Little has been documented of the Eva Street’s origins. The Streets of my City describes the street’s namesake as being “lost in the mists of time”; the name has been dated to at least 1865 when George Oates Greenwood sold part of the section, excluding Eva Street, to John Matthew Taylor.
Papers Past reveals a murky history, and many of the entries for Eva Street involve theft and frequent illicit liquor sales.
W Crabtree & Sons also built a foundry and workshop on Eva Street in 1900. In 1906, an employee of the factory, Harold Williams, was badly injured whilst moving an electric wire from atop a boiler: his foot was burnt by the boiler, and the wire charged his right hand with a heavy voltage, resulting in an amputation.
W Crabtree & Sons' site was eventually sold to R Hannah & Company in 1922 for his footwear factory. You can read more about this on the Leeds Street page.
In the 1920s, Dominion Margarine Company operated from a building on Eva Street.
