42, 44 and 46 Thomas Street (including 41, 43 and 45 Back Turner Street), City Centre, Manchester

Summary

Six former industrial workshop dwellings of the C18 with later alterations.

Description

Workshop dwellings, late-C18, and subsequently altered.

MATERIALS: hand-made red brick, with concrete-tile roofs.

PLAN: two terraces of three backing onto each other, with small yards between them now built on, connecting the two terraces. The houses fronting Thomas Street were of double-depth plan, but those fronting Back Turner Street were of only a single pile.

EXTERIOR: facing onto Thomas Street and onto Back Turner Street, respectively a principal street and a narrow lane in Smithfield Conservation Area.

42-46 THOMAS STREET
Main (north-east) elevation: this is of three storeys above the pavement, with one window to each floor. The ground floor has a continuous shop front with roller shutters and fascia. Timber stall-risers conceal cellar windows. Above the shop front the walling is laid in Flemish bond, with a straight vertical joint between number 46 (at the left) and number 44. Number 46 has taller windows in unaltered openings with stone sills, and a splayed rubbed brick lintel at first floor. Numbers 44 and 42 each have a wide, segmental-arched window at first floor, with a stone sill to 44 and infill brickwork to 42. At second floor each has a wide three-light window with stone sill. To number 44 this is in an unaltered opening, but at number 42 the brick-header lintel continues to the left to the equivalent of five lights’ width.

Left return: the south-east gable wall of number 46 can be seen above the standing ground floor of number 48. At first floor level this has a blocked opening and brickwork with excess mortar and broken headers. At second floor however the brickwork is of stretcher bond and of a finished appearance. To the left and set back is the side of the link to the Back Turner Street block; the first-floor walling is in panels of stretcher-bond brickwork between timber posts. Set back beyond this is the side wall of number 44’s rear outshut. This is also in English Garden Wall bond but with the header courses not aligned with those of the rear wall, and a straight vertical joint where it abuts the rear wall. The roof of the outshut is gabled above the rear wall of the original house, rather than hipping into the main roof. The outshut has casement windows at first and second floor, with stone sills. At the left is the short side wall of the link between this outshut and the Back Turner Street block, which is in stretcher bond. This short link rises just above the eaves of the Thomas Street outshut, and has a mono-pitch roof falling towards the eaves of the back Turner Street houses.

Right return: obscured by the adjacent building at 40 Thomas Street.

Rear elevation: in English Garden Wall bond and partly obscured by the link blocks, which run the whole width of the ground floor. The left half of number 42 (at the left) is visible above ground floor, with a wide single-pane window at second floor. A link block obscures more than half of the outshut to the right to eaves height, with the gable of the outshut visible above. To the right is a short width of the right-hand side of the rear wall of number 44’s rear outshut, visible to full height. This rear wall is in stretcher bond. The main rear wall of number 44 is visible to the right, with a first-floor sixteen-pane sash window with stone sill and header-brick lintel, and second-floor three-light fixed window. To the right of this, number 46 is set back by two bricks, and its eaves are slightly lower. Its left half is obscured at first-floor by a link to 45 Back Turner Street, with duo-pitch roof. Immediately to the right of this is a casement window with stone sill (partly concealed by the link), and above this a wider window of three fixed lights, also with a stone sill.

41-45 BACK TURNER STREET
Main (south-west) elevation: the front wall of the Back Turner Street houses is of three storeys, laid in Flemish bond. Number 41 (at the left) has an irregular joint at the upper levels, with the wall of number 43 projecting slightly. There is a straight vertical joint between numbers 43 and 45. These two each have a wide central window below the eaves, and a single first-floor window with a stone sill and segmental head. Each also has an inserted opening at ground floor with a concrete lintel. These openings and all of number 45’s windows are blocked in modern brick.

Number 45 has a widened ground-floor doorway at the left; below this and the adjacent blocked opening, are modern brick podia. Beneath 43’s ground-floor opening is the segmental brick head of a cellar window, with to its left a large stone block at pavement level. This block supports at the left the stone threshold of the entrance to the passage between 41 and 43 (now blocked). Immediately left of this is number 41’s doorway, with plywood-sheeted door and slim stone threshold. Further left are a blocked cellar window with segmental head, and blocked ground-floor window with segmental head and stone sill. Aligned above these are a first-floor window and shorter second-floor window, with similar windows over the doorways. All four upper windows have stone sills, with segmental heads to the first floor. At the far left are two inserted slim windows at ground and first floor. Above these is a short brick ridge chimneystack.

Left and right returns: these are obscured by the adjacent properties, but the north-west side wall of the link block between 42 Thomas Street and 41 Back Turner Street can be seen from the void above the ground-floor. At its left there is a straight vertical joint between this wall and the rear wall of 42 Thomas Street. The brick is in English Garden Wall bond, with a window below the eaves with stone sill. At the right a straight vertical joint separates this walling from more modern brickwork linking it to the rear wall of 41 Back Turner Street, with a monopitch roof pitching down towards number 41.

Rear elevation: like that of the Thomas Street houses, this is obscured at ground floor and in parts at upper levels by the link blocks. Where visible, it is in English Garden Wall bond. At the left, number 45 has a partially-blocked attic window of eight lights’ width, with timber frame. The first three lights retain mullions and are blocked with hand-made bricks. A small timber window occupies lights 4 and 5, while lights 6-8 have been replaced by a brick panel. Number 43 has a narrower window opening with a three-light modern casement inserted. The right-hand end of a former attic window to number 41 is blocked with a mix of hand-made and modern bricks, but identifiable by a straight vertical joint at the right.

INTERIOR: the basements, particularly to Back Turner Street, retain much original walling with blocked features behind later studs. The rear outshut to 44 Thomas Street has a fire surround and door surround, both C18, at first floor, and the basement to 45 Back Turner Street retains a range-alcove at the base of the chimney breast. Visible roof purlins are hewn timber and more historic timbers including purlins and rafters survive above the ceilings. Staircases and floors appear to be largely C19 or later but some areas of C18 floorboards survive. At least one area of lime plaster ceiling on riven laths also survives. Further historic fabric may be concealed behind later finishes.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 14/11/2019

History

From the C18 the area to the east of Manchester, now known as the Northern Quarter, began to be developed. Characteristic workshop dwellings comprised three storeys and a cellar and were usually two rooms deep. They had a workshop in the attic lit by a long window, and often a workshop in the cellar, many of which were later converted as separate dwellings or rented workshops. An urban refinement of rural Pennine weavers’ cottages, these were also used by craftsmen in other trades, although textile manufacturing was the dominant use (both weaving and spinning).

Such premises form an important reminder that the C18 industrial expansion of Manchester depended largely on domestic manufacture, even after the appearance of cotton spinning mills in the last 20 years of the century. Similar houses were built in London, where they have virtually disappeared, but workshop dwellings in other industrial cities usually lacked the distinctive attic windows, with the workshops either in cellars or outhouses. Similar dwellings are found in small numbers in smaller industrial towns including Macclesfield. The only other concentration of such premises in Manchester was in the Aldport area around the southern end of Deansgate, where only one listed terrace of seven now survives (2018). Within Manchester, examples of this type of dwelling are now thought to total up to 60.

Casson and Berry’s map of Manchester in 1745 shows a developed block between Turner Street and the south side of Thomas Street, on the site of the buildings. This is similar to the arrangement shown on Tinker’s map of 1772, suggesting that these buildings were already present by the 1740s. They are certainly the buildings shown on Green’s map of 1794, which shows numbers 42 and 44 Thomas Street with rear ranges separated by only a few feet from the rear of the houses fronting Back Turner Street (which were numbered 41, 43 and 45 prior to being annexed to the Thomas Street houses). Straight joints in the brickwork, lack of connection at roof level and the proximity to adjacent windows confirm that the current rear ranges are additions indicating that like number 46, numbers 42 and 44 were originally only two rooms deep. The similarity in the brickwork however suggests that the extensions were built relatively soon after the main houses and might be those depicted on Green’s map, although they have subsequently been altered and extended rearwards. Two passages between the three houses on Back Turner Street gave access to the rear yards of all six properties.

Straight vertical joints seen in the brickwork between 44 and 46 Thomas Street and between 43 and 45 Back Turner Street suggest that the front and rear terraces were developed progressively, and possibly in tandem. The block originally included similar houses to the north, and the vertical joints were thus halfway along the block. Only one house was built beyond the joint on Back Turner Street, possibly because of reducing demand. However number 44 Thomas Street is slightly deeper in plan than either of its neighbours, and is shown like this on the 1850 1:1,056 town plan. Number 41 Back Turner Street is also notably wider than 43 and 45. The variation between the properties suggests that they were not developed entirely speculatively.

The 1850 1:1,056 Ordnance Survey (OS) town plan shows the building footprints in more detail and confirms that the extensions were not symmetrical and had irregular plans. By this date, all of the buildings had rear extensions, although those to Back Turner Street appear to have been single-storey as there are no indications in the upper brickwork. This map appears to show the rears of 46 Thomas Street and 43 Back Turner Street to be linked internally at the corner where they met. Basement areas are shown to all of the houses except for 43 Back Turner Street. However, blocked windows and a door in the rear cellar wall of 43 Back Turner Street indicate that there was a basement area to the rear here.

The Goad fire insurance plan of 1888 shows that the Back Turner Street houses were still dwellings of three storeys plus basements, while the Thomas Street houses had become shops. The 1891 1:500 OS town plan also shows no links between the blocks, and marks basement areas to the front of all of the houses. By the later 1890s the houses on Back Turner Street had become an umbrella factory (also including number 39, now demolished) with links through the party walls, and 46 Thomas Street and 45 Back Turner Street had become linked. The Thomas Street houses were being used for storing fents (cloth roll-ends). By the 1931 Goad map the ground floors and yards became a single space, with columns supporting the upper floors.

During the Second World War an underground air-raid shelter was created in the cellars of 46 Thomas Street and 45 Back Turner Street, with some alterations to their northerly neighbours. The surviving base of the chimney breast at number 45, against the party wall with 43, indicates that the stair to the attic, which is against this wall, is a later insertion. Many of the other staircases appear to have been replaced in the C19, although most reuse the positions of the predecessors. The original roofing was probably stone, and all the Goad plans indicate slate, but this has now been replaced by concrete tiles.

Reasons for Listing

Numbers 42, 44 and 46 Thomas Street, Manchester (including 41, 43 and 45 Back Turner Street), six former workshop dwellings of the C18 with later alterations, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Historic interest:

* as important contributors to Manchester’s pre-eminence as the world’s first industrial city, providing unique contextual evidence of the origins of industry in Manchester based on domestic scale manufacturing.

Architectural interest:

* for their local distinctiveness as urban workshop dwellings erected through small-scale individual enterprise in the rapidly-expanding proto-city;

* for their rarity as surviving examples of this type of building in Manchester, and including single-depth examples on Back Turner Street.

Group value:

* as a substantial group erected with yards between them, and with other listed buildings belonging to the same phase of the city’s development, in particular on Thomas Street, Back Turner Street and Kelvin Street.

External Links

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