How were Ancoats & Miles Platting named?
‘Miles’ is because we are one mile from New Cross. ‘Platting’ is how people used to get around, when this area was very marshy. They used to plait bulrushes to walk on and make their way across boggy areas. But the spelling of ‘plaiting’ got changed to ‘platting’, and so Miles Platting got its name. Residents at Reginald Latham Court, passed on by Jason Brindle

I read a few years ago in the Manchester Evening News about how Miles Platting was named. According to this article it was because the largest manufacturer in the area was a rope maker. Rope making was then called ‘plaiting’ but spelt ‘platting’. Some of the rope was for hanging people at Hanging Ditch. I can’t remember what the article said about the Miles part of the name but I remember the Platting because of the hanging connection! Mrs Stella Abbott.

The settlement of Ancoats has been around a very long time. The name Ancoats comes from an old English word ‘Eincot’ meaning ‘lonely huts’. The first written reference to it can be traced back as far as the year 1212. Jack and Freda Sims

Miles Platting was so called from a bridge, locally known as a ‘platting’, by which the high road crossed the boundary brook, at about a mile’s distance from New Cross in Manchester. Jack and Freda Sims and another unnamed reader.

Abbot Toner told this story to us, when we were pupils at Corpus Christi: Years ago when the area was farmland, there was a farmer by the name of Miles who had two sons. At the death of their father the sons inherited the farm. As brothers sometimes do, they quarreled and so the land was divided between them Each brother marked out his land by plaiting ropes together as a boundary, and from this comes the name Miles Platting. Marie Pandolfo and Vi Huse