Trafford Park

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Trafford Park is a large (1183 acres) industrial estate in the Salford and Trafford metropolitan boroughs of Greater Manchester, England.

Originally it was a country estate, (a deer park) belonging to the de Trafford family, whose mansion was Trafford Hall. An old map shows the whole area as "Trafford Heath", and inside it a smaller "Trafford Park". Trafford Park contained three farms (Park Farm [1], Moss Farm, Waters Meeting Farm), and had three entrance lodges (at Throstle Nest, Old Trafford, and Barton-upon-Irwell).

1760: The Bridgewater Canal was built. It runs along the south side of Trafford Park.
about 1860: An ornamental lake was built. (It was eventually filled in with foundry waste.)
1882: Big public meeting calling for the Manchester Ship Canal to be built. The 4th Sir Humphrey de Trafford objected [2].
1894: The Manchester Ship Canal was opened. That made Trafford Park a prime site for industrial development. During next century Trafford Park was built over with factories and some working-class housing.
1896: Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford (successor to previous) put Trafford Park up for sale.
- June 23: Ernest Terah Hooley bought Trafford Park for £360,000. (Manchester City Council wanted to buy it but could not agree terms quick enough.)
- August 17: Ernest Terah Hooley registered Trafford Park Estates Company. At first his plans for Trafford Park were a racetrack and exclusive housing and a bicycle factory, but Marshall Stevens (general manager of the Manchester Ship Canal Company persuaded Hooley to set up an industrial area there.
1897: A tramway opened across the Park. After that, railways were built in the Park, and linked to the Manchester Ship Canal's railway.
- January: Stevens left his post and became Trafford Park Estates's managing director.

The lake became a boating lake and a 3-mile-long golf course was set up.

- March: Manchester Patent Fuel Company was established; it opened in Trafford Park in 1898. (Trafford Brick Company arrived soon after.)
1898: Several firms arried, including J.W Southern & Co. (timber merchants), James Gresham (engineers), and W.T Glovers & Co. (electric cable manufacturing). Glovers built a power station in the Park on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal. Edmund Nuttall & Co. acquired a large section of land.
1899: The British Westinghouse Electric Company bought much land in Trafford Park. Firms arrived including Kilverts (making lard), the Liverpool Warehousing Company, and Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd.

Trafford Hall was opened as a hotel.

1900-1902: Trafford Hall's stables and some other outbuildings were used for stock auctions and selling horses. A polo ground was set up; but all these open-field land uses were later pushed out by industry.
1900: Work started on building Westinghouse's factory. They owned 130 acres in 2 sites in the Park. Foundation stone laid in August 1900. Production began in 1902.
1902: A hotel was opened.
1903: Westinghouse began making turbines and generators in their new factory there. They built nearby working-class housing, with numbered avenues crossed by numbered streets. At that time they employed half of the 12,000 people working within Trafford Park.
1903: The Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS), bought land at Trafford Wharf and set up a big food packing factory and a flour mill there.

By now over 500 houses had been built in "The Village", a grid layout of workmen's houses with numbered streets across numbered avenues.

1904: Act of Parliament for Trafford Park's railway system.
1910: The Ford Motor Company moved to Trafford Park.
1911: Manchester's first aerodrome was constructed, between Trafford Park Road, Mosley Road, and Ashburton Road.
1918 early: Trafford Park aerodrome closed. (Today, Tenax Road runs north-south through the centre of the site.)
1919: Westinghouse renamed itself Metropolitan-Vickers.
1931: The Ford Motor Company moved out, to Dagenham.
1933: Over 300 American firms had bases in Trafford Park.
1938: The Kellogg company opened a big industrial complex at Barton Dock.
1939: WWII started. Trafford Park became a borough.
1940: Trafford Hall was destroyed in the blitz.
- December 23: The Metropolitan-Vickers aircraft factory in Mosley Road was badly damaged with the loss of 13 Avro Manchester bombers in final assembly.
1945: Trafford Park employed over 75,000 workers. Its peak was around then.