Manchester Cotton Districts Learning Journey
Come with Victorian visitors and follow the Learning Journey steps into Manchester's busy cotton districts.
Click on the steps below to explore.
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Manchester Cotton Districts Learning Journey Step 6: Housing districts for workers and middle classes
Workers housing* Ancoats * Ardwick * Cheetham * Hulme * Moss Side In the inner city districts, where land is at a premium, worker's housing is built back-to-back, or in little rows, or around courts with central sanitation facilities. '...on the left side of the Medlock lies Hulme which...is one great working people's district...[and] southward from Great Ancoats Street lies a great straggling working men's quarter...occupied by...rows of houses or squares...' (Engels, Friedrich. Condition of the Working Class in England. 1845) 'The dwellings of the labouring manufacturers are in narrow streets and lanes, blocked up from light and air...crowded together because every inch of land is of such value, that room for light and air cannot be afforded them...the houses all built of brick and blackened with smoke; frequent buildings among them as large as convents, without their antiquity, without their beauty, without their holiness; where you hear from within...the everlasting din of machinery...' (Robert Southey 1774-1843) Middle class housing: * Chorlton-cum-Hardy * Didsbury * Fallowfield * Rusholme * Victoria Park * Whalley Range * Withington Those who can afford do so escape to the outer, more genteel districts mainly on the south side of the city. '...the far outskirts of the city, again, form a sort of universally-stretching west-end. Thither fly all who can afford to live out of the smoke. There are open handsome squares, and showy ranges of crescents and rows, and miles of pleasant villas peeping from their shrubberied grounds...' (Angus Bethune Reach, 1849 - 50). see also the Housing and Living Conditions sections on this web site. BB |
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