PCA completed an extensive and complex programme of archaeological work as required by planning consent ahead of and during the redevelopment of this key strategic site in Salford. The site was formerly the Exchange Railway Station, which was largely demolished in 1969, and comprised a large brick viaduct which carried the railway lines and former station above street level.
During the initial evaluation and historic building survey the site was actively used for commercial car-parking, PCA worked to minimise disruption to the site’s use during the archaeological works. The evaluation revealed good survival of important medieval and post-medieval remains, leading to a requirement from the archaeology advisors to the City of Salford for further mitigation works to comprise a strip, map and record investigation. The work was completed prior to demolition of the viaduct structure, in order to prevent delay to the construction programme once demolition began.
The work revealed evidence for the occupation of the historic core of Salford from potentially the late medieval period through to the late 19th-century. The archaeological remains, with the aid of cartographic and documentary evidence, chart the development of the site through several centuries, illustrating 17th, 18th and 19th century urban development as this historic core of Salford bustled with dwellings, shops and markets, courtyards, textile industries and other industries, along with cultivated garden plots.
The Historic Building Recording project, coupled with the below-ground archaeology, documented and evidenced the mass clearance process in the 1870s and 1880s as the construction of the Exchange Station and the London & North Western Railway cut a swathe through the area. The outstanding project justified its publication within the Greater Manchester’s Past Revealed Series (No 18), released to local acclaim in 2017.
