Manchester Craft and Design Centre

The Manchester Craft and Design Centre is a nineteenth-century building on Oak Street that originally opened as the Smithfield Fish Market in eighteen seventy-five. You can identify it by the ornate cast iron gate and two restored fishmonger booths that remain from its days as a bustling trading hub. When the nearby Arndale Centre drew retail business away, the market shut down in nineteen seventy-three. After several years of silence, the city council converted the space into a craft village, which opened to the public in nineteen eighty-two.