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Oldham Road, MANCHESTER, M4 5EB

Victoria Square on Oldham Road.

Bengal Street in Ancoats.

Built by Spalding & Cross for the Manchester Corporation in 1897, replacing slums, the first such housing project and still public housing. Quadrangular with a courtyard and greenery inside. Pevsner picks out the good brickwork, and the decorative touches such as the gables and terracotta details. Grade II listed. Sadly, despite the architects' best efforts, Pevsner reports that "the initiative did not do the slum dwellers any good since they could not afford the rents and had to move to squalid conditions elsewhere."

View looking up Oldham Road.

Demolition site alongside Bengal Street in Ancoats.

The Manchester branch of Wing Yip on the corner of Oldham Road and Thompson Street. According to the company website http://www.wingyip.com/#CompanyHistory "Wing Yip is widely recognised as the UK's leading Oriental grocer with four sites - Birmingham, Manchester, Croydon and Cricklewood." Mr Wing Yip and business partners opened their first Chinese restaurant in Clacton-on-Sea in the 1960s. In the 1970s he and his brothers opened their first specialised Chinese grocery store in Birmingham and then Manchester. Note: Photograph is for record purposes only. The photographer has no connection with the business depicted.

Traditional public house at the corner of Silk Street and Bengal Street.

The Grade II listed https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1246277 Victoria Square was Manchester's first municipal housing, built in 1889, by Henry Spalding and A.W.Cross. It is in red brick with terracotta dressings and slate roofs. There is a square courtyard plan with balcony access inside the courtyard. It opened in 1894 and was intended for 825 people in 237 double tenements and 48 single. The flats had internal bathrooms and the Square had shared laundries with drying facilities in the top rooms of the corner towers - an attempt to rid homes of the damp air from drying clothes and thus reduce bronchial complaints. Demolition was proposed in 1970 but, since receiving Grade II listing in 1988, the flats have been extensively refurbished and converted into old people's dwellings, managed by Northward Housing and featuring 163 modern one- and two-bed flats. This photograph shows the corner of George Leigh Street and Bengal Street. It also fronts on to Sherratt Street and Oldham Road. Image

Manchester's first municipal housing was built in 1889, by Henry Spalding and A.W.Cross and is Grade II listed. It is in red brick with terracotta dressings and slate roofs. There is a square courtyard plan with balcony access inside the courtyard. The listing gives loads of architectural detail, most of which I don't understand. It opened in 1894 his block of flats was opened in 1894 and was the first building of the major re-housing scheme that the Manchester Corporation undertook. The building was intended for 848 people in 237 double tenements and 48 single. The flats had internal bathrooms and the Square had shared laundries with drying facilities in the top rooms of the corner towers - an attempt to rid homes of the damp air from drying clothes and thus reduce bronchial complaints. The property continues to be in local authority ownership and now provides accommodation for senior citizens run by Northwards Housing. One of the residents started a community project - knitting enough scarves to encircle the building! Here volunteers are helping to support the linked scarves. Afterwards they were to be auctioned for charity.

According to Pubs of Manchester http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Shamrock%20-%20Bengal%20Street this quaint little back street pub halfway down Bengal Street (of Bengal Tigers infamy, as detailed in The Gangs of Manchester and the play Angels With Manky Faces) is the last remaining pub within Old Ancoats in an area that once housed an untold number of pubs. Shown as a Wilsons house in 1962 http://www.images.manchester.gov.uk/web/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=72326 by 1984 it was a Burtonwoods pub and is a Marstons house today [2010]. It was described in the Manchester Guardian in 1862 as "Vault, brewhouse, grocer's shop and dwelling house", belonging to Renshaw & Cardwell's Hulme brewery. As its name suggests, it was an Irish pub, where the Orangemen and Catholics of Ancoats would mix freely. Nowadays it describe's itself http://www.shamrock-irishbar.co.uk/ as a hidden gem on the outskirts of the Northern Quarter with plasma screen showing all live Premiership Matches, a restaurant serving home cooked food and a beer garden. Image