John Mortimer
Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos)
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from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 edition. Excerpt: ... New Warehouses In York-st.--Financial Troubles--The Birth Of The Railway System--Commercial Aspects Of The Town--Reminiscences. While the Town Hall was being built Market Street was getting itself made wider, so that there should be less need for the Police Commissioners to give notice that "if people wanted to talk on the pavement they must edge up close to the wall." There was evidently a growing need for more elbow-room, which made itself manifest in various ways. The cramped conditions of commercial life, as manifested in the neighbourhood of Cockpit Hill and Cannon Street were being left behind. In a very interesting chapter of his Manchester Banks and Bankers, Mr. Grindon has described something of the progress made in widening the area of commercial activity between the years 1828-36. Gradually, but persistently, the streets which had been residential for the merchants were being pressed upon for warehouse room, the inhabitants betaking themselves to conditions more suburban. In the business migration, the firm of Henry Bannerman and Sons, as we have seen, took the initiative, becoming pioneers in the outward progress. When they took that warehouse at the top of Market Street they were neighbours to the Royal Hotel and Bridgewater Arms, which had just been removed there from High Street, and it reads strangely now that prior to this removal the site at the corner of Mosley Street which the inn now occupies "'had been the private house of Mr. C. B. Potter, a wealthy manufacturer of nankeens, a nice garden extending sideways and behind." The tendency of the outward march of the warehouses was towards York Street, and the first to venture in that direction "was Mr. John Macfarlane, a sagacious Scotchman, who had long been established...
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