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Deansgate railway station
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Deansgate railway station
Deansgate is a railway station in Manchester city centre, England; it is located 1,100 yards (1 km) west of Manchester Piccadilly, close to Castlefield at the junction of Deansgate and Whitworth Street West. It is part of the Manchester station group.
It is linked to Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop and the Manchester Central Convention Complex by a footbridge built in 1985; Deansgate Locks, The Great Northern Warehouse and the Science and Industry Museum are also nearby.
The platforms are elevated, reached by lift or stairs, or by the walkway from the Manchester Central Complex. The ticket office, staffed full-time, is between street and platform levels. There are no ticket barriers, although manual ticket checks take place on a daily basis.
It is on the Manchester to Preston and the Liverpool–Manchester lines, both used heavily by commuters. Most tickets purchased by passengers to Deansgate are issued to Manchester Stations or Manchester Central Zone; therefore actual usage is not reflected in these statistics, due to the difficulty in splitting the ticket sales correctly between the four grouped stations (Piccadilly, Victoria, Oxford Road and Deansgate).
The station's name was temporarily changed to Olivia Deansgate railway station in February 2026 to celebrate the BRIT Awards happening that month. It was named after Olivia Dean, one of the nominees of the award.
The original station buildings were situated on Hewitt Street. The station was opened as Knot Mill and Deansgate on 20 July 1849 by the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) near the Manchester terminus ('the Knot Mill station') of the Bridgewater Canal from which travellers could catch a fast packet in 1849 which could get them to Liverpool in four and a half hours for as little as sixpence. This fare was anomalously low because of a temporary outbreak of competition between the canal and the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR); it was back up to sixteen pence by 1853.
When a celebratory train ran over the line at the beginning of July 1849, a reporter for the Manchester Courier observed that most stations had permanent buildings and "at Knott Mill and Oxford-street temporary stations will in the meantime be erected." When the line opened for passenger traffic a fortnight later, the Courier reported the station at Knott Mill had opened with temporary wooden buildings. The booking office was at street level; from it, "narrow, steep, troublesome steps, enough to tire anyone but athletes" led to the platforms. The station proved, according to its critics, to be "inconvenient of approach, ugly in appearance and with platform, booking office and waiting-room accommodation much cramped" but accessibility was the biggest issue: for the aged, the invalid or children it was "a most difficult not to say dangerous task to climb the steep flights of steps to the platforms."
The area was also the site of the annual Easter-tide Knott Mill Fair, a decades-old event which, until its abolition in 1876, hosted acts such as Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal and George Wombwell's Menagerie.
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Deansgate railway station
Deansgate is a railway station in Manchester city centre, England; it is located 1,100 yards (1 km) west of Manchester Piccadilly, close to Castlefield at the junction of Deansgate and Whitworth Street West. It is part of the Manchester station group.
It is linked to Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop and the Manchester Central Convention Complex by a footbridge built in 1985; Deansgate Locks, The Great Northern Warehouse and the Science and Industry Museum are also nearby.
The platforms are elevated, reached by lift or stairs, or by the walkway from the Manchester Central Complex. The ticket office, staffed full-time, is between street and platform levels. There are no ticket barriers, although manual ticket checks take place on a daily basis.
It is on the Manchester to Preston and the Liverpool–Manchester lines, both used heavily by commuters. Most tickets purchased by passengers to Deansgate are issued to Manchester Stations or Manchester Central Zone; therefore actual usage is not reflected in these statistics, due to the difficulty in splitting the ticket sales correctly between the four grouped stations (Piccadilly, Victoria, Oxford Road and Deansgate).
The station's name was temporarily changed to Olivia Deansgate railway station in February 2026 to celebrate the BRIT Awards happening that month. It was named after Olivia Dean, one of the nominees of the award.
The original station buildings were situated on Hewitt Street. The station was opened as Knot Mill and Deansgate on 20 July 1849 by the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) near the Manchester terminus ('the Knot Mill station') of the Bridgewater Canal from which travellers could catch a fast packet in 1849 which could get them to Liverpool in four and a half hours for as little as sixpence. This fare was anomalously low because of a temporary outbreak of competition between the canal and the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR); it was back up to sixteen pence by 1853.
When a celebratory train ran over the line at the beginning of July 1849, a reporter for the Manchester Courier observed that most stations had permanent buildings and "at Knott Mill and Oxford-street temporary stations will in the meantime be erected." When the line opened for passenger traffic a fortnight later, the Courier reported the station at Knott Mill had opened with temporary wooden buildings. The booking office was at street level; from it, "narrow, steep, troublesome steps, enough to tire anyone but athletes" led to the platforms. The station proved, according to its critics, to be "inconvenient of approach, ugly in appearance and with platform, booking office and waiting-room accommodation much cramped" but accessibility was the biggest issue: for the aged, the invalid or children it was "a most difficult not to say dangerous task to climb the steep flights of steps to the platforms."
The area was also the site of the annual Easter-tide Knott Mill Fair, a decades-old event which, until its abolition in 1876, hosted acts such as Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal and George Wombwell's Menagerie.
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