Looking down at the River Medlock..... and thinking of lost streets

 Now, I thought this was one of those straightforward stories.

The Medlock from Brancaster Road, 2021

Andy’s picture of the River Medlock, offered up another river story.  

It was taken from Brancaster Road, which connects Oxford Road with Princess Road.

But that was before I got lost in tracking Brancaster Road back into the past and coming to the conclusion that the road doesn’t have a past.

It looks to have been cut sometime between March and May 2017 during the redevelopment of the old BBC building which occupied the site between Oxford Road and Princess Street.

The BBC opened their flagship building in 1975, and its construction led to the elimination of a network of streets which had been home to rows of terraced houses, a school and church and a number of factories and warehouses including the Medlock Works which made rubber footwear.

The area in 1844

These survived the Blitz, were still there in 1950, but following a compulsory purchase order, in 1967 and following clearance of the site, building began in 1971.

By then most of these lost streets were nearing their 150th birthday.

Charles Street which is on the edge of the site looks to have been cut in 1822, and with a bit more research in the Rate Books we should be able to date the collection of streets which were cleared away.

By the 1850s Charles Street could boast five beer shops, one pub called the George IV, and 27 properties which were home to a varied group of people, from shop keepers to craftsmen and a screw manufacturer, and an engraver to a firm of calico printers.

Who did what on Charles Street, 1851

And yes by 1844, the Lass ‘ Gowrie was trading under its name.

In time I will go looking for the rest of the streets and search out the occupations of the residents.

Which leads me back to Andy’s picture. 

Had he stood on the same spot back in 2015 he would have been in the car park of the BBC, 65 years earlier and it would have that rubber footwear factory, and stretching back a century the site was a timber yard.

The Medlock goes dark, 2021

Which just leaves another picture of the Medlock as it disappears into the dark, thereby fulfilling my promise of a river story.

Location; Chorlton-upon-Medlock

Pictures; by the River Medlock in Chorlton-Upon- Medlock, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the same spot in 1844, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/