Ancoats Stories / The Presence of Absence
In the 1700s the eastern border of the City of Manchester was marked by a river and fields. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution some eager industrialists sat down and planned a grid of streets and canals on that land to accommodate the production of cotton and cloth on a scale that was hitherto unimaginable. By the end of the 18th century the area, known as Ancoats, had become the world's first planned industrial suburb, and it was in full steam. The mills grew so rapidly that they swallowed up roads. Walkways and tunnels were built to allow five consecutive blocks of mills to function as one complex.
By the 1960s the cotton industry had quit Ancoats for more profitable shores and the area's deep dark canyons provided a painful testimony to a lost era. By spring 2003 the process known locally as 'ditching' had begun. A window was knocked out on each floor, a giant skip and crusher worked away below as a team of workmen flung centuries of accumulated objects out of the window.
These pictures portray the presence of absence in the space's last moment as a mill. They follow the journey of the ditchers and the industrial archaeologists over the summer of 2003 as walled up rooms, tunnels and walkways were reopened momentarily. A coin (1799) and a child's shoe were discovered in an attic; a reminder of the ancient traditions of constructing a place. Today Ancoats is rising again as a new suburb and this time it is not to accommodate dark, noisy, crowded and perilous productivity, but contemporary inner city living. These photographs and the experience of living and working in Ancoats formed the basis for 'The Peeps', a series of 20 or so permanent peep holes that have subsequently been built into the walls around Ancoats.