Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 25 Ashley Lane ............. now even the name is lost

Now Richard’s picture of Aspin Lane as it runs under the railway viaduct is as atmospheric as you could get.

Aspin Lane, 2016

The wet stone setts, the lonely lane framed by that viaduct takes you back a century or more to another age when this bit of Angel Meadow was one of those places where “poverty busied itself.”

Like Richard I have spent many years wandering the streets around the old St Michael’s Rec and burial ground.  In my case it came after meeting the historian Jacqueline Roberts, reading her book on the area and using some of her material in classes I taught on working class housing in the 19th century.*

And it was she who first introduced me to the idea of using census material to engage students in exploring social history.  The unit focused on the streets around Irk Street, John Street and Back Ashley Lane in the 1851.

Ashley Lane, 1849

Here in just 16 houses lived 120 people, making their living from a variety of occupations from factory work, to cap makers, porters and that lowest of jobs, a brush maker.

Some like Mr and Mrs Shaw and their three children lived in the cellar of number 3 Back Irk Street, while round the corner at nu 3 John Street the eight members of the Riley family were squeezed into one of its two rooms.

So Richard’s photograph drew me in but as hard as I looked there was no Aspin Lane on the old maps, but that was simply because Aspin Lane was indeed Ashley Lane and an unknown photographer had got there before us and in 1910 took a picture from almost the same spot.

Ashley Lane, 1910

But all stories deserve a second look.

And after my old facebook friend Bill questioned me on my comment on the status of brushmakers I went looking for more on them. 

And the Working Class Movement Library offered some interesting detail, leading me to correct my assumption this was a precarious and low status occupation.**

Location; Angel Meadow

Pictures; Aspin Lane, 2016 from the collection of Richard Hector- Jones, and in 1910, m00218, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 142-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Roberts, Jacqueline, Working Class Housing in Nineteenth-century Manchester: The Example of John Street, Irk Town, 1826-1936 1983

***Brushmakers, Working Class Movement Library, https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/brushmakers/

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 23 .............. Mincing Street ..... not even a street name

Now Mincing Street seems so insignificant that even the Corporation hasn’t bothered to award it a street sign.

Mincing Street, 1899

It runs from Aspin Lane to the junction of Corporation Street and Dantzic Street and at present is surrounded on both sides by open land.  This land and the street itself exists as somewhere to park your car which I suppose is why it doesn’t any more even qualify for that street name.

So of all our forgotten and lost streets it does really merit going to the top of list.

Of course once it was much more.  In the middle of the 19th century there were twenty-five properties running along the two side of the street and there was also access to a closed court of back to houses which was called simply Court No 1.

And if that was not enough at the western end of the street gave access to Holden Street which contained another seventeen houses some of which were back to back and some which faced a series of closed courts which didn’t even get titles.

Nelson Street, 1851

It took me a little time to track Mincing Street down because back in the 1850s it was called Nelson Street and continued east under the railway viaduct to terminate at the river Irk.

Why its name was changed is unclear given that just a little to the north there is still a Little Nelson Street which might have been a candidate for a name change,

But names changes were at some point clearly in the wind given that Dantzic Street was in 1949 known as New Blakeley Street and two years later was Charter Street while today what is Aspin Lane was Ashley Lane.

I suspect that it wil not be long before those car parks are built on and given the size of the individual properties that have already gone up in the surrounding streets the density of occupation may not be so different from what it had been in 1851.

All of which just leaves me to thank Antony Mills for suggesting Mincing Street and providing me with three photographs of Little Nelson Street.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Mincing Street with a family on step, 1899, C.H. Godfrey, m03380, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Nelson Street in 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

In search of the sellers of sleep on Angel Street …..

Now yesterday I was on Angel Street exploring the stories behind the doors of the lodging houses, of which there were many in the surrounding area.

44 Angel Street, 1897, 

Number 44 Angel Street was typical.  It was run by Mr. Patrick Comer.  On the night of March 31st 1901 when the census was taken it was home to thirty two men ranging from William Paxton aged 22 from Wigan who described himself as a street hawker to Thomas Reed from Ireland who at 74 was still working as a labourer.

All of them earned their living from manual work or the slightly more precarious occupation of selling on the streets.

Most were single although a few were widowers and while the largest single group had been born here there were those from the rest of Lancashire, as well as Ireland Scotland and even London.

I doubt their stories will ever be told, and even after combing all the official records for the 32 the results will be fragmentary and much of their lives will remain in the shadows.

And so following up on comments from John Anthony Hewitt and Geoff Ashworth, who were both interested in the owners and managers of these places who were what the French called “sellers of sleep".

Inside 44 Angel Street, 1897

Not that the owner would have been over bothered at the use put to his properties.  In the case of number 44 this was someone listed as Allanson.  He or she first appears in the Rate Books owning numbers 44, 42, and 38, but by 1898 the empire had shrunk to just 44.

On Angel Street, 1900

A search of the records has so far not thrown up any candidates that I can be confident as being the owner.

That said I was a little more successful with the man I take to be the manager.  This was Patrick Comer who may be one of the men staring out at us from the photograph dated 1898.  He seems an interesting character as he is also listed as occupying both numbers 44 and 40.

And yet the census returns for 1901 offer no reference to Mr. Comer.  Of course he had moved on between 1891 when he appears in the Rate Books and 1901 when is absent from the census.

Or perhaps he was still officially the occupier doffing up 7/6d a week for the rent on 44 and 5/- for number 40, and then collecting  a sub rent from those actually living in the two houses.

So more searching and more speculation.

Location; Angel Street

Pictures; Angel Street, 1900, m85543 44 Angel Street, 1897, m08360, 44 Angel Street 1898, m00195, and Angel Street common lodging house, 1897, m08365, S.L.Coulthurst, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Angel Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Angel%20Street

Looking for the family on Mincing Street in 1895

Here  is a bit of a detective story .



Mincing Street, 1895

It is June 1895 and even without checking the newspapers for the week I can tell it was a warm day by the number of people out on the street.

Of course it may have just been  the presence of C.H. Godfrey with a camera that drew an audience.

The family may even have been asked to pose for the shot.

Either way the presence of a photographer in a working class part of the city five full years before the beginning of the last century was bound to pull a crowd.

Posing for the photographer, 1895

The fact that there were not more may have been down to it being a workday.

But this was still a time when a camera was a novelty and as soon as the photographer set up it drew the curious, the vain and more than a few who had just not seen the new art of photography working its magic in front of them.

And for us there is a lot to see, from the family group including the chap with a cup of something in his hand to the woman at the corner house watching both the cameraman and the cat.

What first drew me in was the pub on the extreme right hand side.

This was the Lord Derby which in 1895 was run by Thomas s Harrop and in 1911 by Mrs Edith Williams.

Mr Harrop has yet to show up on official documents but I know from the 1911 census that Mrs Williams was a widow who had been married for 42 years and was assisted by her son in law and daughter.*

The Lord Derby

The Lord Derby was on Dantzic Street and had seven rooms which marked it above many of the properties in the area.

And then as you do I wondered about the eight people in front of us.

It started with their names, because once armed with an identity it is possible to start a search for who they were.

And a  name might lead to an entry in the census returns with their ages, places of birth and occupations.

Added to which it would allow us to access the rate books which in turn would offer up details of the houses, from their rateable value to the rents that were charged.

And finally using the 1911 census it would be possible to discover the number of rooms in three two houses.

But all of that hangs on a name and there we have come unstuck.

If I were in Central Ref I could go through the pages of the Rate Book looking for Mincing Street and there for 1895 would be the names of the tenants and the landowner.

But sitting here at home the alternative in the short term is the directories, but sadly the residents of Mincing Street proved too unimportant to be listed.

So all that is left to say is that our three properties may have been back to back houses and that what appears to be a street corner on the extreme left was the entrance to a closed court comprising of nine properties four of which were back to back.

The Derby Arms and Nelson Street which became Mincing Street, 1893

I say they were back to back because that is what the maps from the 1850s and 1893 suggest, but no research ever goes smoothly, and the 1911 census records the nine houses on Mincing Street as possessing  four rooms.

So there is lots more to do but in the meantime for the really curious I shall leave you with this.

The fencing high up behind the pub was part of the protective wall around the old St Michael’s graveyard.

There will be more but not yet.


Picture; Mincing Street with a family on step, 1899, C.H. Godfrey, m03380, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Nelson Street in 1893 from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Census, Enu 02 183, St Georges Manchester, Lancashire, 1911

** Census, Enu 02 245-253, St Georges Manchester, Lancashire, 1911

That interesting wall on Gould Street ........ Lost and abandoned walls no 2

Now it all started when Ted responded to a story with the question “do you do requests Mr Simpson? 

Here's an interesting wall on Gould Street, by Angel Meadows,” and included a picture.

And the rest was as they say a matter of detective work on a wet and grey Saturday afternoon.

But before I got there Nick had come up with a map and a picture of a building which seemed to be the candidate.

By 1972 it was home to a company called Wither’s and stood on Irk Street awaiting demolition. It had similar windows on the ground floor to Ted’s wall and because Irk Street ran parallel to Gould Street it seems the candidate.

According to Nick’s map the site was a Sunday School and the directories for 1903 through to 1911 list it as the Gould Street Sunday School.

All of which fits but just throws up a little bit of a puzzle, because Ted’s wall had not been on Gould Street but on Back Irk Street which was renamed sometime after 1894 becoming just a continuation of Gould Street.

Back Irk Street appears on the census returns for 1881 and maybe there later, but is not listed by 1911 which may be explained by a name change or equally by the simple fact that it was too small and too mean to warrant an inclusion.

I suspect there will be more to come on this one.

Location; Manchester

Initial research; Nick Rushton

Pictures; Ted’s wall courtesy of Ted and that building on Irk Street, 1972, m20523, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Sunlight on Sharp Street ...... earlier in the week

It is of course stating the obvious to say that pretty much anywhere looks better in bright sunlight.

That said I can think of a few forlorn places behind gasworks and those old tanning works which would challenge the idea that a warm sunny dayncould transform a rubbish scene.

But Andy’s pictures of his adventure down by the old Ragged School near Angel Meadow prove that Sammy sunshine can lift a place.

Back in the 19th century and into the 20th the area was grim and even in the 1990s it wouldn’t qualify for a scenic award.

For while the crummy housing, and decaying factories and warehouses had gone it was still a dismal place not lifted by its history which was equally grim and depressing.

Now I could go on about the awful living conditions around Angel Meadow and its slide into an area of open spaces, car parks, and empty properties, all waiting for something to happen.

But I won’t, instead I will share more of Andy’s photographs which are chronicling the transformation of the area.

Some will mutter that the developments are bland, off the peg architecture and will be home to many who do not care about the history all around them.

 But that is to be unfair to the residents and to the developments, which have the merit of replacing those old windswept car parks which were empty by 6 pm with a bit of busy life again, albeit a less grim one.

Location; Sharp Street

Pictures; down by Sharp Street , 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Angel Meadow ........... reading the book by Dean Kirby

Now Angel Meadow is one of those places which draws you in and offers up a slice of the darker side of life in Manchester.

The book

For many it has become a byword for life lived on the margin standing beside Little Ireland on the other side of the city and equally notorious slums like Seven Dials in London.

Over the last four decades I have dipped into it through the writings of Engels and others explored the site as it went from empty wasteland, through landscaped park followed by more neglect and regeneration and a couple of years ago watched as the archaeologists uncovered something of its past.

To some of my Canadian friends the mismatch between the name and the reality is not easy to understand.

But there you are, it was in the words of Robert Roberts “a place where poverty busied itself” and those entering might well have echoed Dante’s warning “All hope abandon ye who enter here.”

Hope there may not have been much of but the area was home to thousands who lived out their lives in the cellars and overcrowded dwellings which were past their best long before the old queen came to the throne.

Uncovering the past, 2009

All of which is an introduction a new book on the area written by Dean Kirby who can trace some of his family to  those mean streets in the 1860s.

The book “takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the alleyways, gin palaces and underground vaults of this nineteenth century Manchester slum, which was considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels.”

For those wanting an introduction to Angel Meadow there is an excellent article in WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? which gives the context to the book and a little of the reasons why Mr Kirby wrote it.**

Angel Meadow, 1849

And having read that piece I am off to buy my copy.

Location; Angel Meadow Manchester

Picture; cover of Angel Meadow, 2016, cellar dwellings at the Miller Street dig October 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Angel Meadow in 1849 from the OS Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital archives Solution, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Angel Meadow: Victorian Britain’s Most Savage Slum, Dean Kirby £14.99

**Archaeologists unearthed my ancestor’s slum home, Gail Dixon WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? Issue 112, May 2016

Walking Angel Meadow ............. the archaeological tour June 4 2016

Now I first came across Angel Meadow when it was an overgrown bit of waste land.

Angel Meadow in the 19th century

I read about the place back then but on a visit down there I couldn't really visualise just what it would have been like to live there when it was one of our worst slums.

Well the Friends of Angel Meadow are about to offer just such an experience.*

For one day and one day only on Saturday June 4 you can walk the walk. It is billed as the ANGEL MEADOW ARCHAEOLOGY WALK and is part of the Angel Meadow Histories Day.

And not wanting to repeat what someone else has already written here is what they say,

ANGEL MEADOW ARCHAEOLOGY WALK

Dr Michael Nevell is Head of Archaeology at Salford University and Co-Editor of the Industrial Archaeology Review.

Angel Meadow in 1980

He will lead an archaeology walk around Angel Meadow highlighting the sites of recent digs and the findings from workers' housing excavations.

This event is part of the Manchester Histories Festival 2016.

The walk starts from Popup Bikes on Corporation Street and they have kindly offered free bike parking to those with tickets. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/angel-meadow-guided-archaeology-walk-tickets-24839925887

Do you have questions about Angel Meadow Guided Archaeology Walk? mail@friends-of-angel-meadow

Angel Meadow, 2005

This event is expected to be very popular- please contact FOAM ASAP should you not be able to attend to ensure others do not miss out.

Look out for further announcements of events soon.

Location; Angel Meadow



Pictures; courtesy of FOAM

*Friends of Angel Meadow http://www.friends-of-angel-meadow.org/

Angels in the Meadow

Now it is always a privilege when I get a guest writer to contribute to the blog and so I was pleased when Richard agreed to write about the work being undertaken to regenerate Angel Meadow that once notorious part of Manchester.

Back in the 19th century

And I hope this will be just the first.

"The lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy and most wicked locality in Manchester is called Angel Meadow. It lies off the Oldham Road, is full of cellars and is inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants, tramps and in the very worst states of filth and darkness."  

So wrote Angus Reach for The Morning Chronicle in 1849. However, sixty years earlier Angel Meadow was anything but; the area occupied by a burgeoning middle class of Manchester whose Georgian town houses commanded views of the beautiful Irk Valley with its Rolling Meadows and trout-filled river.

In 1788 St. Michael's & All Angels Church was built as the area prospered.

Six years earlier Richard Arkwright had constructed Simpson's Mill- Manchester's first steam-powered cotton mill across the road from the church (today the new Co-op HQ site); an invention which would help to transform not just Angel Meadow and the city, but the whole world as the Industrial Revolution took hold.
 By the mid-19th century Angus Reach wasn't the only social commentator to discover that behind the new wealth and prestige of Cottonopolis lay a darker reality, described by Friedrich Engels as "a Hell on Earth" in his Conditions of the Working Classes in England & Ireland 1844.

In Angel Meadow the original Middle Class inhabitants had long since left for the new suburbs and cleaner air, replaced by the poorest migrant workers (many from Scotland and Ireland, fleeing the potato famines and land clearances) living out desperate existences, with life expectancy less than 27 yrs old.

The old elegant Georgian town houses were transformed into cheap lodging houses alongside squalid back-to-back terraces.

Before regeneration, 1980s

A Pauper's Burial Ground had been created adjacent to St. Michael's churchyard and within just 27 years nearly 40,000 bodies had been cast into a vast pit, covered with lime and then heavy flagstones to prevent the bones being stolen for fertiliser.

The demise of Angel Meadow had been compounded by the Leeds-Manchester train viaduct bringing smog and environmental disaster to accompany further aromas from the numerous tanneries, dyeworks and abattoirs located along the banks of the River Irk. Cholera particularly struck hard in Angel Meadow because of the poor sanitation of its residents.

The church graveyard was finally closed for burials in 1854, with approximately 3800 buried within its boundaries; neglected epitaphs which would be covered by moss and abandoned for the next 150 years.

After regeneration, 2005

The church itself stood as fortress to moral decline until 1935 as attendance dwindled (artist LS Lowry painted it many times) and the area was depopulated during post-war slum clearances.


And there the gravestones lay until the turn of the last Millennium when regeneration of the old red brick warehouses, alongside new apartments, brought residents back to Angel Meadow.

The Friends of Angel Meadow (FOAM) was set up in 2004 to campaign for the regeneration of St. Michael's Flags & Angel Meadow into a local park. Since then Lottery funding and other grants has seen improved paths, history boards, opening up of entrances and new seating.

Members of FOAM, 2009

FOAM members continue working to maintain the park as a community asset well as engaging in Local History research projects- a key element of its original constitution.

Many of the original St. Michael's church gravestones had been damaged or removed but there remain about 40, configured into a new seating area within the park.

But who were these people buried here, where had they come from and where did their descendants end up?

 FOAM's "Who do you think they were?" project seeks to answer those questions. Working alongside the Manchester & Lancashire Family History Society, members were guided in using both online and MCC archive resources; scraping back "all the moss which had grown over their names.” 


The research revealed families such as the Thornhills who had migrated to Manchester from Cheshire. One descendant, Sir Thomas Thornhill Shann, (a true Manchester Man: from child cotton mill labourer to influential industrialist) would serve as Lord Mayor of Manchester between 1903-05, greeting King Edward VII on his visit to the city in 1904.

Angel Meadow, 2005

Yorkshire born, William Buck was a descendant of the Redmaynes of Westmorland (who included Henry VIII's wife, Katherine Parr) within their family tree.

Joseph Cowlishaw was descended from Sir John Claye (b.1440) knighted by Edward IV, during the War of the Roses.

Further antecedents had migrated to America including anti-slavery politician Cassius Marcellus Clay.

A descendant of African-slaves, Herman H. Clay, would name his own son after him in tribute. His son, Cassius Clay Jr (b.1942) would later convert to Islam and change his name to Muhammad Ali.

FOAM members 2005

Heroes of the American Civil War and both World Wars, an Archbishop of a breakaway Catholic Church, a winning horse breeder of the Kentucky Derby, a three-time American Presidential election runner-up and just ordinary working men contributing to the economic vitality of Manchester during its heyday with the luck to make it out alive are just some of those who the project has already discovered.

FOAM received a commendation for the project from the Manchester Histories Festival in 2014 and continue to reveal stories.

Pictures, courtesy of FOAM

 All the research and further information, including ways to get involved, can be viewed at the GENEALOGY section of the FOAM website: http://www.friends-of-angel-meadow.org/index.htm