MMU Students' Union, Higher Chatham Street, Manchester - Archaeological Excavation

Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) has obtained planning consent to erect a
new Students’ Union building on land at 12 Higher Chatham Street on the southern
fringe of Manchester city centre (centred on NGR 384240 396810). The planning
application (ref 101104/FO/2012/C1) allows for the construction of a new four-storey
building that will house a shop, hall, cafe/bar, studios, meeting rooms and office
spaces, and will occupy a site that is used currently as a car park.
The archaeological potential of the site was highlighted in a desk-based assessment
produced by Dr Peter Arrowsmith. The demonstrated that the study area was
developed during the first half of the nineteenth century as part of the expansion of
Chorlton-upon-Medlock as a suburb of Manchester. Double- and single-depth
workers’ housing, together with a brewery and an associated store house had all been
erected on the site by the 1840s, and two properties on Higher Cambridge Street were
converted into the Bridgewater Music Hall during the second half of the nineteenth
century. The assessment concluded that any surviving buried remains of these
heritage assets would be of local significance, and would merit preservation by
record. In the light of these conclusions, the Greater Manchester Archaeological
Advisory Service (GMAAS) recommended that four trial trenches were excavated
across the footprint of a representative sample of the nineteenth-century buildings as
an initial stage of the archaeological investigation of the site.