The Onward Buildings
The "Onward Buildings" can be found on the east side of Deansgate at the corner of Bootle Street.



It was designed by the architect Charles Heathcote and built between 1903 and 1904.  The Onward Buildings has unusually clean and simple lines compared with most of Heathcote's other Manchester buildings, which tend to be rather baroque in style.  Pevsner describes it as "irrepressively cheerful".  It is constructed of red brick with bold stripes of pale yellow sandstone and it has windows and doorways framed in yellow terracotta.  The corners of the building are curved and a row of porthole style windows are located just below the roof cornice.  Two tall, striped, chimney stacks frame three garret windows. 


In October of 2010 the Onward Buildings are home to a Turkish Restaurant and a model shop at street level and office space above. 



A small wrought iron balcony sits above the entrance.



The elaborate keystone above the entrance reveals the building's original purpose because it says "Band of Hope" with a cherubic angel's face below. 



Heathcote was commissioned to design the building for the Band of Hope.   The name itself gives it away since "Onward" was the title of the first of the Band of Hope newspapers intended for children, which began publication in 1865.  The paper included a variety of material aimed at reinforcing the temperance way of life including music, moral tales, stories, and poetry.  The overall message was the need to be on guard against temptations and keep on the straight and narrow.

The building's construction was financed by a federation of local temperance societies.  Further evidence of this is to be found on the third floor where the porthole style windows light a green tiled hall with a stage at one end.



Behind the stage is a large plaque in an elaborate tile frame.
On the wall above one of the round windows is a ceramic plaque.  It points out that the names of the various temperance organizations and individuals, who supported the building's construction, are listed on the tiled wall below.
A border of tiles lists various areas from which the support came and the tiles below the border are dedicated to groups and individuals who supported the cause.



A close look at the tiles reveals many prominent names from Manchester's history.



In the section shown above, forinstance, you can see the names of: 

Thomas Worthington the architect responsible for the court house on Minshull Street and Nicholl's Hospital School on Hyde Road as well as the Albert Memorial in Albert Square.

W. J. Crossley M. P. founder with his brother of the Crossley Brothers Engineering Company.  He was the MP for Altrincham and made a baronet in 1909.  He was a teetotaler and treasurer of the United Kingdm Alliance, a temperance organization.

Sir William Anson who donated land for the creation of Birchfields Park and the Anson Estate.  His name is comemmorated in Anson Road.

Sir William Mather chairman of Mather & Platt and a liberal politician.

Above this section of the wall there is a large plaque dedicated to John Harrop



The building has other interesting features and has been lovingly restored by its present owner.
















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The Band of Hope

For those who believe that binge drinking in 2010 is a new phenomenon blighting Britain's streets, the truth is that in the 1800s excessive drinking was a significant feature of life.  Temperance societies, usually sponsored by Christian groups, sprang up around the country.   Their goal was to encourage people to turn their backs on the evils of alcohol and take "The Pledge". 

Among these groups was the Band of Hope which was founded in 1845 by the Reverend Jabez Tunnicliffe in Leeds.  The Band of Hope was particularly distressed about the affects of alcohol on children and at their first meeting in 1847 some 300 people turned up of which 200 were children who signed the pledge.  The Band of Hope's web site outlines the conditions that prevaled at this time, "One of the evils of Victorian society was cheap and grossly abused child labour – small children were regarded as ideal for working in coal mines, in cotton mills and as chimney sweeps - some children, employed as chimney sweeps, were as young as 8 years. Life, both for them and their parents was wretched; physical and emotional pain oppressed them all the time, prospects of escaping from this drudgery were nil - and their only solace was in the alehouse. Beer was cheap, spirits were plentiful and there were no restrictions on children visiting alehouses. The Silk-Buckingham Committees of 1834 reported that in 14 public houses in London, 18,391 children entered one of these during one week. Twenty years later, a select committee reported of public houses in Manchester “on a single Sunday in 1854 there were 212,243 visits to drink shops and 22,132 of these were made by children, some of whom went to drink on their own account - some to fetch drink”.  By 1887  the organization had about 1½ million members out of 8 million young people in Britain of Band of Hope age.  Four years later that number had risen to 2 million.

The YouTube video below shows a Band of Hope procession in Manchester in 1901 some 3 years before Onward House was completed.



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Prior to the Onward Buildings occupying this site, the nature of the area was quite different.  Four public houses were located in close vicinity and many of the buildings were residential rather than commercial.  The location of the Onward Buildings is shown on the 1849 OS map below as a translucent purple square, revealing that Number 1 Court preceded it.  Adjacent to the site was a Quaker's Burial Ground, possibly connected to the congregation of the Friends Meeting House, that was built on nearby Mount Street in 1828.
By 1901 much had changed in the area.  Elliot House, the Manchester School Board Offices, was under construction on the corner of Jackson Row and Deansgate.  On the former Quaker's Burial Ground "Century Building" was also under construction for Leech Brothers & Co.  The site on the corner of Bootle Street was empty.  Clearly the buildings around Court 1 had been demolished setting the stage for the construction of the Onward Buildings.

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Moving forward in time, the aerial image below dates from the 1940s.  The red arrow points to the Onward Buildings.  Century Building, its neighbour, has gone possibly a victim of the Blitz.
In 2010 the site of the Century Building is occupied by the unromantically named "201 Deansgate", a modern office building designed by Holford Associates and built in 1995 - 96. 







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