well this is how Engels described - Portugal st and primrose st, blossom, naval and radium st
In the last-mentioned broad district included under the name Ancoats,
stand the largest mills of Manchester lining the canals, colossal six and
seven-storied buildings towering with their slender chimneys far above
the low cottages of the workers. The population of the district
consists, therefore, chiefly of mill hands, and in the worst streets, of
hand-weavers. The streets nearest the heart of the town are the oldest,
and consequently the worst; they are, however, paved, and supplied with
drains. Among them I include those nearest to and parallel with Oldham
Road and Great Ancoats Street. Farther to the north-east lie many newly-
built-up streets; here the cottages look neat and cleanly, doors and
windows are new and freshly painted, the rooms within newly whitewashed;
the streets themselves are better aired, the vacant building lots between
them larger and more numerous. But this can be said of a minority of the
houses only, while cellar dwellings are to be found under almost every
cottage; many streets are unpaved and without sewers; and, worse than
all, this neat appearance is all pretence, a pretence which vanishes
within the first ten years. For the construction of the cottages
individually is no less to be condemned than the plan of the streets. All
such cottages look neat and substantial at first; their massive brick
walls deceive the eye, and, on passing through a _newly-built_ working-
men's street, without remembering the back alleys and the construction of
the houses themselves, one is inclined to agree with the assertion of the
Liberal manufacturers that the working population is nowhere so well
housed as in England. But on closer examination, it becomes evident that
the walls of these cottages are as thin as it is possible to make them.
The outer walls, those of the cellar, which bear the weight of the ground
floor and roof, are one whole brick thick at most, the bricks lying with
their long sides touching; but I have seen many a cottage of the same
height, some in process of building, whose outer walls were but one-half
brick thick, the bricks lying not sidewise but lengthwise, their narrow
ends touching. The object of this is to spare material, but there is
also another reason for it; namely, the fact that the contractors never
own the land but lease it, according to the English custom, for twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, or ninety-nine years, at the expiration of which
time it falls, with everything upon it, back into the possession of the
original holder, who pays nothing in return for improvements upon it. The
improvements are therefore so calculated by the lessee as to be worth as
little as possible at the expiration of the stipulated term. And as such
cottages are often built but twenty or thirty years before the expiration
of the term, it may easily be imagined that the contractors make no
unnecessary expenditures upon them. Moreover, these contractors, usually
carpenters and builders, or manufacturers, spend little or nothing in
repairs, partly to avoid diminishing their rent receipts, and partly in
view of the approaching surrender of the improvement to the landowner;
while in consequence of commercial crises and the loss of work that
follows them, whole streets often stand empty, the cottages falling
rapidly into ruin and uninhabitableness. It is calculated in general
that working-men's cottages last only forty years on the average. This
sounds strangely enough when one sees the beautiful, massive walls of
newly-built ones, which seem to give promise of lasting a couple of
centuries; but the fact remains that the niggardliness of the original
expenditure, the neglect of all repairs, the frequent periods of
emptiness, the constant change of inhabitants, and the destruction
carried on by the dwellers during the final ten years, usually Irish
families, who do not hesitate to use the wooden portions