Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ........... no 57 New Wakefield Street and the ghosts of Little Ireland

New Wakefield Street is the long twisting street which takes you away from  what was Little Ireland that byword for all that was bad about Manchester in the 1840s.

I have written about it as have shed loads of historians back to Frederick Engels and Dr Kay.

And I have to confess when I wandered down the street I was more interested in the graffiti that had been left on the wall of the railway viaduct and the impressive door way half way on your right.

In the distance is Imperial Buildings which for two and a more decades was home to Gaskell’s Baths which included a heated pool, and sauna which one journalist wrote “sweeps the filth of Manchester out of one’s pores” and were combined with treatments for obesity, rheumatism and sciatica.

They operated from the 1930s through to the 1950s and years later Mrs Gaskel could be found at the Galleon in south Manchester.

And that pretty much is that.

Location; Manchester

Picture; New Wakefield Street, 2004  from the collection of Andrew Simpson