Resources on housing in Manchester (pre-1919)
Special Collections resources at the University of Manchester Library
Introduction
By the late nineteenth century it was becoming clear that one of the legacies of Manchester’s rapid industrialisation- its vast ring poor quality ‘slum’ housing, often intermingled with factories- was too great a problem to ignore. Significant improvements were achieved by a combination of passionate local reformers and targeted municipal action. Change accelerated after the First World War and the large state subsidies awarded to local authorities to construct new housing estates.
19th and Early 20th Century
The poor housing conditions in Manchester were an oft discussed topic, raised most famously by Engels in The condition of the working class in England in 1844, which saw its first translation into English in 1885.
Insanitary, cramped and wholly unfit housing acted as a breeding ground for disease and, many Victorians charged, moral decay. Alfred Alsop of the Wood Street Mission produced a series of melodramatic ‘slum’ stories, publications describing the degrading conditions in which many children lived, and the wickedness and dissipation they generated:
Early Reformers
Impetus for reform lay in the reports on the Health of the City of Manchester, produced by the city’s Medical Officer of Health Dr John Leigh. In ‘Seeing the Slums’, the Library digitised a series of maps by Richard A. Bastow, employed as a sanitary surveyor by the Manchester Corporation to identify poor housing, and which were used in Leigh’s reports:
Leigh’s reports were criticised in some quarters for understating the mortality figures, and a report was published in 1889 by the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association, An enquiry into the causes of excessive mortality in №1 District, Ancoats, written by Dr John C. Thresh. This found mortality rates in №1 District Ancoats to be more than 2.5 times higher than Leigh’s average figure:
He concluded “These blocks of insanitary buildings must be removed from the very foundations.” Thresh’s charge of municipal neglect gave a great impetus to reformers such as Charles Rowley, whose Healthy Homes Society based in Ancoats was founded in its wake. It campaigned to “Promote healthy lives, healthy homes, and healthy surroundings” and spawned similar such groups across the city.
The Manchester University Settlement, founded in 1894, was also home to a great many determined campaigners for improved housing- their members recognising its pivotal importance in achieving lasting social change.
The first body to stand candidates in municipal elections on the housing platform was the Citizens Association for the Improvement of the Unwholesome Dwellings and Surroundings of the People, with T.C Horsfall and T.R. Marr its dominant individuals. Horsfall saw the improvement of Manchester’s housing as a moral mission and was a great proponent of German methods, viewing direct municipal intervention and orderly planning a necessity to bring about meaningful change. “We are told we have an Empire on which the sun never sets”, he said in 1906 to the Citizens Association, “but we certainly have a much larger area of slums than other countries into which the sun never shines”.
Marr’s influential 1904 publication, Housing conditions in Manchester & Salford was a comprehensive survey undertaken for the association. In it he describes the continuing, large scale work undertaken by the Manchester Corporation to address the worst of the slums. Rather than wholesale demolition, the Corporation opted for large-scale ‘reconditioning’, removing all back to back housing by knocking through their back walls, turning them into ‘through houses’; demolished some houses in a row to allow light to the others; and adding yards, water closets and inside taps to every dwelling. In each instance the landlord was to pay the price of the refurbishment, or else face the demolition of the property. In this way Manchester’s back to back houses were eliminated before the First World War, and its worst housing now better than equivalent cities in the country. But to reformers this was merely a sticking plaster.
Raymond Unwin and Garden Cities
Raymond Unwin, part of whose archive we hold at the University of Manchester Library, and Barry Parker were appointed architects of the first ‘garden city’ at Letchworth in 1903. Garden cities were to be new, self-contained developments separate from established areas, employing strict separation between industrial and residential buildings, comprising high quality, low density housing for their inhabitants.
They sought to capture the best elements of the country- light, fresh air and green open space- while avoiding the overcrowding, insanitary conditions and temptation towards vice they associated with the great cities. An plan of the Chorltonville Estate in Manchester from 1912 illustrates this in practice.
Unwin was invited to join the Tudor Walters Committee during World War 1, convened to advise the wartime Government on building new working class housing after the war. Their report published in November 1918 bears Unwin’s imprint in its recommendations, and it determined the shape of social housing developments between the wars.
“No garden, no home”, The Nation’s New Houses, Pictures and Plans, pg. 30
Early Municipal Housing
The Manchester Corporation’s first forays into social housing were tenement flat buildings, such as the Victoria Square dwellings, Granville Place (now demolished), and Ashton House- a lodging house designed for women.
The Plan of Manchester Tenements (scheme A) for housing on Bradford Road, including designs and floor plans for tenements and cottages, illustrates their design principles. Built on expensive inner-city land, a fact reflected in their high rents, they themselves were far beyond the reach of the poorest in the city, and generally unpopular with their tenants.
Following the lead of the garden cities, significantly cheaper land was sought and found at Blackley, four miles north of Manchester. Here, low density housing could be built broadly on garden city lines.
Horsfall and Marr were critical of the Sanitary Committee’s initial design, with Marr demanding the re-orientation of its main road to maximise the sunlight for residents. Forced to reduce the cost, the height of the bedroom ceilings were only 5ft at the side, with reformers demanding 9ft across its full width. Writing to the Manchester Guardian, a correspondent noted:
“If this infraction of our by-laws is allowed to stand we shall be compelled to allow all the jerry builders in Manchester to cut down the height of bedrooms in the same way… a retrograde step of a most disastrous kind.”
Only a portion of the 243 acres was developed before the First World War, with the prohibitive costs of further extension meeting opposition in the Council chamber. Despite this, the houses were a great improvement on those in the inner city, with most having three bedrooms and all of these a bathroom, and wide roads allowing the residents light and fresh air. But again the price placed them in the reach of only the affluent working classes. Follow the link below to view plans for each of the ‘cottage’ styles employed at Blackley:
Discussion Points
- Which individuals and groups campaigned for improvements to housing conditions?
- What powers did the municipalities have before 1918 to effect change?
- How much progress had been achieved by 1918?
Additional Resources
Pre-World War 1
- Alsop, Alfred, From dark to light : or, voices from the slums, R153833
- Charles Rowley, Fifty years of work without wages : laborare est orare
(Unitarian College (1801- ) Printed Collection D227) - SC2426B — Marr, T. R., Housing conditions in Manchester & Salford : a report prepared for the Citizens’ Association for the improvement of the unwholesome dwellings and surroundings of the people, with the aid of the Executive Committee
- T.C. Horsfall Collection:
- Poverty and housing conditions in a Manchester ward (R72952)
Raymond Unwin and Garden Suburbs
- The Sir Raymond Unwin Papers
- Unwin, Raymond, Town planning in practice : an introduction to the art of designing cities and suburbs, (R178142)
- Scott, M. H. Baillie, Garden suburbs : town planning and modern architecture / with con, 1910 : (R208933)
- ‘Where shall I live?’ : Guide to Letchworth (Garden City) and catalogue of the [1907] Urban Housing and Rural Homesteads Exhibition. (R208941)
- Gunn, Edwin, Economy in House Design (R208925)
- Allen, John Gordon, The cheap cottage and small house : a manual of economic building (R208943)
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