Motel One, 34 London Road, Piccadilly, Manchester. Archaeological Excavation

In order to mitigate the loss of these heritage assets, Manchester City Council attached conditions to planning consent that required an appropriate scheme of archaeological investigation in advance of development. In the first instance, a full photographic record of the buildings was compiled between March and May 2013, prior to demolition, followed by the targeted excavation of the steam-power plant for the early nineteenth-century mill.
The precise date at which the mill was erected remains uncertain. The first accurate plans to show the building are those produced by the Ordnance Survey in 1850 and Joseph Adshead in 1851, which present conflicting information regarding the use of the building. The previous detailed survey of the area, published by Bancks & Co in 1831, shows the footprint of the mill to have been occupied by workers’ housing. The physical evidence obtained from the archaeological investigation, however, suggests that the historical mapping is inaccurate, as it seems likely that the mill dates to the early part of the nineteenth century.