A walk around Ancoats

On a cold December day I managed to get to Ancoats and have a little walk round. Going behind Piccadilly station wasn’t something I’d ever done before as far as I know and it felt a bit eerie as the streets were deserted, lined by imposing old buildings which all seemed to be empty. I passed by the basin of the lock where the water was still frozen since the bout of freezing weather not long previously. It could have been a photo opportunity but the car parks that are abundant in the area don’t make for pretty pictures. In fact, the overwhelming impression of the area is that of old, abandoned buildings and car parks.

Cornwall Street where John Regan, Martha Clunie’s father lived with his family in 1871 has now been renamed Cornell Street for some reason I can’t fathom. Adjoining Anita Street was originally called Sanitary Street and the reason for this stems apparently from some creative vandalism to the street sign as well as a change in what we think is appropriate for street names. At one time Sanitary Street would have been an accolade to progress and hygiene.

I found what remains of Loom Street, where the Regan family lived at number 108 in 1861. It is now a kind of gloomy alley cut off at the end with a couple of dark buildings on either side, one of which seems to house some kind of business activity. Looking closer I found a plaque erected to some long forgotten clergyman and some old lettering depicting the name of the street.

Later, on the way back to Piccadilly station I found a bookshop and browsed the Manchester section where I found a history book with a whole section on the excavation of Loom Street houses undertaken by the University in 2007.

Manchester: The Hidden History by Michael Newell: The History Press, 2008

The most common houses excavated were back to back properties and the book gives details of various kinds of properties. It disclaims some remarks made by Engels about the thickness of the walls and the living conditions described in his book in the 1840s. Whilst living conditions were certainly poor and sanitation and sewerage were still lacking it would appear that by the 1860s things were quite different than in the 1830s. As well as looking at the structure of the houses the excavation uncovered remains of ‘high quality pottery such as creamwares and fine porcelains’ and ‘glass and stoneware bottles, showing the consumption of mineral water, carbonated cordials or ginger beer……these beverages were often drunk in preference to the local well water that was frequently contaminated’.

On George Leigh Street just along from Loom Street is the church of St Michael’s which was once the keystone of the thriving Italian community which came to Ancoats at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1881 most of our family had left the area and gone over to Salford. They were replaced by Italian immigrants who made the area their own and were well-known for starting the ice-cream business. There is a beautiful website about these Italians here.

The church is now the object of a campaign to keep it open and there appears to be quite a bit of animosity between the locals and the bishop.

I didn’t manage to walk further up the streets to find Portugal and Elizabeth Streets were the Clunie’s lived due to cold feet and hands.

Another time maybe.

Children of the Industrial Revolution 2

Before they all ended up in Salford it seems lots of our family lived in Ancoats, Manchester.

What is truly amazing is how some of our ancestors lived so close to each other in the 1850s and 1860s yet it would take another 100 years before these families were joined together by the marriage of my mother and father who also met each other when they lived in adjoining streets although these streets were some miles and many decades distant from this district.

In 1851 Mary Callaghan, my great-great-great grandmother (she was Hannah Keogh, grandma Nally’s great-grandmother) was living in the area around New Islington, Pott Street, she was widowed by the age of 36 and left with five children to care for alone. She was Irish, born in 1815 , her eldest daughter Mary was born in Ireland in 1833 and the younger ones were born in Manchester. Her daughter Mary Callaghan married Laurence Nolan who was also born in Ireland. It seems they were born in Westmeath and must have emmigrated during the potato famine. They all lived in the same street ten years later. In the next decade they moved to Salford and their daughter Ellen Nolan married Matthew Keogh (whose father Daniel Keogh was born in Ireland) they brought Hannah Keogh into this world. Hannah Keogh (who married Arthur McNally) was the dearly beloved mother of my dearly beloved father who married his dearly beloved wife, my mother.

In 1851 my mother’s mother’s families were living not too many streets away in much the same conditions. George Clunie was living at 49 Portugal street, his son James Clunie’s future wife Martha Regan was living with her Irish born father, John Regan, a street sweeper and her capmaker mother, Sarah, not so far away on the other side of what was then St George’s road, now Rochdale Road.

By 1861 the Clunies had moved a few doors down Portugal Street to number 51. Martha’s father John and his family were nearby in Loom street. Martha and James would marry and give birth to Edward Clunie who married Laura Ann Ashman the parents of our beloved grandma Laura Armstrong (born Clunie).

Meanwhile, not too far away on the other side of the river Irk, Agnes Armstrong, born in Scotland and recently widowed was living at 64 Stocks Street with her two sons who had been born in Rochdale a few years earlier. Her younger son James Charles Armstrong would marrry Sarah Myers to produce Charles James Armstrong who married Annie Hodkinson to give birth to James Edward Armstrong, our grandad Jim, who married our dearly beloved grandmother Laura Clunie.

Sarah Myers was the daughter of Robert Myers and Jemima Baxter. Robert Myers marrried Jemima Baxter in 1853 but it seems they had already had a few children born before they married. Robert Myers was a pawnbroker at 294 Deansgate which is certainly in a pretty different category to the rest of the workers in this family.

Ancoats was the original ‘Cottonopolis’. The area described by Frederich Engels in his 1845 ‘The Condition of the Working Class in England’ the work of a 24-year-old German middle-class boy, who incredibly rejected all his bougeoise background to eventually team up with Karl Marx and start one of the most influential movements in history.

His impassioned descriptions of the slum living conditions of the workers in this area make for depressing reading. The exact areas he describes can be pinpointed on the map as dwelling places of our family. The most surprising thing about this work is the chapter on Irish immigration, which he begins by saying is an attempt to discover the causes and effects of this immigration. The analysis of causes is notable for its complete absence and the analysis of effects turns into a surprisingly rascist diatribe comparing the Irish to savages.Their southern facile character is used to living in filth, they only know potatoes and drunkeness. What does such a race need higher wages for he asks. They live with their pigs as Arabs live with their horses. They are specifically responsible for spreading the habit of going about with no shoes on their feet and generally responsible for bringing down the level of civilization of the English working class.

This is particularly upseting as Laurence Nolan is listed as an engine driver, which as I understand from other readings, was a job that was pretty much on a par with an airline pilot these days.

The most poignant irony is that much of these same living and working conditions can be seen today in 2010, in modern day China (and other cities of what we quaintly call the developing world). What we now call globalisation is pretty much the same as what one hundred and fifty years ago was called industrialisation and capitalism. Now it is carried out under the auspices of a system called communism which was sparked by this eager, young German boy, who, apalled at the conditons of the working class in Manchester, teamed up with a fellow German, Karl Marx, to create a movement that was meant to improve their condition.

In 1841 the life expectancy in Manchester was 26.6 years.