Land at Hood Street, Ancoats, Manchester - Evaluation Report

Manchester Life Development Company has submitted a planning application
(109593/FO/2015/N1) for the redevelopment of a plot of land at Hood Street in the
Ancoats area of Manchester (centred at NGR 384925 398615). The proposals allow
for a mixed-use development comprising commercial space, three residential town
houses and 28 residential apartments, together with associated car parking and
landscaping works. The construction works required for the proposed development
will necessitate considerable earth-moving works, whilst an archaeological deskbased
assessment that was prepared to support the planning application concluded that
the site had potential pertaining to the early development of Ancoats as Manchester’s
first industrial suburb based on steam power.
In order to secure archaeological interests, the Greater Manchester Archaeological
Advisory Service, in their capacity as archaeological advisor to Manchester City
Council, recommended that it would be appropriate to undertake a programme of
archaeological evaluation to inform the development process, in accordance with the
National Planning Policy Framework, paragraph 141. The programme of work
recommended comprised the excavation of three evaluation trenches, which were
targeted on the footprint of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century workers’
housing and an iron foundry.
The evaluation trenching was carried out by Oxford Archaeology North in September
2015. The natural geology was revealed in all of the excavated trenches at depths of
less than 1m below the modern ground surface. The archaeological features identified
comprised elements of buildings depicted on the sequence of historical mapping, with
the earliest potentially dating to the late eighteenth century. However, the structural
remains were fragmentary, with little physical evidence for internal floors, fixtures or
fittings, reducing their archaeological significance. All buried remains were overlain
by demolition rubble that seemingly derived from the clearance of the site in the
second half of the twentieth century.