Now, something like 39 years ago I did the Ancoats Trail, which had been designed by Jaqueline Roberts as a guide to what were left of our late 18th and early 19th century buildings.
In 1815 Ancoats had more cotton mills and the largest number of households than any of the other rating districts in the city.
The population, swelled by large numbers of immigrants from Ireland as well as the surrounding area, rose from 11,039 in 1801 to 53,737 by 1861.
It was a crowded and teeming place, which visitors to Manchester either admired or like the Prussian, Johann Georg May thought was a “scene of melancholy.”
A view endorsed by another foreign visitor, who “saw the forest of chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and smoke, forming an inky canopy which seemed to embrace and involve the whole place ......It is essentially a place of business, where pleasure is unknown as a pursuit, and scarcely rank as secondary considerations.
Every person who passes you in the street has the look of thought and the step of haste”
Richard Buxton who lived amongst the grime, smoke and melancholy was far more generous when he wrote, “The operative who lives in a large manufacturing town, sees plenty of the handyworks of his fellow-men in the giant steam-engine, the ingenious mule, which rivals the gossamer in spinning threads, the never-tiring power loom, and the countless other contrivances of mechanical skill which have resulted from the fertile brain of man.”
But this paean to industrial Manchester only serves to act as a contrast to the wonders of flowering plants and open fields. The worker might see “the triumphs of science and art but little of the works of nature. This renders him an intelligent, but to a certain extent, an artificial man.”
It is no wonder I suppose that he should hold to the “many delightful walks, by pleasant streams through green woods.” All the more so when faced not only with the dirty industrial waterways, and satanic mills but awful hovels which were home to so many in Ancoats.
Speculators had followed the industrialist in laying out streets and building houses in the area and with no regulations much of the housing was of the worst type.
So here, are the first seven which featured in the publication. Some like the three one up one down cottages on Bradley Street, survived after decades of neglect and were converted into offices.
They are the last remaining one up one down houses in Manchester. And were redeveloped in the late 90s and nothing is left of the original interior.
Similar houses which have been excavated at Greengate in Salford opposite St Mary’s in Manchester reveal the small shoddy nature of this type of house.
They had room sizes of less than 3.5 m square with foundations of one brick depth.
Each ground floor room had a fireplace but there was no sign of floor covering nor a staircase and it is likely that access to the upper floor was by a wooden ladder.
Others on the list were grander, like the row on Lever Street, which have also survived.
They were built in the 1790s and were constructed on three floors with cellars and were occupied by artisan families. The uppermost floor would have been used as workshops and some of these surviving on Liverpool Road still have the longer and wider windows designed to admit the maximum amount of daylight.
So, armed with the trail I shall be off on a day when the rain is not falling like stair rods and complete part one of the trip back into the city’s past.
Watch this space.
Location; Ancoats
Pictures; one up one down cottages in Bradley Street, 1983 from the Early Manchester Dwellings Group Bradley Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and pages from the Ancoats Trail, 1984
*The Ancoats Trail, Jaqueline Roberts, Education Service, Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry
References
Hartwell Clare, Manchester2001 Penguin page273
May Johann Georg, quoted in Visitors to Manchester complied by L D Bradshw Neil Richardson Manchester 1987 page 25
Cooke Taylor William, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire quoted in Visitors to Manchester page 36
Buxton R A page xii
Nevell Michael, Manchester the Hidden History The History Press page 149
 |
| The Ancoats Trail, 1984 |
The population, swelled by large numbers of immigrants from Ireland as well as the surrounding area, rose from 11,039 in 1801 to 53,737 by 1861.
It was a crowded and teeming place, which visitors to Manchester either admired or like the Prussian, Johann Georg May thought was a “scene of melancholy.”
A view endorsed by another foreign visitor, who “saw the forest of chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and smoke, forming an inky canopy which seemed to embrace and involve the whole place ......It is essentially a place of business, where pleasure is unknown as a pursuit, and scarcely rank as secondary considerations.
 |
| The Bradley Street three, 1983 |
Richard Buxton who lived amongst the grime, smoke and melancholy was far more generous when he wrote, “The operative who lives in a large manufacturing town, sees plenty of the handyworks of his fellow-men in the giant steam-engine, the ingenious mule, which rivals the gossamer in spinning threads, the never-tiring power loom, and the countless other contrivances of mechanical skill which have resulted from the fertile brain of man.”
 |
| Bradley Street, 2016 |
Speculators had followed the industrialist in laying out streets and building houses in the area and with no regulations much of the housing was of the worst type.
So here, are the first seven which featured in the publication. Some like the three one up one down cottages on Bradley Street, survived after decades of neglect and were converted into offices.
They are the last remaining one up one down houses in Manchester. And were redeveloped in the late 90s and nothing is left of the original interior.
 |
| The Trail, part 1 |
Similar houses which have been excavated at Greengate in Salford opposite St Mary’s in Manchester reveal the small shoddy nature of this type of house.
They had room sizes of less than 3.5 m square with foundations of one brick depth.
 |
| Walking the Trail |
Others on the list were grander, like the row on Lever Street, which have also survived.
They were built in the 1790s and were constructed on three floors with cellars and were occupied by artisan families. The uppermost floor would have been used as workshops and some of these surviving on Liverpool Road still have the longer and wider windows designed to admit the maximum amount of daylight.
So, armed with the trail I shall be off on a day when the rain is not falling like stair rods and complete part one of the trip back into the city’s past.
Watch this space.
Location; Ancoats
Pictures; one up one down cottages in Bradley Street, 1983 from the Early Manchester Dwellings Group Bradley Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and pages from the Ancoats Trail, 1984
*The Ancoats Trail, Jaqueline Roberts, Education Service, Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Industry
References
Hartwell Clare, Manchester2001 Penguin page273
May Johann Georg, quoted in Visitors to Manchester complied by L D Bradshw Neil Richardson Manchester 1987 page 25
Cooke Taylor William, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire quoted in Visitors to Manchester page 36
Buxton R A page xii
Nevell Michael, Manchester the Hidden History The History Press page 149
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