Belle Vue Gaol (also known as Manchester City Gaol, Manchester Borough Gaol [1] or Gorton Gaol) was a Victorian prison in Gorton, Manchester, England. It operated between 1850 and 1888. It was notorious at the time for abysmal prisoner living conditions. It was demolished in 1892. [2]
When the building of the gaol, located near Hyde Road, commenced circa 1845 it was intended to have been a short-term prison [3] housing male and female inmates who were serving sentences of no more than six months. However, there are prison records that show that there were a few prisoners, mainly military prisoners, usually deserters, who were imprisoned there for up to two years. There were also facilities for securing prisoners awaiting trial at the Assize Court (after July 1864) in Manchester and the Quarter Sessions located nearby. [4] The gaol was considered to be inadequate and as a result many other prisoners were sent to the New Bailey Prison in Salford. [2] [5]
George Gissing, novelist [6]
In Great Britain and Ireland, a county town is the most important town or city in a county. It is usually the location of administrative or judicial functions within a county, and the place where public representatives are elected to parliament. Following the establishment of county councils in England 1889, the headquarters of the new councils were usually established in the county town of each county; however, the concept of a county town pre-dates these councils.
The Salford Hundred was one of the subdivisions of the historic county of Lancashire in Northern England (see:Hundred. Its name alludes to its judicial centre being the township of Salford. It was also known as the Royal Manor of Salford and the Salford wapentake.
Gorton is an area of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England. It is to the southeast of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 36,055. Neighbouring areas include Levenshulme and Openshaw.
Ardwick is an area of Manchester, in the county of Greater Manchester, England, one mile south-east of the city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 19,250.
HM Prison Manchester is a Category A and B men's prison in Manchester, England, operated by His Majesty's Prison Service. It is still commonly referred to as Strangeways, which was its former official name derived from the area in which it is located, until it was rebuilt following a major riot in 1990.
Ashburys railway station serves the area of Openshaw, in Greater Manchester, England. It is a stop on a junction of the Glossop Line, the Hope Valley line and the freight line to Phillips Park Junction. It has been open since 1855 and is the nearest station to the City of Manchester Stadium.
The Manchester Martyrs were three Irish nationalists – William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien – who were hanged in 1867 following their conviction of murder after an attack on a police van in Manchester, England, in which a police officer was accidentally shot dead, an incident that was known at the time as the Manchester Outrages. The three men were members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also known as the Fenians, an organisation dedicated to ending British rule in Ireland, and were among a group of 30 to 40 Fenians who attacked a horse-drawn police van transporting two arrested leaders of the Brotherhood, Thomas J. Kelly and Timothy Deasy, to Belle Vue Gaol. Police Sergeant Charles Brett, travelling inside with the keys, was shot and killed while looking through the keyhole of the van as the attackers attempted to force the door open by shooting the lock.
Belle Vue is an area of Manchester, England, sited east of the city centre; it is bordered by the Hope Valley line to the east and the Glossop line to the west. It is part of the electoral ward of Longsight.
HM Prison Leeds is a Category B men's prison, located at Gloucester Terrace in the Armley area of Leeds in West Yorkshire, England, which opened in 1847. Leeds Prison is operated by His Majesty's Prison Service, and is still known locally as Armley Gaol, the historical name of the prison.
Abbey Hey is an area of Gorton, in the city of Manchester, England. It is known mainly for Debdale Park, Wright Robinson College, Parkstone Park also known as Cat Valley field, the donkey sanctuary & Delamere Park
Broughton Rangers were one of the twenty-one rugby clubs which met at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, in 1895 to form the Northern Rugby Football Union. They were originally based in Broughton, Salford, but in 1933 moved to Gorton, Manchester to play at the Belle Vue Stadium, and were renamed Belle Vue Rangers in 1946. The club folded in 1955.
Belle Vue Stadium was a greyhound racing track in Belle Vue, Manchester, England, where the first race around an oval track in Britain was held on 24 July 1926. It has also been used for motorcycle speedway, as the home ground of Elite League team Belle Vue Aces from 1988 until 2015, and from 1999 until 2019 for stock car racing and banger racing.
Manchester City and Manchester United are popular Premier League football clubs in Greater Manchester. United's ground is in Old Trafford; Manchester City's home ground is the City of Manchester Stadium in east Manchester. Fixtures between the clubs are referred to as the Manchester Derby. Manchester United are historically the second most successful football club in England with 67 elite honours won and was the first team in England to achieve the Continental treble. Manchester United's revenue was the fifth highest of a football club in the world in the 2022–23 season at €745.8 million. In 2023, Forbes estimated the club was the second most valuable in the world at $6 billion.
Blackley Cemetery is a large, municipal cemetery situated within the northern suburbs of the city of Manchester, and is owned, operated and maintained by Manchester City Council. The cemetery and crematorium complex is located on Victoria Avenue in the district of Blackley. It was opened in 1953 on land that was previously a golf course.
The Manchester Zoological Gardens opened in 1838, on a 15-acre (6 ha) site between Broom Lane and Northumberland Street in Broughton, now in Salford, England. Attractions included a Grand Menagerie, a lake, a maze, an archery ground, and a series of landscaped walks. The gardens were laid out by a company of local business men, on land rented from the Rev. John Clowes of Broughton Hall, who had become interested in botany and horticulture in later life. The gardens competed with John Jennison's Belle Vue Zoological Gardens opened three years earlier, but the venture was commercially unsuccessful and closed in 1842. Some of the animals were acquired by the Belle Vue Zoo, others went to London Zoo and to Hampton Court.
Hyde Road Stadium, in Manchester, England, often referred to as Belle Vue was the home of the Belle Vue Aces speedway team. The stadium's capacity was 40,000 and it was built in 1928 and used until demolished in 1987. It was claimed, incorrectly, to have been the first purpose-built speedway track in Britain.
Before Manchester City Football Club moved into their first permanent home in Manchester, England, in 1887, the club played at a short series of grounds which ranged from established cricket venues to bumpy fields with no stands or boundaries nor history of sporting usage. The club was founded as a philanthropic endeavour to encourage impressionable youths to commit to wholesome activities rather than falling to the local adolescent culture of alcohol and violence. The sport of football was barely 15 years from the writing of its own rulebook. The club had no immediate option of using or constructing a stadium, and thus most of their first locations were nothing more than painted lines and goalposts. As the club reformed and changed its name twice between 1880 and 1887, so its choice of locations were a series of low-cost, short-term solutions when their current location became untenable. In 1887, when City moved to their sixth pitch in only eight years, they had the money, ambition, reputation and stability to construct themselves a more permanent base of operations, at the stadium named Hyde Road.
The Manchester Titans are an American football team based in Manchester, England, that competes in the BAFA National Leagues Premier Division North, the highest level of British American Football. The team operate from the National Speedway Stadium in Gorton. The Titans were given British American Football League status in 2003, although they missed the following season in order to be restructured for the 2005 campaign. The team was founded in 2003 by two Ex-Manchester Allstars Youth team players who had been playing their football outside of the city.
The National Speedway Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium on Kirkmanshulme Lane, in Gorton, Manchester, England and is the home of the Belle Vue Aces and Belle Vue Colts speedway teams and the Manchester Titans American football team.
Greater Manchester bus route 53 is a bus route runs between Salford Shopping Centre and Cheetham Hill. It is operated by Stagecoach Manchester on contract from Transport for Greater Manchester.
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