Andrew Simpson: Stories of ghost buildings …………..

Saturday 25 March 2023

Stories of ghost buildings …………..

I am looking out of the window of a long-vanished building.

The room with a view, 2023

Today all that is left are two sides which run along a section of The Ashton Canal.

To my rear is the New Islington metro stop and beyond the window in the distance is Great Ancoats Street.

And until recently I had no idea of its existence until I started exploring and writing about New Islington which is that area between the Ashton Canal to the south and the Rochdale Canal to the north.*

The Soho Iron Works, 1849

My building or at least the two walls were part of the Soho Iron Works which operated from this spot by at least 1810.

This I know because according to one source in that year Peel, Williams & Co acquired the works, which they ran along side their Phoenix Foundry in Shudehill.

“Pigot and Dean's New Directory of Manchester and Salford published in 1821 contains an entry for the firm, listing Peel and Williams as 'iron and brass founders, Phoenix Foundry, Shudehill; roller and spindle-makers, water-press and steam engine manufacturers, and gas-light erectors, Soho Foundry, Ancoats.'

In 1839 Peel, Williams and Peel began manufacturing railway locomotives, which were trialled on the Liverpool - Manchester line. By 1861 a local directory described the company as 'Peel, Williams and Peel, steam engine makers, iron and brass founders, engineers, millwrights, boiler, gasometer and hydraulic press makers, Soho Iron Works and Forge, Pollard st, Great Ancoats st.'

In the following year Peel, Williams and Peel was awarded a medal for their machines at the 1862 London Exhibition”.**

More ghost windows, 2023

The firm remained in business till May 1887 when the site was advertised for sale by auction, and in 1895 the building was occupied by the Union Alkali Company and described itself as a Chemical Works and were still there in 1928.

Intriguingly my Goad Fire Insurance map of 1928 references that part of the building along side the canal had been damaged in a fire in 1843, which followed on from an earlier fire in 1828 which had destroyed the older part of the foundry but spared the newer build.

Newspaper coverage of the 1828 fire included a letter which rebutted criticism of the conduct of the Norwich Union firemen who according to Thomas Bedford, Foreman of the millwrights “behaved themselves during the fire at Soho in a manner becoming their situation”.***

Just what they were accused of has yet to come to light.

But trawling the same paper there is one of those little bits of news which offers an insight into factory life and involved a court case where two apprentices were charged “with unwarrantable assault on a fellow -apprentice who having refused to fetch some water into the shop” was suspended in the air by a chain until he passed out and was rescued by workmen.****

"unwarrantable assault", 1828

I will go looking for the two accused who were John Broome and Jonathan Mills but I suspect history has long ago forgotten them if it ever bothered to notice them.

Still the romantic in me wonders if they too like me stared out of my window, which the historian in me concedes is pure tosh.

Location Pollard Street, New Islington

Pictures, relics of the Soho Works, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and map of the Soho Iron Works, 149 from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1989, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the site in 2023, courtesy of Google Maps.