Tariff Street, Piccadilly, Manchester - Desk-based Assessment

Town Centre Securities PLC is devising proposals for the redevelopment of land
bounded by Tariff Street, Jackson’s Warehouse and the Rochdale Canal in the
Piccadilly area of Manchester (centred on NGR 384840 398315). The proposals
concern the erection of an 11-storey residential development, the construction of
which will inevitably necessitate considerable earth-moving works with the potential
to damage or destroy any buried remains of archaeological interest.
The proposed development area was undeveloped land on the fringe of Manchester
until the late eighteenth century, when the Rochdale Canal was construction. This
took a route across the southern part of the study area on its approach to the canal
terminus at Piccadilly Basin, where several canal warehouses were erected. Within a
few years, the Ashton Canal connected with the Rochdale Canal in this location, and
Piccadilly emerged as an important trans-shipment area, characterised by numerous
wharves and warehouses. One of the last examples, Jackson’s Warehouse, was
erected immediately adjacent to the present study area in 1838; this building survives
extant, and is afforded statutory designation as a Grade II* listed building. The first
building within the boundary of the Site Area, however, was not erected until the
1840s. This comprised an L-shaped, two-storey structure, which was probably a small
warehouse and associated storehouse. A large element of this building was
demolished during the second quarter of the twentieth century and, based on the
results obtained from recent geo-technical site investigations, any buried foundations
may have been further damaged or destroyed during landscaping works carried out in
2002. The surviving elements of the warehouse were finally demolished in 1991.