The Burnage Estate was designed to be pleasant for it’s new residents with spacious houses and green spaces. The earliest tenants on the Burnage Estate were working class families who wanted a better life and could afford the higher rent. These tenants were moving from more crowded locations like Longsight and Beswick.
Aerial Views, Hulme, St Mary’s Church, Moss Side on left and Old Trafford in background, Manchester, 1926
With thanks to Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives for the Image
The 1930 Greenwood Act encouraged councils to demolish poor quality inner-city housing ‘slums’. A site between Avon Road and Arbor Drive, originally reserved for a library became earmarked for housing for relocating people from condemned housing in Collyhurst, West Gorton, and St. Clement’s (behind Piccadilly Station).
Ancoats – General View From Victoria Hall Roof, 1895
With thanks to Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives for the Image
Years after this first wave of tenants in Burnage, groups of people moved from other areas and we don’t know so much about these stories.
We have met people living in Burnage who moved from all of these areas, but we have also met people from beyond Greater Manchester, from Ireland to Belize and Syria to Portugal and we want to celebrate all of these moving stories.
We started to gather some wonderful embroidered representations of people’s stories while producing our community quilt but we would now like to ask people for more details.
In our exhibition, we had planned to ask visitors to share their moving story or to pin on a map where they moved to Burnage from.
Now we want to ask you. Please help us to map the story of community growth in Burnage.
Tell us where you moved from.
Maybe ask your parents or grandparents about their moving story.
Did your family come from Manchester?
Did you live elsewhere in the UK?
Perhaps you or your family moved from a different country?
Please tell us your story by commenting on Facebook or Twitter, or by emailing us at contact@burnagehome.co.uk
