This new digital resource takes the form of a freely available interactive website, which maps stories, histories, and recollections of the Jewish community who once lived in the Cheetham Hill, Strangeways, and Hightown areas of North Manchester.
The Memory Map of Jewish Manchester aims to create a lasting document of the living memory of Manchester Jewry in this area during this period by locating a number of sites that consistently occur in people’s recollections. These places include shops, synagogues, schools, cinemas, cafes, streets, and youth clubs amongst many other places. Some of these buildings no longer exist, but the location will be marked on this freely accessible digital map, which users can explore remotely and listen to excerpts from oral history interviews, see photographs, and read information about more than 40 sites. We hope to include more sites in the future and build on this project over time.
The open-source platform for this project was developed by the Bartlett Faculty for the Built Environment, University College London for www.jewisheastendmemorymap.org (2020).
The Memory Map of Jewish Manchester has been produced by Dr. Rachel Lichtenstein of Manchester Metropolitan University, assisted by Paul Darby. The audio clips and copy for each site have been provided by Dr. Ros Livshin, oral historian of Manchester Jewry who has also operated as a historical advisor and expert throughout this project. The platform has been developed by Dr. Duncan Hay.
This project is funded by the Jewish Historical Society of England and the History Research Centre of Manchester Metropolitan University, with considerable support in kind from the Manchester Jewish Museum, who have generously given us permission to use oral history and photographic material from their collections for this project.
We would also like to thank both the Shloimy Alman archive for the kind use of Shloimy’s photographs of Jewish Manchester in the 1970s and the People’s History Museum (PHM) in Manchester
The memory Map will also be accessible via the exhibition Vanished Streets: photographs of lost Jewish Manchester from the 1970s by Shloimy Alman at the People’s History Museum (20 October 2021 – 16 January 2022).
Manchester Jewish Museum
