Angel Meadow, Manchester's Hell On Earth (NEW VERSION) 

Angel Meadow in Manchester England is steeped in history and legend. Here John Harris gives an insight into the area and its mixed fortunes through the years. This short film was entered into the 2020 British International Amature Film Festival (BIAFF) and was awarded the diamond award for Best Documentary.

If your family are Mancunian from the Industrial age onward, odds have it that we have kin laying in Angel Meadow. There is no honorable way that such a place should be desecrated, it is a relequary for the mortal remains of those unheralded saints on whose backs Britain was built. Never forget St. Peters Field, The Comunist Manifesto and Suffrage. Those souls laying in that field are those that worked and fought for what we take for granted today. At the very least we owe them a peaceful rest. Raise a glass to our suffering forebears. In life they suffered the hardships of the working classes of the Industrial Revolution. In death they are suffering the unrest from the greed of the second millennium. It may not be an historical heritage that you would print on a Tea Towel to sell to tourists, but it's a heritage that's runs through and bolsters the core values of the free world.

Many of these people immigrants from Ireland. They dug thr canals , built the railways. They made Britain Great

An expertly-made and produced documentary that I would in different circumstances have said was particularly enjoyable to view.....instead it was deeply moving, with a pervading air of sadness. As a southerner living in Mcr for a number of years, as I gazed from the train window I had no concept of the scale of deprivation and hardship endured by the people who had lived here.

My second great grandfather James William Bryan was born in 1848 at the Kings Arms Yard boarding house at 19 Charter St (now the northern end of Dantzic St) His parents were William Bryan and Caroline Bryan. William was a silk weaver. James worked as an umbrella hawker. This video is great information about the early life he must have endured. They lived there from the 1840s - 1870s so would've seen it all.

WOW! What a wonderful video. The sinister burial yard, where I guess paupers were buried without coffins? wrought chills in my spine. St. Michael’s Flags ….And Angel Meadow, may the souls of those children rest peacefully in Paradise. ❤❤❤. Thank you for this video.

Very well done thank you for remembering the pour souls.

Thankyou John for such an eye opener from the past history, each school should be taught the history of there hometown and see the progress through time and respect what we have RIP TO THE 40,000+ 💞 🌹

Manchester was the shock city of its age. It is the world’s first industrial city so it was visited by the great and the good who were equally impressed by the wealth it generated and appalled by the squalor and pollution. It is now in the process of becoming the first former industrial city to successfully reinvent itself. It has done it despite years of central government indifference and on its own terms. It has not forgotten either the art of money making or its radical soul. Not a Manc myself but all power to it- truly a great global city

Leave the area alone as a reminder of the past sufferings of who made Manchester. To much redevelopment will hide our history. We should preserve not build and line the pockets of the developers. It's a small area in collyhurst and should stay as it is. Thank you for this footage.

I work in the £300m building overlooking this park (mass grave) i didnt know its history until someone at work mentioned it. Really is an eye opener how this area influeced the studies of Engel and Karl Marx which led to communism.

Superb video thank you for this informative and moving story of Angel Meadow. My father was born in Ancoats in 1920 and spoke only when pressed to do so of the hard times he experienced in his youth.

Incredibly moving piece of work! Thank you.

Magnificent presentation and well informed documentary, pictures and photos and camera work along narration very well put together. Thank you 🙏

Poor Souls 😢 RIP ❤️

Almost puts a tear in ones eye. Thanks for posting.

A lovely piece of work, John, thank you.

The comparison of past and current photos was seamless. Well done

We went to Angel Meadow about ten years ago and even managed to go inside the Ragged School, the sad thing is timewise it's not that long ago.

I have the book angel meadow.an absolute must read if you are interested in local and social history

I’m interested in social history, I know a it about Angel Meadow, but I found your presentation very good and learned a bit, well done, thanks. Salford

This was a excellent video but very sad history of the working classes thank you from New Zealand

Brilliant video, extremely well produced

What a great video! I'd love to see more like this. Great presenter!

Great video, well put together and really interesting.

"my mum (gran) was born in MANCHESTER with 6 people in DANZIG st and went to the ragged school my gran left the ragged school at the age of 13 in 1912 on the monday morning started her working life in the leather trade and finally retired in 1973 at the age 73 yrs.

Fabulous video, thank you.

Very interesting and informative video. Thank you for sharing with us.

Great short film, which resonates so very loudly today, thinking about hungry children at school and ever increasing reliance by many on food banks; it seems we are slipping back into our tainted and long forgotten past in the blink of eye!

Moving

Some ancestors come from Manchester, so this is interesting to me. Thank you. Australia.

Top Video.Thank You

to you sir a glass of what you fancy if we ever meet , very good video , thankyou

This is truly fascinating and I am about to buy and read Dean Kirby's book written about this. I stumbled across this earlier as the new Friedreich Engels was mentioned. My elderly aunt (95), has done a lot of research on our family tree and it turns out that Fred was married to both Mary Burns and her sister, Lydia (Lizzie) Burns. They are connected to our family tree in some way which we are just researching now. I work in Manchester and all this history is literally on my doorstep. Thank you so much for sharing. I found this very informative and have just subscribed to your channel. Thank you, Julie Burns

the price of industrial revolution was the suffering of the people

Great video

Thanks for sharing v nice

This is heartbreaking ...

great vid

Very interesting. I'd heard of it and guessed it must have been where what is now a park when I walked through to the Angel pub. I must go again to have a good look round and get some photo's.

Excellent travel through history and some very dark times

Wonderful,keeping reality alive so the powers that be are unable to paper over the truth. The bbc have a lot to learn !

Excellent presentation John, thanks, I’m very interested in manchester and Salford social history, my interest started many, many years ago when my grandad passed a book to me it was a signed copy of the Manchester Man’ by Isabella lineaus banks, it was in the ‘old txt’ but I red it, had to re read many pages, it was a story of true events woven around a fictional young man but many other characters did exist, the actual book has pull out maps and amazing illustrations, ( I bet you know all this), anyway thanks again 👍☘️🇮🇪, Eccles

My poor Mam was part of this !, never said a word !

i love it

Believe it ir not there were ( and remain ) pockets of deprivation in the south of england . When i grew up in the 60's there were still plenty of people who had been scarred by the Great Depression of the 20's , 30's . Later on i worked in Salford for a few months and was shocked by hiw cold it was in the winter . When i read ' Love on the Dole ' I thought how miserable it must have been ti have been poverty stricken in that area in the Depression plus having to face the damp and the cold on top of that . Not that is the south if France in the southeast . Sadly new poverty now stalks us . Mass net inward migration , inevitable shortage of housing , huge increases in rogue landlords due to buy to ket mortgages, plus the loss of relatively well paid manufacturing jobs are a recipe for poverty and misery . Well done to governments of bith colours for supporting these disastrous policies .

Theres even harder times today in manchester if one bothers to look.At least in those harsh times,people had each other.Now the poor and homeless seem to be lone wolves with no one to turn to in their cardboard boxes.................

I couldn't read the writing on the thumbnail. What awards did this documentary win?

Thankyou

Wonderful,keeping reality alive so that the powerful cannot paper over the injustice of the past. The bbc could learn a lot. Call the midwife ????

Wow.. 👍😎🇨🇦

Who, but God Alone, will remember. awaken and raise up these long-forgotten shades to that New Life which, though scarcely ever touched through the gloom of their great probations, was yet reckoned "by heart" more surely than dimmed eyes could tell.

LOST SOULS

REspect

👍👍

did Dickens work at Grants Warehouse. I know he based characters of the brother owners

What an excellent film, and sadly the capitalists move on in again

Did we really let children live this way

As someone who played on those gravestones sixty years ago and knew three previous generations that were born in and around what is now known as angel medow( one born in 1877)I think the portrayal of the area as hell on earth is a modern take on life then. All the stories i grew up with about the area were fun, good times, a friendly place. True everyone was poor and dodgy dealings went on. Tradgies happened etc. Same as it ever was. Not looking at the past through rose coloured specs just think the poverty = bad life take is misleading.

Regeneration or DEGENERATION?..

Excellent, while we move gradually full circle backwards in food bank Britain thanks to Neoliberal economics practised by all of the main parties, for close on half a century.

All that white privilege.

Great video