Murray's Mills and Ancoats

Murray's Mills stand on Redhill Street in Ancoats, a district a short walk northeast of the centre of Manchester, England, and form the core of what historians often call the world's first industrial suburb. The mills were built by the brothers Adam and George Murray, beginning in 1798 with the Old Mill and followed by the Decker Mill in 1802 and the Double Mill on the canal, completed by 1806. They sat beside the Rochdale Canal and were among the first mills to use steam engines supplied by Boulton and Watt, with fireproof construction using cast iron beams and brick. The neighbouring Royal Mill, completed in 1912 and thus later in date, shares the setting, and the adjacent McConnel and Kennedy Mills contribute to a rare cluster of early cotton mills. By the early nineteenth century Ancoats was densely populated by mill workers, many of them Irish migrants, and the district was described by Friedrich Engels in The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. After the decline of cotton in the twentieth century, the mills fell vacant and the district became derelict, but a regeneration programme beginning in the 1990s, supported by Historic England and local partners, has restored the mills and converted them to apartments, offices and restaurants. The conservation area is part of the wider Ancoats and New Islington regeneration, and the Ancoats Mill Group is on the UK's Tentative List for World Heritage status. Visitors can walk around the exterior of the mills, view the canal arm and the former Ancoats Dispensary, and see how Georgian industrial architecture has been adapted. Most buildings are private, so interiors are not generally open, but the streets and canal paths are public. Murray's Mills are close to Cutting Room Square and the Northern Quarter, making the area easy to combine with a food and heritage walk.