Trafford Park Industrial Estate
The Trafford Park Industrial Estate marked a new way of organising industrial development. Previously, industries in Manchester had grown up haphazardly, with poor coordination of infrastructure and social facilities, such as workers’ housing. Trafford Park is considered to be the world’s first planned industrial estate.
The Trafford Park estate was intended to use space rationally to create a cluster of new and advanced industries. It had good transport links, especially with the Manchester Ship Canal, and by physically separating industry and housing, indirectly allowed for the latter to be improved.
Trafford Park was intimately bound up with the Ship Canal. Although it was not part of the original project, once the Canal had opened, it offered great opportunities for new businesses to develop in its vicinity. In particular, firms which depended on imported products, such as oil and foodstuffs, or were export oriented. This diversification would also allow Manchester to reduce its dependence on the textile industry. In fact, there were no textile mills at Trafford Park.
Trafford Park attracted foreign investment, particularly from the U.S. Westinghouse, an engineering firm, set up its European base there. It later became part of Metropolitan Vickers, one of Manchester’s biggest employers in the inter-war period. The company manufactured generators, turbines and engines. Ford also built its first European car-making plant at Trafford Park, although it moved production nearer London in the 1930s.
Trafford Park also became an important centre for food processing, an industry which became increasingly important to Manchester’s economy after 1918. This benefitted from proximity to the Port of Manchester. Imported grain from North America was processed for flour or later breakfast cereals (Kellogg’s had its UK base there). Other factories at Trafford Park processed meat, fruits and tea.
Trafford Park also became an important centre for oil processing, increasingly important as motor vehicle traffic increased and industries switched away from coal.
There were very few residential areas in Trafford Park itself, but during the inter-war period, large housing estates were developed close by in Stretford and Urmston. Manchester United football team were also located in the area (the team had moved there from east Manchester in 1910).
The industrial estate weathered the Depression of the 1930s successfully, in contrast to the major factory closures and unemployment of the textile towns. Trafford Park as a major engineering centre also benefitted from wartime production; Metropolitan Vickers in particular made everything from aircraft to radar equipment.
Trafford Park’s buoyant economy did not persist into the post-war period. It was increasingly challenged by smaller industrial estates, which had better links to road transport. The decline of the Port of Manchester in the 1960s and 1970s also signalled the end of Trafford park’s heyday. The Ship Canal was unable to take advantage of the ‘containerisation revolution’ of the 1960s, and trade shifted to other ports. By the 1980s, most of Trafford Park’s major employers had gone, and by the 1990s, the regeneration of the area saw the opening of the Trafford Centre, a retail centre which epitomised the transformation of post-industrial Manchester.
Additional Resources
Alan Kidd, Manchester: a history (Manchester 2007)
Douglas Farnie, The Manchester Ship Canal and the Rise of the Port of Manchester (Manchester 1980)
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