manchester mancunians expats
Saturday, 11th October 2003
Then and Now: Ancoats
Carl Palmer THE awesome sight of huge cotton mills with chimneys so tall they outstripped the church spires is not obvious from these bleak and uninspiring images of Ancoats.But their place on the banks of the Rochdale Canal is at least testament to their architectural longevity, when all around an air of dereliction hovers, and nearby cleared sites hint more at neglect than restoration. The older image, taken in 1903, is of McConnel and Kennedy's Mills, in Redhill Street, then called Union Street, with Murrays Mills close by.
McConnel & Kennedy built their first cotton-spinning factory in Ancoats in 1798 - employing more than 1,500 workers in 1836 - and were responsible for the first successful application of steam power to mule spinning.The mills were also among the earliest to be lit by gas - just one example of the superiority McConnel & Kennedy had over neighbouring mills. Interestingly, the Murray brothers - Adam and George - who owned the mill nearest to McConnel & Kennedy, not only originated from Kircudbrightshire in southern Scotland like their rivals, but were apprenticed to the same textile machine manufacturer. The archive photograph is part of a collection chronicling the changing face of Manchester during the past 250 years. The collection comprises more than 77,000 images on a computer at Manchester Central Library.
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