Moss Side - History

History

Historically a part of Lancashire, Moss Side was formerly a rural township and chapelry within the parish of Manchester and hundred of Salford. Thought to be named after a great moss which stretched from Rusholme to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the earliest mention of the area is in 1533 when it contained part of the estates of Trafford of Trafford. Moss Side is described in the opening chapter of Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton as a rural idyll with a 'deep clear pool' and an old black and white timber framed farmhouse, later identified as Pepperhill Farm. Following the Industrial Revolution there was a process of unplanned urbanisation and a rapid increase in population size. The population in 1801 was 151 but by 1901 this had increased to 26,677. The industrial growth of the area resulted in a densely populated area, so much so, that a part of the township of Moss Side was amalgamated into the expanding city of Manchester in 1885, with the rest joining in 1904.

Mass development in Moss Side occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when large numbers of red brick terraced houses were built, and soon attracted numerous Irish immigrants and other working people.

Manchester City F.C. moved to a new stadium on Maine Road on 25 August 1923, relocating from Hyde Road, Ardwick; on its opening it was one of the most capacious sports stadiums in the United Kingdom, capable of holding up to 85,000 spectators. The club would play there for the next 80 years.

During the Manchester Blitz of World War II many of the terraced houses were damaged by German bombing on the night of December 22/23 1940.

Migrants from the Indian subcontinent and Caribbean settled in the locality during the 1950s and 1960s, and by the 1980s Moss Side was the hub of Manchester's Afro-Caribbean community.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, Manchester City Council demolished many of the Victorian and Edwardian terraced houses to the west of Moss Side and replaced these with new residential properties.

In 1981, the Moss Side area was one of England's inner city areas affected by a series of riots. Analysts trace the 1970s origins of Manchester's gang crime to social deprivation in the south-central part of the city — Hulme, Longsight and Moss Side — where the activity of the underground economy encouraged a trade in illegal narcotics and firearms contributing to Manchester's later nickname of "Gunchester". "Turf wars" between rival drugs 'gangs', resulted in a high number of fatal shootings. During what has been termed the Madchester phase of the history of Manchester, narcotic trade in the city became "extremely lucrative" and in the early 1990s a gang war started between two groups vying for control of the market in Manchester city centre — the 'Cheetham Hill Gang' and The 'Gooch Close Gang', in Cheetham Hill and Moss Side, respectively. There were several high profile shootings associated with gangs and drugs in this area during the 1990s and into the 21st century. The last gang related gun fatality in Moss Side was in 2006. Aided by the work of Xcalibre, the Greater Manchester Police's task force, founded in 2004, and the multiagency Integrated Gang Management Unit, gang related shootings in the area have fallen by about 90% in recent years.

Many of the flats in neighbouring Hulme were demolished in the late 1990s to make way for new low rise homes. Housing on the Alexandra Park Estate in the west of Moss Side has been renovated and the streets redesigned to reduce the fear of crime.