Earlier this month an innocent question posted on a reddit messageboard sparked a fierce debate.
“Is Tyldesley classed as Manchester or Wigan?,” a user asked. You’d think there’d be a straightforward answer. But you’d think wrong.
Tyldesley has a Manchester postcode, but a Wigan phone number and it comes under Wigan council. It straddles the Salford border, but its nearest town centre is Bolton.
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So it’s perhaps not surprising that the people of Tyldesley can’t agree exactly where their loyalties lie. And they’re not alone.
Across the region there are several places similarly wrestling with their own questions of local identity. From the border-straddling suburbs with divided loyalties, to the spill over estates that retain ties to their old inner-city homes, the former industrial districts re-branded by developers, here are the places in Greater Manchester no-one’s sure exactly where they are:
Prestwich
A mural of late Fall singer Mark E. Smith painted on the side of a fish and chip shop in Prestwich
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
‘I’m not from Bury’ sang long-time Prestwich resident Mark E Smith in Bury Pts 1+3. And if you took a walk down Bury New Road you’d probably find many Prestwich folk would agree with the late Fall frontman’s take on local geography.
It’s part of the borough of Bury, but it’s inside the M60, has an M25 postcode and is closer to Deansgate than The Rock.
In 2020 we asked the people of Prestwich if they live in Bury or Manchester and got more than 1,000 responses. And almost three out of four said Manchester.
Greenheys
Greenheys, pictured here in the 1920s, was once a bustling working-class district
It’s not a name you hear used that often nowadays, but Greenheys was once a bustling working-class district of south Manchester and home to waves of Irish and Caribbean immigrants.
However much of Greenheys was lost in the 1960s slum clearances and most of the area is now taken up by the Manchester Science Park, with very few of the original 19th Century buildings remaining, bar the Old Abbey Taphouse.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 debut novel Mary Barton opens with a description of Greenheys, then still a rural area on the outskirts of the city, while the writer Thomas De Quincy and socialist Robert Owen, both lived at Greenheys House.
Today, much of it is seen as part of neighbouring areas like Rusholme, Hulme and Moss Side. Manchester Academy, Webster Primary School, the northern edge of Whitworth Park and the Contact Theatre are all sited within the historic boundary of Greenheys.
Middleton
Middleton town centre from above
(Image: Middleton Guardian)
When the 1974 Local Government Act changed the boundaries of towns and cities across the UK, people in Middleton were left scratching their heads. The town, which has a long and proud history all of its own, was suddenly lumped in the borough of Rochdale.
But many of its people – especially on the vast Langley overspill estate, which when it was built by Manchester corporation in the 1950s doubled the population of the town – traced their family roots back to Manchester and the slum clearances of the mid 20th Century. And the waters were muddied even further because Langley was still under the control of the old Manchester Corporation – making it a kind of Mancunian island in Rochdale.
This identity crisis was highlighted in Parliament in 1971 by then Middleton and Prestwich MP Alan Haselhurst. He said: “Langley is a huge transit camp, which has not become fully integrated with Middleton.
“It elects councillors to the Middleton Council. It pays rents to Manchester. For many people coming from the slum and twilight areas of the old Manchester, finding the rent looms largest in their lives. This orientates them naturally to Manchester Corporation.
“They are Mancunians. Many still work in Manchester and, therefore, there are few pressures on them or their families to think in terms of being Middletonians.”
New Islington
New Islington Marina
(Image: Keith Gray)
Like flares and beards, New Islington fell out of fashion after the 70s, but made a comeback in the 21st Century. First appearing on an Ordnance Survey map in 1870, New Islington refers to roughly the area between Great Ancoats Street and the Rochdale and Ashton canals in Ancoats.
There once was a New Islington swimming baths, New Islington Primitive Methodist church, and New Islington Conservative club. But the name fell out of use when the area was redeveloped and renamed the Cardroom estate in the 70s.
However, as we know, what goes around comes around, and when the Cardroom was demolished in the early 2000s and the area was redeveloped yet again the New Islington name was resurrected. Now home to shiny new blocks of flats, converted mills and smart bakeries and bars and a bustling marina, New Islington is now one of the trendiest places to live in town.
Firswood
Firswood Metrolink stop
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
Locals and the council call it Stretford, the Royal Mail call it Old Trafford, and if they could get away with it, estate agents would probably call it West Chorlton – so where exactly is it?
The big ‘Trafford Welcomes you to Stretford’ sign on the way into Firswood shouldn’t leave any doubt – but all official bodies, with the exception of Trafford Council, call this area Old Trafford.
And why not? Old Trafford tram stop is in it, It’s overlooked by the floodlights of Lancashire County Cricket Club’s Old Trafford ground, and it’s on the way to Man United’s Old Trafford stadium. Then again, they’re all technically Stretford too, because Old Trafford is historically part of Stretford.
That said, when people who live around here say Old Trafford, they don’t mean Firswood – or, a lot of the time, the famous grounds it calls neighbours. They mean the residential neighbourhood north east of Firswood, heading towards what used to be known as Brooks Bar – Stamford Street, Shrewsbury Street, that end.
So Firswood is Firswood, apparently in Stretford and Old Trafford at the same time, but not really either – with two tram stops, one called Firswood, and one called Old Trafford, and a big sign saying you’re in Stretford, just to clear things up.
On top of this Firswood shares its postcode with Whalley Range. But it’s not Whalley Range, it’s just near it.
Largely, fields and farmland until the 1920s, Firswood marks the border between boroughs – Manchester to the east, Trafford to the west. Local landmarks include Longford Park, Stretford Memorial Hospital, and Morrissey’s boyhood home on Kings Road.
Ashburys
Ashburys railway station
(Image: Gerald England)
You can be forgiven for not knowing where Ashburys is, given there’s no actual place of that name in Manchester. There is though an Ashburys railway station in Openshaw, which takes its name not from the surrounding area but from the Ashbury Railway Carriage and Iron Company, which built it in 1855 at the cost of £175.
At various times the station has been known as ‘Ashburys for Openshaw’ and ‘Ashburys for Belle Vue’ . And in a pleasing twist of fate in 2012 a team of archaeologists unearthed the original Ashburys train factory buried deep underground while preparing the way for a new rail operations centre.
Ladybarn
Tea on the lawn at the back of Rose Cottages, Ladybarn, Manchester. 17th August 1971.
It’s now part of the suburban sprawl of South Manchester. But for much of the 19th and 20th centuries Ladybarn was a well-established village in its own right.
The name may refer to a medieval tithe barn, which was related to Layday – a date in the agricultural calendar. Or it could be named after Lady Barn House, formerly the home of Lady Barn House School, which moved to Cheadle in the 1950s.
Some of the village’s original cobbled streets survive on to this day, and the name lives on in Ladybarn Lane, Ladybarn Social Club and Ladybarn park. Is it part of Fallowfield, Withington or even Burnage? It borders all three, but isn’t quite any of them.
Holt Town
A Metrolink tram stops at Holt Town
Sandwiched between Ancoats to the east and Beswick to the west, Holt Town was established in 1785 by the industrialist David Holt. It was Manchester’s only ‘factory colony’ – a smaller version of Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire or Saltaire in West Yorkshire -where workers lived onsite in 22 four storey terrace houses provided by their employers.
At the time it was largely a rural area with the houses backing on to River Medlock. But by the time of the Industrial Revolution Holt Town had been surrounded on all sides by the factories, mills and terraced housing of its larger neighbours.
Now almost all of the original buildings have gone and the most visible reminder of Holt Town is the Metrolink stop of the same name.
Smedley Dip
Smedley Dip
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
The tiny estate sits in the middle of North Manchester’s former industrial heartland, just a mile from the city centre, off Smedley Road between Cheetham Hill and Collyhurst. Being hemmed in between the Rochdale and Bury tram lines, the River Irk and the busy Queen’s Road gives Smedley Dip a sense of being cut off from everything around it.
And that isolation led some to dub it ‘the forgotten estate’. That was until people living in Collyhurst decided to do something about it – and literally build a bridge to Smedley Dip.
The £50,000 footbridge opened over the River Irk in 2019 and now the estate is finally connected to the rest of Collyhurst.
Pomona Island
A cyclist rides along the towpath of the Manchester Ship Canal at Pomona Island
(Image: Manchester Evening News)
“Next stop is Pomona. Pomona, never heard of it, you talk so hip you’re twisting my melon man.” Those were the words of Shaun Ryder during a guest slot as the Metrolink announcer in 2017.
And back then it was fairly unusual to see anyone getting off the tram at Pomona. After all, unless you liked to exploring desolate wasteland, there wasn’t much there to get off for.
But that wasn’t always the case. In the late 1800s Pomona Island, which straddles the boroughs of Manchester, Trafford and Salford, was home to a botanical gardens and the Royal Pomona Palace, which was bigger than the Royal Albert Hall.
Later it was a bustling dockland, serving the nearby Manchester Ship Canal. But when the docks fell into decline so did Pomona.
For years it was a bit of an inner-city anomaly, cut-off from its surroundings and overgrown and for years developers have been trying to build there. And for the last few years they’ve been getting the chance.
In recent times hundreds of apartments have sprung on in the area, as Manchester’s building booms spreads out from the city centre.