Central Manchester sports Minshull Street, Aytoun Street and both cross or meet Major Street which also crosses Chorlton Street. The latter does not refer to Chorlton-cum-Hardy but Chorlton on Medlock, the area immediately south of the River Medlock. 

Chorlton on Medlock used to sport a grand half-timbered mansion called Chorlton Hall. This was the home of the Minshull family and 1769 was occupied by the widow Barbara Minshull who owned a huge swathe of land on both sides of the River Medlock. This was becoming extremely valuable as Manchester rapidly grew. 

In the summer of 1769 she went to the fashionable and rowdy Kersal Races. Also attending was a Scot, Roger Aytoun, who was quite a sight. He was 6ft 4”, extremely handsome and wearing a full military redcoat uniform. The latter was odd because he wasn’t in the army, but he knew it was good for getting the girls. 

There was a strange custom at Kersal where it was not just the horses that raced but also men competing in ‘nude racing’, which probably meant near nude rather than fully naked.  Rumour is that when 65-year-old widow Barbara Minshull saw the 20-something Roger Aytoun charging down the track she found herself immediately attracted after ‘studying his form’.

Three weeks later they were married, Aytoun attracted, it would prove, more by her status as one of the richest women in the North. Aytoun was so drunk during the marriage service he had to be held upright by friends. Minshull lived another fourteen years and during this time Aytoun employed himself to a rigorous squandering of her fortune on wine, women and recruitment. 

His military aspirations were met when he bought a commission becoming a major. He raised a Manchester volunteer regiment which fought with distinction at the three and a half year Great Siege of Gibraltar against the Spanish and the French (1779-1783) . 

One of Aytoun’s recruitment methods in Manchester was distinctive and notorious. This involved Aytoun having a fight for a wager with another toper. If Aytoun won the loser had to join his regiment. Aytoun gained a nickname from this madness which was the delightful, ‘Spanking Roger’. 

There’s pub named Spanking Roger in Miles Platting and, of course, those streets in the city centre recall this colourful rogue and his opportunistic marriage.