Transport on Plymouth Grove
Posted
29th May 2025
in blog, Blogs & News
In early May, I enjoyed a volunteer trip to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester (MoTGM) with other volunteers from Elizabeth Gaskell’s House. (Lizzie, one of our other volunteers, has already reported on the enjoyable volunteer trip to the Greater Manchester Museum of transport, which you can read here).
During the trip, I was keen to try and find out more about the transport options which would have been available to the Gaskell family in their time at Plymouth Grove. In 1850, when the Gaskells’ first moved there, this was a road of affluent houses on the edge of the city and many residents would have had their own transport. The Gaskell family owned a pony called Tommy to pull a trap (a small, light, horse-drawn carriage), and employed an “outdoors man” to care for the horse as well as the garden. Barbara Brill’s book, William Gaskell 1805-84: A Portrait, states that William often drove the children out with Tommy, so the trap must have been able to seat at least four.
In such a busy household where Elizabeth and William had independent responsibilities, four growing daughters who were encouraged to visit friends and wider family, and a housekeeper with many errands to run, there must have been many occasions when more transport was needed. Some of their many visitors would also have needed transport to carry them to and from other parts of the city, railway stations and coach stops.
While at the MoTGM, I took the opportunity to ask George, the volunteer responsible for its extensive library and archive, if he knew of any records of transport along Plymouth Grove around 1850. At first, it wasn’t easy to track any down. George couldn’t quickly find anything indicated before 1908, but I could tell that he was intrigued.
A week later George had passed on some sources of information via my transport-enthusiast husband. A little brown book titled Bye-Laws and Fares for Hackney Carriages Licensed to Ply for Hire by the Council of the Borough of Manchester 1849 shows that Hackney Cabs could be hired to bring people close and would travel along Plymouth Grove. The fare from Brook Street to Stockport Road, a distance of one mile, is shown as 1 shilling (today’s 5p) in a cab or 1s 4d in a coach: this is equivalent to around £5-£6 today. Another entry shows a journey from St Ann’s Square, just beside William’s Cross Street Chapel, to Nelson Street, a five-minute walk from Plymouth Grove, costing 1s 3d or 1s 8d. This however, is also “private” transport available only to people of means.
So was there any “public” transport to Plymouth Grove? It seems that by 1851 there would have been horse-drawn omnibuses to bring people very close to it. A table of routes shown in Duffield’s Pocket Companion 1851, reproduced in The Manchester Carriage and Tramways Company by Edward Gray in 1977, shows the use of inns as starting places, a relic of stage-coach journeys from the pre-railway age. There was an omnibus route to Plymouth Grove from the Commercial Inn, Market Street, as well as one to Rusholme Bar or Victoria Park, both very close, from the same inn.
The City Omnibus Company also ran a service from Victoria Station to Plymouth Grove, an hourly service in each direction, returning from Nelson Street. Whether or not these omnibuses also ran along Plymouth Grove is unclear, but they would be much cheaper than Hackney Cabs. In 1857, an omnibus from The Exchange to Nelson Street and Plymouth Grove cost 9d inside or 3d outside.
There are at least two entertaining references to Elizabeth Gaskell’s use of public transport in her letters, though unfortunately they do not relate specifically to Plymouth Grove. In a letter dated 1855 sent from Church House to Marianne and Meta, Elizabeth says she got SAFELY! to Altringham (sic), then in the ‘bus I sate next to somebody….‘ who read Little Dorrit very slowly as she read it over his shoulder. This ‘bus was travelling on at least to Knutsford.
A second reference is in a letter dated 13 and 14 Sept 1857 written from Chatsworth to Marianne. The letter describes a trip Elizabeth made there with Meta. They travelled by coach and Elizabeth says: ‘We went to the end of Shakespeare St in pouring rain, Joseph carrying our box and found to our dismay that there was (sic) no inside places. However we got tilted up to the top of the coach and were whirled off….I had no idea it was so long a journey- it was 1/4 to 4 before we left Buxton, where we did get inside and six before we got to Rowsley…’ Imagine travelling all the way to Buxton on top of a coach in pouring rain!
Shakespeare Street at that time was a long street not too far away, running from the opposite side of Plymouth Grove towards Stockport Road. I’m not sure which end she would pick up the coach up from, but probably the further one so that the Buxton coach could continue along Stockport Road. In an addendum to this trip, a brief note from Rowsley written on the day they hoped to return says ‘We came here to meet the coach which is full from the railroad, so we must wait till tomorrow.’ An indication of the uncertainty of travel at this time.
Both these coach routes are listed in Duffield’s Pocket Companion of 1851. A service to Knutsford ran from the Angel and Royal Hotels, Market Street. There were three services to Buxton including one called the “railway coach” to Rowsley and beyond, from The Thatched House, probably an inn in the city centre.
Services along Plymouth Grove remained horse-drawn until the early years of the 20th Century. In 1877 the City Omnibus Company ran a service from Market Street to Plymouth Grove every half-hour, fares 3d or 2d, which would be accessible fares for everyday use by many. The last horse-drawn omnibuses ran in Manchester in the very early 1900’s, with Plymouth Grove to Exchange via Princess St and Cross St every 30 minutes being one of the very last.
George was able to show me a map at the museum which indicated a tramline on Plymouth Grove by 1908. This was just in Meta Gaskell’s lifetime as she died in 1913. Today, these tramlines no longer exist. Bus services run along Plymouth Grove, which has 5 stops on each side, making them easily available to local residents. In my years volunteering at The House I don’t think I have ever seen a horse on the road, but they would have been seen and heard all day long during the Gaskell years.
George was able to show me a map at the museum which indicated a tramline on Plymouth Grove by 1908. This was just in Meta Gaskell’s lifetime as she died in 1913. Today, these tramlines no longer exist. Bus services run along Plymouth Grove, which has 5 stops on each side, making them easily available to local residents. In my years volunteering at The House I don’t think I have ever seen a horse on the road, but they would have been seen and heard all day long during the Gaskell years.
Blog by Jane Mathieson, Volunteer at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
With thanks to George Turnbull and Hamish Mathieson, volunteers at the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester
