Ardwick: A Brief History

The name Ardwick is thought to come from the words Ard, which was an abbreviation of the name of King Aethelred, and wic, meaning a farm or small hamlet, making it ‘the farm or hamlet of Aethelred’. Records of the village of Ardwick can be traced back to 1282, when it was known as Atherdwic. An old Roman road ran through the settlement, providing a link between Manchester and Stockport. By the 14th century, the area was recorded as having extensive cornfields and fisheries. From medieval times Ardwick was an independent township in the ancient parish of Manchester within the Salford Hundred of Lancashire. It became part of the Borough of Manchester on the borough’s creation in 1838. Historically the boundary between Ardwick and Manchester was the River Medlock.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, Ardwick remained a small village in open countryside. The principal residents were the Birch family, one of whom was a Major General when Oliver Cromwell (briefly) instituted direct military rule.

Grand terraces of Regency houses (some of which still survive) were fronted by Ardwick Green, which was a private park for residents and contained a pond.

For the Established Church, St Thomas’s on the north side of Ardwick Green was built in 1741. Bishop Vaughan opened the Roman Catholic church of St Aloysius in 1885.

Ardwick Cemetery was established in the 1830s as a prestigious place for fashionable burials. John Dalton, the chemist and physicist best known for his advocacy of atomic theory, is amongst those buried there. The cemetery was later converted into a school playing field.

By the early 19th century, Ardwick had grown from being a village into a pleasant and wealthy suburb of Manchester. However, by the end of the century, it had become heavily industrialised and was characterised by factories, workshops, warehouses, yards, railways and rows of back-to-back terraced houses. Like so many of Manchester’s once-fashionable suburbs, Ardwick succumbed to the onward sprawl of industrialisation, with a variety industrial process discharging effluent into the River Cornbrook, which became known to local people as the ‘Black Brook’.

Ardwick Green

Ardwick Green, situated on slightly elevated ground south-east of Manchester just across the Medlock valley, had become a fashionable retreat for the wealthy by the late eighteenth century. St Thomas’s church (Ardwick Chapel) dates from 1741 when Ardwick was ‘a detached village, cut off from Manchester by nearly a mile of cultivated fields’. The church was later enlarged to cater for the increased numbers living in the vicinity. Elegant houses grew up around a large green with its serpentine-shaped lake known to locals as ‘the canal’. This was probably the original village green landscaped to provide a suitable setting for ‘gentlemen’s residences’. Ardwick Green became Manchester’s first residential suburb, with the warehouses and workshops of the town accessible by carriage (crossing the Medlock at Ardwick Bridge on the London road) or by a brisk walk across fields. Once this must have been an idyllic rural setting – fields, hedges, open spaces and a small number of newly erected houses here and there along the London road. However, Atkin, writing in 1795, tells us that while ‘some years ago it was regarded as a rural situation … the buildings of Manchester have extended in that direction so far as completely to connect it with the town’. Nonetheless, Ardwick Green was still ‘principally inhabited by the more opulent classes, so as to resemble, though on a small scale, the west end of the city of London’. Laurent’s map of 1793 shows a footbridge over the ‘canal’ to allow ease of access to the church. As the country between Ardwick Green and Manchester became built up, the Green became a privately owned open space reserved for the use of residents: exclusivity was sought by installing a chain fence and later on railings and a gate, each household possessing a key for access and paying an annual fee that covered the cost of maintaining the grounds. The fee was 2s 6d a quarter and passing on the keys to somebody else incurred a fine. Another benefit of the fence was that it served the purpose of keeping out cattle. Ardwick Green and its immediate vicinity remained a desirable address until the middle of the nineteenth century. Several local residents were well-known names in Manchester life. John Kennedy (1769-1855) and James McConnel (1762-1831), partners in the famous firm of cotton spinners from Ancoats, lived there. Kennedy moved into one of the grandest houses, Ardwick Hall, at the south end of the Green. McConnel had a large house built in 1806 at the Polygon, a select development facing the nearby Stockport Road. Later inhabitants included the eminent engineer William Fairbairn (1789-1874) and leading Manchester merchants Alexander Henry (1784-1862) and John Rylands (1801-88). Rylands was Manchester’s foremost cotton merchant in a city noted for its merchant princes. The Mosley family also resided there.

In the centre of the Green was the ‘canal’, a long leech-shaped fishing lake, the grassy banks of which served as a promenade for the fashionable inhabitants of the district. Boating took place on the pond in later years. Poplars and other trees were planted and added to the pleasant and ornamental environment. The ‘canal’, or serpentine, was famously featured in the novel The Manchester Man by Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks, in which she describes how Jabez Clegg rescued his foe and rival, Laurence Aspinall, who had fallen through the ice whilst skating and was up to his neck in cold water. When frozen, the lake was much patronised and had a more select body of skaters, and consequently a more fashionable surrounding of admiring spectators.

In 1867, the Green was purchased by the Manchester Corporation for £2,068 and became the city’s third public park. The park was originally managed in the style of some London squares – before any member of the public could use it they had to pay a quarterly subscription of half a crown, with each subscriber receiving a key for the park. However, in the 1890s, subscriptions fell off and the park fell into a state of neglect and near bankruptcy.

In the early 1900s, the park was regenerated to a high ornamental standard at considerable financial cost. The 1915 City Parks report describes the park as: “…a green and refreshing oasis in the desert of houses - a few paths by the side of the grass plots, shrubs and flower beds, with a bandstand and a small pool at each end, all enclosed by rails.”

In the Second World War trenches were dug in the park. In 1948, the park was re-laid and consisted of grassed lawns, flower beds, shrubberies and walks. A children’s playground was laid out in 1951 on the south side of the park to occupy the younger people while the adults enjoyed the quietness of the gardens.

Other features of the park include the war memorial near the west end and the glacial boulder at the east end. In addition, there rests a milestone on the pavement of Ardwick Green South, just beyond the railing to the park.

Previous  Next