Looking for the lost and hidden bits of Spinningfields

I have been reflecting on how that place between Deansgate and the River remade itself as Spinningfields.

Hardman Street 2025

To be fair it has had many remakes.  I knew it in the 1970s and 80s as an area waiting for something to happen with tired looking buildings.  Go back another twenty years and the scars of the last war were all too visible from what the 1951 OS map recorded as “Ruins” and open spaces.

Hardman Street and Byrom Streets, 1951

Slide back a century and a walk down Hardman Street from Deansgate would have offered up a busy densely populated network of streets, closed courts and small industrial units.  

On the corner of Byrom Street and Hardman Street stood William Murray’s livery stables which described itself as the “Horse Bazaar” while close by were Ashley’s Silk Mill, Hampson’s Hat Factory and Thompson’s Soda Water Works.

In between were heaps of houses occupied by families who worked in a wide range of trades, plenty of unskilled labourers as well as washerwomen and street hawkers.

To these we can add a significant number of “beer sellers”, brewing and selling the stuff from their own front rooms.  So, on Byrom Street there were three listed amongst a total of 23 properties, while Hardman Street boasted two beer houses nestling between the Golden Eagle, Victoria, and Hope Pole Taverns which together made up just twenty-five households.

Hardman Street and Byrom Streets, 1851

And to gain some perspective you just need to walk down those two streets today which are narrow and short to get an idea of how close all these drinking establishments were and how many people they served, because each of these streets led off into back streets, alleys and closed courts.

All of which is a direct contrast to how the area has turned out, with its tall glass and steel towers its bars, offices, and restaurants.

Each time I go there I have to think hard to recall the place I knew, and once again I am forced back on the collection of pictures, I took over four decades ago.

Hardman Street and Byrom Streets, 2025

Google maps shows the bright new Spinningfields while in 1981 the same spot was dominated by what had been “The Hospital for Consumption and Disease of the Throat” which still had inscribed above one door “Tuberculosis Office”.

It is reminder of a grim time when infectious diseases like TB were rife, and treatment was pretty much reliant on segregation, rest and fresh air.

To this day I am still horrified by the practice of spitting in the street which seems to be on the increase and which for my generation and earlier generations ran counter to public health campaigns still evidenced in old signs which can be found on some public places and vintage trains, buses and trams.

I had quite forgotten that hospital but a series of pictures I took in 1981 jogged my memory and took me back to that corner of Hardman and Byrom Street before today.

Hardman Street from Crown Square

It was a protest march which terminated like so many in Crown Square and had taken us from All Saints up Oxford Road to Quay Street and Byrom Street.

That said it took a bit of time to match the 1981 picture with the present spot.

But I did and along the way thought again about how places change.

Location; Spinneyfields

Pictures; Hardman and Byrom Street, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and again in 2025, courtesy of Google maps, and the area in 1951 from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1851 and in 1849 from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

Hardman and Byrom Streets, 1981