Building Name

The City of Manchester Abattoir, Newton Heath

Date
1961 - 1966
District/Town
Newton Heath, Manchester
County/Country
GMCA, England
Client
Manchester City Council
Work
New build

Built at a cost of £4,160,000, the City of Manchester Abattoir was built to replace the Meat Market and Slaughterhouse in Water Street which had been in existence since 1872. There was no legal obligation on the Manchester Corporation to build the new municipal abattoir; rather it was a desire to improve the slaughtering facilities and the standard of hygiene. By 1950 it had become clear that the old premises at Water Street no longer met the needs of modern times. Therefore, plans went forward for a new abattoir, wholesale meat market and cold store sited away from the city centre. However, building work did not start until 1961.

The new abattoir was built in the belief that it would meet the slaughtering and meat processing needs for a sub-region covering an area of some 20 to 30 miles radius of the city. At the time of completion, it was the largest and most technologically advanced abattoir in Europe. It is the only abattoir in the UK of the standard required by the United States authorities for the export of meat to that country and one of the few abattoirs approved for the export of meat to the Common Market countries. However, the abattoir never achieved the anticipated throughput of 225,000 cattle. Technological changes and new legislation resulted in only 95,000 cattle being slaughtered in the year ending March 1970, and the enterprise was losing money at the rate of over £1,000 per day.

Reference           Hansard, HC Deb 17 November 1970 vol 806 cc1194-204