It is linked to Deansgate-Castlefield tram stop and the Manchester Central Convention Complex by a footbridge built in 1985; Deansgate Locks, The Great Northern Warehouse and the Science and Industry Museum are also nearby.

Most tickets purchased by passengers to Deansgate are issued to Manchester Stations or Manchester Central Zone; therefore actual usage is not reflected in these statistics, due to the difficulty in splitting the ticket sales correctly between the four grouped stations (Piccadilly, Victoria, Oxford Road and Deansgate).

[1] The station was opened as Knot Mill and Deansgate on 20 July 1849 by the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway[2] (MSJAR) near the Manchester terminus ('the Knot Mill station'[3]) of the Bridgewater Canal from which travellers could catch a fast packet in 1849 which could get them to Liverpool in four and a half hours for as little as sixpence.

[4][5] This fare was anomalously low because of a temporary outbreak of competition between the canal and the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR);[6] it was back up to sixteen pence by 1853.

[9] The booking office was at street level; from it, "narrow, steep, troublesome steps, enough to tire anyone but athletes"[10] led to the platforms.

"[11] The area was also the site of the annual Easter-tide[12] Knott Mill Fair,[13] a decades-old event which, until its abolition in 1876,[12] hosted acts such as Pablo Fanque's Circus Royal and George Wombwell's Menagerie.

[14][15] In 1860, special trains laid on in connection with the fair by both the L&NWR and the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway (MS&LR), the joint owners of the MSJAR were not advertised as running to Knott Mill station; the LNWR excursion ran to Ordsall Lane,[16] the MS&L excursion to London Road (now Piccadilly station).