Wilmott Street …… just waiting for something to happen

Walk along Wilmott Street today and you know it is waiting for something to happen.

Walking the street, 2021

The stretch from the old gas works down to the Mancunian Way is pretty much just open space on either side.

But great chunks of it are already blocked off with builder’s boards offering up artists impressions of the new developments which will arise from the waste ground.

And when these have finally come to be I suspect Wilmott Street will once again reach a density of living which it did back in 1849, when it and the streets off were full of back to back properties, some of which were situated in closed courts.

From car parks to high rise, 2021

So, for those living in Jones’s Court, access was off Wilmott Street by a narrow passage which ran along side a coal yard, while to reach Pomona Square, you had to make your way along an even narrower path.

It could hardly be described “as a place with a view”, added to which there was the  noise and smells during the day from the gas works, and the nearby textile mills.

Fifty or so years later, while the closed courts had vanished, we could add a rubber works and foundry to the industrial landscape, making it no less a desirable place to pass your days.

1913

But by the middle of the last century much of the housing had gone, either by council clearance programmes or German bombs.  

I suspect it was the Council, given that the rubber factory and assorted engineering metal and prints works were still there.

That said some at least of the housing appear to have gone before the Great War.

Later I will pick a section of the street and trawl the census returns and rate books to bring out of the shadows some of the people who lived and worked here.

The future, 2021

But for now I will leave you with Andy’s pictures, taken on a day when he slid out of the cultural hub of First Street and wandered down on to Wilmott Street, to ponder on how already the street is dominated by those new developments.

Location; Wilmott Street

Pictures; urban wasteland with the promise to come, Wilmott Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and George Street, Wilmott Street, Irving Street and Newcastle Street, 1913, J Jackson, m26069, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass