Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

Museum Location

Few people would describe the location of the Museum of Transport as particularly interesting or beautiful. However, a little research into our small corner of Cheetham has revealed that the area has undergone some quite major changes especially during the last 150 years.

The first known reference to the name “Chetam” was made in the year 1212, and is thought to derive from the old English Cet (wood) – Ham (village or manor). In the 14th century, reference was made that “Roger de Middleton holds one carve of land in Chetham”. Very little changed in this quiet rural area for over 500 years, and Cheetham’s main claim to fame seems to have been the high quality of its archers. Even the growth of Manchester and Salford in the late 18th century hardly affected the few local inhabitants until the more wealthy Manchester businessmen began to have large houses built outside the smoke and disease of the overcrowded towns. Some of the first of these merchants’ mansions were built in Halliwell Lane and Smedley Lane, and some of the latter can still be seen.

In the Irk Valley were two particularly large houses, Smedley Hall and Endham Hall. Both have long since vanished from the heavily polluted Irk Valley, but a road called Hendham Vale still runs alongside the river. The valley could also boast one of the most popular beauty spots near Manchester, the Arcadia Gardens.

Closer to the Museum on the west side of Cheetham Hill Road (then called York Street) was the Temple. This was a collection of large houses occupied by gentlemen and merchants. The formal gardens of the Temple House were where the Temple Junior School stood until it was relocated several years ago, and included a pond and bowling green. There was also a toll bar on this road at this point.

Much of the area near the present Museum was part of the estate of the earl of Derby, whose name survives in the nearby Derby Street and the Derby Brewery. In 1836 a plot of land was given by the Earl upon which St. Luke’s Church, opposite the Museum, was built at a cost of £23,000. St. Luke’s was a well-known church in the area, and the composer Mendelssohn is reputed to have played the organ there. Sadly, the church fell into disuse in the 1970s, and was demolished some years ago; however, the tower remains and is a prominent local landmark.

By the time of the 1845 first edition of the Ordnance Survey, Queens Road had come into existence, but only as a field path known as “Job’s Stile Path”. After a few legal wrangles over access to the path, the Earl of Derby sold some land, this time for the construction of a number of terraced houses. This area was to the north and east of the present Museum and Bus Garage, the principal street being named Johnson Street after the developer, George Johnson. The Johnson Street area was demolished in the 1970s and re-used for local authority housing, whilst the site of Luke Street, next to the Museum, remained until recently open space. The new Temple Junior School now stands on this site.

As Manchester expanded in the late 19th century, hundreds of streets of terraced houses were built all round the City. The Cheetham area was no exception, and the area once occupied by Temple House and some of its gardens, was covered with small terraced houses, which still exist today.

The site of the Museum and the Bus Garage was still open fields at that time, as was the area between the Garage and Cheetham Hill Road. In June, 1899, the “Cars, Sheds and Staff Sub-Committee” of the Manchester Corporation Tramways Committee investigated the area. The Sub-Committee was looking for a site for one of the largest electric tramcar sheds in the country, as part of the Corporation plans to take over and electrify the existing horse-tram network of the Manchester Carriage & Tramway Company. The site was purchased from Lord Derby, and in June 1900 the Chairman of the Tramways Committee, Councillor Daniel Boyle, after whom Boyle Street is named, laid the foundation stone of Queens Road Tram Depot. The tram shed cost £90,000, and was built to house 252 tramcars. Although it was officially opened at the start of the City’s first electric tramcar service on 6th June, 1901, new trams had been stored in the unfinished building, and some were damaged in a fire in April of that year. Tramcars entered the building through four entrances off Boyle Street, and sidings ran onto the site of the current Museum Lower Hall, possibly to a sand drier or permanent way yard. Various outbuildings were also erected in this area, such as accommodation for the tower wagon, stables, and a mess room, and these buildings are now used as the Museum’s Archives, Small Objects Store, Tea Room and Entrance Hall.

In the late 1920s, express bus services to supplement the tramcars were introduced. These express buses served Norden and Gatley, and Altrincham and Hyde, via the City Centre, running in addition to the tramcars and charging higher fares. A motorbus garage was erected in 1926-28, at a cost of £17,332-8-6 to house these vehicles, and buses such as the Manchester Leyland “Tiger” in the Collection would have been regular visitors. This building now forms the Upper Hall of the Museum, and traces of the original vehicle inspection pits can be seen in the floor. By the mid 1930s, the motorbus fleet was expanding rapidly, and the electric tramcar was out of favour with the City’s Transport Committee. An increasing proportion of the tramshed was used for garaging motor buses until the last tramcar left in 1938. In 1934-35, a bus washing and fuelling bay was erected between the bus garage and the tramshed, and the area was roofed over at a cost of £7218-16-6. This now forms the Lower Hall of the Museum, and again, traces of its former use can be seen – the gallery above the doors was used for supervising refuelling operations, for example, and the floor slopes in various directions to take water from bus washing away to the drains.

The land across Boyle Street from the Museum, formerly the ornamental gardens of the Temple, was also built on in the early years of the century, when the Temple Junior School, Clinic and Picture Theatre were erected. Smedley Street was opened in front of the School, and after a number of options were rejected, the present “cottage flats” were built opposite the tram depot, in the 1920s.

With this latter development, almost all the land in the area around the Museum was built up, with the exception of land to the south of Queens Road. This area was once the site of two brick works and clay pits, and a number of minor tramways are shown on the 1931 Ordnance Survey map. This land is largely still vacant, apart from the more recent former prison officers’ houses on Queens Road.

The 1931 map also reveals how industry had spread outwards from Manchester. Apart from the brickworks mentioned above, Stock Farm, on the site of the Manchester Fort retail park, was used for rag sorting. There was a “chocolate manufactory” in Smedley Lane, and just to the north of Smedley Lane, a printing works and cabinet works were in business. A number of dyeing, bleaching, weaving and transferring businesses, associated with the textile trade, were to be found in the nearby Irk Valley, all of which would have added their own quantities of pollution to the river and its surroundings.

The availability of cheap housing and jobs in the area attracted many people. Initially these would have come from the surrounding rural area, whilst during the 19th and early 20th centuries, Irish and Jewish immigrants moved into the area. More recently, people of West Indian, Chinese, and Asian origin have settled in the district, making it one of the most cosmopolitan in the City.

As industry overtook the area, and with improvements in public and private transport, the more wealthy businessmen moved out of Cheetham and many of their large houses were divided into flats and bedsits. One pair of large houses in nearby Teneriffe Street was noted to be home to over 50 people in the 1930s, and much of the area was similarly overcrowded.

Although many areas close to the City Centre were demolished and redeveloped in the 1960s and 1970s, only relatively small areas of Cheetham were dealt with, leaving a pattern of streets and buildings which can readily be traced back over the last couple of centuries. As we have seen, the Cheetham area was not one of the earliest to be developed by industry and for working class housing, which was often poorly constructed. This meant that other areas had more urgent need of improvement, and thus Cheetham survived to the more recent era of small-scale redevelopment and refurbishment of existing buildings.

The ambitious road schemes planned during the 1960s envisaged both Queens Road and Cheetham Hill Road being rebuilt as multi-lane dual carriageways, with a large intersection at their junction. Fortunately for the appearance of the district, many of these plans did not come into being and the modern houses on Queens Road and the older ones on Cheetham Hill Road underwent a programme of refurbishment once the blight of the road plans was lifted. The cancellation of these plans also released land for the construction of the various “superstores” on Cheetham Hill Road, and the conversion of the old Technical Institute on Queens Road into the Irish Centre.

The Museum buildings themselves were used as a bus garage until the 1950s. Then, with the gradual reduction in the number of buses in service, the buildings became surplus, and were leased by the Post Office as a vehicle maintenance workshop for about 20 years, until 1977. The Post Office moved to new premises in Gorton, and Greater Manchester Transport Society was offered the use of the building as a transport museum. The Museum opened in 1979, and with the opening of the Jewish Museum and the various superstores, has helped to give the area an air of relative prosperity and activity. The landscaping of the Churchyard opposite is progressing, with plans to open up the vista between the Museum and Cheetham Hill Road, and along with the new houses, the retail units on Cheetham Hill Road, and the new school, the development of the area continues.