Looking for a bit more of the past on Commercial Street

Now I was on Commercial Street yesterday with a collection of Andy’s pictures, and a  map looking for Mary Clarke who briefly lived in a cellar dwelling. 

Commercial Street, 2022

There wasn’t much I could find out about Mary Clarke, other than that briefly in 1853 she rented the cellar of number 8 Alpha Place.

 Her rent was just 1/6d which was almost half what the residents of the house were paying and hints that her accommodation was very basic.

 Alpha Place consisted of 10 back-to-back houses bounded to the south by Commercial Street and Jordan Street to the east, just a few minutes’ walk from Deansgate.

 The house vanished a long time ago and for decades the site was a car park but early in the new century a set of fences went which promised development.

Commercial Street, 1851

That development has yet to materialize as Andy’s pictures shows.

He was there this week wandering Commercial Street which is one of those twisty streets that was once densely populated with a mix of early 19^th century houses, small industrial units and textile mills.

 And it was at the point where Commercial Street runs back from Jordan Street where he took this picture.

 It neatly delivers that contrast between the old and the new.

 I can’t be sure when the building in front of us was constructed, but the footprint was occupied by the 1840s, and given that Alpha Place dates from a decade earlier I am guessing that the site had been developed by then.

So far I have yet to find a reference to Commercial Street for the mid-19^th century in the directories, but I will go back to the Rate Books and see if I can identify who lived or worked in it.

 The 1876 directory lists business on the street, none of which were located in our building which suggests that it was still in residential use and given the low status of the residents it was not worthy of an inclusion.

But by 1911 it was used by a Thomas Nuttal who was a fancy box maker.

 So a tad more research, which I might just get done before those fences come down.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Commercial Street, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1851 from Adshead's Manchester of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk

 *Commercial Street,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Commercial%20Street