Ancoats

During our last morning in Manchester, we left the Northern Quarter and entered Ancoats, an area of the city that has been transformed almost unrecognisably in recent years. For many years, from the late 18th century onwards, Ancoats was a thriving industrial district, home to some of the largest mills that established Manchester's reputation as 'Cottonopolis'. The area suffered accelerating economic decline from the 1930s. In recent years the area has been transformed almost unrecognisably. The former factories that characterise 'the world's first industrial suburb', remain however, as do the names of the streets named after Manchester's violent Victorian Scuttlers gangs, such as Bengal Street for the Bengal Tigers.

The mills and factories have been turned into elegant flats, and there is an influx of new independent bars and restaurants, making Ancoats one of the hippest places in the UK

We soon arrived to Cutting Room Square the heart of the district. 

Halle St Peters, the principal recording and rehearsal venue for the Halle Orchestra, a Grade II listed building, dominates the square. The building is a regular host to concerts, events and weddings.

The streets are dominated by the massive cotton-mills

which are now gated residential units.

Looking in

We moved on to Rochdale canal

This canal boat caught our attention

skulls at every window.

The sculptural bridge in the distance leads to Ancoats Marina, a waterside wharf which is the border between Ancoats and New Islington.

We stopped to have a look at the mill buildings on this side of the canal. It took me back to when I read Elisabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton where the conditions of the mill workers in Manchester are described. Children starving before their parents' eyes; workers living in damp, unheated basement rooms, many dying of disease and starvation; the ill tossing on damp beds under piled clothing for lack of warm blankets.

 

We crossed this amazing bridge

view from the bridge

A whole boating community on the other side of the bridge, moored in a selection of narrowboats.

The whole area has been redeveloped with tons of apartment buildings

and bridges connecting everything

In the midddle of all these high-rises and the bridges, a pocket-sized park, Cotton Field Park

and swans, geese and ducks

and a small human-made island in the middle

Through the gate on the bridge

a main road

and we retraced our steps

past a series of adverts for the new development - they all seem to be for renting, rather than for sale

and back to the bridge, and the old cotton mills facing us.

I kept looking at these massive buildings, all cotton mills, and I could not help but wonder what it was like during the Industrial Revolution and I thought of Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England'.

Engels wrote it during his 1842-44 stay in Salford and Manchester, the heart of the Industrial Revolution. In it he argues that the Industrial Revolution made workers worse off. He shows, that in large industrial cities such as Salford, Manchester and Liverpool, mortality from disease was four times that in the countryside, and mortality from convulsions was ten times as high. The overall death-rate in Manchester and Liverpool was significantly higher than the national average. He focused on both the workers' wages and their living conditions. He argued that the industrial workers had lower incomes than their pre-industrial peers and they lived in more unhealthy and unpleasant environments.

We crossed the bridge again

We came upon the boat we had seen from across the canal - a proper skeleton this time

Another bridge, Victorian this time

We got to Great Ancoats Street, we had come full circle, and stopped at Gran T's coffee house for some lunch

It's a great place: lovely atmosphere, great food and the staff are particulatly helpful.