Pre-industrial Until the industrial development of the park began in the late 19th century, much of the area now known as Trafford Park was a "beautifully timbered deer park". Its had flat meadows and grassland, and an inner park containing a tree-lined avenue leading from an entrance lodge at
Barton-upon-Irwell. It was the ancestral estate of the
de Trafford family, one of the most ancient in England, and at that time, one of the largest landowners in
Stretford. The family acquired the lands around Trafford in about 1200, when Richard de Trafford was given the lordship of Stretford by
Hamon de Massey, 4th Baron of Dunham. Some time between 1672 and 1720, the de Traffords moved from the home they had occupied since 1017, in what is now known as
Old Trafford, to what was then called Whittleswick Hall, which they renamed Trafford Hall. Trafford Park contained the hall, its grounds, and three farms: Park Farm, Moss Farm, and Waters Meeting Farm. Park in 1922. In 1761 a section of the
Bridgewater Canal was built along the southeast and southwest sides of Trafford Park. The canal and the River Irwell, which marked the estate's northeast and northwest boundaries, gave the park its present-day "island-like" quality. A meeting held in 1882 at the
Didsbury home of the engineer
Daniel Adamson began the estate's transformation, with the creation of the
Manchester Ship Canal committee.
Sir Humphrey de Trafford implacably opposed the canal, objecting that it would bring polluted water close to his residence, interfere with his drainage, and render Trafford Hall uninhabitable. The Ship Canal Bill nevertheless became law on 6 August 1885, and construction began in 1888. A wall was built between the park and the canal to block it off from view and two wharves were built for the exclusive use of the de Traffords. The opening of the ship canal in 1894 made Trafford Park a prime site for industrial development. During the following century, the park was built over with factories and housing for workers. The deer were initially allowed to continue roaming free, but as the park's industrialisation gathered pace they were considered inappropriate and were killed, the last of them in 1900. Trafford Hall survived until its demolition following the Second World War.
Early development On 7 May 1896
Sir Humphrey Francis de Trafford put the estate up for auction, but it failed to reach its reported reserve price of £300,000 (£ as at ). There was public debate before and after the abortive sale as to whether Manchester Corporation should buy Trafford Park, but the corporation could not agree to terms quickly enough. On 23 June
Ernest Terah Hooley bought Trafford Park for £360,000 (£ as at 2023). In 1908 the Estates Company reversed its earlier policy of only leasing the land, and began to construct what were known as "Hives", subdivisions of a long building that could be internally reconfigured for each tenant's needs. Nineteen were built initially, available to rent at £80 per annum (£ as of ).
Brooke Bond was one of the companies to use the Hives, before moving to its purpose-built factory on the park in 1922. The Estates Company also built large reinforced concrete warehouses, known as "Safes". These were fitted with sprinkler systems and were considered fireproof, which reduced insurance costs to 25 per cent of those of comparable warehouses elsewhere in the area. Each Safe had a capacity of , enough to hold 50,000 bales of cotton.
Industrialisation sheets at the
Turner Bros. Asbestos Factory, Trafford Park, September 1918 Among the first industries to arrive was the Manchester Patent Fuel Company, in 1898. The Trafford Brick Company arrived soon after, followed by J.W. Southern & Co. (timber merchants), James Gresham (engineers), and W. T. Glovers & Co. (electric cable manufacturers). Glovers also built a power station in the park, on the banks of the
Bridgewater Canal. Most of these early developments were built on the eastern side of the park, while the rest of it remained largely undeveloped. The first American company to arrive was
Westinghouse Electric, which formed its British subsidiary –
British Westinghouse Electric Company – in 1899, and purchased on two sites. Building work started in 1900, and the factory began production of turbines and electric generators in 1902. By the following year, British Westinghouse was employing about half of the 12,000 workers in Trafford Park. Its main machine shop was long and wide; for almost 100 years Westinghouse's Trafford Park works was the most important engineering facility in Britain. In 1919 Westinghouse was sold to the
Vickers Company and renamed
Metropolitan-Vickers, often shortened to Metrovicks. In 1903 the
Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS), bought land at Trafford Wharf and set up a large food-packing factory and a flour mill. Other companies arriving at about the same time included Kilverts (
lard renderers), the Liverpool Warehousing Company, and Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto Ltd. manufacturing plant to its warehouse. Kellogg's moved into the park during the 1930s.|alt=A photograph of a bridge. On the side of the image is, right left to right: a red K (the Kellogg logo), Trafford Park (printed in all capital letters) and a green cockerel (the Corn Flakes logo) The second major American company to set up a
manufacturing base in Trafford Park was the
Ford Motor Company, in 1911. Ford used its factory as an assembly plant for the
Model T, and other vehicles were assembled there in later years before production moved to a
new factory at Dagenham, Essex, in 1931. By 1915, 100 American companies had moved into the park, peaking at more than 200 by 1933. When the cotton industry began to decline in the early-20th century, Trafford Park and the Manchester Ship Canal helped Manchester – and to a lesser extent the rest of south Lancashire – to mitigate the economic depression that the rest of
Lancashire suffered. During the First World War the park was used for the manufacture of munitions, chemicals and other
materiel. Most firms at Trafford Park succeeded in avoiding bankruptcy during the
Great Depression, unlike the rest of Lancashire. Ford moved to Dagenham in 1931, but returned temporarily to Trafford Park during the Second World War. Following the lead of its American counterpart,
Metropolitan Vickers set up Manchester's and one of the UK's first radio stations at their factory in 1921. Its first broadcast took place on 17 May 1922. That October the company was one of six which formed the
British Broadcasting Company (BBC), which started broadcasting from the Metrovicks studio under the call sign
2ZY on 15 November 1922. Much of the station's content was musical, but news, plays, and children's programmes were also transmitted. Conditions in the studio were cramped, and the BBC moved the station to larger premises outside the park in 1923.
Westwards expansion Sir Humphrey de Trafford had retained of land on the western side of the ship canal after his 1897 sale of Trafford Park. As the industrialisation of the park neared its completion the Estates Company acquired parcels of the remaining de Trafford land, then in the control of family trustees, as did the Canal Company. In 1924 the Estates Company bought a half share in Dumplington Estates Ltd., a company set up to administer of land bought from the de Trafford Trustees to build a garden village. In 1929 the Ship Canal Company acquired Dumplington Estates, giving the Estates Company land to the south of Barton, the Trafford Park Extension. The Canal Company recognised the potential for a new dock on the land and named it Barton Dock Estate, although no dock was ever built. The Barton Docks area was developed during and after the Second World War, but the land belonging to Dumplington Estates remained largely undeveloped until the construction of the
Trafford Centre, which opened in 1998.
Second World War Trafford Park largely produced war materiel during the Second World War, such as the
Avro Manchester and
Avro Lancaster bombers, and the
Rolls-Royce Merlin engines used to power the
Spitfire,
Hurricane,
Mosquito and the Lancaster. The engines were made by Ford under licence. The 17,316 workers employed in Ford's purpose-built factory produced 34,000 engines during the war. The facility was designed in two separate sections to minimise the impact of bomb damage on production. The wood-working factory of F. Hills & Sons built more than 800
Percival Proctor aircraft for the RAF between 1940 and 1945, which were flight-tested at the
Barton Aerodrome. Other companies produced gun bearings, steel tracks for
Churchill tanks, munitions,
Bailey bridges, and much else. ICI built and operated the first facility in the UK able to produce
penicillin in quantity. Trafford Park was frequently bombed by the
Luftwaffe, particularly during the
Manchester Blitz of December 1940. On the night of 23 December 1940, the Metropolitan-Vickers aircraft factory in Mosley Road was badly damaged, with the loss of the first 13 MV-built Avro Manchester bombers in their final assembly. The new Ford factory producing aircraft engines was bombed a few days after its opening in May 1941. Trafford Hall was severely damaged by bombing, and was demolished shortly after the war. In the December 1940 air raids, stray bombs aimed for Trafford Park landed on the nearby
Old Trafford football stadium, home of
Manchester United, resulting in minor damage; matches were soon being played at the stadium again. On 11 March 1941, stray bombs fell onto Old Trafford again, causing serious damage to the stadium. It was comprehensively rebuilt after the war and re-opened in 1949, until which time Manchester United played their home games at
Maine Road, home of
Manchester City in
Moss Side. At the outbreak of war in 1939 there were an estimated 50,000 people employed at Trafford Park. By the end of the war in 1945 that number had risen to 75,000, probably the peak size of the park's workforce; Metropolitan-Vickers alone employed 26,000.
Decline and regeneration In the 1960s employment in the park began to decline as companies closed their premises in favour of newer, more efficient plants elsewhere.
Ellesmere Port and
Runcorn at the western end of the Manchester Ship Canal overtook Trafford Park in economic importance. In 1967 employment had fallen to 50,000 and there was a further decline in the 1970s. In 1971 Stretford Council responded by setting up the Trafford Park Industrial Council (TRAFIC), membership of which was open to any firm in Trafford Park. One of TRAFIC's early initiatives was to encourage businesses in the park to address the general air of decay by improving their own areas through landscaping and other environmental improvements. The park's decline was exacerbated by the decreasing use of the Manchester Ship Canal during the 1970s, which was unable to accommodate the newer, larger container ships entering service. By 1976 the workforce had fallen to 15,000, and by the 1980s industry had virtually disappeared. On 12 August 1981, of Trafford Park – along with
Salford Quays – were declared an
Enterprise Zone by the UK government in an attempt to encourage new development within the estate. The new status did little to reverse the park's fortunes; the target had been to create 7,000 new jobs over 10 years, but by 1986 only 2,557 had been created, not enough to compensate for the job losses caused by closures within the park. On 10 February 1987 the
Trafford Park Development Corporation was formed to assume responsibility for a Urban Development Area that included Trafford Park and also parts of Stretford, Salford Quays, and the former steelworks at
Irlam, now known as Northbank. Wharfside, one of four redevelopment schemes undertaken by the corporation, included of the eastern end of the park as well as part of the ship canal docks and the area around Manchester United F.C.'s Old Trafford ground to the east of the Bridgewater Canal. The intention was to build "a flagship site" containing prestigious accommodation for offices, shops, and hi-tech industries, capitalising on the area's proximity to Manchester city centre and mirroring the earlier success of the redevelopment at nearby Salford Quays. Between 1987 and 1998 the
development corporation attracted 1,000 companies, generating 28,299 new jobs and £1.759 billion of private sector investment. The setting up of the corporation was intended to end on 31 March 1997, but was extended until March 1998, when the responsibility for Trafford Park's development passed to Trafford Council. As of 2025 there were 1,400 companies within the park employing 40,000 people, making it one of the largest in Europe. On 24 April 2026, a major fire broke out. ==Governance==