Next tours: Sat Nov 5th 2011.

Meet: Victoria Station wallmap, 3pm.

Ends: Marble pub.

This is more than a walk through an obscure part of central Manchester, it’s a trip to other worlds: Scotland and Gibraltar! Believe it. The road that connects Red Bank to the bottom of the steps leading down to the Irk from Cheetham Hill Road railway bridge is called Scotland, although someone sadly has stolen the road sign.

This is what Friedrich Engels had to say about the locale. “The landlords are not ashamed to let dwellings like the six or seven cellars on the quay directly below Scotland Bridge, the floors of which stand at least two feet below the low water level of the Irk … utterly uninhabitable, [it] stands deprived of all fittings for doors and windows, a case by no means rare in this region, when an open ground-floor is used as a privy by the whole neighbourhood for want of other facilities. . . .”

A hundred yards on, at the end of Millow Street, stood “Gibraltar”. This was once described by the social commentator James Phillips Kay as the haunt of the “lowest” of the population. “The stranger, if he dare venture to explore its intricacies and recesses is sure to be watched with suspicion, on every side is heard the sound of the axe or knife…”

Okay, both those revered social commentators were writing many years ago, but go there now and it’s pretty grim, which is why we guide you around these atmospheric areas, converting the squalor and sordidness into scintillating stories. And we’ve not even entered Angel Meadow proper yet. Don’t worry; Scotland and Gibraltar on the way to that Victorian Hell-Hole. Angus Bethune Reach called Angel Meadow: “the lowest, most filthy, most unhealthy, and most wicked locality in Manchester…full of cellars and inhabited by prostitutes, their bullies, thieves, cadgers, vagrants and tramps.” Nice!

Have things improved? A bit, but come along and find out. When we’ve finished with all the terrible tales we deserve an ale or two and so finish at the Marble pub with its gorgeous tiles, magnificent ales and friendly atmosphere.