Burnage is an area of Manchester, England, south of the city centre and bisected by Kingsway. The population at the 2011 census was 15,227. It lies between Withington to the west, Levenshulme to the north, Heaton Chapel to the east and Didsbury and Heaton Mersey to the south.
History
Toponymy
The name Burnage is thought to have stemmed from "Brown Hedge", from the old brown stone walls or "hedges" which were common there in medieval times. In a survey of 1320, the district is referred to as "Bronadge".
Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Burnage was an area of common pasture and marsh land. Burnage did not have its own manor but the land was shared between the farmers from the Manors of Withington and Heaton Norris as it was a border district between two neighbouring lordships. A survey of 1320 records 356 acres of common pasture land under the Manor of Heaton.
As the population began to expand, the land was reclaimed for arable land. In a survey of 1322, the Lord of Manchester was permitted to appropriate more land for arable use, provided he left enough common pasture land for the commoners to graze their animals. Named arable farmers of this time included Thomas Grelley, Sir John de Byron, Sir John de Longford and Dame Joan de Longford, who farmed 136 acres of land subject to the Lord of Manchester. There are records of a sale of land, which refer to "that moiety of the place called Burnage lying next to Heaton", when John La Warre and his wife Joan granted 100 acres of moor and pasture in Heaton and Withington to a Thomas de Trafford.
The Withington land belonging to the de Longford family later passed to the Mosley family and subsequently to the Egerton family. Because the Mosleys were former Lords of the Manor of Withington, the Mosley family's heraldic crest was used as the crest of Withington. A carved Mosley crest can still be seen above the door of the old Withington Town Hall (1881) on Lapwing Lane in West Didsbury. In recognition of the connection with the Withington Manor, the Mosley crest was also adopted in the 20th century as the badge of Burnage High School.
17th—19th centuries
By 1655, Burnage had become a township.
The Egerton family were major landowners in Burnage; in 1798, the politician William Egerton was recorded as the largest contributor to the land tax, paying over a third, and by 1844, William's eldest son and heir Wilbraham Egerton owned about half of the land in Burnage.
In 1894, the Irish writer George Bernard Shaw described Burnage as the prettiest village in Manchester. Burnage had an established cottage industry in hand weaving. Many of the original weavers' cottages survive today.
20th century
1906 saw plans to build a "garden suburb" in the district. Burnage Garden Village was created by building many new semi-detached houses as well as open recreational spaces, including lawns, gardens, a bowling green, tennis courts, allotments and a children's playground.
Hans Renold established an engineering works at Burnage from 1906 to manufacture roller chain. The factory closed during the late 1980s. The site lay abandoned for several years, but now has been developed and a Tesco supermarket and a development of flats and retail units sit on the site.
Construction of Kingsway (the A34) began in 1928. It was named after King George V and was originally numbered A5079. Like Princess Road further to the west, Kingsway was laid out as a dual carriageway for motor vehicles with a segregated tram track along the central reservation which allowed Manchester Corporation Tramways to run trams into Manchester City Centre.
A large housing estate was built by Manchester City Council along the Kingsway route, mostly characterised by brick semi-detached houses laid out in avenues and octagons. Today, only parts of Burnage Lane still survive as original weavers' cottages. A cinema, the Lido, was built in the 1920s on Kingsway. This was renamed the Odeon in the 1940s and then became the Classic in the 1960s, before finally becoming the Concorde cinema in the 1970s which then also included a bingo hall in the premises. The cinema closed in the early 1990s, and has since been demolished and a supermarket built on the site.
Mauldeth Hall in Green End was the dwelling of the Bishop of Manchester for more than 20 years, before his move to Higher Broughton.