Lost in Spinningfields …….. with just the past as a guide

I must admit I do get confused in Spinningfields, or more accurately I get disorientated.

Looking down Hardman Street to Hardman Square, 2025

Even now almost two decades after the development began and following heaps of visits, I still lose my way and get a bit surprised at what I come across.

Looking up from Crown Square, 2025

But then most of the rebuilding happened while I was less focused on coming into town with the result that the place took off while I had my eyes elsewhere.

Added to which I remember it from the 1970s and early 80s when the area was best described as a place waiting for something to happen.

And that according to my Wikipedia began in 1997 when a property company purchased several buildings around the Rylands Library.  

The plan was to create a new business quarter and retail area which it dubbed a “Knightsbridge of the North”. *

Inevitably the business area was described as our equivalent of London’s Canary Wharf and by 2010 a report byLooking up  Manchester City Council noted that 16,000 people were employed in Spinningfields which accounted for over 35% of the City’s prime office space.**

And along with the offices, and a mix of restaurants has come residential towers and that footbridge across the river linking Spinningfields to New Bailey in Salford.

Hardman and Byrom Street, 1981

There will I guess be detractors, but I like the place, even given my ability to get confused.  It has a buzz and offers up plenty of photo opportunities but which do present challenges in matching my collection of old pictures with today.

Hardman and Byrom Street, 2024

So I looked out an image from the early 1980s of the end of anti-cruise missile demonstration.  It had begun in All Saints and snaked its way through the city before ending in Crown Square.  

The picture caught the last leg of the march as it made its way via Byrom Street, passing Hardman Street before terminating in the Square.

Standing at the corner of Hardman and Byrom Street recently it was hard to match that picture with the present.

Which I suppose explains my confusion.  It is a bit like staring through a very dirty window.  You can make out something but it is difficult to make sense of what you see.

That said the Spinningfields development has been so comprehensive that there is little left to remember, and you have to fasten on the remaining bits of the old street pattern. 

But that has a bonus because it always takes me back to explore the area in the past and that in particular in the 1840s and 50s when the area was a mix of back-to-back housing, as well as factories and markets.  Much of this was subsequently swept away with the development of warehouses, and offices which in its way was almost as comprehensive as its 21st century equivalent. ***

Hardman Street and surrounding streets, 1951

Which is where I came in, leaving me to ponder how as a resident of the area in 1851 I would have coped with wandering the streets a century later or today.

All I guess would be confusion.

Location; Spinningfields

Pictures; Hardman Street, 2025, and Hardman Street/Byrom Street in 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Hardman Street/Byrom Street, 2024, courtesy of Google Maps and Hardman Street and surrounding streets, 1951, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1951

 *Spinningfields, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinningfields

**Manchester City Council Report for Resolution, March 2010, https://www.manchester.gov.uk/egov_downloads/Spinningfields.pdf

***Spinningfields, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Spinningfields