Written by José Álvarez, assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Geology & Environmental Science, Universidad de Alcalá.
Thanks to the generous welcome and invaluable support of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, and with funding from the University of Alcala and Banco Santander, I was a visiting researcher at the University of Manchester from 1 June and 31 August 2025. The main purpose of my visit was to advance my research on Robert Owen (1771–1858), a Welsh textile manufacturer and social reformer who was later known as the ‘Father of British Socialism’, and focus on two lesser-explored stages of his biography: his time in Manchester (1787–1800) and his final years (1848–1858).
I began to take an interest in Owen around 2002, when, together with other undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Alcala, I reflected on how the crisis of socialism might foreshadow a broader crisis of the modern world. Since then, devoting a significant part of my best years to studying the so-called “utopian socialists” seemed like a worthwhile endeavour. I ultimately chose Robert Owen because I had a personal advantage: as a boy and as a teenager in the 1980s and 1990s, I had learned English with friends from Liverpool, Oxford, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sunderland, and other English cities.
After a decade of research for my doctoral thesis (2003–2013) and a research stay in Manchester’s archives in the summer of 2007, I was already familiar with many relevant sources. This prior experience enabled me to make more effective use of the three months in 2025, during which I was able to complete two articles derived from this long process of study.
Among the numerous sources I have worked with over the decades, in this blog I would like to highlight ‘a map of Manchester and Salford’, drawn and engraved by William Green (c. 1790–c. 1820) and by John Thornton (1641–1708), and now held by the John Rylands Research Institute and Library.
The Map of Manchester and Salford
‘A plan of Manchester and Salford’ is a map engraved by John Thornton and published in 1794. It is an illustrated plan consisting of nine sheets bound together in a single volume, on paper, with a scale of 29 inches to the mile. This document is a highly valuable primary source from the perspective of historical cartography, as it provides detailed information on the plans for urban development and reform promoted by the aristocracy in Manchester and Salford. The work, which began in 1787, contains precise data on street nomenclature, the location of public buildings, the identification of landowners beyond the built-up area, and notes concerning newly projected streets.
This is a work of historical cartography of great material as well as symbolic value, which has reached us in an excellent state of preservation. Analysing it allows us to study Owen’s period in Manchester from a spatial perspective and provides insights into how the aristocracy with territorial interests envisioned and integrated processes of modernization, Enlightenment, and economic and social reform during what, from 1840 onwards, came to be called the Industrial Revolution.
I had the opportunity to locate this map thanks to the services of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library and the University of Manchester, to which I was granted free access. I first consulted the digital version on Manchester Digital Collections and was later given access to the physical copy.
Manchester in Owen’s Time
The map allows us to situate the young Robert Owen in the market town that Manchester was at the end of the eighteenth century. It enables us to identify —first on paper and then within the urban fabric— the places of residence, work, transit, or investment mentioned in the sources in connection to Owen between 1787 and 1800. Yet the value of the document is not confined to the geographical dimension; it also invites reflection on language, thought, and human intentions in their historical context.
During my stay, I personally visited the locations identified by the sources based on the information contained in this plan. Some have been preserved, others have disappeared, but all offer a vivid perspective of the city Robert Owen once knew. The Welshman was connected to various sites in Manchester: from St Ann’s Square, where he lived around 1790, to 8 Brazenose Street, where in 1794 he shared lodgings with the engineer Robert Fulton (1765–1815), and to Piccadilly, home to the factory of Peter Drinkwater (1750–1801), which Owen managed between 1792 and 1795.
Manchester then appeared as a space amid urban and industrial transformation, a privileged setting for what we now study as the Industrial Revolution
The detail of sheet 6 of the plan (Figure 3) brings us closer to the appearance of Ancoats Lane at the beginning of the last decade of the eighteenth century. It was here that Robert Owen, at the start of that same decade, established his first modern mill as an independent entrepreneur, without the involvement of partners.
Methodology and Implications
The use of historical cartography as a methodological tool allows us to integrate studies on language, thought, history, economy, spatiality, and education. In this case, ‘A plan of Manchester and Salford’ provides a privileged basis for analysis, as it allows us to reconstruct or situate the spaces connected with Owen in Manchester, integrating them into the broader context of the city’s demographic, urban, and industrial transformation at the end of the eighteenth century.
The information contained in this plan can be compared with and enriched by other primary and secondary sources —such as minutes, the press, or Owen’s biographies— making possible an interdisciplinary approach to his figure.
Likewise, the use of techniques of overlay and comparison of historical maps makes it possible to trace in a dynamic way the evolution of population, urban structure, economic structure, and economic organization within the framework of the Industrial Revolution.
On the one hand, between language, thought, and historiography, these research methods make it possible to connect spatial analysis with the social and cultural history of the period. On the other hand, in the field of spatial studies and education, the map becomes a highly valuable resource for bringing students and the general public, closer to the historical experience of Robert Owen in Manchester.
Finally, it is important to emphasize that the specialized assistance of the staff of the John Rylands Research Institute and Library was decisive for the consultation, contextualization, and full use of this source. Without the mediation of this institution, which preserves and makes available a documentary heritage of international significance, the development of this work would not have been possible.
Concluding reflections
A close analysis of ‘A plan of Manchester and Salford’ provides new insights into Robert Owen’s time in Manchester, shedding light both on the specific places where he lived, trained, worked, and invested, and on the expanding urban framework and economic structure that shaped his decisions and projects. In this way, Owen’s biography becomes part of the material history of the city, enriching our understanding of the interactions between individual, population, space, and society at the origins of the Industrial Revolution.
The study of this source also reveals a fertile field of research at the intersection of historical cartography and intellectual history. ‘A plan of Manchester and Salford’ documents streets and buildings, but it also reflects a way of thinking about and projecting the city, in which Enlightenment and reason, applied to spatiality, to understanding, and to the material definition of space, become tools for inducing economic development and social transformation.
This research stay has been a valuable experience both on a personal and an institutional level. Personally, it allowed me to deepen a trajectory of more than two decades devoted to the study of Robert Owen and the so-called “utopian socialists”. Institutionally, it strengthened the ties between the University of Alcala, the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, and the University of Manchester.
Last but by no means least, I wish to conclude by reiterating my gratitude to Dr. Janette Martin, the John Rylands Research Institute and Library, the University of Alcala, and Banco Santander, without whose support and financial backing these studies could not have been carried out.
References
- Claeys, G., Selected Works of Robert Owen: London, Pickering and Chatto, 1993, 4 vols.
- Green, W., A plan of Manchester and Salford: Manchester, engraved by John Thornton, 1794.
- Owen, R., The Life of Robert Owen by Himself: London, Effingham Wilson, 1857.
- Multiple Authors., Oxford English Dictionary: Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2023.
All images unless otherwise stated are copyright of the University of Manchester and can be used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike Licence.
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