About
The Pankhurst Centre occupies two Victorian villas at 60 to 62 Nelson Street in Manchester, and number 62 is the house where Emmeline Pankhurst lived and where, on 10 October 1903, the Women's Social and Political Union was founded in the front parlour. That room has been restored, and standing in it is the point of a visit: the militant campaign for women's suffrage, which within a decade involved mass demonstrations, window-breaking, arson, imprisonment, hunger strikes and forcible feeding, began around a table in an ordinary Manchester sitting room.
The museum tells that story from its Manchester origins outward. Emmeline Pankhurst and her husband Richard, a radical barrister who drafted early married women's property legislation, were already established figures in the city's political life; after his death in 1898 she took in her daughters' generation of activists and turned the household into an organising centre. The WSPU's motto, Deeds Not Words, marked a deliberate break with the constitutional suffrage societies that had campaigned for decades without result, and the displays follow the split, the escalation, the state's response and the divisions within the movement itself, including those between Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia.
The building is also a working women's charity. The Pankhurst Trust incorporates Manchester Women's Aid, which provides refuge and support to women and children experiencing domestic abuse, and it operates from the same site. That continuity is deliberate and is part of what the Centre is for; it also means the museum's own opening hours are narrower than the building's, and visitors should come on the published museum days rather than assuming general access.
Entry is free. The museum opens on Thursdays and Sundays from 11:00 to 16:00, and it is small, so an hour is usually enough - though the parlour tends to keep people longer than they expect.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
💡 Visitor Tips
- The museum opens Thursdays and Sundays only, 11:00-16:00 - the building is in use on other days as a women's service.
- Entry is free; donations go to the Pankhurst Trust, which also runs Manchester Women's Aid.
- Allow time in the parlour - it is a small room and the reason most people come.
- The villas have steps and domestic staircases, so contact the Trust in advance about access.
- Group visits must be booked; the rooms are small and the site is a working charity.
- Combine with the People's History Museum in the city centre for the wider labour and suffrage story.
- Manchester Piccadilly is the nearest step-free rail station, about twenty minutes on foot.
- Check the Trust's website before travelling, as opening varies around events.
Highlights
The parlour where the WSPU was founded
On 10 October 1903 a small group of women met in the front parlour of 62 Nelson Street and formed the Women's Social and Political Union, a body restricted to women and committed to action rather than petitioning. The room has been restored to something close to its appearance then, and it is the heart of the museum.
What gives it force is its ordinariness: a modest middle-class sitting room in a Manchester terrace, of a kind that survives in thousands, from which came a campaign that filled prisons, split the Liberal government's attention and put the question of women's enfranchisement beyond ignoring.
Emmeline Pankhurst and her household
Emmeline Pankhurst was already a political figure in Manchester before 1903, married to Richard Pankhurst, a radical barrister who helped draft early married women's property legislation and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament. After his death in 1898 she supported the family through work as a registrar of births and deaths in Chorlton-on-Medlock, an occupation that brought her into direct contact with the conditions of working-class women's lives.
The displays cover the household, the family's finances, the daughters Christabel, Sylvia and Adela, and the way domestic and political life were inseparable in this house.
Deeds Not Words
The WSPU's motto marked a deliberate break with fifty years of constitutional campaigning that had produced sympathy and no legislation. The museum traces the escalation that followed: heckling ministers, mass demonstrations, deputations to Parliament, window-breaking, arson and attacks on property, alongside the state's response of arrest, imprisonment, hunger strikes, forcible feeding and the Cat and Mouse Act.
The interpretation does not flinch from the violence on either side, and it sets out the arguments within the movement about whether militancy advanced the cause or set it back - a debate that has never entirely closed.
Manchester and the movement
The suffrage campaign was not a London story that happened to start elsewhere: Manchester's radical, nonconformist and trade union politics, its textile industry with its large female workforce, and its tradition of reform from the Anti-Corn Law League onwards all shaped what the WSPU became. The museum grounds the campaign in that city context, including the women cotton workers' suffrage petitions, the Free Trade Hall incident of 1905 when Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney were arrested, and the networks of local activists whose names are far less famous than the Pankhursts'.
Collections
The Pankhurst Centre interprets the origins of the militant women's suffrage campaign in the house where it began: 62 Nelson Street, Emmeline Pankhurst's home, where the Women's Social and Political Union was founded on 10 October 1903 and where the front parlour has been restored. Displays cover the Pankhurst family and household, the WSPU's Deeds Not Words strategy and its escalation into window-breaking, arson, imprisonment, hunger strikes and forcible feeding, the movement's Manchester and north-western roots, and the political and personal divisions between Emmeline, Christabel, Sylvia and Adela.
The Centre also documents the 1980s campaign that saved the villas from demolition, and operates as part of the Pankhurst Trust alongside Manchester Women's Aid.
The Parlour
The restored front room of 62 Nelson Street where the WSPU was founded in October 1903.
Deeds Not Words
The militant campaign, the state's response, and the arguments within the movement.
Manchester Women
The city's radical and industrial context, local activists, and the campaign beyond the Pankhurst family.
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.