The industrial zone known as Trafford Park, between the Manchester Ship Canal and the Bridgewater Canal, began life as an extensive area of parkland surrounding the stately home of the de Trafford family. Finding themselves completely hemmed in by waterways after the establishment of the Manchester Ship Canal, the de Traffords vacated the land, opening up the whole area for industrial development. Gradually the whole area was covered with factories and the ancillary roads and railway lines, as the advantages of the transport links impressed themselves on developers and businessmen. Trafford Park became the largest industrialised area in Great Britain, drawing in a labour force from all over the country. Housing was built in the Park itself to meet the accommodation needs of the incoming workers and their families, and the expansion of nearby towns like Stretford owed much to the proximity of factories and jobs. After a decline in the late sixties and early seventies, Trafford Park is once again a vast centre of industry and business.
Ask anyone in the Greater Manchester area about Trafford Park, and they will either have worked there themselves, or know someone who did.
THE AUTHORS
This book was conceived and written by Patricia Southern and Karen Cliff, respectively the Local Studies Librarian and Senior Assistant at Trafford Local Studies Centre, where the local history library houses the basic tools that facilitate the study of the local past, such as maps, photographs, street directories and archives. Patricia Southern is a native of north Cheshire, which was incorporated into Trafford after the Local Government boundary changes of 1974.
She was educated at Altrincham County Grammar School for Girls, and qualified as a Librarian at what was then the Polytechnic of Newcastle upon Tyne.
Karen Cliff has long experience of working with the public in the field of local studies, and has researched several aspects of family and local history on her own behalf. She is the co-author with Vicki Masterson of books on Urmston, Partington and Warburton, and Stretford.
235 x 165 mm | paperback original | 128 pages | 200 vintage photographs
