Ancoats has the unusual distinction of being the world’s first industrial suburb – the cotton mills along the Rochdale Canal built in the 1790s and 1800s were the template for industrial urban development worldwide – and also one of England’s most gentrified neighbourhoods in the 2020s. The transformation from abandoned warehouses to Manchester’s best restaurant quarter happened fast enough that the two histories coexist in the same physical spaces.
The Mills and the Architecture
The Ancoats mills – Murray’s Mills, Murrays and Decker Mill, the Rochdale Canal complex – are some of the most significant industrial buildings anywhere in Britain and have been properly preserved rather than demolished. Walking down Redhill Street and along the canal, you’re in a UNESCO World Heritage buffer zone that actually looks like what it is rather than a theme park version of it. The scale of the mill buildings relative to the street is genuinely imposing.
The Food and Restaurant Scene
Ancoats has the highest concentration of independently run, genuinely good restaurants per square mile in Manchester. Elnecot, Rudy’s (the original), Mackie Mayor, Pollen Bakery, Where The Light Gets In nearby in Stockport-adjacent, Manchester’s best ramen, pizza from proper wood-fired ovens. The restaurant cluster happened because cheap warehouse rents coincided with a generation of chefs wanting to open their own places. The rents are no longer cheap but the quality has stayed.
Coffee
Ancoats is Manchester’s best neighbourhood for coffee. Pot Kettle Black on Tariff Street, Foundation Coffee nearby, Grindsmith in the media complex – these are proper specialty coffee operations making good decisions about sourcing and extraction rather than just charging more for the same thing. The Ancoats coffee culture feeds on a population that works in the nearby media and creative sector offices and knows what it wants from a flat white.
New Islington
New Islington is the residential development on the Ancoats/Miles Platting border – the former Cardroom Estate regenerated into a mixed-tenure waterside neighbourhood. The architecture has been genuinely praised (Will Alsop’s Chips building is one of Manchester’s more interesting recent residential buildings) and the marina gives it a water feature that most inner-city neighbourhoods lack. It’s where Ancoats workers live when they can afford to.
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