St John's
The Neighbourhood Guide to St John’s
First things first: where exactly is the new St John’s Neighbourhood in Manchester? Bordered by Quay Street to the north, Byrom Street to the east, Liverpool Road to the south, and the River Irwell to the west, it’s the bit between Spinningfields and Castlefield, just below Deansgate. Once home to Granada Studios, it is marketed as a new creative district made up of media and tech businesses, apartments, hotels and visitor attractions. Its best-known landmarks are the Science and Industry Museum and, increasingly, the new Aviva Studios where Manchester International Festival is based. If you’ve ever eaten langoustines at Fenix or raced the clock in the Crystal Maze Experience, you’ve been there, probably without realising it. (Continued below.)
As with other ‘new’ districts that have sprung up in Manchester (New Islington, NOMA, the Green Quarter) St John’s came about through a partnership between property developers and Manchester City Council. And like New Islington, which first appeared in records in 1817, the name has historical precedence.
It refers to St John’s Street, the only Georgian terrace in central Manchester, and its adjacent park, St John’s Gardens. This was once the site of St John’s Church and its graveyard – 22,000 bodies are buried beneath the lawns, benches and rose beds.
A plaque at the entrance marks the park as the resting place of one William Marsden who helped establish the half-day holiday on Saturdays for mill workers in 1843. That the founder of the modern-day weekend is interred in a neighbourhood largely devoted to leisure and creativity is a happy coincidence. Marsden died young at just 28-years-old; why not explore the new St John’s on his behalf? We bet he’d have loved to have a go in the Crystal Maze.
