| Rusholme | |
Moss Lane East, looking towards Wilmslow Road in Rusholme |
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Rusholme
Rusholme shown within Greater Manchester |
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| Population | 14,422 |
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| OS grid reference | SJ850953 |
| Metropolitan borough | City of Manchester |
| Metropolitan county | Greater Manchester |
| Region | North West |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | MANCHESTER |
| Postcode district | M14 |
| Dialling code | 0161 |
| Police | Greater Manchester |
| Fire | Greater Manchester |
| Ambulance | North West |
| EU Parliament | North West England |
| UK Parliament | Manchester Gorton |
| List of places: UK • England • Greater Manchester | |
Rusholme is now a suburban locality in Manchester, England, about two miles south of Manchester city centre, past the University of Manchester and the hospital. It has a large student population, with several student halls and many students renting privately in the area. There are larger houses towards the Victoria Park neighbourhood, however most of the housing consists of low-cost terraced houses, around 70–100 years old. Wilmslow Road is the major thoroughfare through the area. In the south-west is a large public park, Platt Fields Park, featuring a large pleasure lake and Platt Hall.
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Rusholme was an independent town until incorporation into Manchester in 1885.
It is served in Westminster by the MP for Gorton (election results), currently the Rt Hon Sir Gerald Kaufman MP. In May 2011 Kate Chappell was elected as Labour councillor for the ward.
The community is surrounded by Fallowfield to the south, Moss Side to the west, Victoria Park to the east and Chorlton-on-Medlock to the north.
| Hulme | Manchester | Ardwick | ||
| Moss Side | Longsight | |||
| Rusholme | ||||
| Whalley Range Chorlton-cum-Hardy |
Fallowfield | Levenshulme |
Rusholme, unlike other place names in Manchester which have the suffix holme is not a true water meadow. Its name derives from ryscum the dative plural of the Old English rysc, a "rush" meaning at the rushes. The name was recorded as Russum in 1235, Ryssham in 1316 and Rysholme in 1551.[1]
Late in the Roman occupation of Britain a hoard of about 200 gold coins was hidden in the valley of the Gore Brook. These coins date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and were found where Birchfields Road crosses the brook in the 1890s. They are now kept in the Manchester Museum.[2]
Records of the name Rusholme do not appear until the mid-13th century when "Russum" is mentioned; at this time it is known that a house existed at Platt which was replaced by a larger house of black and white construction which was the home of the Platts until the mid-18th century when the present classical building replaced it. An early record of the Platt estate mentions the Nico Ditch, an Anglo-Saxon linear earthwork which runs east-west through the area and was probably used as an administrative boundary. It dates from the 8th or 9th century.[3] Tales of battles between the Danes and the Normans associated with the road names of Danes Road and Norman Road are not accepted by historians. Another black and white hall existed at Birch; this was probably built in the 16th century.[2]
The economy of the area was dependent on agriculture until the 18th century; however during the 17th and 18th centuries there was a growth of cottage industries such as spinning, weaving and brickmaking.[4]
Over the Victorian era, there were several different socio-political meanings of Rusholme. Primarily, it was a township based around a general area known as Rusholme since at least the thirteenth century. The area grew into a township, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, it had its own government responsible for public health, roads, policing, poor relief, and other local government tasks. That Rusholme was originally a politically autonomous entity was vital to its self-conception as a discrete area even after it lost almost all political self-control upon incorporation into Manchester. The low-cost terraced housing built between 1880 and 1930 dominates the landscape, along with a sprawling council housing estate erected in the interwar era.
Prime Minister Herbert Asquith was married in the Congregational Church, Rusholme, in 1877, to Miss Helen Melland.[5] Richard Cobden, William Royle (author of a history of the township), and Thomas Lowe (1815–1892) were long-time residents. Lowe began working as a baker and became also a flour dealer and later a nurseryman and finally the proprietor of a dairy.[6][7]
Conservative Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was for twenty-six years one of the councillors for Rusholme on Manchester City Council before becoming Lord Mayor of Manchester from 1975–1976.
Other local politicians include ward councillors Paul Shannon, a Liberal Democrat and deputy leader of the Manchester City Council Liberal Democrat group. Rabnawaz Akbar was elected as Labour councillor for Rusholme ward in May 2010. Councillor Akbar serves on the Citizenship and Inclusion Committee. His end of term is 2014.
John Ruskin gave the lectures later published as Sesame and Lilies in 1865 at Rusholme Town Hall.
Film Studios Manchester opened in a converted Wesleyan church on Dickenson Road in 1947. The first Manchester-made feature film was Cup-Tie Honeymoon starring Sandy Powell and Pat Phoenix. It was the first of many similar films made at the site. From 1947 to 1954 it was the home of Mancunian Film Studios, many of whose productions were filmed on local streets. In 1963 the BBC bought the studios as its northern base and on New Year's Day, 1964, Jimmy Savile presented the first edition of Top of the Pops from there. It was used until 1971 when the BBC moved to studios in central Manchester.
Rusholme was mentioned in the song "Rusholme Ruffians" by The Smiths on their 1985 album Meat Is Murder. Mint Royale's 1999 album On the Ropes contained a track titled "From Rusholme with Love".
The cricket writer and music critic Neville Cardus was born in Rusholme, as was musician Roy Harper. The actress Tina O'Brien was also born here.
Rusholme was the home of the second indoor ice skating rink in England, after the London Glaciarium, although this has since been replaced by a grocery store.
A large public park in the south-west, it opened in 1910 and proved to be very popular, maintained by a fleet of up to 50 gardeners until the second half of the 20th century. The centrepiece of the park is a large pleasure lake, which is used for boating and fishing. The grounds contain Platt Hall, there are several formal gardens and three dedicated show fields for large outdoor events. In 2010, Platt Fields Park was awarded a Green Flag Award for achieving the national standard for parks and green spaces.
The Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity is on Platt Lane. At Birch in Rusholme is the much older chapel of St James, now disused. In Thurloe Street is the Roman Catholic Church of St Edward.
There are a number of purpose-built student halls in the Victoria Park area (for example Hulme Hall), and a large number of students rent privately in Rusholme. There is a South Asian community, as well as a community of working class white people.
In the past Rusholme is has been one of the areas in south Manchester, including Longsight, Hulme, Moss Side, and Old Trafford to have suffered a problem with gang-related gun crime, in recent years shooting incidents have significantly declined.[8]
Wilmslow Road is part of the B5117, a major thoroughfare running from Parrs Wood north into Manchester City Centre transversing the campuses of the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University. It also forms part of what is the busiest bus route in Europe,[9] with many bus stops being serviced by one bus from one of many different bus companies every 60 to 90 seconds during peak times. There are a large number of Indian and Middle Eastern restaurants along a section of this road, known locally as the curry mile. It contains at least seventy restaurants, take-aways and kebab houses specialising in the cuisines of South Asia and the Middle East. There are also a variety of fashion, grocery and music shops along this section of the road, as well as several traditional English pubs including Hardy's Well, The Whitworth, and The Huntsman Inn.
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