The confusing story of New Wakefield Street

It was the railway wot did for New Wakefield Street.

New Wakefield Street, 2002

It’s that twisty thoroughfare that runs from Oxford Road alongside the railway viaduct and ends at Great Marlborough Street.

It might have been something more than it is, but that viaduct determined that only the south side would be developed, and the development would be a collection of mucky businesses.  

So, in 1911 these included a printers, a shirt maker, as well as an engineering works, a rubber tyre maker, a packing case firm and an art metal workshop alongside a company specializing in refining oil and a drysalters’ store.

All of which meant that it was a place you went for work, or to deliver or collect stuff, or as a cut through to Great Marlborough Street. 

But I don’t want to give the impression that it was ever destined for great things because even before the viaduct arrived the area was a collection of mean houses and smelly, noisy factories some of which occupied the appalling slum known as Little Ireland, which Dr. Kay and Frederick Engels described in detail.

And the maps can’t quite agree on our dismal thoroughfare.

Wakefield Street and Railway Street, 1851

The 1841 OS map shows it as a continuous street running west to east, crossing Great Marlborough Street before ending in what was then Oxford Street.  

The western half up to Great Marlborough Street was dominated on the south side by 17 terraced houses of which 15 were back-to-back properties, facing a Whipstring Manufacturer, beyond which there were what might have been more houses on the northern side.

It was these “northern” properties which the viaduct did for, cutting a swathe from London Road Railway Station out across Chorlton-on-Medlock and on towards Cornbrook and open country. 

And oddly it would appear this stretch is not recorded on the OS Map for 1849 which shows an engineering works straddling what should have been the bit of Wakefield Street which joined Oxford Street.

New Wakefield Street, 2017, looking west

All of which becomes even more confusing just two years later when Adshead’s map of Manchester shows the road reinstated but going under the name of Railway Street, a name it has lost by 1863 when it shows up in the directories as New Wakefield Street.

In the fullness of time, I will set about trawling the Rate Books in a laborious search for just when the name changes occurred.

Leaving me just to reflect that the workshop in my picture and the open space that was opposite have undergone their own changes, but that is another story or perhaps for a walk.

Location; Manchester

Picture; New Wakefield Street, 2002, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, in 1851, from Adshead map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and in 2017 courtesy of Andy Robertson