Trafford Park
Trafford Park is an area of the metropolitan borough of Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, opposite Salford Quays on the southern side of the Manchester Ship Canal, southwest of Manchester city centre and north of Stretford. Until the late 19th century it was the ancestral home of the Trafford family, who sold it to the financier Ernest Terah Hooley in 1896. Occupying an area of, it was the first planned industrial estate in the world, and remained the largest in Europe over a century later.
Trafford Park is almost entirely surrounded by water; the Bridgewater Canal forms its southeastern and southwestern boundaries, and the Manchester Ship Canal, which opened in 1894, its northeastern and northwestern boundaries. Hooley's plan was to develop the Ship Canal frontage, but the canal was slow to generate the predicted volume of traffic, so in the early days the park was largely used for leisure activities such as golf, polo and boating. British Westinghouse was the first major company to move in, and by 1903 it was employing about half of the 12,000 workers then employed in the park, which became one of the most important engineering facilities in Britain.
Trafford Park was a major supplier of materiel in the First and Second World Wars, producing such equipment as the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power the Spitfire and the Lancaster. At its peak in 1945, 75,000 workers were employed in the park. Employment began to decline in the 1960s as companies closed in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere. By 1967 employment had fallen to 50,000, and the decline continued throughout the 1970s. The new generation of container ships was too large for the Manchester Ship Canal, which led to a further decline in Trafford Park's fortunes. The workforce had fallen to 15,000 by 1976, and by the 1980s industry had almost disappeared from the park.
The Trafford Park Urban Development Corporation, formed in 1987, reversed the estate's decline. In the 11 years of its existence the park attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private-sector investment. As of 2025 there are 1,400 companies within the park, employing 40,000 people.
History
Pre-industrial
Until the industrial development of the park began in the late 19th century, much of the area now known as Trafford Park was a "beautifully timbered deer park". Its had flat meadows and grassland, and an inner park containing a tree-lined avenue leading from an entrance lodge at Barton-upon-Irwell. It was the ancestral estate of the de Trafford family, one of the most ancient in England, and at that time, one of the largest landowners in Stretford. The family acquired the lands around Trafford in about 1200, when Richard de Trafford was given the lordship of Stretford by Hamon de Massey, 4th Baron of Dunham. Some time between 1672 and 1720, the de Traffords moved from the home they had occupied since 1017, in what is now known as Old Trafford, to what was then called Whittleswick Hall, which they renamed Trafford Hall. Trafford Park contained the hall, its grounds, and three farms: Park Farm, Moss Farm, and Waters Meeting Farm.In 1761 a section of the Bridgewater Canal was built along the southeast and southwest sides of Trafford Park. The canal and the River Irwell, which marked the estate's northeast and northwest boundaries, gave the park its present-day "island-like" quality.
A meeting held in 1882 at the Didsbury home of the engineer Daniel Adamson began the estate's transformation, with the creation of the Manchester Ship Canal committee. Sir Humphrey de Trafford implacably opposed the canal, objecting that it would bring polluted water close to his residence, interfere with his drainage, and render Trafford Hall uninhabitable. The Ship Canal Bill nevertheless became law on 6 August 1885, and construction began in 1888. A wall was built between the park and the canal to block it off from view and two wharves were built for the exclusive use of the de Traffords.
The opening of the ship canal in 1894 made Trafford Park a prime site for industrial development. During the following century, the park was built over with factories and housing for workers. The deer were initially allowed to continue roaming free, but as the park's industrialisation gathered pace they were considered inappropriate and were killed, the last of them in 1900. Trafford Hall survived until its demolition following the Second World War.
Early development
On 7 May 1896 Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford put the estate up for auction, but it failed to reach its reported reserve price of £300,000. There was public debate before and after the abortive sale as to whether Manchester Corporation should buy Trafford Park, but the corporation could not agree to terms quickly enough. On 23 June Ernest Terah Hooley bought Trafford Park for £360,000.On 17 August Hooley formed Trafford Park Estates Ltd, transferring his ownership of the park to the new company – of which he was the chairman and a significant shareholder – at a substantial profit. The initial plans for the estate included a racetrack, housing and a cycle works, along with the development of the ship canal frontage for various types of trade. By that time the ship canal had been open for two years, but the predicted traffic had yet to materialise. Hooley met with Marshall Stevens, the general manager of the Ship Canal Company, and both men recognised the benefit that the industrial development of Trafford Park could offer to the ship canal, and the ship canal to the estate. In January 1897 Stevens became the managing director of Trafford Park Estates. He remained with the company, latterly as its joint chairman and managing director, until 1930.
The company did not initially construct buildings for letting, and instead leased land for development. By the end of June 1897 less than one per cent of the park had been leased, and so the park's existing assets were put to use until more tenants could be found. Trafford Hall was opened as a hotel in 1899, to serve prospective industrialists considering a move to the park, along with their key employees. It had 40 bedrooms, available to "gentlemen only". The hall's stables and some other outbuildings were used for stock auctions and the sale of horses, from 1900 to 1902, and the ornamental lake was leased to William Crooke and Sons for use as a boating lake, initially on a five-year lease. A polo ground was set up in the park in 1902, and of land near the hall were leased to the Manchester Golf Club, which laid out a three-mile long course. The club moved from Trafford Park to a new site at Hopwood Park in 1912.
In 1908 the Estates Company reversed its earlier policy of only leasing the land, and began to construct what were known as "Hives", subdivisions of a long building that could be internally reconfigured for each tenant's needs. Nineteen were built initially, available to rent at £80 per annum. Brooke Bond was one of the companies to use the Hives, before moving to its purpose-built factory on the park in 1922. The Estates Company also built large reinforced concrete warehouses, known as "Safes". These were fitted with sprinkler systems and were considered fireproof, which reduced insurance costs to 25 per cent of those of comparable warehouses elsewhere in the area. Each Safe had a capacity of, enough to hold 50,000 bales of cotton.
Industrialisation
Among the first industries to arrive was the Manchester Patent Fuel Company, in 1898. The Trafford Brick Company arrived soon after, followed by J.W. Southern & Co., James Gresham, and W. T. Glovers & Co.. Glovers also built a power station in the park, on the banks of the Bridgewater Canal. Most of these early developments were built on the eastern side of the park, while the rest of it remained largely undeveloped.The first American company to arrive was Westinghouse Electric, which formed its British subsidiary – British Westinghouse Electric Company – in 1899, and purchased on two sites. Building work started in 1900, and the factory began production of turbines and electric generators in 1902. By the following year, British Westinghouse was employing about half of the 12,000 workers in Trafford Park. Its main machine shop was long and wide; for almost 100 years Westinghouse's Trafford Park works was the most important engineering facility in Britain. In 1919 Westinghouse was sold to the Vickers Company and renamed Metropolitan-Vickers, often shortened to Metrovicks.
In 1903 the Cooperative Wholesale Society, bought land at Trafford Wharf and set up a large food-packing factory and a flour mill. Other companies arriving at about the same time included Kilverts, the Liverpool Warehousing Company, and Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd.
The second major American company to set up a manufacturing base in Trafford Park was the Ford Motor Company, in 1911. Ford used its factory as an assembly plant for the Model T, and other vehicles were assembled there in later years before production moved to a new factory at Dagenham, Essex, in 1931. By 1915, 100 American companies had moved into the park, peaking at more than 200 by 1933. When the cotton industry began to decline in the early-20th century, Trafford Park and the Manchester Ship Canal helped Manchester – and to a lesser extent the rest of south Lancashire – to mitigate the economic depression that the rest of Lancashire suffered. During the First World War the park was used for the manufacture of munitions, chemicals and other materiel. Most firms at Trafford Park succeeded in avoiding bankruptcy during the Great Depression, unlike the rest of Lancashire. Ford moved to Dagenham in 1931, but returned temporarily to Trafford Park during the Second World War.
Following the lead of its American counterpart, Metropolitan Vickers set up Manchester's and one of the UK's first radio stations at their factory in 1921. Its first broadcast took place on 17 May 1922. That October the company was one of six which formed the British Broadcasting Company, which started broadcasting from the Metrovicks studio under the call sign 2ZY on 15 November 1922. Much of the station's content was musical, but news, plays, and children's programmes were also transmitted. Conditions in the studio were cramped, and the BBC moved the station to larger premises outside the park in 1923.