We all know Levenshulme’s gentrification story. How true is it?

Sunday Times-worthy cabbage, class segregation and 'lovely' dinner parties

Dear readers — In recent years, Levenshulme has become a byword for gentrification ground zero — and yes, there are all the cultural markers you might associate with a rapidly bougie-fying neighbourhood on offer (sourdough, soaring house prices, sensory storytelling baby classes). But is this a story that’s as simple as an influx of affluent people to a once predominantly working-class neighbourhood? We sent Sophie to take a closer look.

But before that — the court case you didn’t know you needed until now: a Bury chicken shop vs. Tesla — plus a former Burnage Academy for Boys boy makes his tech fortune, in your news briefing.

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Your Mill briefing

🍗 A chicken shop owner in Bury has lost £12,000 in legal fees trying to take on Tesla — you know, the biggest electric car company in the world? Amanj Ali registered “Tesla Chicken and Pizza” in May 2020. Then, in 2021, the Intellectual Property Office emailed to say someone was trying to register “Tesla” in the same class as Ali (food and drink services). “I was thinking, who is this?” It was the car company, looking to protect its trademark. By 2022, they applied to invalidate Ali’s trademark saying he was taking unfair advantage of their name. Just to reiterate, this is the company owned by the world’s richest man, vs a chicken shop in Bury. Ali opposed it, lost, and had to pay £4,000 to Tesla, on top of £8,000 of legal fees. 

🖋 The inquests into the deaths of Kate and Archie Vokes, who tragically died in an avalanche during a family holiday in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, France, last December, opened yesterday. Kate was the non-executive director at the Manchester property company Bruntwood. Opening the inquests, which are expected to take place in July, Senior Coroner Alison Mutch OBE said the coroner’s office was still awaiting information from French authorities — who are carrying out a criminal investigation. Causes of death have not been established.

👩‍⚖️ Survivors of the Manchester Arena Attack Martin and Eve Hibbert are suing a conspiracy theorist who said the attack was a “staged operation” by government agencies, after a judge ruled the theory was “absurd”. Richard Hall accused the Hibbert’s and other survivors of lying about their injuries, saying that no one at present at the attack was actually hurt or killed.

📈 An AI company founded by a former Burnage Academy for Boys student has been acquired by an American tech firm. Onfido, founded by Husayn Kassai and two fellow University of Oxford graduates, specialises in ID verification software, and has been sold to American firm Entrust. The sum is undisclosed, but will make its staff millionaires. An unsuccessful bid to buy Onfido valued it at $1.1 billion.

📉 The Kellogg’s plant at Trafford Park, which has been open since 1938, has been earmarked for closure, with some 360 jobs on the line. The managing director of Kellanova, the successor to Kellogg’s and current owner of the factory, says the building’s design is inefficient (only half of it is used), too expensive to modernise and therefore no longer viable.

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By Sophie Atkinson

“It’s the cabbage, by the way,” the Sunday Times critic Charlotte Ivers wrote in a review of Levenshulme wine bar Isca last October. “That’s how you know. If someone brings a plate of cabbage to the table and charges you ten quid for the privilege, then congratulations: you’ve been gentrified.”

When we talk about Levenshulme today, we’re often talking about gentrification. It’s a narrative that’s so dominant that even a London-based writer can use it as a punchline in a national newspaper: natural wine-swilling liberal arts graduates pushing up house prices, driving out the working classes who once called the area home. As one friend scathingly put it, Levenshulme is now home to a growing cluster of people having each other over for lovely dinner parties. 

As an English Lit graduate partial to a few drinks in Isca, who formerly lived in Levenshulme, I know there’s some truth to the cliche. But isn’t the reality more complex than that? Surely a narrative so regularly trotted out deserves more scrutiny — so I headed back to the neighbourhood to take a closer look at the myth vs. reality.

First of all, the stats. Levenshulme, as a ward, has seen the second biggest increase in house prices in Greater Manchester over the past ten years (second only to the Irwell Riverside area in Salford, which has seen a lot of new flats built in that time). Median prices in Levenshulme ward rose from £86,000 in March 2013 to £230,250 in March 2023 — a stunning 168% increase, which means house prices have risen almost twice as fast as they have across Manchester as a whole (85%).

Image: courtesy of artistic genius Jake Greenhalgh.

Looking at those steep rises, it’s tempting to think along the lines of your classic gentrification narrative: an influx of the middle classes displacing the original residents. But the data tells us that between 2001 and 2021, the neighbourhood’s population has rocketed by 40%. As such, perhaps it’s not as simple as people being priced out — the population itself hasn’t remained level alongside that rise in house prices, but has expanded considerably.

Plus, the story of Levenshulme over the past half-century has always been one of new arrivals. John Commons, who worked as a Lib Dem councillor for Levenshulme for 26 years, and who has lived here since 1985, is also an enthusiastic local history buff. In the 1950s, he says, Levenshulme was largely occupied by white English people. From the ’60s onwards, working-class Irish people began moving to the area. Then, in the ’00s, he remembers the beginning of Pakistani people moving to the area, largely from nearby Longsight (Levenshulme was considered an upgrade). Roughly a decade ago, middle-class white people and young families starting moving in, too…and you probably know the story from this point in.

Most of Levenshulme’s venues — laid out along the mighty Stockport Road and the streets branching off it — reflect these different groups. There are traditional boozers that one might associate with the working-class Irish community, places where a reasonably-priced pint is king and aesthetics are secondary: the Horseshoe, the Levenshulme, The Sidings (a little further off Stockport Road, but worth the walk), and Hennigans Sports Bar.

Then there are the places which bypass booze to cater to the Pakistani community: the various restaurants along the road and cafes where you can indulge in 10pm desserts. Then there’s the upmarket, arty Levenshulme: we’re talking Station South, The Talleyrand, Trove, Isca, and their ilk, where the prices are steep but you’re presumably not just paying for food and drink, but for the blonde wood furniture and blackboard menus. 

I’m eager to not just visit the new Levenshulme, but the places that take in all of the above. I meet up with C., my old housemate from when I lived in the area, and we head to the Pakistani cafe Lahori Chai Shai. We order cheese parathas and get chatting to a group of boys. The third boy basically disappears the moment I say I’m writing a piece about Levenshulme — sensible enough — which leaves us with Rafay, 19, and Low Key, 18 (that isn’t the latter’s name, obviously, but when I ask what he’s called he says “Nah, I’m low key,” so let’s call him that).

Both are students at MMU and both live with their parents: Rafay in Burnage, and Low Key in Gorton, the two neighbourhoods that bracket Levenshulme. Given how close they live to the area (Burnage is a mile away, Gorton a mile and a half), they’re here pretty regularly, usually to go out to eat. They are both funny and definite in the way that you can only be when you’re on the cusp of your twenties and have perfect trust in your own judgement. 

Image: Jake Greenhalgh.

They tell me that Levenshulme is a shithole. There are worse places, I say, and in response, they reel off an evaluation of various neighbourhoods: Stockport’s a shithole, Oldham’s a shithole, and worst of all is Cheetham Hill: “Let’s be more specific — Bury New Road. It’s purely just… people go there for business reasons.” They both snicker. And when Low Key tells Rafay that renting a three-bed in Levenshulme now costs £1,500 a month, at first he doesn’t believe it. Then suddenly, furiously, he does: “Arrest all landlords!” 

How has this neighbourhood changed in the last few years? “There’s more crime than there used to be, but it looks so much better.” It’s more aesthetic, Low Key says, because of places like Trove (the expensive Stockport Road bakery-cum-cafe). He’s never been inside, but when he walks past, he can tell they’ve put some effort into it and it makes the area look nicer. But then there’s also been more violence in the last few years. You know, all that gang stuff, he says airily, at which point I pretend I do. I ask them if they ever go to somewhere like Station South — white bougie Levenshulme, effectively — and Rafay laughs. “I don’t know any white people in Levenshulme. I just don’t,” he says. “We would never go to a white spot,” Low Key adds.