Angel Meadow Excavation

Angel Meadow is an amazing part of Manchester where our forefathers lived cheek by jowl with the factories and industry of the city. Within a small area there were Ragged Schools, paupers burial ground, industry and the juvenile reformatory. Recently there have been excavations prior to the Co-op building their new headquarters, and today was the open day. So I trolled along and was really pleased with what I came across. 'twas great!

The photo below shows a general view of the housing - most of it was originally fine artizans houses that were latterly sub divided so increasing the density of population.

Below are the end of cloth rolls that were stored and/or worked in these yards

The division of the houses resulted in larger population numbers and significantly increased the profits for the landlords - shown clearly by the single brick course in the photo below. These single back to back houses led to explosions of vermin and awful living conditions.