Proposed Brunswick PFI Regeneration Scheme, Manchester - Evaluation and Watching Brief

In May 2014, Oxford Archaeology (OA) North was commissioned by URS (now
AECOM) to undertake a programme of archaeological works in association with the
Brunswick PFI Regeneration Scheme, central Manchester. The works comprised a
watching brief during groundworks associated with the construction of a new sports
court at Gartside Gardens (SJ 84788 97074), and a trial-trench evaluation at the
junction of Grosvenor Street and Lockton Close/Wadeson Road (SJ 848 973).
Gartside Gardens was established in 1954, prior to which the area had been occupied
by the former Rusholme Road Cemetery, a non-Conformist burial ground that opened
in 1821. The principal aim of the watching brief, which was undertaken in May and
June 2014, was to identify the presence of burials within the footprint of a new sports
court. A series of eleven drainage trenches, a manhole, and a soakaway pit were
excavated under archaeological observation during this phase of works. All of the
excavations encountered deposits of made ground, either extending to the full depth of
the groundworks, occasionally sealing archaeological remains, and only rarely
reaching deposits that were certain to be natural in origin. Evidence of graves cutting
the natural geology and likely to contain in-situ burials, was identified at depths of c
1.2-1.95m below ground level in several drainage trenches, along with the manhole
and the soakaway.
The evaluation was undertaken in June 2015 on a site formerly occupied by a
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, built c 1820. Documentary evidence indicates that the
congregation was disbanded prior to 1924, after which the building was used as
commercial and industrial premises, until it was heavily damaged by fire and
subsequently demolished during the latter part of the 1970s