Old Trafford (area)

Old Trafford
Old Trafford
Area
Metropolitan county	Greater Manchester;
Region	North West;
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	MANCHESTER
Postcode district	M15, M16, M32
Dialling code	0161
Police	Greater Manchester
Fire	Greater Manchester
Ambulance	North West
UK Parliament	Stretford and Urmston;
	List of places UK England Greater Manchester 53°27′37″N 2°17′13″W / 53.4603°N 2.287°W

Old Trafford is an area of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, which borders the cities of Manchester and Salford and is two miles (3.2 km) southwest of Manchester city centre in the historic county of Lancashire. It is roughly delineated by two old toll gates; Brooks's Bar and Trafford Bar, to the east and west.

Old Trafford is the site of Old Trafford Cricket Ground, home of Lancashire County Cricket Club, and Old Trafford football stadium, home of Manchester United F.C., on opposite ends of Brian Statham Way (formerly Warwick Road) and Sir Matt Busby Way (formerly Warwick Road North). The road between them retains the name Warwick Road, and the southern section on the other side of the Metrolink line is Warwick Road South.

History

Old Trafford was a crossing point over the

White City Retail Park, and was said to have been the home of the de Trafford family since 1017, until the family moved to the new hall in what is now Trafford Park, some time between 1672 and 1720.^[1] The name of the area around Old Trafford Hall may subsequently have become shortened to Old Trafford.^[2] The old hall was demolished in 1939.^[3]

In the 1820s, Manchester scientist

Hallé Orchestra was formed to participate in the first of these exhibitions. The site of the botanical gardens was purchased by White City Limited in 1907, and it subsequently became an amusement park, although the name lives on in the street called Botanical Gardens. From the 1950s to the 1970s, White City Stadium was used as a greyhound racing track and for stock car racing. This site is now White City Retail Park. The front entrance is all that has been preserved of the old botanical gardens. Nearby, on the site of what is now the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters, was Henshaw's Institute for the Blind, which originally opened as Henshaw's Blind Asylum in 1837. Next door on the same site was the Royal Institute for the Deaf, where the film Mandy

was made.

Old Trafford expanded and became an urban area after the building of the

Territorial Army

have well-established bases in the area.

Slum clearances during the 1960s and early 1970s saw some of the old Victorian housing stock demolished. However, after the perceived failure of the deck-access concrete crescents of Hulme, Old Trafford's residents preferred renovation to demolition. As a result, there are still many Victorian terraced streets in the area.

By 1985, employment at Trafford Park had fallen to 24,500, as unemployment in the northwest soared above 30 per cent in some inner-city areas. Nearby

Manchester Docks, which had also been a major source of local employment, closed in 1982. As the revitalised Salford Quays

it has become an emblematic part of the regeneration of Manchester in general.

Governance

Old Trafford was formerly a hamlet in the township of Stretford.^[5] It was in the Municipal Borough of Stretford until 1974. In 1974, as a result of the Local Government Act 1972, it became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford in Greater Manchester. Since the realignment of Trafford's ward boundaries in 2004, Old Trafford has been divided between Clifford and Longford wards, with the larger part being in the former.^[6]^[7]

Old Trafford is part of the parliamentary constituency of

Member of Parliament is Andrew Western of the Labour Party

.

In 2005, Trafford Council proposed to the Boundary Commission for England that the wards of Gorse Hill, Longford, and Clifford – which includes Old Trafford – should be moved into a new Salford and The Quays constituency, along with some other wards from Salford.[8] At the subsequent public enquiry in November 2005, Beverley Hughes opposed the change, as well as an alternative proposal to create a constituency of Salford and Old Trafford. The Boundary Commission rejected Trafford Council's proposals, noting that there was "strong opposition to the creation of a constituency that crossed the Manchester Ship Canal and ... that the Canal provided a clearly identifiable boundary which should not be breached".^[9]

Geography

Old Trafford borders Firswood, Gorse Hill and Trafford Park. The area is effectively a peninsula, with its northern boundary the River Irwell, now canalised into the Manchester Ship Canal, and to the east a tributary of the Irwell, the Cornbrook, culverted as the area grew in the 19th century. The southern boundary, the Black Brook, was culverted at about the same time, under Upper Chorlton Road. Some small anomalies due to the brook's underground route were not amended until the late 1980s.

Old Trafford makes up the northeastern tip of Trafford

City of Manchester – and Ordsall to the northeast, which is in the City of Salford

. At the crossroads of Brooks's Bar, the boundaries between Old Trafford and Hulme and Moss Side and Whalley Range meet.

On the western side of the area, Seymour Grove is named after the millionaire grocer Sir Thomas Seymour Mead.

Landmarks

Until the mid-20th century there were four cinemas in Old Trafford: the Imperial Picture Theatre in Chorlton Road, Brooks Bar, The Globe on Cornbrook Street, The Lyceum in City Road and the Trafford Picture House in Talbot Road. Three of the buildings have survived, although not now operated as cinemas. The Imperial opened in 1913, and for a brief period in the 1970s it became an Asian films cinema. It closed in 1979, and the building is now occupied by a timber and ironmongery business. The premises occupied by The Globe were originally part of the Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company's horse-drawn tramway depot. The cinema closed in the mid 1960s, and is now used as a warehouse. The Lyceum opened in 1915, and it also closed in the 1960s. Its building is now used for private functions. The Trafford Picture House opened in 1922, and closed in 1958. After a period when it was used as a vehicle auction room the building became derelict, and it was demolished in 1997.^[11]

Present day

Today, Old Trafford has approximately 13,000 residents. Cultural diversity has been a feature of the area for over a century.

Indian sub-continent

started to arrive during the 1960s but settled in more significant numbers from the 1980s onwards.

Old Trafford is among the 10% most deprived areas in England, suffering problems of unemployment, poor housing and low educational achievement. It also has levels of youth crime well above the national average.

Ayres Road and its environs are the heart of modern-day Old Trafford and a walk down this road gives a real flavour of the multi-cultural nature of the neighbourhood, with its variety of grocers' shops selling food stuffs from

Chinese Medicine Centre, on the site of the old Vimto offices. Something of this atmosphere is evoked by Manchester poet Lemn Sissay

in his poem Ayres Road.

Religion and community

Only 45% of the residents of Clifford ward (the ward that contains the larger part of Old Trafford) reported themselves as being Christian in the

2001 Census, compared to 76% across Trafford as a whole, and 72% across England.^[12]

This is reflected in the unusually high number of non Christian places of worship in the area.

Since the 1980s Old Trafford has become home to two large

mosques

in the area; the Faizan-e-Islam mosque, the Masjid-e-Hidayah, the Masjid-e-Noor and the Masjid Imdadia.

There is also a smaller

Sikh community, with its own Gurdwara

, the Sangat Bhatra Sikh Temple, Upper Chorlton Road. Sikhs account for 4% of the area's population, significantly above the less than 1% average for Trafford and England. To further add to the religious mix there is also a Buddhist temple, the Fo Kang Shang Buddhist Temple, although Buddhists are recorded as making up only 0.2% of the area's population, roughly the same proportion as for Jews. The former library on Stretford Road has been converted into a Chinese Cultural Centre, and a Chinese Medical Centre is on Ayres Road. For many years the numerous Polish community had a focal point in their ex-servicemen's club on Shrewsbury Street, now no longer there.

Old Trafford is in the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Salford,^[13] and the Church of England Diocese of Manchester.^[14]

Education

Along with the rest of Trafford, Old Trafford maintains a selective education system assessed by the

Muslim secondary school but there are three primary schools

within the area.

Old Trafford Stadiums

Old Trafford has been the site of Lancashire County Cricket Club's Old Trafford stadium since 1857. Before the club's formation, in 1864, it had been the home of Manchester Cricket Club, who had moved here in 1856. Manchester United F.C.'s ground, which is also known as Old Trafford, is close by.

The ground of the Northern Lawn Tennis Club was in Old Trafford from 1882 to 1909 (near the cricket ground): this is commemorated in the name of Tennis Street. The move to

West Didsbury in 1909 was prompted by the industrialisation of Trafford Park and consequent air pollution. The half-timbered pavilion was dismantled and re-erected at the new ground.^[15]

Notable people

Famous people who were born or lived in the area include political and social activist

Charles Coverdale, a sergeant in the Manchester Regiment, and James Marshall, an officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Rebecca Long-Bailey

, MP for Salford and Eccles and Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury was born in Trafford.

References

Notes

^ Nicholls 1996, p. 9.
^ Masterson & Cliff 2002, pp. 12–13.
^ Masterson & Cliff 2002, p. 69.
^ "Mothers Pride Bakery - Trafford Forums". Archived from the original on 6 September 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2013.
^ "Stretford". The New Lancashire Gazetteer or Topographical Dictionary 1830. Salford Hundred Ancestry, Annals and History. Retrieved 18 July 2007.
^ "Clifford Ward Profile". Trafford Council. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 8 May 2007.
^ "Longford Ward Profile". Trafford Council. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 8 May 2007.
^ "Boundary change – the facts". Sale and Altrincham Mesenger. 7 November 2005. Retrieved 10 August 2008.
^ "Revised and Final Recommendations for Parliamentary Constituency Boundaries in Greater Manchester". Government News Network. Archived from the original on 29 March 2012. Retrieved 10 August 2007.
^ Farrer & Brownbill 1911, pp. 329.
^ Rendell, Cinemas of Trafford, pp. 57–60
^ "Clifford Neighbourhood Statistics". Statistics.gov.uk. Retrieved 6 May 2007.
^ "Catholic Diocese of Salford". Retrieved 7 May 2007.
^ "The Church of England Diocese of Manchester". Archived from the original on 27 December 2007. Retrieved 7 May 2007.
^ Phythian, Graham (2010) "Looking Back", in: South Manchester Reporter; 13 May 2010, p. 22
^ Massey, A History of Stretford, p. 193
^ Scheerhout, John (12 September 2002), Honour for 'Dalmatians' Dodie, Manchester Evening News, retrieved 14 January 2010