Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 7 St Andrew’s Church

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

One hundred years of St Andrew's

Homer Street nearly made its 100 birthday but the passage of time and a grand slum clearance plan did for it sometime just before 1938.

Its parish church which was St Andrew’s survived for another three decades before it too was demolished.

The church had opened in 1831, and according to one account had been built in “the midst of fields [when] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” **

At the time “the congregation of St Andrew’s was in its early years a fairly comfortable middle-class body, [with] most of the pews in the church being privately rented by people of substance. But by the middle of the century it was surrounded by rising Lancashire industry and black slums filled the parish."***

Inside St Andrew's, date unknown

Surprisingly within just thirty years after it was built and not long after the creation of those “black slums”, the population of the area was in decline.

But it would be Corporation’s slum clearance programme which finally depopulated the area.

So much so that he vicar of St Andrew’s described the area in 1939 as one of “debris and desolation.”

And yet so loyal was the former congregation that many who had been moved out to estates in the north of the city and Wythenshawe in the south returned to attend services, including the popular Sunday School.

St Andrew's date unknown

In 1931 the church had produced a commemorative booklet, which makes fascinating reading.

What I didn’t know was the church also issued a set of souvenir porcelain to mark the event.

And for the picture of these I have Kath Kelly Hughes to thank who saw an earlier story about Homer Street and posted the picture on social media along with two of the church before its demolition.

She added “ I attended St Andrews Sunday school it's a part of my childhood”.

Sadly the site of the church is now an overgrown bit of discarded land, which for a while was home to industrial units.

I think the spot deserves better.

All of which is just a start I hope of a whole set of new stories.

To which I can add that having approached the city Councillors for the area moves were in hand to improve the area.



Pictures; commemorative porcelain, and pictures of St Andrew’s courtesy of Kath Kelly Hughes


*Homer Street,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Homer%20Street

**Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

***A Centenary in Ancoats, St Andrew’s School, Manchester Guardian, June 13 1936

That Ancoats war memorial ….. and some good news

Just a week ago I wrote about the perilous state of the war memorial in St Andrew’s Square.*

It had been erected in 1921 to commemorate the men from St Andrew’s Church who fought in the Great War.

But the closure of the church in 1958, and its demolition three years later left the stone cross increasingly isolated, and over the next sixty years it was pretty much left alone and forgotten.

A large tree threatened the stability of the cross and in the summer months vegetation all but obscured the war memorial.**

I was unsure of who to contact, given that the church authorities had signed off the former church land a long time ago, and so I contacted the relevant elected Manchester City Councillors.

That same day Cllr Sam Wheeler was in touch asking for more details and today his colleague Cllr Jon-Connor Lyons emailed me with the good news that the area had been cut back, and that the Council officers were looking into who owned the land.

So a good start, with the promise that the men of St Andrew’s Church will no longer be forgotten

Location; St Andrew’s Square, Ancoats,

Picture; the wall memorial St Andrew’s Square, Ancoats, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, Amato Food Products***

*Neglected and forgotten ……. the men from St Andrew’s in Ancoats, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/02/neglected-and-forgotten-men-from-st.html

**Heritage Report, St Andrew’s Church, Lee, Anthony, Report No.SA/2019/12

** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/ and to order, info@amatoproducts.co.uk

Neglected and forgotten ……. the men from St Andrew’s in Ancoats

I am profoundly saddened at the fate of the war memorial to the 70 men of St Andrew’s

Church in Ancoats, which is in a sorry state.

It was erected in 1921 am along with a tablet which was located inside the church records commemorates the men who fought in the Great War.

The inscription on the cross read, "To the glory of God and in perpetual memory of the Churchmen of this Parish and Congregation who gave their lives in the War, 1914-18, this Cross and the Tablet in the Church are erected by their fellow-churchmen", but the words are now illegible, and as yet I have no idea of the fate of the stone tablet.

The church closed in 1958 and was demolished in 1961, and some where there may be a record of where it went, which I shall go looking for.

As for the cross it is in a perilous state, after sixty years of neglect.  It leans slightly to one side, has lost a bit of the head on its east facing side, and is surrounded by undergrowth and litter.

I can not think that just a few years after that great outpouring of interest in the Great War, which came with a plethora of commemorations, this war memorial stands in such a terrible state, or that its fate is so uncertain.

All of which just leaves me the task of looking for the 70 names on the tablet and trying to bring them out of the shadows.

I have started with an Alfred Pickering who in 1915 was living at 13 Teer Street.  The street is still there off the Ashton New Road , but the houses have long gone.

So far I haven’t been able to locate him for certain on the census return, but I do have this from the National Roll of Honour, which records that he enlisted in 1915 and survived the war.

There are also references to an Alfred Pickering in the Manchester City Battalions Book of Honour, which records that five men with that name were employed by Manchester Corporation Tramways Department, the Co-operative Wholesale Society, Richard Goodiar Ltd of 8 Mosley Street, Charles Macintosh and Co Ltd, and Peter Spencer and Sons.

Not much I know but a start.

Leaving me just to thank Angela Wallwork of Amato Products who took the pictures of the cross on Friday.

Amato Products supply food and other products to restaurants across Greater Manchester and beyond and their warehouse faces on to the site of the demolished church on St Andrew’s Square.

I would also want to thank Anthony Lee, Senior Project Manager (Heritage Management), Salford Archaeology, School of Science, Engineering & Environment, whose Heritage Report on the site of St Andrew's Church prompted the story.****

And that is it while I go looking for the men of St Andrew’s Church …. There are more stories about St Andrew’s Square, and its neighbour Homer Street along with the history of Ancoats.****

But just as I posted the story, Martin H. Prestwich, commented that a tablet commemorating men from the Second World War was removed to the Manchester Miracle Centre, formerly All Souls Church, corner of Every Street and Harding Street, which he writes, is recorded on the "Imperial War Museum website,  https://www.iwm.org.uk/memorials/item/memorial/15901"

That said this host building looks equally empty and I fear the worst.

But Cllr Sam Wheeler of Manchester City council who is one of the three elected representatives for the area, has seen the story and is looking in to what can be done for the cross.  Which is a fine outcome.

Location; St Andrew’s Square, Ancoats,

Picture; the wall memorial St Andrew’s Square, Ancoats, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, the National Roll of Honour, and the memorial tablet, 1931, courtesy of  Anthony Lee

* St Andrew’s Church Centenary Commemorative booklet, 1931 Manchester Archives & Local History Library, 283.4273.M341

** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/ and to order, info@amatoproducts.co.uk

***Heritage Report, St Andrew’s Church, Lee, Anthony, Report No.SA/2019/12

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