Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 94 Cotswold Street ...

It is easy to miss Cotswold Street, which is off Fairfield Street, runs under the old Altrincham and South Junction Railway and goes nowhere.

Cotswold Street, 2021

You can’t even use it to park up while waiting to meet someone off the train, anymore since it was closed off sometime around 2009.

Nor and this is the real irritant it does not show up on any street directories back into the 19th century, because long before it started its journey into obscurity its name was changed, not once but twice.

In 1894 it is listed on the OS map as Croft Street and a half century before that as Holbrook Street, neither of which place name was deemed worthy to be included  in any of the street directories.

Holbrook Street, 1849

The maps of the 1840s and 50s show Holbrook Street as a narrow road in which there 4 commercial businesses and eighteen residential properties, eight of which were back to backs, and some leading off into closed courts.

In time I will going looking for the inhabitants of those eighteen houses and might struck lucky in tracking down the people who lived in the closed courts on either side of Holbrook Street.

Cotswold Street, 2021

I suspect we will be looking at men, women and children who were drawn from a mix of skilled, and unskilled occupations, and were employed at the London Road Railway Station and the textile, dye and printing works which dominated the area.

And the key will be a name of a resident, because with that we can follow them up on the Rate Books, and census returns.

But for now, that is it.  

By 1950 what had been  Holbrook Street and was now Croft Street contained just eight buildings, seven of which backed on to an Engineering Works, while the opposite side contained just one property.

Today this short street is flanked with open spaces, but nature and the developer abhor a vacuum, and I guess with the steady development of Mayfield, there will soon be smart apartments and commercial businesses occupying this once densely packed place.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Holbrook Street, 1849, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Cotswold Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson