Trail:

Ragged Schools and Ashton House

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Manchester, Working Girls Home, Dantzic Street

At the corner of Aspin Lane and Dantzic Street is the Charter Street Ragged School and Working Girls Home, a relatively rare surviving example of a purpose-built institution of this type, with a largely intact plan. The work of the mission had commenced in 1847 and a school was built on the site in 1866. The range to Little Nelson Street by Maxwell & Tuke, dated 1891, was an extension of the 1866 building, subsequently pulled down and replaced by the block to Dantzic Street in 1898, also by Maxwell & Tuke. The earlier part has tall channelled chimneys and top floor oriels, the rather plain later building one or two BaroqueGlossary Term touches. The corner entrance to Dantzic Street has the words 'Working Girls Home' over the doorway. Accommodation was provided for servants who would otherwise have to use lodging houses, with kitchens, laundries and individual cubicles. Some of these features survive. Two large halls on two floors on the Aspin Lane side served the ragged school and mission. The changes of level inside reflect the piecemeal building history and the exigencies of a circulation system which separated the working girls from other users.

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Manchester, Ashton House, Corporation Street

Near the junction of Dantzic Street and Corporation Street is Ashton House. This was a model lodging house for women built by the corporation 1908-10 by City Architect H.R. Price (a men's lodging house, far to the south-east off Pollard Street has disappeared). On an island site with a very narrow rounded north-east end to the junction with CrownGlossary Term Lane. Red brick and cream terracottaGlossary Term in Arts and CraftsGlossary Term style. Nice details include ironwork with flower motifs, lettering in the gableGlossary Term to the corner with Aspin Lane and voussoirsGlossary Term of tiles laid on edge. It catered for 222 women, who occupied dormitories with individual cubicles and cooked for themselves in communal kitchens.

Glossary

Arts and Crafts

Associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, an important offshoot of the later English Gothic Revival. Not so much a style as an approach to design, it sought truth to materials, high standards of craftsmanship, and an integration of decorative and fine arts, architecture included. Its representative figure is the writer and designer William Morris (1834-96).

Baroque

The term, originally derogatory, for a style at its peak in 17th- and early 18th-century Europe, which developed the classical architecture of the Renaissance towards greater extravagance and drama. Its innovations included greater freedom from the conventions of the orders, much interplay of concave and convex forms, and a preference for the single visual sweep. The revival of the style in early 20th-century Britain, often termed Edwardian Baroque or Neo-Baroque, drew more on English prototypes than on the more expansive variants of the Continent.

Crown

The upper part of an arch or vault.

Gable

Peaked external wall at the end of a double-pitch roof. Types include: Dutch gable, with curved sides crowned by a pediment (also called a Flemish gable); kneelered gable, with sides rising from projecting stones (kneelers); pedimental gable, with classical mouldings along the top; shaped gable, with curved sides; tumbled gable, with courses or brick or stonework laid at right-angles to the slope. Also (Scots) a whole end wall, of whatever shape.

Terracotta

Moulded and fired clay ornament or cladding; when glazed and coloured or left white often called faience.

Voussoirs

Wedge-shaped stones forming an arch.