Strangeways – Modern Mooch

Cheetwood Road Manchester

Posted on August 10, 2026August 10, 2026 by modernmoocher

1900

1920

1960

2026

I often wander these streets and write about the area’s history, or record the current state of affairs, then returning with 35mm film to photograph a black and white world.

On this occasion I am concerned with the tight little rectangle formed by Cheetwood Road, Broughton, Alison and Sherborne Streets.

Cheetwood Road is a postwar construction, a straight route replacing the meandering Cheetwood Lane. The road is lined with low level functionalist brick, steel and concrete industrial units.

Having fallen into disrepair they are now being renovated and reused.

In the early Twentieth Century the area was a mix of semi-derelict Victorian housing and industry.

Corner of Sherborne Street 1905

Cheetwood Lane 1917

The huge Holt’s Cheetwood Hotel has since been demolished, lasting until c1990.

Cheetwood Lane 1920

Images: Thomas Baddeley

Progress House 1969 – Domtar Howard Smith Ltd Paper Manufacturers.

Norweb Electricity

Images: Louis H Price Manchester Local Image Collection.

So here we are on Friday 7th August, taking yet another look.

The whole area and beyond is now the centre of a plan for regeneration.

Salford City Council and Manchester City Council have developed a joint Strategic Regeneration Framework to transform the Strangeways and Cambridge areas.

This plan addresses long-standing challenges such as counterfeit crime, poor-quality buildings, and flood risk, while creating opportunities for new homes, businesses, and green spaces.

Salford Gov

The Strangeways and Cambridge strategic regeneration framework sets out a vision to deliver around 7,000 homes in buildings up to 30 storeys and 3.1m sq ft of new or improved commercial space across 320 acres spanning both Manchester and Salford.

HMP Manchester & Jury Street: A catalytic neighbourhood at the heart of the SRF. Home of the existing HMP Manchester with potential for long term change subject to the relocation of the prison.

Derby Street: An intensified business district, supported to ensure the long-term preservation and evolution of the business base in the area.

Copper Park: A regional destination, multi-functional open space delivered to create positive amenity and biodiversity in response to future flood risk.

Overbridge: Gateway to Copper Park from the city centre, an area of significant residential potential – up to 2,000 homes – but with important economic assets and heritage.

Cheetham Park: A new urban-suburban residential neighbourhood of up to 1,000 homes, building on the heritage of the Victorian Cheetham Park and the nascent residential community around it.

Dutton Street: The Dutton Street area is a natural extension of the city centre. Subject to the existing Great Ducie Street SRF, it is identified as residential-led mixed use area – up to 4,000 homes – where significant development and investment is already evident. This part of the SRF could accommodate 1.75m sq ft of new commercial space

Lord Street: A transitional neighbourhood, connecting the residential-led change in Dutton Street with the economic focus of Derby Street to the north, and with Red Bank and Victoria North to the east.

Place Northwest

Arterial Manchester 2024 – A56

Posted on December 2, 2024December 2, 2024 by modernmoocher

Having photographed the arterial roads of Manchester in 2014, I have resolved to return to the task in 2024.

Some things seem to have changed, some things seem to have stayed the same.

Strangeways #3 – Black and White World

Posted on February 16, 2018February 16, 2018 by modernmoocher

I’ve been here for the last fifteen years on and off, snapping away, capturing something of the area’s ever changing moods, the old, the new, the borrowed and the blue.

Wading through the archives, or searching for the remains of modernity.

On this occasion I have chosen to work on black and white film – the medium conveying something timeless, at a time when things are forever changing.

Let’s take a contradictory look and walk around those familiar, unfamiliar streets of Strangeways – where colourfully clad industrial barn, collides with blackened brick and stone behemoth.

Strangeways Manchester #2

Posted on February 13, 2018February 13, 2018 by modernmoocher

Way back in the Twentieth Century – Cheetwood Industrial Estate was built.

The future was functionalist flat-roofed, concrete, steel and brick boxes.

Adorned with the flowing scripts and signage of the multi-nationals, nationals and local companies, intent upon rendering corporeal the post-war optimism, attendant full-employment and the buoyant business of business.

Fast forward to the future – the roofs have been pitched up, the windows bricked up or shuttered or both, walls encased in sad cladding.

The semi-permanent signage replaced with terminally temporary vinyl.

Joe Sunlight’s neo-classical pediments have been painted a funny colour.

Strangeways Manchester #1

Posted on February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 by modernmoocher

Strangeways?

– How strange.

The Strangeways family themselves are certainly recorded in antiquity at the site, although the name appears differently over time; Strongways in 1306, Strangewayes in 1349 and Strangwishe in 1473. In the late 1500s in records at Manchester Cathedral the surname is spelt Strangwaies.

My thanks to Thomas McGrath for his – Long Lost Histories: Strangeways Hall, Manchester

Before panopticon prisons entered the public imagination, and incarceration was the order of the day for the disorderly, it was all fields around here – with the odd house or baronial hall.

Swire’s map of 1824

Strange days, over time the prison is built, the assizes appears and disappears and tight groups of tired houses cluster around the incipient industry. The fiefdom’s of old become tie and tithe to successions of industrial plutocrats.

Broughton Street 1910 – Photograph J Jackson

Kelly’s map of 1920

The area becomes the centre of the city’s rag trade, a large Jewish Community, the largest outside of London, grows up around Strangeways, Cheetwood and Cheetham Hill – houses, mills, wholesale, retail, warehouse, ice palace, beer-house, brewery. The area is home to several of Joe Sunlight’s inter-war industrial developments – his Jewish family were named Schimschlavitch, his father a cotton merchant. The family emigrated to England in 1890 and settled in Manchester.

So much for Joe Soap – the area was also the location for local lads, Karl Marx, and Marks & Spencer.

Derby Street 1901 – 1924

Further developments took place with the building of the Cheetwood Industrial Estate – a postwar group of flat-rooved, blocky brick and concrete utilitarian units.

So let’s take a look at the ever so strange streets of Strangeways, in that period of change during the latter part of the Twentieth Century, when manufacturing, retail, repair and distribution were almost, just about to disappear in a puff of globalisation, economic depression and Thatcherism. Where Jack and Jill the lads and lasses, traded, ducked, dived, wheeler dealed from Cortinas, Transits and low milage, one owner, luxuriously leather-seated and walnut-dashed Jags. A vanishing or vanished world, where however briefly – Manchester went architecturally mod.