Now this entrance looks as if it should go somewhere and back in 1851 it did.
This is Back Spear Street which is off Spear Street.
Spear Street is one of those streets that connects Hilton Street to Great Ancoats Street.
It is narrower than Oldham and Lever Streets which run parallel but it still offers up some interesting sights including a few of those new wall painting which are everywhere in the Northern Quarter.
And it has a mystery in that Back South Street seems to have moved.
On the 1849 and 51 maps it is directly opposite Faraday Street and contained seventeen properties along its length which ran off Spear Street and then took a right to run parallel with its name sake.
In time I will go looking for its residents, and that search might also reveal why what is now called Back Spear Street starts a little further north and still has an echo of that dog leg set up.
I must admit that at first this did confound me but Goads Fire Insurance map and the current street plan place it closer to Warwick Street than it was.
I don’t have an answer and I suspect the search might not prove doing.
So instead having featured the entrance to the old Back Spear Street and its rival I shall close with the building that stands beside our earlier one.
In 1851 this spot was listed as livery stables, from where a Mr William White ran a coach business.
Almost thirty years later it was the site of a glass manufacturer and by 1903 was specializing in the manufacture of millinery products.
I can’t date our building and so it will have to be a trawl of the rate books but it does post date 1851 and having been at the mercy of the fly poster it does now have one of those Northern Quarter paintings.
And that just leaves me with the mystery because if you follow the directories over the years Back Spear Street seems to where I first found it but that conflicts with our maps.
All very strange.
Which just leaves someone to come up with the answer.
Location; Manchester
Pictures, Spear Street up and down its length, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
 |
| What should be Back Spear Street, 2016 |
Spear Street is one of those streets that connects Hilton Street to Great Ancoats Street.
It is narrower than Oldham and Lever Streets which run parallel but it still offers up some interesting sights including a few of those new wall painting which are everywhere in the Northern Quarter.
And it has a mystery in that Back South Street seems to have moved.
On the 1849 and 51 maps it is directly opposite Faraday Street and contained seventeen properties along its length which ran off Spear Street and then took a right to run parallel with its name sake.
In time I will go looking for its residents, and that search might also reveal why what is now called Back Spear Street starts a little further north and still has an echo of that dog leg set up.
 |
| Back Spear Street, 2016 |
I don’t have an answer and I suspect the search might not prove doing.
So instead having featured the entrance to the old Back Spear Street and its rival I shall close with the building that stands beside our earlier one.
In 1851 this spot was listed as livery stables, from where a Mr William White ran a coach business.
Almost thirty years later it was the site of a glass manufacturer and by 1903 was specializing in the manufacture of millinery products.
 |
| The building beside the old street entrance, 2016 |
And that just leaves me with the mystery because if you follow the directories over the years Back Spear Street seems to where I first found it but that conflicts with our maps.
All very strange.
Which just leaves someone to come up with the answer.
Location; Manchester
Pictures, Spear Street up and down its length, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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