How Manchester's Red Bank slum welcomed Jews and Ukrainians before changing the world - as it faces its biggest transformation
manchestereveningnews.co.ukRed Bank, on the northern outskirts of Manchester city centre, has witnessed huge changes over the years. It's long been a melting pot of cultures and nationalities and it's played a pivotal role in the development of both Manchester's Jewish and Ukrainian communities.
And now, as plans to create a giant new neighbourhood along the River Irk move forward, the area is once again on the verge of transformation. READ MORE: The picture which could finally unlock one family's Titanic mystery In the mid 19th Century Red Bank became the centre of Jewish working-class life in the city.
Hundreds of poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled in the cramped, squalid warren of terraced houses at the bottom of Cheetham Hill Road.
It was, according to Bill Williams, a renowned historian of Manchester's Jewish history, a 'classic slum'. He wrote: "Self-contained and shielded from view by the lie of the land and a facade of shops and public buildings, socially barricaded in by the railway and industries of the polluted valley of the Irk and so neglected and ill-lit as to be in a state of perpetual midnight." But Red Bank was also a hive of industry.
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