehouses, alongside new apartments, brought residents back to Angel Meadow.
The Friends of Angel Meadow (FOAM) was set up in 2004 to campaign for the regeneration of St. Michael's Flags & Angel Meadow into a local park. Since then Lottery funding and other grants has seen improved paths, history boards, opening up of entrances and new seating.
FOAM members continue working to maintain the park as a community asset well as engaging in Local History research projects- a key element of its original constitution.
Many of the original St. Michael's church gravestones had been damaged or removed but there remain about 40, configured into a new seating area within the park.
But who were these people buried here, where had they come from and where did their descendants end up?
FOAM's "Who do you think they were?" project seeks to answer those questions. Working alongside the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society, members were guided in using both online and MCC archive resources; scraping back "all the moss which had grown over their names.”
The research revealed families such as the Thornhills who had migrated to Manchester from Cheshire. One descendant, Sir Thomas Thornhill Shann, (a true Manchester Man: from child cotton mill labourer to influential industrialist) would serve as Lord Mayor of Manchester between 1903-05, greeting King Edward VII on his visit to the city in 1904.
Yorkshire born, William Buck was a descendant of the Redmaynes of Westmorland (who included Henry VIII's wife, Katherine Parr) within their family tree.
Joseph Cowlishaw was descended from Sir John Claye (b.1440) knighted by Edward IV, during the War of the Roses.
Further antecedents had migrated to America including anti-slavery politician Cassius Marcellus Clay.
A descendant of African-slaves, Herman H. Clay, would name his own son after him in tribute. His son, Cassius Clay Jr (b.1942) would later convert to Islam and change his name to Muhammad Ali.
Heroes of the American Civil War and both World Wars, an Archbishop of a breakaway Catholic Church, a winning horse breeder of the Kentucky Derby, a three-time American Presidential election runner-up and just ordinary working men contributing to the economic vitality of Manchester during its heyday with the luck to make it out alive are just some of those who the project has already discovered.
FOAM received a commendation for the project from the Manchester Histories Festival in 2014 and continue to reveal stories.
Pictures, courtesy of FOAM
All the research and further information, including ways to get involved, can be viewed at the GENEALOGY section of the FOAM website: http://www.friends-of-angel-meadow.org/index.htm
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| Back in the 19th century |
"The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy and most wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel Meadow. It lies off the Oldham Road, is full of cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps and in the very worst states of filth and darkness."
So wrote Angus Reach for The Morning Chronicle in 1849. However, sixty years earlier Angel Meadow was anything but; the area occupied by a burgeoning middle class of Manchester whose Georgian town houses commanded views of the beautiful Irk Valley with its Rolling Meadows and trout-filled river.
In 1788 St. Michael's & All Angels Church was built as the area prospered.
Six years earlier Richard Arkwright had constructed Simpson's Mill- Manchester's first steam-powered cotton mill across the road from the church (today the new Co-op HQ site); an invention which would help to transform not just Angel Meadow and the city, but the whole world as the Industrial Revolution took hold.
By the mid-19th century Angus Reach wasn't the only social commentator to discover that behind the new wealth and prestige of Cottonopolis lay a darker reality, described by Friedrich Engels as "a Hell on Earth" in his Conditions of the Working Classes in England & Ireland 1844.
In Angel Meadow the original Middle Class inhabitants had long since left for the new suburbs and cleaner air, replaced by the poorest migrant workers (many from Scotland and Ireland, fleeing the potato famines and land clearances) living out desperate existences, with life expectancy less than 27 yrs old.
The old elegant Georgian town houses were transformed into cheap lodging houses alongside squalid back-to-back terraces.
.jpg) |
| Before regeneration, 1980s |
The demise of Angel Meadow had been compounded by the Leeds-Manchester train viaduct bringing smog and environmental disaster to accompany further aromas from the numerous tanneries, dyeworks and abattoirs located along the banks of the River Irk. Cholera particularly struck hard in Angel Meadow because of the poor sanitation of its residents.
The church graveyard was finally closed for burials in 1854, with approximately 3800 buried within its boundaries; neglected epitaphs which would be covered by moss and abandoned for the next 150 years.
.jpg) |
| After regeneration, 2005 |
And there the gravestones lay until the turn of the last Millennium when regeneration of the old red brick warehouses, alongside new apartments, brought residents back to Angel Meadow.
The Friends of Angel Meadow (FOAM) was set up in 2004 to campaign for the regeneration of St. Michael's Flags & Angel Meadow into a local park. Since then Lottery funding and other grants has seen improved paths, history boards, opening up of entrances and new seating.
 |
| Members of FOAM, 2009 |
Many of the original St. Michael's church gravestones had been damaged or removed but there remain about 40, configured into a new seating area within the park.
But who were these people buried here, where had they come from and where did their descendants end up?
FOAM's "Who do you think they were?" project seeks to answer those questions. Working alongside the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society, members were guided in using both online and MCC archive resources; scraping back "all the moss which had grown over their names.”
The research revealed families such as the Thornhills who had migrated to Manchester from Cheshire. One descendant, Sir Thomas Thornhill Shann, (a true Manchester Man: from child cotton mill labourer to influential industrialist) would serve as Lord Mayor of Manchester between 1903-05, greeting King Edward VII on his visit to the city in 1904.
.jpg) |
| Angel Meadow, 2005 |
Joseph Cowlishaw was descended from Sir John Claye (b.1440) knighted by Edward IV, during the War of the Roses.
Further antecedents had migrated to America including anti-slavery politician Cassius Marcellus Clay.
A descendant of African-slaves, Herman H. Clay, would name his own son after him in tribute. His son, Cassius Clay Jr (b.1942) would later convert to Islam and change his name to Muhammad Ali.
 |
| FOAM members 2005 |
FOAM received a commendation for the project from the Manchester Histories Festival in 2014 and continue to reveal stories.
Pictures, courtesy of FOAM
All the research and further information, including ways to get involved, can be viewed at the GENEALOGY section of the FOAM website: http://www.friends-of-angel-meadow.org/index.htm
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