A famous 1890s’ picture of the Ancoats and New Islington area sums up the situation and is, perhaps, one of the industrial images of all time. Usually interpretations have been negative, seeing it as the apotheosis of industrial degradation, an image of a smoky hell. This is too simplistic and ignores the humanity in the image, the hidden humanity we guess at, busying itself in the factories, shops and houses within a polyglot community of British, Irish, Italians and others.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For centuries upon centuries Ancoats and New Islington had been farms and fields on each side of Shooter’s Brook a tributary of the River Medlock. Ancoats was Elnecot or the ‘lonely cottage’. Elnecot is now the name of a restaurant on Blossom Street.

As Manchester had grown in the late eighteenth-century development started creeping along Great Ancoats Street but it was infrastructure that would produce the growth spurt. Rochdale Canal was approved by Act of Parliament in 1794 and that changed everything. Let’s call the canal the HS3 of its day linking, with other waterways, the Irish Sea to the North Sea.

The canal was finished in 1804 but before that date it had encouraged a ribbon development of factories sitting alongside its course in what has been termed the world’s first industrial suburb. These mighty structures still dominate Redhill Street. Ancoats became the more famous name but as early as 1794 New Islington appears on a map as buildings on the site of the Manchester Life apartment block hosting Cask Bar.

By the end of WWII it was becoming clear the world was changing and the industry that defined the area was in trouble. One by one the factories closed as textiles, in particular, started to move east to cheaper labour markets. Meanwhile social policy aimed at slum clearance shipped thousands of Ancoats and New Islington residents to distant council estates often breaking up generational community relations.

By the 1990s the area was broken, the mills closed or ruined, the population decimated with residual numbers living in new houses and blocks of flats in poor conditions in a ‘no-go’.

The situation had to change. The Ancoats Buildings Preservation Trust was created by the city council in 1995 as a charity to preserve and revive historic buildings. A few years later on the other side of the Rochdale Canal, a 25-acre site was given ‘Millennium Village’ status, led by Manchester developer Urban Splash.

A contemporary Guardian article summed up Urban Splash’s ambitions. ‘Waterways, artificial ‘garden’ islands, a village green and woodland, a school and health centre will complement new flats, houses, shops, workshops, offices, cafes and bars. (This is) occupied by 100 run-down council houses - a quarter of them abandoned - surrounded by derelict cotton mills, canals and the remnants of heavy industry.’

Both in Ancoats and New Islington plans stalled with the economic crash of 2007-2008 but vital infrastructure had been put in place especially with a new canal arm. The result is one of the most dramatic reversals of fortunes in the UK. A mostly abandoned area of a city centre has burst into vivid life with thousands of new residents, a marina, a primary school, a doctor’s surgery, a new park, a new square and one of the best food and drink scenes in the country. Halle St Peters in the former and extended St Peter’s Church has delivered a lively cultural asset in the traditions of Rowley and Horsfall.

Not everything has gone smoothly of course and there have been controversies along the way. Ancoats and New Islington have witnessed a double revolution of the wheel, both times dramatically. These places were once the exemplar of the industrial slum, now they are the exemplar of successful and urbane redevelopment. Very few places have experienced these huge changes once let along twice.

Murray’s and Royal Mills – the classic cotton spinning factories with some parts dating back to 1797. Royal Mill can be entered and the courtyard examined while enjoying a coffee.

Halle St Peter’s – a Church of England church of 1859 by Isaac Holden now reinvented as a rehearsal and performance space for the Halle Orchestra and others now with a splendid extension by Stephenson Hamilton Risley.

Anita Street and Victoria Square – council built terraced housing from the 1890s, the last remaining terraces in the city centre, with, nearby, the contemporary tenement block of Victoria Square.

Daily Express Building – one of the best modernist buildings in the country from 1969 in the streamline moderne style by Owen Williams.

Chips – a controversial statement building from controversial architect Will Alsop highlighting the ambition of the New Islington project and completed in 2009.

You can find out more about the area by booking onto Jonathan’s free tour on 14 September; click here for the details.