Two-up two-downs with a back entry: Levenshulme, Longsight and Gorton
Most of Levenshulme's terraces were built between about 1880 and 1890 as two-up two-downs: a room above each room, a steep narrow staircase up the middle and the kitchen at the back. Many had an outside toilet until the 1980s, and some had no bathroom at all, so the one you have now was made later, usually out of the small back bedroom or over the kitchen. That history decides the job. The soil pipe runs down the back wall, the floor in a converted bedroom is rarely level, and the staircase is the narrowest thing in the house, so we measure its turn at the survey before choosing a shower tray that has to be carried up it in one piece.
The streets help in one way. They are laid out in a grid with wide back entries behind every block, so the old bath, the tiles and the bagged rubble go out through the back gate and the front room stays clean. Next door, Longsight and Gorton have several streets inside the council's landlord licensing schemes, described further down.
Railway suburbs and garden villages in the south of the city
Chorlton grew after its Midland Railway station opened on 1 January 1880, with new houses for city-centre workers around the crossroads of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road; in the 1970s many of the larger ones were split into flats, which is why a Chorlton bathroom can be anything from a family room to a shower room squeezed into a former landing. Didsbury took off with the same railway line, and the streets around St James' Church hold more listed buildings than anywhere in Manchester outside the city centre. Withington and West Didsbury grew round the same line, with their station on Palatine Road, and the 1930s houses on roads such as Paulhan Road came later.
Two estates here were built as garden villages and still behave like them. Burnage Garden Village, put up between 1906 and 1910 by Manchester Tenants Ltd, has Arts and Crafts semis with catslide roofs, so an upstairs bathroom under the roof can have a ceiling that drops low on one side, and the shower has to go where the headroom is. Chorltonville, opened in October 1911, has about 260 houses in fifteen basic designs by the architect Albert Cuneo; they were built with covenants limiting alterations, and a residents' association still looks after the roads and verges, so it is worth checking the deeds before a new vent goes through a front wall.
Wythenshawe, the council's garden city
Wythenshawe was planned in the 1920s to rehouse families from the crowded inner districts: the land was identified in 1920, Barry Parker was appointed to plan it in 1927, and in 1931 Northenden, Baguley and Northen Etchells were brought into the city. It covers about eleven square miles and is often described as the largest council estate in Europe. Wythenshawe Community Housing Group looks after around 14,000 homes there; our work is for the owners of the houses in private hands, and for landlords.
The request we expect most there is the bath out and a walk-in shower in, often for someone who finds the side of the bath hard to step over. We fit low trays or a level-access shower with grab rails and a fold-down seat where it is needed, and slip-resistant flooring to finish.
Mill apartments in Ancoats and flats in the city centre
Ancoats, between Great Ancoats Street, Oldham Road and the Rochdale Canal, has been a conservation area since June 1989, and the council calls it the first industrial estate in the world. Its cotton mills are now homes: Murrays' Mills, among the oldest surviving steam-powered mills, was converted into 124 apartments, and the neighbouring Royal Mills is apartments too. Several of these buildings are listed, so anything that touches the original structure, such as a new hole through a mill wall for an extractor, is a question for the managing agent and the council before it is a job for us. A refit that reuses the existing waste and extract routes usually is not.
In any city-centre block most of the work is planning. We book loading and parking through the concierge, pad the lift, keep noisy work to the hours the management company allows, and pressure-test the new pipework before anything is closed in, because there is always a flat underneath.
Landlords and the council's licensing streets
At the 2021 census private renting became the second most common way to live in Manchester, at 32 per cent of households, up from 28 per cent in 2011. The council licenses landlords street by street rather than across the whole city: more than 3,500 homes had been licensed since 2017, and in February 2025 the council added another 1,863 in six wards, the largest group being 679 homes around Heathcote and Sanby Road and Northmoor Road in Longsight. Other current schemes cover Matthews Lane in Levenshulme, the Ladders in Gorton and Laindon and Dickenson Road in Rusholme.
For landlords we refit bathrooms between tenancies, add a second shower room to a shared house, and choose things that hold up: one-piece trays, panelled shower walls with no grout lines to blacken, a thermostatic bar shower with parts that are easy to get, and a quiet extractor that runs on its own. Keys can come from the agent, and you get photos when the job is done.
Soft water everywhere, so check the pressure instead
United Utilities supplies the city, and every postcode we checked came back soft. Its figures put Didsbury, Withington and Burnage at 30 milligrams per litre, Chorlton at 31, Levenshulme, Fallowfield and Victoria Park at 31, Gorton, Longsight and Castlefield at 31, Ancoats and the Northern Quarter at 28, and Wythenshawe at 27. At those levels a shower screen stays clear with a wipe and a softener would be wasted money. The variable is pressure and flow: a top-floor apartment, a long run to a second-floor bathroom in a Didsbury villa, or an 1880s terrace still on an old narrow supply pipe all behave differently, so we measure before recommending a shower.
Building control and conservation areas
Manchester City Council runs its own building control and takes either a building notice or a full plans application. Once an application is in, the council must be told at least two working days before work starts so it can inspect. On a bathroom that applies to new drainage connections and structural work, such as taking out a wall between a bathroom and a separate toilet, and we tell you at the survey whether your job includes either. The city's conservation areas include Didsbury St James, Victoria Park, Withington, Whalley Range, Chorltonville and Ancoats, and in those we route extractor ducting away from the street side of the house.
Choosing a suite in Manchester
Clifton Trade Bathrooms has a showroom on Oldham Road in north Manchester that is open to the public as well as the trade, and Wickes on Altrincham Road in Baguley has bathroom displays with an in-store design service. If you choose from either, send us the basket or photos of the labels and we confirm that the valve, the waste and the fixing kits suit your room before anything is delivered.
What we do in Manchester
- Terraced bathrooms in Levenshulme, Longsight and Gorton, including levelling and new waste runs
- Family bathrooms and ensuites in Chorlton, Didsbury and Withington houses
- Bath-to-shower conversions and level-access showers in Wythenshawe and Burnage
- Apartment and mill-conversion bathroom refits, with hours agreed with the building
- Rental bathrooms and extra shower rooms for landlords and agents
- Tanked wet rooms, cloakroom toilets, tiling, wall panels and LVT floors
- Toilets and washrooms for shops, offices and salons
Example scenario: a Levenshulme terrace with the bathroom in the back bedroom
An 1880s two-up two-down, the bathroom a 2.4 by 1.9 metre room over the kitchen with a bath under the window, a floor that falls towards the back wall and the soil stack outside. The floor is levelled with ply, the walls boarded and tanked in the shower area, the bath replaced by a 1400 by 800 walk-in shower with a fixed glass panel (the tray measured against the stair turn first), the toilet kept on the stack, a 600 millimetre vanity fitted, LVT laid, and the extractor ducted out over the back entry. Five working days.
Bathroom emergencies in Manchester
For a same-night emergency anywhere in Manchester, a plumber already in the city will reach you faster than we can. Once they have stopped the water, we take over the repair and any refit, whether that is a terrace bathroom in Levenshulme or a mill apartment in Ancoats, where a leak can soon reach the flat below.