Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 19 ........... Back College Land and the vanished Press House Steps

Back College Land, 2016

Now Back College Land looks like it should have some dark and unseemly past with more than a few dreadful tales.

Sadly if they exist I haven’t found them.  Instead there is just this very narrow street connecting Parsonage with College Land.

I think I can date it to sometime between 1793, and the following year when what looks like our street ran back from College Land towards some open land bordering Parsonage.

Just a half century on from that and it is a clearly defined place with even narrower thoroughfares leading off into closed courts on its southern side and a stables on the northern corner beside Parsonage.

I had hoped that it might have a listing on the street directories but it doesn’t which means its residents are pretty much lost to us.  Although Parsonage has offered up names which were on the 1851 census, Back College Land has as yet to offer up its people.

Back College Land and Press House Steps, 1851

Having said that the return for Parsonage did reveal the details of those who lived directly opposite our narrow street.

These were the residents of Press House Steps.  The census records that 122 people lived in just 33 properties bordering the river.*

They worked at a mix of jobs including a porter, some textile workers, and as milliner along with some hat makers and even a poultry dealer.

In the absence of our people from Back College Land I rather think those of Press House Steps will prove most interesting.

We shall see.

And if they prove to yield up some stories it will be a fitting reminder of the people and the place given that it had been swept away by 1900 when the the showrooms and work place of Orme and Sons, makers of Billiard Tables stood on the site.

Location; Manchester

*Press House Steps, Enu 1bb, 20-24, Market Street, Manchester, 1851

Pictures; Back College Land, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Press House Steps, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/