Manchester Victoria to Angel Meadow

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A Short Evening Walk

As the light lingers a little longer each evening and we edge towards June's summer solstice, it is increasingly tempting to take a midweek evening stroll or detour.

Or you might have an hour to spare waiting for a delayed train from Victoria Station. If this is the case, you might like to fill the time with a walk to Angel Meadow and back.



If you leave Victoria Station by the main entrance, watching out for the incoming and outgoing trams, you will soon find yourself on Corporation Street. Carefully cross the busy road, veering left, towards Hanover Street. It was named following the coronation of the Hanoverians King George III and Queen Charlotte in 1761.



Running parallel to Hanover Street is Balloon Street. This cloud-busting name is in honour of James Sadler's first manned ascent in the city in May 1785 - accompanied by a cat called Radcliffe - and also in honour of the balloon factory he established on the street.

Rather than drifting to the top of Hanover Street and entering Shudehill Interchange (unless you want to get the tram one-stop back to Victoria Station), take a left onto Sadler's Yard - a public square, which opened in 2015 and which gives a respite from the relentless traffic around it. Community workshops, clubs, classes, get-togethers and other events have blossomed there and are advertised on a noticeboard.

You could also stop for a quick drink at the Sadler's Cat , formerly the Pilcrow. The neighbourhood bar opened in 2016, partly built from the thirsty work of volunteers.

On Sadler's Yard, you will also find the 1,300-capacity New Century Hall. The CIS Tower opened in 1962 and the nearby New Century Hall launched a year later. It was a conference venue to complement the 28-floor tower, where over four thousand staff worked.



In the 1960’s it hosted Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Kinks and others. In the 1990s, it was the scene of all-night Acid House parties of the MADchester era with the soundtrack provided by the likes of 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald.

The venue re-opened in 2022 as a 'social hub of creativity and community'. It features its original sprung dance floor along with a state-of-the-art sound system vintage wood wall panelling, and psychedelic illuminated disco ceiling.

It also feeds the city’s appetite for food and drink in its ground-floor kitchens and central bar. You can dance to the tunes the DJ is spinning and bands are playing, at the weekends.

Take a walk up the steps (there is also a lift) alongside New Century Hall up to the pedestrianised Dantzic Street (named after the former German city of Danzig, now Gdansk in Poland, possibly a nod to Manchester’s European trading links)

Cross over Miller Street, with its racing traffic, at the Pelican crossing. You are now on One Angel Square . Its main feature is the 238ft tall office building, completed in 2013, designed by architects 3DReid. It was the new working-home for staff of the Co-operative Group, with room for 4,000 workers.

Its leaning, curved design makes it look like a ship, sailing on from north-west rival Liverpool. Gaze up and there is a roof terrace from which, no doubt, the staff take a break and look out over the city, towards Piccadilly, probably dreaming of holidays and cruises and other adventures.



Look down for flowerbeds, community orchards and mini woodlands. This urban greenery comes from NOMA (i.e. North and Manchester), in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and maintained by Evening Gardening Club , Co-op Academy New Islington and Plant Co-operative CIC (This city is a garden). These homes for nature are at your feet both in Sadler’s Yard, at the corner of Dantzic Street before you cross to Angel Square.



Later on, when the human traffic has passed you may see other evidence of nature in the city. Late one Saturday night I saw a fox purposefully trotting across the square, perhaps on its way back to a den amidst the ubiquitous construction sites.

If you cross Angel Street, at the Pelican crossing and take a left you will find Angel Meadow Park..

On a summer evening, it is a space for local residents to recline on the grass until sundown. Beneath lies a grim legacy of Victorian Manchester's industrial past, in the form of a mass burial ground. A cholera epidemic had little problem spreading its deadly bacteria particles amongst the young and old when there was hardly any room to breathe. No wonder Engels famously called it ‘Hell upon earth’ in his account of industrial Manchester in The Condition of the Working Class (1845).

Today the population density is of a less brutal kind, with new apartments blooming wherever space is available - no car park is safe. As evening gets darker the Meadow View block which overlooks the park becomes a lightbox where residents rest before the next working day or weekend rest.



It’s then downhill on a curving walk back to Victoria, via Angel Street and Corporation Street, with New Vic apartments on your right and the City of Manchester sign on your left. You could take time to read the information board, which documents the area’s history, formerly known as Long Millgate, from the Anglo-Saxon and Norman eras. It also pictures archaeological finds from the city's sixteenth/seventeenth-century growth, due to being a centre for the woollen and linen trade.

Victoria Station itself opened in 1844 and was extended to be the complex which we use today. It was designed by engineer George Stephenson (1781 – 1848), the Father of Railways and apparently named with the special permission of Queen Victoria herself.

If it is a mid-week evening, you might hear the cathedral’s bell ringers practising. The melodious sound competes with all the noises of a Manchester evening - car horns, ticking engines, the swish of tyres, snatches of shouts and conversations, upbeat music from bars.

By now your train will hopefully have arrived, with you hopefully having seen one part of Manchester in a slightly different light and maybe resting your feet and reflecting on its history as the train rattles past Angel Meadow.

The postcode for Manchester Victoria Station is M3 1WY
Angel Meadow Park’s postcode is M4 4TF.



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