Manchester Local Image Collection

1813

1836

1900

2025

Manchester Historical Maps

I was walking around town, with a view to updating my Ardwick Walk.

Idle curiosity took me toward the Brunswick Estate – that pocket of housing nestle twixt the Mancunian Way/River Medlock, Ardwick Green, Brunswick Street and Upper Brook Street.

A subset of the greater set of Chorlton on Medlock.

Back in 1813, a web of streets and enclosed fields, and more fields, along with small groups of higher status housing, but by the early 20th century it was very much a working class district, within which industry began to grow.

The population of Manchester expanded unstoppably throughout the nineteenth century.

Here’s a personal and insightful family history of the area, along with a broader history from the Evening News.

Extensive slum clearance in the nineteen sixties saw the area and its street names change, some erased forever in the new build.

In Manchester, in a vast belt immediately outside the central area of the city, there still exist all too many remnants of a planless, knotted chaos of dark, dismal and crumbling homes. Many of these crossed the verge of uninhabit-ableness long before their most elderly inhabitants were born.

Alfred Morris MP 1965

As recorded by photographer Roger Shelley.

Brunswick Street 1904.

Mancroft Walk W Higham 1969

St Paul’s and St Luke’s Brunswick Street W Higham 1970

Lamport Court W Higham 1970

One of three nine-storey blocks, containing two hundred and nineteen dwellings; also including Silkin Court and Lockton Court.

Litcham Close W Higham 1970

Harry Milligan 1903 – 1986 worked as the photographer at Manchester Central Library until his retirement in around 1968. He was instrumental in setting up the Manchester Region Industrial Archaeology Society in 1965. He volunteered at the North Western Museum of Science and Industry from 1968, assisting with reprographics requests. His knowledge of the history of photography in Manchester and the UK led to him taking on the role of Honorary Curator of Photography at the museum.

These are his photographs taken from the Manchester Local Image Collection.

Panorama of Brunswick with UMIST in the background.

Hanworth Close area terraced housing and flats 1972.

Staverton Close

Melcroft Close

Wadeson Road

Helmshore Walk – Skerry Close

Cherryton Walk

Cray Walk

Wadeson Road

Hanworth Close

Pedley Walk

Cray Walk – note the decorative brick relief

King William IV

Former Chesters then Whitbread estate pub was built in 1967. Closed in 1996 when it was converted to residential property. It had a brief spell 1991 to 1995 as brewery premises for the Dobbin’s West Coast Brewery, during this period the interior was stripped out to accommodate the brewery paraphernalia.

As a companion to the radical reshaping of Manchester see also All Saints, plus look around Brunswick Parish Church, close by the lost terrace of Hartfield Close.

In addition the Brunswick Street Launderette.

Second time around, following my post in 2019.

A terminal halt on the Campus Capers walk.

Taking a walk around town on an overcast and intermittently showery Friday, we’re all here again.

Sat at home on an overcast and intermittently showery Monday, I took a walk around online archives.

1962 to 1963 Photos: Local Image Archive

The inner courtyard was originally paved, subsequently grassed over.

The lack of sunlight has resulted in the grass becoming both waterlogged and moss-bound.

As a former TMBC maintenance gardener I recommend raking out, aeration and a top dressing of light river sand as a remedy.

Ribapix 1964

The William Mitchell concrete panels are of a modular design, rotated to form distinct groups of horizontal and vertical rhythms. A number of the buildings elevations are clad in linear, diagonal and vertical forms, though the majority are curvilinear and organic.

Local Image Collection 1972

The Ellen Wilkinson building, home to Education and Communication, is one of the few buildings on campus named after a woman. She gained the nickname of ‘Red Ellen’ in her political career, due to her socialist politics and vibrant red hair colour.

Wilkinson was a successful Labour party politician and feminist activist, and a passionate and bold personality in the Houses of Parliament. She was made Minister of Education under Clement Atlee’s government, making her the second woman to ever get a role in the British cabinet. She was brought up and educated in Manchester, making her legacy on the Manchester campus even more significant.

Mancunion

Ellen Wilkinson is a large sized building with three blocks. There are six floors in C Block, five floors in B Block and seven floors in A Block.

There are three lifts and six main staircases within the building.

The floors are signed as Ground, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. This is slightly different inside the lifts where control buttons are marked as 0 instead of Ground.

There are link passages from A and B Block to C Block on levels Ground, 1 and 3.

The building was the work of George Grenville ‘GG’ Baines and Building Design Partnership.

This scheme pre-dates Wilson Womersley’s appointment as masterplanners for the Education Precinct but exists harmoniously with the later series of buildings. This is most likely due to the method of development before any ‘grand concept’. The incremental expansion of the University, following WWII, was largely dictated by the progress of compulsory purchase orders; this group was no exception. At the planning stages, the lack of a masterplan led to organising the wings of the buildings in an open, orthogonal arrangement. This would allow expansion in a number of directions, according to the next available site in ‘the dynamic situation’. The result was the creation of a small courtyard flanked by two five-storey blocks and a two-storey structure. All three buildings use the same pink-grey concrete. The plastic qualities of concrete were explored in both cladding and structural panels and the textural qualities exposed in the bush hammered columns, to reveal the Derbyshire gravel aggregate. The sculpted and moulded panels on the two-storey block and on the gable ends of the larger blocks were designed in collaboration with William Mitchell. The only other materials in the external envelope were the windows of variously clear and tinted glass. The window modules were set out against a basic geometry in three standard patterns and applied across the façade. This resulted in a clever interplay of vertical and horizontal expression. Phase II, a seven-storey teaching block, was not as refined in its details.

Mainstream Modern