Chorlton on Medlock
Districts & Suburbs of Manchester

CHORLTON ON MEDLOCK
Chorlton on Medlock, (not to be confused with Cholton-cum-Hardy), was formerly known as Chorlton Row, and was originally incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1838. Chorlton signifies the old Viking word for freemen (spelled variously as "coerls", "chorls" or "churls")and hence the placename means "the settlement (or town) of freemen by/on the River Medlock".

It is bounded by Rusholme, Moss Side, Ardwick and Hulme. Its area includes the University of Manchester and the Manchester Museum, and flowing though it, hidden for the most part, is the River Medlock, which gives the district its name. Chorlton on Medlock starts at the Mancunian Way flyover just south of the city centre. It lies between Upper Brook Street, Plymouth Grove and Ardwick Green. Stockport Road goes through the area, giving good access to south Manchester.

Until the 19th century it had been a small country village, but the Industrial Revolution and the building of Chorlton Mills catapulted it into the urban landscape which it now is. By 1900 its population had multiplied a hundred fold as people flocked in to live in filthy slum houses and work in the new textile factories that abounded within its borders. Its back-to-back jerry-built houses were the most distinctive feature of the Mancunian industrial landscape and typified the worst excesses of profiteering and human exploitation by unscrupulous mill owners and landlords. The Chorlton mills occupied land alongside the Medlock between Oxford Street, Cambridge Street and Chester Street. The area around Rosamund Street, Charles Street and Jenkinson Street became known as "Little Ireland" due to the large numbers of Irish immigrant workers living there. This place came to be synonymous with all the evils and squalour of unregulated industrialisation for Manchester became notorious.

Chorlton on Medlock also saw the arrival of Charles Mackintosh's works on Cambridge Street. Here Mackintosh was to develop his fabric waterproofing techniques that were to make his name celebrated the whole world over. Other notable residents of the district were one-time Prime Minister David Lloyd George, the Pankhursts, pioneers of womens' suffrage, and the novelist Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell.

One side of the square gardens at All Saints is occupied by the Doric columns of the old Chorlton Town Hall, later to form the refectory at the Manchester School of Art (where the author of this page spent many happy hours as an art student in the mid-1960s), now part of the Manchester Metropolitan University which occupies the whole of the other side of the square.

Also within the district is St Mary's Hospital, the Whitworth Art Gallery, John Rylands University Library, the BBC Manchester studios and the great Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Name on Oxford Road. The slums of Little Ireland are now long gone and Chorlton on Medlock is largely occupied by the campuses of the universities of Manchester.

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.