Underground Manchester.

[regentroad5]

If a visit could be organised I would love to come.

[aidanorourke]

Steve Little is one of Manchester's most knowledgeable local historians. I'm aware he is an expert on the history of Ancoats, but I didn't know he had pictures of underground Manchester. I'd be very interested to find out more about this. I don't have his contact details.

[duncan]

I once found a book in an old book shop in the city centre near the coach station entitled 'the seven underground rivers of manchester' which described the building over of seven rivers as manchester grew over the centuries. I also had a friend who discovered a passageway under a building near oxford road that led under the city centre though i think this was built during the the second world war. There is also the underground bunker under piccadilly which I think is what is now being used to lay telephone cables.
Anyone out there got anything to add on this?

[aidanorourke]

That book, The Seven Underground Rivers of Manchester sounds very interesting indeed, wouldn't mind laying my hands on a copy! Another publication I would certainly be very keen on acquiring is an A-Z of Manchester from prior to 1960.

[mrs barnes]

apparantly, the building that used to be Parkers Hotel has an underground passage that goes under the road to another building. i believe that the Hotel was the predecessor to the CIS tower, so it may lead to another Cooperative building. i am interested in the history of this building, does anyone know anything about it at all?

[CDElison]

I decided to register after reading this very interesting thread, below is a photograph I took of what looks to be an underground entrance below Victoria Station. The road is situated behind Chetham's School of Music. Regretfully, I didn't take any photographs of whatever was inside through the gates as I didn't want to arouse any suspicion of passers-by.


Image captured: 08/08/2003 08:35:27

[aidanorourke]

Manchester Walker's Croft cobbles (bw)

That photo is taken at the end of Walker's Croft, the curved cobbled street that runs behind Chetham's School. It follows the line, and was once the embankment of the River Irk, which was culverted. Straight ahead, in that tunnel entrance is the area covered over when Victoria Station was expanded in the late 19th century, straddling and burying the River Irk. What is inside there? I would love to know.

This image shows the other end of Walker's Croft, looking towards Victoria Street and the former Exchange Station, which people seem to have forgotten ever existed.

[kevconnor]

This evidence is more anecdotal than anything concrete but two point I can remember for certain.
On Piccadilly radio when it use to be Dave and Umberto doing the breakfast show this subject was covered as a trivia piece.
The upshot being it was the Victorian whom we had to thank for this. As the area in the north east corner of Manchester is a naturally sloping from south to north as it sloped towards the rivers Irk and Irwell with the confluence point somewhere around the Victoria area. Looking in this general area there are small clues that this could be true, If people note the variation between the level at which Deansgate is at outside the cathedral and the level the river is at is set down much lower from the road and there is Victorian building and engineering all around it such as the entrance to the old exchange station on the Salford side of the river.
When I was younger working in a newsagents in North Manchester the owner was then quite an elderly gentleman he told me that somewhere around the Cathedral you could look down and see an old Roman road where the Victorians had just rode rough-shot over it, much looking around have proved fruitless (although this gated off area around the school of music I have never seen before) so I have never been able to verify the truth of this.
Secondly a piece I remember from the BBC North West news was the excavation of an old Saxon bridge that had been uncovered, this happened post 1996 and is somewhere in the region of Hanging ditch or Blackfriars in the area where it is known the medieval Manchester Settlement was located.

Just as another point although much of the evidence is circumstantial it needs to be remember that the Victorians weren't as indebted to the necessity of preservation and we are now, just look at what happened to the old Manchester fort that stood in Castlefield as a prime example, Sentimentality glosses over the fact that whilst the Victorians built and shaped Manchester, it was completed much at the cost of previous traces of older Manchester.

If anyone can find any more information on these I would love to hear about it, Maybe someone at the BBC can remember covering this piece.

If anyone has the inclination it maybe an idea to view the old OS maps in central Manchester, I am not sure how far back they go but it would need to be before Victoria Station was build In the mid1830's to 1840's

[kevconnor]

while writing the other one i remembered that I have an old book of Engels and decided to have a look in it he describes the scene around Victoria station as being
“First of all, there is the old town of Manchester, which lies between the northern boundary of the commercial district and the Irk. Here the streets, even the better ones, are narrow and winding, as Todd Street, Long Millgate, Withy Grove, and Shudehill, the houses dirty, old, and tumble-down, and the construction of the side streets utterly horrible.
The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate.
Above Ducie Bridge, the left bank grows more flat and the right bank steeper, "

This has been taken from, the conditions of the working class in England, his famous work that was written in 1844, around the time that Victoria station was first built.
He goes onto mention that this area was referred to as Old Manchester(there have been settlements in this area dating back to the bronze age), and that this was very much the poor area of the city, this could prove to be part of the reasoning as to why the Victorians saw fit to 'Regenerate' the area (obviously not as modern a phenomena in Manchester as we may have though).

Engels would have known much about this area of Manchester when he and Marx were in Manchester much of their time was spent in Cheetham free public Library around the corner.

parts of the book are available on Google Books as well for anyone who is interested in reading further.

[regentroad5]

I find the idea of hidden places in the modern metropolis of Manchester absolutely fascinating.In the 1960's and early 1970's before they built the Arndale it was great to walk up Market Street and be able to explore the grimy splendour of old fashioned streets and alleyways and squares,which to me always seemed hidden from the mainstream of everyday life,and steeped in character.