Cheetham
Districts & Suburbs of Manchester

CHEETHAM
Cheetham is a very old district, having been in existence since before the 14th century. Its name is derived from the old English for "a village near the wood". It was incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1838.

There was a time when Cheetham and Cheetham Hill were separate entities, but they are now regarded as one and the same. Cheetham is bounded by Crumpsall and Broughton (the latter being in the City of Salford). Bury Old Road/Cheetham Hill Road run directly through the centre of the district.

The area known as Strangeways is also included in the Cheetham district, though apart from HM Prison, Strangeways exists in little other than its name. Once, however, Strangeways Hall and Park, ancestral home of the Strangeways family, dominated the region, until it was demolished in 1863 to make way for the ever-increasing housing requirement.

Located on a hillside between Manchester and Prestwich, Cheetham emerged as a popular place for wealthy industrialists to build their homes, looking down upon, but quite separate from the grimy Victorian city below - thus it avoided encroaching industrialisation. In 1868, Strangeways Prison, designed by Alfred Waterhouse, (who had designed the Town Hall) was formally opened, as were the adjacent Assize Courts (now gone). The prison was the site of the notorious prison riots of 1990 which resulted in millions of pounds worth of damage and a significant level of rebuilding and additional high security perimeter walls which now mask much of Waterhouses's original architecture.

Cheetham Hill is now part of the so-called 'Cheetham and Broughton Partnership', a scheme aimed at improving the housing, economy and environment of this part of Manchester and neighbouring Salford. Cheetham village itself has seen extensive remodellimng and improvement during 2002-2003, with new pavements and road surfacing, improved lighting CCTV throughout and the creation of new parking bays and a fast track bus lane through the busiest part of the area.

By the 1860s Cheetham had become a thriving and busy township with its own Town Hall, Library, Swimming Baths, Assembly Rooms and the Northern Hospital (closed in the mid-1990s). It was considered an elegant and desirable place to live in Victorian times.

Cheetham is also favoured by having the Manchester Jewish Museum within its boundaries, (formerly a Portuguese Synagogue). The area has, in fact, several large synagogues, witness to the large number of Jewish people who live within the area.

Contemporary Cheetham is only a pale shadow of its former self, and is somewhat run down by modern standards. Its concrete shopping precinct, which dominated the village for 2 decades, was never a particularly pleasant place to shop, and was the nightime focus for local gangs to congregate, and is a centre of crime and drug dealing. It has now been completely demolished and a new supermarket is being built in its place. The former elegant library now stands derelict, having been through several transformations; the old town hall is currently an Indian Restaurant after more than 30 years of dereliction and decay. Some of its finer churches are abandoned and the cemeteries lie overgrown and neglected.

Unti recently, Cheetham boasted "the Cream of Manchester" in the original Boddington's Brewery at Strangeways, but even that has been demolished in 2007, having been bought out by Interbrew, a Swedish brewer and summarily closed down.

The lower part of Cheetham Hill Road is now occupied by innumerable small retail and wholesale busineses, including clothing, jewellery and furnishing traders.

Return to: Suburban Districts of Manchester

See also:

• Map of City Boundaries in 1838
• Map of City Boundaries in 1938
• Map of City Boundaries in 2002
• Gazetteer of Greater Manchester Place Names

NOTE:
We have made reference to several sources in compiling this web page, but must make special mention of the Breedon Books' "Illustrated History of Manchester's Suburbs" by Glynis Cooper, of which we made particular use. Information about this book can be found on our Books About Manchester webpage.