Greenheys, Manchester

53°27′44″N 2°14′25″W

Former German Protestant Church (now Stephen Joseph Studio), Greenheys
For the area of Little Hulton in Greater Manchester, see Greenheys, Salford.

Greenheys is an inner-city area of south Manchester, England, lying between Hulme to the north and west, Chorlton-on-Medlock to the east and Moss Side to the south.

Turing House (left) in the science park

Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton, published in 1848, opens with a description of Greenheys, then still a rural area on the outskirts of the city.[1][2] The writer Thomas De Quincey and pioneer socialist Robert Owen both lived at Greenheys House, overlooking the now culverted Cornbrook river.[3]

Manchester Science Park is here, on Pencroft Way, Lloyd Street North.[4]

Old Abbey Taphouse incident

On 30 September 1953, in a blatant act of racial segregation, black boxer Len Johnson and his friends were refused service at the Old Abbey Taphouse pub in Greenheys on account of the colour of Johnson's skin.[5] Manchester police were called to the pub and Johnson and his friends were thrown out.[6] Johnson was angered by this and enlisted the help of the then-Lord Mayor of Manchester, and the Bishop of Manchester to combat the stance. Over the following three days, more than 200 people, black and white, gathered to take part in a demonstration outside of the pub. Eventually the ban was overturned and Johnson, who was teetotal, was invited inside the pub to share a drink with the publican.[6] Their protest fuelled the momentum to end the colour bar policies of the era in the United Kingdom.[7] The Race Relations Act 1965 eventually made racial discrimination in public places unlawful in a direct response to the colour bar.[8] A mural exists outside of the pub dedicated to the event and Johnson's memory.[9]

See also

References
  1. On Topography and Hunger in Mary Barton, Victorian Review
  2. Elizabeth Gaskell's Manchester, Alan Shelston, The Gaskell Society Journal,Volume 3 (1989)
  3. Ed Glinert, The Manchester Compendium: A Street-by-Street History of England's Greatest Industrial City (2009), p. 135
  4. Manchester Science Park
  5. Dooley, Terry (1 November 2020). "Under the shadow of the colour bar: The Ballad of Len Johnson". boxing-social.com. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  6. "Breaking the Colour Bar". theoldabbeytaphouse.org. Retrieved 1 August 2023.
  7. Britton, Paul (24 February 2019). "How a boxer helped overturn the 'colour bar' by ordering drinks in a pub". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  8. Britton, Paul (24 February 2019). "The shameful history of the racist 'colour bar' in Manchester - and how a boxing hero made history by ordering a round in the pub". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
  9. Coulson, Jess (26 January 2023). "Northern Voices: The legacy of Len Johnson and radical activism at The Old Abbey Taphouse". saltmagazine.co.uk. Retrieved 2 August 2023.
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