Eastern By Pass: Manchester’s Road to Nowhere

A short distance from Clayton Hall, two disconnected streets with the same name preserve the remains of one of Manchester’s most ambitious, and least completed, road schemes.

One section of Eastern By Pass runs through Clayton as an unexpectedly broad dual carriageway lined with houses. Another survives farther south in Openshaw, where the road resembles a spacious residential boulevard. Between them are Ashton New Road, the Ashton Canal, industrial land and housing. The two streets were intended to form part of one continuous route through Newton Heath, Clayton, Openshaw and Gorton.

However, only fragments were built. The photographs preserved in Manchester City Council’s Local Image Archive allow us to follow much of the intended route and to see the houses, shops, clubs, factories and institutions that stood in its path.

A plan older than the postwar city

The Eastern By Pass is often described as a postwar proposal because it appeared as Route D/23 in the City of Manchester Plan published in 1945. In reality, the idea was already several decades old.

Manchester City Surveyor’s Department photographs show that properties connected with the proposed road were being recorded as early as 1920. A further systematic photographic survey followed in 1922, with another large group of images taken by the City Engineer’s Department in 1930. Manchester’s archive guide confirms that the City Engineers and Surveyors undertook extensive photography and that many of their images survive in the Local Image Collection (Manchester City Council, n.d.a; Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, n.d.).

These photographs overturn the idea that the Eastern By Pass began with postwar reconstruction. By the time Manchester Corporation included D/23 in its 1945 plan, officials had already been considering and surveying versions of the route for at least 25 years (Manchester City Surveyor’s Department, 1920; 1922; Manchester City Engineer’s Department, 1930).

The 1945 plan gave the road the designation D/23. The proposal was revised again in the SELNEC Highway Plan of 1962, which described D/23 as a new road running from the Manchester–Failsworth boundary at Averill Street to Wayland Road. Modern road-history research suggests that the broader scheme was intended to continue towards the A6 in the Levenshulme area, although the precise alignment changed considerably between different versions of the plan (Manchester Corporation, 1945; SELNEC Highway Engineering Committee, 1962; SABRE, 2025).

Following the route

At its northern end, the later version of the road would effectively have continued south from Broadway and the A62, near the Failsworth boundary. It would then have crossed through Newton Heath and the Medlock valley before reaching Clayton Vale.

The archive photographs trace the scheme through Culcheth Lane, Culcheth Brow, Clayton Vale, North Road and Vale Street. From there, the road would have continued towards the junction of Stanton Street and Melbourne Street (Melbourne Street was later renamed Canberra Street) before joining the completed Clayton section of Eastern By Pass.

The proposed road then ran south to Schofield Street and Ashton New Road. It would have crossed Ashton New Road and the Ashton Canal before joining the surviving Openshaw section near High Legh Road. From there, the route can be followed through Sandywell Street to Ashton Old Road, then towards Lees Street, Abbey Hey Lane, Tan Yard Brow and Hyde Road. Farther south, Wayland Road and Wayland Road South retain the broad alignments and unusually large junctions associated with the wider scheme (SABRE, 2025; Vallantine, 2011).

Some later reconstructions extend D/23 much farther across south Manchester. Those sections are less certain and appear to combine different generations of highway planning. The photographic evidence is strongest for the route through Newton Heath, Clayton, Openshaw and Gorton.

Scroll through the gallery below, as we’ve tried to piece together the original route of Eastern By Pass.

We pay tribute to the team at Manchester Libraries for maintaining and opening up such a brilliant resource. It is a perfect example of how local archives can answer questions hidden in the streets around us!

What stood in its path?

The City Surveyor’s photographs are not simply pictures of roads. They form a remarkable record of the communities that would have been affected by the Eastern By Pass.

In Newton Heath, the route passed close to Culcheth Hall, photographed in 1920. Known locally as ‘the Nunnery’, the hall was occupied by the Little Sisters of the Poor, who operated a home for older people there under the name St Mary’s Home. The Little Sisters were already established at Culcheth by the beginning of the twentieth century. The home survived the road proposal, closing in the early 1970s before the buildings were eventually demolished (Farrer and Brownbill, 1911; History Me, 2014).

Nearby photographs record Culcheth Lane and Culcheth Brow, the houses of Victoria Terrace, industrial premises, open land and the former Clayton Vale Hospital. One 1930 image shows Victoria Terrace clearly named on the wall. A marriage register provides a human connection: in 1909, Margaret Ann Fallon, a 22-year-old reeler, was living at number 8 Victoria Terrace when she married John Singleton Melling at All Saints, Newton Heath. The photograph may therefore include her former home (All Saints, Newton Heath, 1909).

The route then crossed towards Clayton Vale. Photographs show Clayton Vale Hospital, houses near Clayton Brook and several properties surrounded by fields, gardens and rough ground. They demonstrate that parts of the valley still retained a semi-rural appearance during the 1920s and 1930s.

Crossing the Medlock valley would have required a substantial bridge or viaduct. No surviving source reviewed so far identifies this as the formal reason for abandoning the road, but the scale and cost of such a structure would plainly have presented a major engineering obstacle.

Through Clayton

The route continued along Vale Street. A 1973 Highways Department photograph shows its broad forecourt and shopping parade. Only one carriageway was constructed, with an unusually generous area apparently left available for the second. It remains one of the clearest physical signs that Vale Street was intended to carry something much larger than ordinary local traffic.

At North Road, the proposed route encountered one of Clayton’s best-known community buildings: Clayton Labour Club. The building had originally served as the Liberal Club and stood at the junction of North Road and Melbourne Street, later Canberra Street. Today, the building has been turned into flats and an ‘aparthotel’. Future Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, visited the club during the Second World War as part of fundraising efforts for troops. (Clayton Hall Living History Museum, 2026).

Directly opposite stood a row of houses at North Road and Vale Street, also photographed in connection with the planned road.

At Stanton Street and Melbourne Street, a corner shop and adjoining houses stood across the planned line. Farther south beyond Ashton New Road were houses on Iredine Street and the row of shops on Ashton New Road. Older residents may remember the latter carrying the hand-painted sign “Del Boy’s Discount Furniture” during the 1980s. A Chinese takeaway later occupied part of the row before its demolition in the 2000s (Clayton Hall Living History Museum, 2026).

At the junction of Schofield Street and Ashton New Road, another row of houses occupied the intended continuation. The surviving dual carriageway still ends awkwardly in their former direction, making the unfinished route visible in the modern street pattern.

Through Openshaw

South of Ashton New Road and the canal was a second completed stretch of Eastern By Pass. Archive catalogues sometimes describe this section as Clayton, but the streets and buildings shown, including High Legh Road, Sandywell Street, Sexa Street and Eva Industries, were in Openshaw.

The 1922 survey photographed rows of houses on Sandywell Street, a Threlfall’s public house at Smith Street, and the busy junction with Ashton Old Road. These were established neighbourhood streets, not empty land awaiting easy development. Completing the road would have meant substantial demolition and the severing or widening of streets filled with homes and businesses.

By 1964, photographs show the isolated Openshaw section surrounded by postwar housing. Other views record open land beside Eva Industries, the former Eva Brothers works, together with Travellers’ caravans on the nearby tip. St Cross Church can be seen in the distance in one image. These photographs show the unfinished Eastern By Pass not as an abstract line on a plan, but as part of a lived and changing industrial landscape.

Gorton and Abbey Hey

South of Ashton Old Road, the survey continued through Gorton and Abbey Hey. Photographs recorded buildings on both sides of Hyde Road, including shops, houses and licensed premises. Other images show the junctions of Abbey Hey Lane with Lees Street and Union Street, where the Droylsden Industrial Co-operative Society maintained a substantial corner store.

At Sunny Side and Kirk Street, the survey photographed houses and a yard containing a horse-drawn vehicle. At Tan Yard Brow, it recorded a tannery, industrial buildings and rough, waterlogged land.

One particularly unusual photograph shows Pain’s Firework Magazine: an isolated building used for the secure storage of fireworks or explosives. Pain’s remains a familiar name in the pyrotechnics industry. The company’s history includes the spectacular Last Days of Pompeii, first staged at Manhattan Beach in New York in 1879, and the fireworks display held before the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer (Pain’s Fireworks, n.d.). It is not recorded where this building stood.

The extraordinary variety of property affected by the planned road was huge: cottages, terraces, suburban houses, shops, pubs, factories, a tannery, a hospital, a convent, clubs and explosive stores.

What was actually built?

The Clayton section was laid out as a short dual carriageway. Photographs from 1962 and 1964 show its generous width, central reservation and postwar housing near Coatbridge Street.

The Openshaw section was very different in character. It was built as a broad residential boulevard near High Legh Road and Sandywell Street, with houses arranged around it. Although less obviously a major road than the Clayton dual carriageway, its scale and alignment reveal the same intention.

Vale Street in Clayton, and Wayland Road and Wayland Road South in Gorton, provide additional traces. None forms a complete Eastern By Pass, but together they preserve pieces of the route Manchester’s planners expected eventually to join.

Why was it abandoned?

No single Council resolution formally cancelling the complete Eastern By Pass has yet been identified. The scheme’s long history suggests repeated postponement and redesign rather than one sudden decision. It had already been under consideration in the early 1920s, survived into the 1945 city plan and was modified again in 1962. Not long afterwards, however, it appears to have disappeared from active highway planning (SABRE, 2025).

The likely obstacles are visible in the photographs themselves. Completion would have required a costly crossing of the Medlock valley, new bridges over waterways and railway lines, large-scale property acquisition and extensive demolition at Ashton New Road, Ashton Old Road, Hyde Road and elsewhere. The route also passed through neighbourhoods and industrial districts that continued to change while the plan remained unresolved.

Changing transport priorities probably played a part too. By the 1960s, regional planners were considering a much larger network of urban motorways and strategic roads. An old surface-level road, planned in stages over more than 40 years, may simply have lost its place within that new vision.

The road’s legacy

Today, the two surviving streets called Eastern By Pass can look like planning mistakes: roads built too wide, ending too suddenly and failing to connect with anything of comparable scale. But they are better understood as fragments of a much larger vision.

The scheme would have reshaped a broad corridor through Newton Heath, Clayton, Openshaw and Gorton. Had it been completed, many of the buildings in the City Surveyor’s photographs, and perhaps whole sections of the neighbourhoods around them, would have disappeared much earlier than they eventually did.

The road itself failed. The photographic survey created for it, however, has preserved an exceptional record of East Manchester. It shows not only the buildings that stood in the road’s way, but also the people, workplaces, institutions and communities that gave those streets their character.

The Clayton section of Eastern By Pass, near Ashton New Road.
Photograph: Steven/SABRE (n.d.a).

The Openshaw section of Eastern By Pass, south of the Ashton Canal.
Photograph: Steven/SABRE (n.d.b).

Reference list

Published and online sources

  • Farrer, W. and Brownbill, J. (eds.) (1911) ‘Townships: Newton’, A History of the County of Lancaster, Volume 4, pp. 271–273. London: Victoria County History. Available through British History Online (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • History Me (2014) ‘Culcheth Rose Queen of 1950’, History Me, 22 February. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • Manchester City Council (n.d.a) Local government records guide. Manchester: Manchester City Council. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives (n.d.) ‘Photographs and posters’, Archives and Local History Collections. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • Manchester Corporation (1945) City of Manchester Plan. Manchester: Manchester Corporation. Available through the University of Manchester online plans archive (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • Pain’s Fireworks (n.d.) ‘Our history’, Pain’s Fireworks. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • SABRE (2025) ‘Manchester Eastern By-pass’, Roader’s Digest: The SABRE Wiki. Last modified 24 November 2025. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • SELNEC Highway Engineering Committee (1962) SELNEC: A Highway Plan 1962. Manchester: South East Lancashire and North East Cheshire Highway Engineering Committee. Available through the University of Manchester online plans archive (Accessed: 25 July 2026).
  • Vallantine, S. (2011) ‘Manchester’s Road to Eastern Promise: Unravelling the mysteries of the Eastern Bypass’, East of the M60, 5 June. (Accessed: 25 July 2026).

Registers and local research

  • All Saints, Newton Heath (1909) Marriage register, 1908–1917, p. 53, entry 105: marriage of John Singleton Melling and Margaret Ann Fallon, 28 August 1909. Transcript derived from LDS FamilySearch record.
  • Clayton Hall Living History Museum (2026) Eastern By Pass research notes: identifications, local recollections and comparison with modern streets. Unpublished working notes.
  • Clayton Hall Living History Museum (n.d.) Local research note concerning Clayton Labour Club and the wartime visit of Clement Attlee. Unpublished.

Primary photographic sources

  • Manchester City Surveyor’s Department (1920)

Photographs connected with the proposed Eastern By Pass, Manchester Local Image Collection:

  • Culcheth Hall/convent, accession m69128
  • Culcheth Lane and Culcheth Brow, accession m20031
  • House near Clayton Brook, Clayton Vale, accession m19976
  • Clayton Labour Club, North Road, accession m20116
  • North Road and Vale Street, accession m20115
  • Iredine Street, Clayton, accession m20084
  • Manchester City Surveyor’s Department (1922)

Photographs connected with the proposed Eastern By Pass, Manchester Local Image Collection:

  • Tan Yard Brow property, accession m24251
  • Herbert Street, Newton Heath, accession m35642
  • Droylsden Road, Newton Heath, accession m35413
  • Albert Street and Albert Place, accession m35200
  • Sandywell Street, Openshaw, accession m37507
  • Smith Street and Sandywell Street, accession m37524
  • Sandywell Street and Ashton Old Road, accession m37506
  • Hyde Road, north side, accession m27187
  • Hyde Road, south side, accession m27382
  • Abbey Hey Lane and Lees Street, accession m22756
  • Abbey Hey Lane and Union Street, accession m22755
  • Sunny Side and Kirk Street, accession m24242
  • Tannery at Tan Yard Brow, accession m24253
  • Manchester City Engineer’s Department (1930)

Photographs of properties on or near the proposed Eastern By Pass, Manchester Local Image Collection:

  • Clayton Vale Hospital, accession m78619
  • Unidentified road, accession m78661
  • Unidentified houses, accession m78657
  • Unidentified houses and outbuildings, accession m78207
  • Tan Yard Brow property, accession m78203
  • Newton Heath houses, accession m78205
  • Newton Heath houses and outbuildings, accession m78660
  • Probable clubhouse, accession m78206
  • Culcheth Lane industrial premises, accession m78208
  • Victoria Terrace, Culcheth Brow, accession m78567
  • Unidentified houses on open land, accession m78202
  • Pain’s Firework Magazine, accession m78240
  • Ashton New Road shops, accession m12262
  • Schofield Street and Ashton New Road, accession m12263
  • Stanton Street and Melbourne Street, accession m77805
  • Manchester City Surveyor’s Department (1962–1964)

Photographs of the completed and unfinished Eastern By Pass:

  • Eastern By Pass near Coatbridge Street, 1962, accession m20011
  • Eastern By Pass, Clayton, date not shown, accession m20038
  • Northern end of Eastern By Pass, 1964, accession m19865
  • Travellers’ caravans near the Openshaw tip, 1964, accession m19867
  • Tip near Eva Ltd, Openshaw, 1964, accession m19866
  • Eva Industries Ltd, Openshaw, 1964, accession m20050
  • High Legh Road from Eastern By Pass, 1964, accession m37286
  • Eastern By Pass from Sandywell Street, Openshaw, 1964, accession m20039
  • Manchester City Council, Highways Department (1973) ‘Vale Street: forecourt and shops’, Manchester Local Image Collection, accession M850/4/16/1501, 2 April.
  • Manchester City Surveyor’s Department (1976) ‘Terence Street, Newton Heath: proposed Eastern By Pass road’, Manchester Local Image Collection, accession m35911, 20 January.