JULY 28TH, 2010
By ADMIN

Heavy Haulage Salford

Heavy Haulage Salford Greater Manchester

Approximate Population: 72,750

With increased competition from the towns of Bolton and Oldham, Salford’s cotton spinning industries faltered, and so its economy turned increasingly to other textiles and to the finishing trades, including rexine and silk dyeing, and fulling and bleaching, at a string of works in Salford. For centuries in Salford, textiles and related trades were the main source of employment.

Both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels spent time in Salford, studying the plight of the British working class. In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Engels described Salford as “really one large working-class quarter …[a] very unhealthy, dirty and dilapidated district which, while other industries were almost always textile related is situated opposite the ‘Old Church’ of Manchester”.

Salford developed several civic institutions; in 1806, Chapel Street became the first street in the world to be lit by gas (supplied by Phillips and Lee’s cotton mill). In 1850, under the terms of the Museums Act 1845, the municipal borough council established the The Royal Museum & Public Library, said to have been the first unconditional free public library in England, preceding the Public Libraries Act 1850.

The effect on Salford of the Industrial Revolution has been described as “phenomenal”. The area expanded from a small market town into a major industrial metropolis; factories replaced cottage industries, and the population of rose from 12,000 in 1812 to 70,244 within 30 years. By the end of the 19th century it had increased to 220,000. Large-scale building of low quality Victorian terraced housing did not stop overcrowding, which itself lead to chronic social deprivation. The density of housing was as high as 80 homes per acre.