Accessible Description - Photo of Information Panel Titled 'The Astley'

An archaeological excavation was undertaken by Pre-Construct Archaeology Ltd in April 2016 at Nos 74-88 Great Ancoats Street. The excavation trench was located in the southern part of the site on the corner of Dean Street and Houldsworth Street, where a series of late 18th- and early 19th-century brick cellars and a paved courtyard were revealed.

Until the 1770s Ancoats was a rural area to the east of Manchester, but during the last quarter of the 18th century it became the town’s first industrial suburb with the construction of cotton factories, weavers and other workers cottages. The population of Manchester grew dramatically from 76,000 to 316,000 in 1851 with more people being crammed into smaller and smaller houses. A significant proportion of these people were Irish who made up a tenth of the city’s population by 1841. Concentrated in the slum area of Ancoats and often living in conditions of abject poverty in windowless cellars. The buildings revealed on site were a mixture of residential and commercial, with small workers houses and a warehouse. The vast majority of the cellars had fireplaces which suggest that there indeed occupied rather than just used for storage. Census returns from 1861 onwards would suggest at least by that date that none of the buildings were occupied by more that one family, however families of up to seven were sharing two small rooms and a cellar measuring as little as 3.75 metres by 3 metres (9 foot 11 inches by 11 foot 6 inches).

Close up of the text and images from the information panel in Great Ancoats Street in Manchester

Information panel commemorates a former pub, early workers’ housing and warehousing in Great Ancoats Street, Manchester, a site redeveloped for a high-rise apartment development © Norman Redhead, University of Salford

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Astley Arms/Paganini Tavern, 78 Great Ancoats Street

The Astley Arms stood to the north of the excavation area at 78 Great Ancoats Street. It is possible that the public house dates back to the late 18th century as a large building is hown on William Green’s Map of 1794. From at least 1816 to 1828 the licence was held by Thomas Evans who commissioned his own pottery for the pub.

From 1832 to 1849 the license was held by Thomas Inglesent, a local character, who was known as ‘blind’ or ‘fiddling Tom’; he renamed the pub the Paganini Tavern after his hero whom he imitated on the violin, and in addition made wonderful farmyard impressions to his customers who were described as ‘not very select’.

In the mid 1850’s the pub reverted to its original name, the Astley Arms, and it remained as a pub until 1928. By the time of the Goad fire insurance map of 1931 it was used as a button warehouse.

36-40 Dean Street

The earliest buildings found on the site were three one room workers houses that fronted onto Dean Street. These houses consisted of two storeys with brick floored cellars and had a slate roof. These cottages soon became ‘blind backs’ with the construction of buildings to their rear.

By the time of the 1861 Census the properties were occupied by to Irish families and a Londoner with an Irish wife who were employed as a painter’s labourer, a paper hanger, nail maker, shoe nail maker and a cap milliner. For at least 30 years from 1871 to 1901 No. 36 was occupied by Manchester born Joseph Shipley, his wife Teresa and his expanding family of 6 children. Joseph conducted his French polishing business from the premises and the family grew in prosperity to take over neighbouring No. 38 by 1881.

Buildings on Houldsworth Street and No. 2 Court

To the rear of the workers cottages was built a commercial building which operated as a rag and paper warehouse in 1888 and behind this was a paved courtyard with outside privies.

The pair of buildings to the east appear to have been a mixture of commercial and residential properties from at least 1851. On Goad’s map of 1888 they were part used by the paper warehouse with a smithy in the basement. A ginnel ran between the two buildings giving access to an area to the rear of the Astley Arms pub, where No. 2 Court is shown. Two small two storey one room court dwellings were built in tis courtyard and were occupied in the last quarter of the 19th century.

At least one of these court dwellings was at one time associated with the Astley Arms to the north, as it is mentioned in a sale’s particular of 1891 and a publican was living there in 1901 along with numerous other families including that of a cabinet maker, a seamstress and greengrocer’s porter in 1881, a French polisher in 1891 and a sackmaker in 1901

Images

1980s photograph of buildings on the corner of Dean Street and Houldsworth Street (© Manchester Early Dwellings Research Group)
1849 Ordinance Survey Map
Plan showing house numbers
Site view looking south-west towards Houldsworth Street
Transfer-printed mug with a European landscape designed commissioned by Thomas Evans, landlord of the Astleys Arms public house found on site
Late 19th and early 20th-century glass bottles embossed with the names of Greater Manchester mineral water manufacturers and a Blackburn brewery (left to right) J.Pratt & Son, Leigh Street; J&B Jewbury Brown, Ardwick Green North; T.W. Lawson Limited, Napoleon Works, Rochdale Road; Thomas Whewell, Victoria Brewery, Blackburn; John Dyson, Temperance Street and Clayton; M. Lapidus, Great Ducies Street and T.D. and P Dowd, Beswick Street
Fireplace in a room fronting Houldsworth Street
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