Thomas Hoyle's calico printing and dyeing works was founded in 1782. It became world-famous for a single colour, “Hoyle's purples”, dyeing the River Medlock along the way. The works stood on this site until the railway arrived over a century later.

The pub was originally built in 1803, about 50 yards from where it now stands. When Piccadilly station expanded in 1849 to add the Oxford Road line, it had to move, dismantled brick by brick and rebuilt on its current site, reopening in 1877.

Built in an Italianate style with two large pools and laundry facilities, the baths served the print and dye workers living in cramped, insanitary housing nearby. They provided vital public hygiene for the local community until being destroyed in the Blitz in 1940.

Mayfield opened on 8 August 1910 to cope with extra traffic generated by the new Styal Line. It had four platforms, with passengers reaching London Road via a high-level footbridge, and functioned mainly as an overflow station for the busier station opposite.

In August 1960 the station closed to passengers when the newly refurbished Piccadilly station opened nearby. Mayfield sat empty for the next decade, its four platforms and footbridge falling quiet as the site waited for a new purpose.

The site reopened as a Royal Mail parcels depot, with platforms raised for loading and an overhead conveyor bridge built to link it to a new sorting office at Piccadilly. This period gave the site its enduring “Depot” name, lasting until 1986.

Since 1994, on the first Friday of every month, the Star and Garter has played Smiths classics all night long. Now running for over 30 years, it's become a genuine pilgrimage for Morrissey and Smiths fans from around the world.

This was Mayfield's debut as a cultural venue after decades of dereliction. The building was still semi-derelict and boarded up, no conversion had taken place yet, when the festival transformed the raw space for a series of major performances and installations.

The first season at the newly opened Depot drew around 225,000 people across an autumn and winter of club nights, marking Mayfield's transformation from abandoned railway building into one of the city's biggest clubbing destinations.

A new outdoor food & drink destination opened within Depot Mayfield that July, built into the old industrial shell with bars and a rotating line-up of street food from around the world. Its indoor Ticket Hall followed that November, completing the mix of indoor and outdoor space. It quickly became a fixture of the site's ongoing reinvention.

Manchester's first new public park in over a century opened on the site, with a stretch of the River Medlock unearthed and restored to open air after decades spent buried underground. The park's planting includes a nod to the area's dyeing history.