Rusholme

Rusholme is a neighbourhood in south Manchester, England, about two miles from the city centre. It is bounded by Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north, Victoria Park and Longsight to the east, Fallowfield to the south and Moss Side to the west. The name derives from Old English, recorded as "Russum" in 1235. The area grew from an agricultural district into a suburb of low-cost terraced housing built mainly between 1880 and 1930, and the 2011 census recorded a population of 13,643 in the ward, including a large number of students living in halls and rented terraces close to the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. Rusholme is best known for the Curry Mile, the stretch of Wilmslow Road between Whitworth Park and Platt Fields Park lined with restaurants, takeaways and shisha lounges. The area's South Asian food scene developed from the 1950s onward, when the first wave of immigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh settled in Rusholme, many moving from mill and factory jobs into running their own restaurants, shops and taxi firms. By the 1980s and 1990s the strip had grown to more than 80 South Asian restaurants, said at the time to be the largest concentration outside South Asia itself. Manchester City Council made "Curry Mile" the street's official nickname in 2008 when it put up street signs. In recent years the mix has broadened to include Yemeni, Palestinian, Turkish and Persian restaurants, shisha lounges and dessert parlours alongside the remaining South Asian kitchens. Green space bookends the strip. Platt Fields Park, opened in 1910 with a boating lake and formal gardens, sits at the southern end and contains Platt Hall, a Georgian house built in 1760-63 that later housed Manchester's Gallery of Costume from 1947 to 2017. Whitworth Park lies on the area's northern boundary, opposite Manchester Royal Infirmary. Manchester Central Mosque, one of the longest-established mosques in north-west England, sits a short walk east in neighbouring Victoria Park and serves much of Rusholme's Muslim community.

Photo: The Curry Mile, Rusholme, Manchester by Bill Boaden, CC BY-SA 2.0