Manchester On The Edge…
A Plan of Manchester and Salford drawn from an actual survey by William Green
William Green, Surveyor and landscape artist.
When 27 year old William Green began his survey, Manchester’s population was under 70,000 (Census 1801). He was 34 when his Plan of Manchester and Salford was completed. Six years later he moved to Ambleside in the Lake District where he established himself as a landscape artist. He remained there until his death in 1823. Wordsworth, whom he counted as a friend, wrote his epitaph.
Although Green’s paintings are held in a number of museums and galleries it is his beautiful map of Manchester that is his most lasting work. A Plan of Manchester and Salford allows us to see, in its artfully drawn sepia folios, a small, semi-rural, Manchester. Pre-rail and, with the exception of the Bridgewater, pre-canal. That this version of the city was on the edge of great change is also vividly illustrated in the plan by the inclusion of proposed new streets and canals along with the ownership of each patch of undeveloped land.
Although the John Rylands copy of the original Map is a beautiful volume the digitisation of it available on the Manchester Digital Collections page is a revelation. Giving an opportunity to zoom in to the detail more successfully than my unaided eyes will allow, it also makes for easy comparison with more recent maps and satellite images of the city today.
I’ve picked a few of my favourite features of the plan (links to appropriate sheet of the digitisation in brackets):
Strangeways Hall and Park (sheet 2).
The Hall, (to the middle left of the image) which had been on the site since at least the 1640s, was by this time owned by the Reynolds family and leased out to a girls boarding school with the rest of the park still largely given over to country pursuits — there are shooting butts, open water, woodland and, where modern day Cheetham Hill Road now intersects with Lord Street, a large maze. The first steps towards industrialisation are visible in the buildings over the road from the hall — three dye works, two print works and a brewery were on the site in 1794. Apart from the rising gradient and some field boundaries (parts of the modern prison seem to follow a boundary behind the hall) this whole area is unrecognisable today — dominated as it is by HMP Manchester (still known locally as Strangeways prison despite being renamed following the riots of the late 1980s) and the traffic on Bury New Road.
Gaythorn.(Sheet 8)
Though you don’t hear the name much nowadays Gaythorn has been industrialised since the late 1700s. Green records several large buildings on the site where the river Tib flows into the Medlock. These are identified elsewhere as factories or mills. This was followed in 1825 by the Provincial Portable Gas Company who set up gas production on site. The site was chosen because coal, burnt to create the gas, could be transported on the rivers. The rivers were culverted once canals (in this case the Rochdale canal) rail and road made them redundant as a means of transport, however gas production continued on the site until 1929 when the site was converted to distribution only, eventually closing in 1953. Serving as a car park for many years after the gasometers were demolished, Gaythorn was only fully redeveloped in the last ten years and now contains the Home arts venue amongst offices, apartments and bars (including the Gasworks Brew Bar…).
Shooters Brook (Sheet 6 & 8)
The river Shooters Brook stretches from the top right of sheet 6 to the middle of sheet 8 where it meets the Medlock at Brook Street. Completely culverted by the mid-1850s, at the time of William Green’s map it still flowed largely through open land, its use as a power source attracting factories only in its Ancoats section. It later passes through what would become the location of Piccadilly Rail Station, crossing London Road (then called Shooters Brow) and heading towards the river Medlock, roughly parallel and to the east of modern day Whitworth Street. As you wander around this area today, down through the University of Manchester North Campus with the trains rattling along the viaduct above, try to picture Shooter’s Brook below, “famed for its profusion of hazel trees, growing on the banks….known as “Nut Valley.” This I had from elderly lady, who in her youth had often traversed the valley as far as Ancoats in search of nuts” (R. B. Bibby, Haughton, January 1876 Manchester Courier — letters to the editor).
Ardwick Island (sheet 9)
Not the roundabout by the Apollo, nor a true island, but a development of factories fitting snugly into a curve in the Medlock by Ancoats Bridge. Its name came from a combination of its location by the river and the fact that its northern edge marked the border between Ardwick and Ancoats. As the map indicates, it was owned by James Meredith. Meredith was a pin manufacturer and the section of road indicated as Ancoats Bridge on the map was by 1831 known as Pin Mill Brow, a name it retains today. In the years since, this apparently rural area has been comprehensively built over — more than once — the mills that replaced the fields having largely been replaced themselves by housing or modern industrial units. Ancoats Hall to the North of Ardwick Island on the map below was rebuilt in the 1840s and survived as a Museum until the 1950s, but was demolished soon after it closed. Amazingly the one area on the map that has a semi-rural appearance today is Ardwick Island itself — the early industry cleared away to leave this section of the Medlock valley to be reclaimed by trees.
The Hidden Gem (St. Mary’s Catholic Church) and its predecessor (Sheet 5)
The first Catholic chapel in Manchester since the Reformation was founded in 1774 and served a congregation that was scattered all over the North West. It can be seen on Green’s map on Rook Street
— in modern day Manchester, Rook Street has disappeared beneath the Lewis’s building (now Primark) on the corner of Market Street and Piccadilly Gardens. Rook Street Chapel was joined by a second place of Catholic worship just as the map was published and Green has included it — indicated on Mulberry Street as New Roman Catholic Chapel.
Rev Arthur J. Dobb (in Like a Mighty Tortoise (1978)) notes that it was built “on a site crowded in by intensive poor-quality housing on land which had so recently been open meadow and grazing pasture.” This is St Mary’s, also known as the Hidden Gem and is the City Centre’s Catholic Church to this day. The Rev. Dobb continues “St. Mary’s much rebuilt, still stands of the same plot of land, now surrounded by the edifices of sophisticated materialism, which is probably more spiritually barren ground than the moral vileness of the 18th century.”
Finally, some street names I enjoyed that appear on the map but have since been lost: Tickle Street off Deansgate (sheet 8), Toad Lane (sheet 5), Gun Street off Great Ancoats (sheet 5), Lad Lane (sheet 8) and the lovely sounding Sots Hole (off Back King Street (sheet 5).
Discussion Points
What was the purpose of William Green’s map?
Who was Charles Laurent? What was his relationship to Manchester and to William Green?
Additional Resources
Wyke, T., Robson, R. and Dodge, M., 2018. Manchester: mapping the city. Edinburgh: Birlinn.
Mapping Manchester (University of Manchester Digital Collections) https://www.digitalcollections.manchester.ac.uk/collections/maps/1
Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History (Manchester homepage) https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Category:Town_-_Manchester
If you are interested in using any material from Special Collections please get in contact with our Reading Room staff: uml.special-collections@manchester.ac.uk.
Copyright Statement: Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used on this page are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA, for further information about each image, please follow the link in the description.
