Keith Warrender
With the simple title of “Deansgate” for Keith Warrender’s talk, we didn’t really know what to expect. What we got was a delightful visual ‘walk’ down Manchester’s premier street, highlighting the predominant buildings in their heyday, whether Victorian, twentieth century or modern. The street itself runs, straight as a die, approximately north-south through the western part of the city centre. Originally it was the route connecting the Roman camp at Castlefields to the settlement at the junction of the Irk and the Irwell. A medieval settlement of half-timbered buildings gradually evolved at the northern end of the street, exemplified by the Old Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar (although neither of those are on their original site.)
Wellington Inn, Shambles, in 1942
The first building of note was the Grosvenor Hotel of 1880, fronting onto Deansgate on one side and the Irwell on the other. It was one of the main business hotels in Manchester for almost a century, sited between the Exchange and Victoria Station but it was demolished in 1971. On the other side of the street is a much more recent incomer - Harvey Nicholls, which opened in 2003 as part of the Exchange Square development. The northern end of the street was badly damaged in the 1996 Manchester bombing, which led to extensive redevelopment and has been viewed by some as a catalyst for the regeneration of the city, turning it into a modern powerhouse city with above-average economic growth in the generation since the bombing.
Kendals, which is now no longer trading, had been on Deansgate, trading under various names, since 1796, gradually developing into a department store. For much of that time it represented the epitome of luxury department store shopping in Manchester, together with Finnegans further down Deansgate. Adding to the retail attraction were the Deansgate Arcade which was demolished in 1956 and the Barton Arcade which still survives and is a listed building. For most of the twentieth century Kendals was owned by Harrods and it owes to Harrods the iconic art deco building that still stands on the west side of the street.
Moving on, we got to the oldest pub in Manchester, the Sawyer's Arms in terms of a continuously held licence, one that stretches back to the 1730s. It has a tiled exterior with bevelled and engraved glass but the interior is not original and has seen many changes with different ownership.
In 2011 Deansgate became the home of a statue of Chopin, both to mark his 201st birthday and to mark his trip to Manchester in 1848. Most importantly, it recognises the role of Polish migrants to Manchester for their contribution to the city. The statue of Abraham Lincoln on the other side of Centurion House is also a thank you, but this time a thank you to the city, not from the city.
Nearby is the John Rylands Library, [below] another gift to the city by the eponymous widow but a much more recent addition is Spinningfields Square with its new Crown Court, Magistrates Court and Coroner’s Court. Their location is a great convenience for the barristers and solicitors in St John Street, slightly further along Deansgate. On the way, you pass Sunlight House, the tallest building in Manchester when it was built in 1932 for Joseph Sunlight. It would have been 40 stories if the developer had had his way but it was scaled down to 14 stories after opposition from the city council.
We are coming to the end now, to a block that was looking very shabby until recently but has had an impressive makeover. The Great Northern Railway designed a unique transport node when it built its goods warehouse at the end of Deansgate in 1898. It was the last, but also the largest railway warehouse in the city and was considered to be the most advanced transport node in the country. It served as a three-way goods exchange, connecting railway, canal and road networks. Trains arrived directly from the existing route to Central Station on a specially constructed iron viaduct into the huge marshalling yards. The building could hold a total of 150 goods wagons across two of its levels and with the capacity for a further 500 in its sidings. It was built over the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal and a dock was constructed beneath to allow goods to be transferred to and from canal barges via shafts and a complex system of haulage using hydraulic power. A brilliant idea but unfortunate timing. Canals were already in serious decline in 1898 and the invention of the internal combustion engine would not only accelerate that decline but also offer severe competition to the railways. The warehouse was closed in 1954 and for a long time it was derelict but it was given listed building status which saved it from demolition. In 2002 it was redeveloped as a leisure centre and it is now being modified again to include 300 flats.
Keith neatly concluded our saunter down Deansgate by describing its ultimate use, a leisure arena of cycling, Formula 1 demonstration, and even foot races on this celebrated avenue. But not even Usain Bolt can compare with the times it has been host to the two football teams that have carried the name of Manchester worldwide by using it for their victory parades
Neil Mullineux - March 2025
