Brighton Street, Cheetham, Manchester, Greater Manchester- Desk-based Assessment

In March 2008, Sinclair Knight Merz, acting on behalf of Satnam Investments Ltd, requested that Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) undertake an archaeological desk-based assessment of land situated off Roger Street in the Red Bank area of Manchester (centred on SJ 8437 9941). The study area lies on the north-eastern fringe of Manchester city centre, and is occupied by a range of modern industrial buildings and large storage yards. The assessment was required to support a planning application for the redevelopment of the site, which proposes the erection of a multi-storey block.
Notwithstanding the recovery of an urn of a probable sixth-century date during construction work in c 1850, it is likely that the study area and its immediate environs were unoccupied, open land until the post-medieval period. Historic mapping indicates that a field boundary traversed the site by the mid-eighteenth century, although it remained undeveloped until the early nineteenth century. The first buildings to occupy the site, seemingly comprising a mixture of residential and commercial premises, had been erected by 1819. They were focused on the Roger Street frontage, whilst the eastern part of the site remained undeveloped until the later nineteenth century. The density of buildings in the western part of the site increased during the middle of the century, as the Red Bank area evolved as a focus for works associated with the textile-finishing trades, especially dyeing and, latterly, chemical manufacture and oil refining.
The assessment identified 11 sites of archaeological interest within the study area, of which five are recorded on the Greater Manchester Sites and Monuments Record (SMR) and lie beyond the boundary of the proposed development. Of the six sites identified within the boundary of the development area, one is considered to be of high local significance and is likely to require appropriate archaeological mitigation in advance of development. This would probably take the form of evaluation trenching to allow for an assessment of the presence, character, depth, and extent of buried remains, and thereby inform the planning process.