Lancaster and York Buildings, Knowsley Street and Higgins Street, Cheetham

Four storey blocks providing 120 artisan’s dwellings, York Buildings, faced Higgins Street and Lancaster Buildings faced Knowsley Street. The OS maps suggest that there was also a third block on Woolley Street between Knowsley Street and Exchange Street. The photograph appears on the Manchester Forum website. According to various contributors the photo is of the rear of York Buildings looking east towards Woolley Street; the brick buildings on the right were air-raid shelters.

INQUIRY - Report of an inquiry into the proposal by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway to provide new housing for those residents displaced by the extension of Oldham Road Goods Yard. The proposed site, bounded by Knowsley Street, Woolley Street Higgins Street and Blacklock Street, off Cheetham Hill Road, was claimed to be the nearest available. In his evidence, Henry Shelmerdine noted that the company had already carried out four other schemes of similar character but on a smaller scale. Anticipated rents were 6s on the ground and first floors and 5s 6d on the second and third floors. [Manchester Guardian 21 February 1899 Page 12]

LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD INQUIRY -  Mr E. A. Sandford Fawcett, an inspector of the Local Government Board, held an inquiry at the Manchester Town Hall recently into an application of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company to purchase 187 houses, to be demolished in connection with the extension of the goods yard of the company at Oldham road, and to provide new dwellings for the 900 residents therein. Mr Henry Shelmerdine, architect and estate agent of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Company, said the houses to be built were on a plan approved by the Local Government Board and by the corporations of Manchester and Salford. Many of the houses to be pulled down had been condemned by the sanitary authority of the city. The average rental of the new flats would be 6s. for the ground and first floors, and 5s. 6d. for the second and third floors. The company had carried out four other schemes of the same character, but on a smaller scale, in Manchester and Salford. [Building News 3 March 1899 Page 299]

Reference        Manchester Guardian 21 February 1899 Page 12
Reference        Building News 3 March 1899 Page 299
Reference        Building News 21 July 1899 Page 88 – contracts for 120 artisans' dwellings
Reference        British Architect 28 July 1899 Page viii - contracts for 120 artisans' dwellings