Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 95 Royton Street ...

 You won’t find Royton Street.

Spinningfields, 2020

It vanished long ago under the Spinneyfields development but for a century and more it lay between Hardman Street and Cumberland Street.

Not that you would have found it that easily, because it was one of those closed streets shut off by two narrow passages which gave off to more closed courts.  The curious or those in the know could access it by one of two streets which ran between Hardman and Cumberland Streets of which only one had been given a name.

Royton Street, 1849

To add to its obscurity, it failed to get into any of the street directories during the 19th century, but it did boast the St Mary’s Roman Catholic Chapel School.

But in 1851 it was home to 399 people who lived in 39 houses, nine of which were one roomed back-to-back properties, and the remainder, consisted of four rooms with weekly rents ranging from 1 shilling [5p] to 5s [25p].

Their occupations included textile workers, laboures, retired soldiers, a sailor, a French polisher and an architect’s assistant.  Added to these there were a number of skilled artisans including a group of “shoe makers” a tailor, a “Gold Beater” and “Cabinet maker”.

The east side of Royton Street, circa 1880-1900

During the course of the 19th century some of houses were replaced by industrial units, including two steam printers and a paper warehouse, so that by 1951, the western side of the street had been swallowed up by another printing press and all the houses along the entire length of the street had gone.

I can’t be sure when Royton Street was cut, but the first reference to it in the Rate Books is 1828, although there is a suggestion that it might have already been there by 1819.

It has yet to pass out of living memory and I am sure I will have known it, but with the passage of over 53 years these narrow streets off the beaten track were places you found by accident and didn’t always return to.

Today the closest I think the inquisitive will get to walking its length will be along the Avenue which runs down from Deansgate, past Spinningfields Square finishing in front of Manchester Crown Court.

The Avenue, 2020

On a pleasant day the shops, bars and restaurants which flank the Avenue on both sides attract plenty of passersby but perhaps not as many as the developers expected.  

Still the swish retail outlets and the swanky eating places are a long way from the Royton Street of the 1850s.

But I am drawn to that earlier place, partly because of the wealth of information about its inhabitants which shed light on how we lived 170 years ago in this part of the city, but also because there is a personal link.  

It is not me, but a Facebook friend whose family were on Royton Street from at least 1851 for two decades, and continued to live in the area up into the middle of the last century.

Royton Street, 1951

Alan Jennings who introduced me to his ancestors has written a vivid account of their lives, and in particular those who served during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars through to the Great War, and Alan’s own service with the Colours.

Now that is the story of personal history I like.

Location; Manchester

Pictures;  Hardman Street, and the Avenue, 2020, from  the collection of Andrew Simpson and Royton Street in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49, and Royton Street circa 1880-1900 from Goad's Fire Insurance maps, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/and Royton Street 1951, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford