“Mrs Gaskell lives in a large cheerful airy house quite out of the Manchester smoke a garden surrounds it and on the hot weather the windows are kept open a whispering of leaves and a perfume of flowers always pervaded the room.”
Written by Charlotte Bronte in 1850,the writer is describing 84 Plymouth Grove,a couple of miles south of the city centre.If you passed by it recently it would have been surrounded by scaffolding and was in a bad state of repair.
84 Plymouth Grove
The house was built in 1838 at a time when that part of Manchester was green fields and was rented by the Gaskell family in 1850 for £150 a year.Although Elizabeth was to die suddenly in 1865 the family lived in it until Meta, her daughter died in 1913.
Last Friday saw its rebirth as the first phase of a major refurbishment programme was completed.
It was all made possible thanks to a substantial £312,000 repair grant from English Heritage and extra funding from the University of Manchester, Bowland Trust, Architectural Heritage Fund, BIFFA, Awards for All and the Oglesby Trust.
The Grade II listed Italianate villa at 84 Plymouth Grove, where the author of Cranford and North and South lived with her family for 15 years, has been treated to major structural repairs to make it safe and the ground floor accessible.
The building needs further work to be undertaken before it can be opened to the public, but the trust is developing an application for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
The second stage will involve renovating the historic ground floor rooms to present them as they were when the author lived there. As part of this proposed project, additional floors will be made available for community and conference use.
Janet Allan, Chairman of the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust, which owns the property, said: “The exterior of the villa now looks stunning. It has a new roof and lime rendered walls to the main house. All the drains have been replaced and the timberwork has been restored or replaced. Internally, the dry rot has been eradicated and the floors strengthened.”
Henry Owen-John, English Heritage’s Regional Planning & Development Director in the north-west, said: “We have been delighted to support the Manchester Historic Buildings Trust in completing the initial repairs to Elizabeth Gaskell’s house. After a long period of it looking so shabby, it is now wonderful to see the building in such good order.”
It’s all part of the 200 year celebrations of the birth of one of Manchester’s most famous writers.
But back to the middle of the 19th century and the Manchester smog was unfortunately soon to reach the outskirts of Ardwick. By 1860,Mrs Gaskell struggled to find annuals which would survive in the garden.