Red Bank, Cheetham, Manchester, Greater Manchester. Archaeological Desk-Based Assessment.

In July 2006, Sinclair Knight Merz requested that Oxford Archaeology North (OA North) undertake an archaeological desk-based assessment of land situated off Red Bank road in the Cheetham area of Manchester (centred on SJ 8438 9934). The study area lies on the north-eastern fringe of Manchester city centre, occupying a site on the western bank of the river Irk, and is currently used as a car park. The assessment followed on from a rapid archaeological review of the site, undertaken by OA North in October 2005, which concluded that the study area had a potential to contain buried remains of medium to high local significance. This has been confirmed by the present assessment, which was required to support and inform a planning application for the proposed redevelopment of the site.
Notwithstanding the recovery of an urn of a probable sixth-century date during construction work in c1850, it is likely that the study area and its immediate environs were unoccupied, open land until the post-medieval period. Historic mapping indicates some occupation of the area by the mid-eighteenth century, although it remained largely undeveloped until the early nineteenth century, by which time the first industrial buildings and associated workers’ housing had been constructed on the site. The density of industrial buildings 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, the manufacture of chemicals. The twentieth century use of the site was dominated by an iron works, which occupied most of the study area, presumably following the demolition of the earlier industrial buildings. It is likely, however, that some buried remains of these earlier structures will survive in situ beneath the floor of the former iron works, and that some may be of high local archaeological significance.