So long before the construction of motorways and airports wiped out some of our favourite buildings there was Corporation Street.
 |
| The synagogue on Halliwell Street, 1849 |
One of those buildings was the synagogue on Halliwell Street which had opened in 1825.
The inaugural stone had been laid the year before at a ceremony which had started with prayers at the “temporary place of worship on Long Millgate …. [after which] the reader and congregation walked in procession to Halliwell Street to perform the laying of the first stone of the intended new synagogue when very appropriate and impressive prayers, composed for the occasion were said by the reader, after which thirty persons sat down, at the Wilton Arms to an excellent dinner”.*
Just over a year later in the September the Manchester Guardian reported on the consecration of the new synagogue which it wrote “is in every respect suitable for the performance of divine worship”. *****
Sadly the Manchester Guardian didn’t comment on its closure or demolition but did give a detailed account of the new synagogue on Park Street Cheetham Hill Road on March 25th 1858.**
Halliwell Street on which the early synagogue was built was swept away with the coming of Corporation Street, but the 1851 census provides us with a very clear picture of its inhabitants, including Soloman Philips who was the appointed overseer for the synagogue, along with a Miss Levy who described herself as a Professor of Hebrew.
In all there were seventy four residents living on the street, twenty-one of whom were children under the age of 14. The seventy four had birth places which ranged from Manchester and Salford to Liverpool, Warsaw and Hamburg.
Their occupations were varied but erred on the side of skilled artisan, including watchmaker and milliner to a professor of Music and a veterinary surgeon alongside the more humble jobs of launderess, matchmaker and traveller along with the delightful “Ender and Mender”.
Mr. Philips had come from Warsaw, and his wife Sarah from Koosemer in Poland No pictures have survived of their home on Halliwell Street but it commanded an annual rent of £18 which translated into a weekly rent of six shillings which was above that of properties in the surrounding streets.
And it does appear that their house survived the destruction of the synagogue and part of the road it stood on because in 1861 Philip and Sarah are still here at number 9, which sometime during the decade before had been renumbered as no. 4.
Now that remanent is part of Balloon Street which has also been much truncated, but as Balloon Street it is a reminder of that 18th century pioneer of all things ballons.
This was James Sadler who according to my Annals of Manchester "ascended in his balloon on May 12th 1785 from a garden behind the Manchester Arms Inn Long Millgate, which was then a private house”***.
And not content with that seven days later “made his second balloon ascent, but on alighting was obliged to let it drive in the wind”.
 |
| Indigo Hotel, Todd Street, 2025 |
Location; Shudehill
Picture; the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Indigo Hotel, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*The Manchester Guardian, August 14th, 1824
** The Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1825
***The Manchester Guardian, March 26th, 1858
****Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885
***** Davies, Ethan, Manchester's first synagogue recognised with plaque in special ceremony, Manchester Evening News, July 13th, 2022, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchesters-first-synagogue-recognised-plaque-24477558
No comments:
Post a Comment