This is County Street which is so unremarkable that it’s another of those narrow side streets not even worth a glance.
It is situated off Mount Street between Central Street and Lloyd Street, and goes nowhere.
It has none of the mysterious promise of other small side streets which might entice you in.
True it is narrow enough but it is also very short, ends in a dead end and has no twisty bits which make you wonder what is round the corner.
By 1900 it was just what you see now, although then it was called Chapel Street and ran into the back of the Memorial Hall and which is now a restaurant.
Go back just another fifty years and the street was indeed a more twisty stretch continuing all the way down to Coach Makers Entry which ran from Jackson’s Row to Lloyd Street.
And had you turned into it from Mount Street in 1851 it would have led to Brignall’s Dye Works and a Tannery before going off north and east taking in any properties and passing the backs of another six buildings before exiting out on Coach Makers Entry, where for good measure there was the Coach Makers Arms.
I can’t be sure when it was cut but it will date from after 1819, and indeed just fifteen years earlier this was just open land with a pond where the Albert Square Chop House now stands.
So it may not be much now but go back long enough and there was a lot more to that dead end, with plenty of stories just waiting to be uncovered.
Location, Manchester
Pictures; County Street, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the street in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
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| County Street, 2016 |
It has none of the mysterious promise of other small side streets which might entice you in.
True it is narrow enough but it is also very short, ends in a dead end and has no twisty bits which make you wonder what is round the corner.
By 1900 it was just what you see now, although then it was called Chapel Street and ran into the back of the Memorial Hall and which is now a restaurant.
Go back just another fifty years and the street was indeed a more twisty stretch continuing all the way down to Coach Makers Entry which ran from Jackson’s Row to Lloyd Street.
And had you turned into it from Mount Street in 1851 it would have led to Brignall’s Dye Works and a Tannery before going off north and east taking in any properties and passing the backs of another six buildings before exiting out on Coach Makers Entry, where for good measure there was the Coach Makers Arms.
 |
| The street in 1851 |
So it may not be much now but go back long enough and there was a lot more to that dead end, with plenty of stories just waiting to be uncovered.
Location, Manchester
Pictures; County Street, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the street in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
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