Pankhurst Centre

The house where Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters founded the WSPU in 1903

Address 60-62 Nelson Street, Manchester M13 9WP

The Pankhurst Centre occupies the Victorian terraced house where Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia lived when they founded the Women's Social and Political Union in 1903. The WSPU went on to run one of the most dramatic political campaigns in British history, including window-smashing raids, hunger strikes, arson, and the death of Emily Wilding Davison at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

The house has been carefully restored and now operates as both a museum and a working women's centre. The ground floor rooms where the Pankhursts lived and organised are open to visitors, furnished as they would have been in the Edwardian period. The exhibition covers not just the Pankhursts but the wider history of women's rights in Manchester and beyond. Entry is by donation.

things to do museum sight
A story
It was in the back parlour of this terraced house on 10 October 1903 that Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women's Social and Political Union — the suffragette organisation that would militantly campaign for women's right to vote for the next fifteen years. The WSPU's motto, "Deeds not Words," was adopted here. The house is now a women's centre and museum preserving the memory of the Pankhursts and the broader suffragette movement.