We prove the existence of an unstable manifold for solutions to the partial functional differential equation of the form \(\dot {u}(t)=A(t)u(t)+f(t,u_{t}),~ t\in \mathbb {R}\), under the conditions that the family of linear operators \((A(t))_{t\in \mathbb {R}}\) generates the evolution family (U(t, s))t ≥ s having an exponential dichotomy on the whole line \(\mathbb {R}\), and the nonlinear forcing term f satisfies the φ-Lipschitz condition, i.e., \(\|f(t,\phi ) -f(t,\psi )\| \le \varphi (t)\|\phi -\psi \|_{\mathcal {C}}\) for \(\phi , \psi \in \mathcal {C}:=C([-r, 0], X)\), where φ(⋅) belongs to an admissible function space defined on \(\mathbb {R}\). We also show that such an unstable manifold has the attraction property. Concretely, it attracts exponentially any solution to the abovementioned equation. Our methods are Lyapunov–Perron method combined with the admissibility of function spaces and the technique of choosing induced trajectories.