Building Name

Trafford Park Village

Date
1899 - 1904
District/Town
Trafford Park, Manchester
County/Country
GMCA, England
Client
the Trafford Park Dwellings Company Limited
Work
New Build

Housing for the workmen are being built by the Trafford Park Dwellings Company Limited, who have acquired 120 acres of land, whereon will be erected some 1,100 dwellings. About 300 of these are completed, and 300 more are being rapidly pushed forward. The engineer and architects are Mr Thomas Rodd, of Pittsburg, USA, and Mr Charles Heathcote, architect, Manchester. Mr Charles Heathcote is also architect for the dwellings referred to.

In 1898, a large plot of land was sold to Edmund Nuttall & Co., for the construction of 1,200 houses. The houses were never built, but the land later became the site of Trafford Park Village, known locally simply as the Village. The announced arrival of the Westinghouse factory acted a spur to development, and so in 1899, Trafford Park Dwellings Ltd was formed, with the aim of providing housing for the anticipated influx of new workers. Nuttall's land was acquired, and by 1903 five hundred and forty nine houses had been built. When the development was completed in 1904 there were seven hundred and thirty houses and in 1907 it was estimated that the population of the Village was 3,060.

The Village was laid out in a grid pattern, with the roads being numbered instead of being named. Avenues numbered 1 to 4 ran north-south, and streets numbered 1 to 12 ran east-west. Various types of rented houses were built to cater for the differing sorts of workers on the Park, from manual labourers to office workers. Its design attracted some criticism from the start; the streets were narrow, with few gardens, and the whole development was close to the pollution of the neighbouring industries. In that respect, it resembled the terraced properties in the surrounding areas, many of which were condemned as slums in later years. By the 1970s the Village was also considered by Stretford Council to be a slum area, and unsuitable for residential housing. In the first phase of clearance, in the mid-1970s, 298 houses were demolished. A further 325 houses were demolished in the early 1980s, leaving only the largest 84 houses remaining.

Reference    Building News 9 August 1901 Page 174
Reference    Nicholls, Trafford Park: The First Hundred Years, pp. 130-132.