Old maps chart the decline of Angel Meadow from a rural idyll to an industrial slum. The first detailed plan of Manchester, made in 1741, shows how the area had been divided into three hedge-lined fields, including one that marked the later path of Angel Street. Rows of cottages were laid out across the fields and dozens of smart houses were built as the area briefly became a wealthy suburb for merchants and artisans.
But the large old merchants’ houses were eventually let out to lodgers as Manchester’s population doubled to 100,000 within just 25 years. The architectural flourishes remained – giving the slum an air of faded grandeur – while builders operating without planning restrictions threw up new houses in every spare nook and cranny.
Covered passages soon led to inner courts that were soon ankle-deep in the filth and offal. Workshops, a dye works, two iron foundries and a rope works opened to service the new cotton industry and the nearby Arkwright’s Mill. Within a few years, the Irk had more mills along its banks than any other river of the same length in England. Follow the decline of Angel Meadow by clicking through this gallery of maps:
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Published by angelmeadowbook
Step into the Victorian underworld of Angel Meadow, the vilest and most dangerous slum of the Industrial Revolution. In the shadow of the world's first cotton mill, 30,000 souls trapped by poverty are fighting for survival as the British Empire is built upon their backs.
Thieves and prostitutes keep company with rats in overcrowded lodging houses and deep cellars on the banks of a black river, the Irk. Gangs of 'scuttlers' stalk the streets in pointed, brass-tripped clogs. Those who evade their clutches are hunted down by cholera and tuberculosis. Lawless drinking dens and a cold slab in the dead house provide the only relief from this filthy and frightening world.
Journalist Dean Kirby takes readers on a hair-raising journey through the alleyways, gin palaces and underground vaults of the nineteenth century Manchester slum considered so diabolical it was re-christened 'hell upon earth' by Friedrich Engels in 1845.
Enter Angel Meadow if you dare...
Angel Meadow will be published by Pen and Sword on 28 February, 2016. See my website for details.
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