Now, it has become quite popular to take a house and tell its story over time.
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| St Andrew's Square, 1849 |
Long before a certain television series did just that with a property in Liverpool, I had done the same for our house in Chorlton, along with the two I grew up in, in south east London, and the home of our Josh and Polly who live in Leicester.
And over the years I have dipped into the history of heaps of houses, including Homer Street and Coronation Square, both of which were in Ancoats and which were developed in the late 1830s.
Back then the area was just beginning to change from what one account described as a place “of fields [where] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” *
Within a generation the fields had been covered with mills, factories, foundries and dye works along with mean terraced housing and the Medlock began its long association with filth and pollution.
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| The area, 1819 |
And so to the challenge laid down by Bob and Del Amato to find out about what was there on the site of what is now their business. **
The warehouse of Amato Food Products stands on what was once a row of fourteen terraced houses which faced St Andrew’s Church.
I can’t be exactly sure when the square was developed, but the church was opened in 1831 but by 1839 the properties show up in the rate books.
Eighteen years earlier according to Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.
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| St Andrew's Square, no 2 at the bottom, 2021 |
But the 14 properties along the southern side of the square were a cut above their neighbours .
The houses consisted of five rooms and they commanded a weekly rent of just over 5 shillings, which is higher than the surrounding streets.
And many of the residents were drawn from the skilled working class, including a railway clerk, a tailor, a dressmaker and a bookkeeper, along with a salesmen, painter and book keeper.
Their origins were as varied as their occupations with a fair few having come from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Lakes, with others from Cheshire as well as Salford.
I could have picked any of the 14 homes but ended choosing no. 2 St Andrew’s Square for no other reason than it was the first in the row as entered the square from St Andrew’s Street.
Today it is the western end of the Amato warehouse, but in 1851 it was home to Mr. and Mrs. Cruickshank, and their five children, Elizabeth, May, Emma William and James.
Mr. Cruickshank was 43 years old, had been born in Manchester and gave his occupation as a Miller. His wife Hannah was three years younger and was from Salford. Three of the children were born in Chorlton on Medlock and the youngest in Oldham, and despite the fact that they ranged in age from 20 down to 13, only William who 15 is listed as working.
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| Looking east along the square, 2021 |
I doubt that any of them had attended the school at the other end of the square but certainly some of the children from the other houses will have done.
The school appeared in an earlier blog story but deserves to be revisited.***
What is interesting is that the square does not appear in the street directories until the beginning of this century, by which time our house was occupied by Samuel Boole who was a labourer for Manchester Corporation, his wife Ethel, their five children and Ethel’s mother.
Like many families of the period, they appear to have moved across the city, and we can track their movement by where their children were born. The eldest of the children was born in Chorlton-on Medlock and the rest in Ancoats.
In time I shall dig deeper into the stories of both the Boole family and the Cruickshank’s, as well the occupants of the other thirteen houses.
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| Inside the warehouse, 2021 |
All of which just leaves me to ponder on what remains may lie below the warehouse.
Location; Ancoats
Pictures; St Andrew’s Square, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, and St Andrew’s Square in 1849, OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49, and the area in 1919 from Johnson's map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/
*Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931
** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/
***Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/looking-for-lost-one-street-over-time_7.html
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