Legislation and Reality: The Archaeological Evidence for Sanitation and Housing Quality in Urban Workers’ Housing in the Ancoats Area of Manchester Between 1800 and 1950

Abstract

This paper will look at some of the excavated material for British urban workers ' housing, built and

Excavating ‘Hell Upon Earth’ Towards a Research Framework for the Archaeological Investigation of Workers’ Housing: Case Studies from Manchester, UK

“…More common was the clearance of working class housing ahead of the construction of urban railway lines from the mid-1830s through the industrialised towns. This has been recorded along the path of the Eastern Counties Railway in Shoreditch, London, (46) (Nevell 2014;Dwyer 2011, 15-19) and along the Oxford Road line lining the Castlefield and Piccadilly stations in Manchester and beneath Exchange Station in Salford.…”

“…Many of the areas studied archaeologically were the subject of detailed commentary by social reformers such as Friedrich Engels and Elizabeth Gaskell, or surveys by the local health inspection authorities. This has allowed comparison of the written with the archaeological record, which it turns out often proved to be at odds with each other (18) (Nevell 2011(Nevell & 2014.…”

“…Late 18 th century terraced houses with substantial brick foundations have also been excavated in Ancoats along Loom Street and in Salford along Chapel Street (Nevell 2008, 146-150). Later 19 th century board housing in Ancoats also had substantial brick foundations (though no cellars) with running water, paved surfaces and individual back yards and outside toilet blocks (26) (Nevell 2014). Yet many urban excavations in Manchester and Salford have also revealed poorly-built housing, especially amongst the court, back-to-back and blind-back housing of the first half of the 19 th century.…”

“…One striking feature of the archaeological case studies of industrial urban housing from around Britain is that older housing, those properties built before the introduction of local bye-laws, took a long time to be upgraded, or in many cases were not improved at all before eventual demolition. A study of housing in the northern half of Ancoats provides a case-study for the way in which archaeology can show how the introduction of bye-laws and regulations could take decades to affect existing housing (47) (Matthews 1999;Nevell 2014).…”

“…Later studies include a series of articles on housing quality in Lancashire factory colonies by Geoff Timmins, industrial workers' housing in West Yorkshire, and studies of handloom weavers' dwellings in the Cotswolds, and workers' housing in Essex (5) (Palmer & Neaverson 2003;, Dewhurst 1986& 1989Timmins 1979;. More recently, individual excavation case studies on back-to-back and cellar dwellings in Manchester and Sheffield have been published in both journals (6) (Nevell 2014;Wooler 2015).…”