9 May 2026
11:00am - 12:00pm
Meeting Place: Queen Victoria Statue in Piccadilly Gardens
Manchester M1 1LU
FREE to Members Only
Overview
Ancoats has been described as the world’s first industrial suburb. The area was open land until the 1780s but over the next 40 years it became intensely developed. Huge steam-powered cotton spinning mills, foundries and engineering works, many alongside the new Rochdale Canal, filled much of the area with squalid slum housing squeezed into any available spaces. The area attracted great attention with visitors coming from Europe and North America to see this new phenomenon. There a four ways into history, documentary sources, archaeological evidence, what can be seen and what we can imagine. All of these will be used to explain Ancoats then and now.
The guided walk will cover about one and a half miles. Be aware that parts of the canal towpath are uneven.
Image credit: Pit-yacker, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia
Ken Moth
Ken Moth is a retired accredited conservation architect and amateur historian. Originally from east Manchester, he can remember when the textile factories, foundries and chemical works were still in production.