May 2016 – Modern Mooch

Lost and Found – Tiviot Dale

Posted on May 23, 2016May 23, 2016 by modernmoocher

Ὁ βίος βραχύς,ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή,ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξύς,ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερή,ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή.

I have no wish to take issue, with the finer thoughts and feelings of Deborah A. Ten Brink.

However.

There is a sense that our earthly endeavours, may serve to assist us in avoiding the void, the cold dark inevitability of eternity, that everyday here today, gone tomorrow feeling.

However.

Nothing lasts forever, except forever and nothing.

The cherished memories, condensed in a fraction of a second, rendered corporeal in photographic emulsion, carefully stored in family albums.

Are but a trick of light, a slight of hand, heart and mind.

Blink and they’re gone.

Blink again and you’re gone.

Here they were.

Here they are.

Gorsey Bank -Stockport #2

Posted on May 22, 2016 by modernmoocher

I’ve passed this way before.

Many times before

Where once a housing estate stood, was demolished then nature slowly reinstated.

https://modernmooch.wordpress.com/2016/01/26/gorsey-bank-stockport-1/

Weeks ago, stripped back awaiting redevelopment, fresh growth has already taken hold.

Again.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.

Today I passed again the turned ground of former homes, through front rooms, kitchens.

The well tended gardens of long gone ghosts.

And then I found a film.

Furled then unfurled, still moist from yesterdays rain – with care, I laid it in the sun.

Unprocessed, lacking any trace of edge markings, but exposed – who could ever know?

It’s too late to stop now, develop or fix.

Heaven alone knows, the latent images that may have lain awaiting within:

Those fragile fragments of silver.

I have dutifully released and revealed the actions of the landscape upon the abandoned film.

What once was lost, now is found, was blind but now we see.

North Foreland Estate – Broadstairs

Posted on May 21, 2016May 21, 2016 by modernmoocher

Where the lone lawn ranger, meets the top of the range Range Rover.

Yippee ki oh ki-yay!

Forever out to out Lutyens.

I think you’re probably out to lunch.

To walk the shoreline path through North Foreland Estate, is to walk an intentionally unintentional free market, mash-up of architectural history.

Hey ho let’s go!

To begin at the beginning, 1636 a lighthouse is erected – leaping forward somewhat:

During World War II a number of radar stations were set up by German forces in France and the Netherlands to detect allied aircraft flying across the English Channel and a chain of top secret radar jamming stations were set up by British scientists along the south east coast of Britain. An array of transmitters was set out around gallery of the lighthouse controlled by equipment in the lower lantern as part of this chain.

The North Foreland lighthouse was last manned lighthouse in the UK, but was automated in a ceremony presided over by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1998.

It seems appropriate that the DoE should preside over the automation, however, I digress.

This is a gently rolling coast line, low chalk cliffs harbouring sandy coves and spies.

And the wealth of nations, £2,000,000 gets you this shiny hunk of real estate.

A gated community, double negated through further gating, ornamental railings, well clipped hedges, picket fences, high grey stuccoed walls, and attendant dogs.

Big dogs, very big dogs, fortunately with even bigger walls.

As is often the case in such areas the residents are short of nothing – excepting residents.

There was but on lone lawnmower owning owner to nod to.

Last seen, receding towards his quasi sixties, semi-dormered detached, hat intact.

So accompany me now through the New England homes of the new England, admire the Mock Gothic, Super Krazed Moderne, pseudo Tudo-Jacobethan delights that await us.

Too rich for your undernourished pockets, have you considered a drawing of a house?

High concept, conceptual housing for the under-housed.

So farewell the North Shoreland I’ll leave you to get on with your high value, property based, rise and fall bollard lifestyle I, like Felix – kept on walking.

Collyhurst

Posted on May 20, 2016July 24, 2019 by modernmoocher

It’s the end of the road, for the middle of the street.

Needwood Close Collyhurst is closed.

An area that has suffered the slings, swings and arrows of failed PFI bids, absent partners and putative city fathers.

2012

After missing out on £252m of state investment when the Government cut the Homes and Communities Agency budget, Manchester is now trying another approach to deliver the much needed regeneration of Collyhurst.

As reported by Manchester Confidential

2014

The masterplan is part of Manchester Place, a joint initiative between Manchester City Council and the Homes & Communities Agency that looks to create a pipeline of development-ready sites to help the city meet its ambitious target of creating 55,000 new homes by 2027 as set out in the Manchester Residential Growth Prospectus.

Manchester Place will work with investors, such as Manchester Life, a £1bn, partnership between Manchester City Football Club and Abu Dhabi United Group, the privately owned investment company which also owns Manchester City Football Club, to bring 6,000 new homes to east Manchester over the next 10 years.

As outlined in Place North West

2016

Hartfield Close – Manchester

Posted on May 19, 2016May 19, 2016 by modernmoocher

It’s not unusual.

To discover something, whilst looking for something else.

For me, it’s almost a way of life.

I was in the area to look around the nearby Brunswick Parish Church.

Just around the corner was Hatfield Close a low, white two-storey terrace of six homes, each with a small fenced garden to the rear, facing onto a large open grassed area, backed by further housing.

It was difficult to discern whether they were empty or inhabited – two seemed to have residents. Curious in a city with a growing population and a demand for vacant property. Are they in limbo, between redevelopment, refurbishment or CPO?

They have ben offered to the market within the last year.

At a value way below comparable properties, currently they seem to be adrift in an uncaring world, a tiny lost island of Municipal Modernism.

They deserve a little care an attention.

We all do.

The Bullring – Liverpool

Posted on May 18, 2016June 7, 2022 by modernmoocher

I love walking around the Bullring, there are no bulls, just students.

What was once imagined as inter-war social housing, a proud public utopia for you and me, is now a temporary pied-à-terre for them and their owners.

Built in 1935 as part of the city’s expansion of council homes, a time and place very much in thrall, to the then current developments in German Modernism.

Large Housing Estate Britz

It was one of many such developments across Liverpool, as outlined here:

In this detailed post by Municipal Dreams.

St Andrews Gardens, aka The Bullring is the sole survivor.

In 1967 the residents turned out in force to celebrate the opening of the very close by Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King.

Faces now faded, the lost warm, wide smiles and pretty paper flowers of post-war dreams.

Seen here on film.

Go take a walk today through a past and a future which we all still deserve.

There is still the sense of a magical space and possibilities as yet unrealised

God Bless Our Pope

Yorkshire Building Society – Bradford

Posted on May 17, 2016February 3, 2020 by modernmoocher

I don’t know much about the Yorkshire Building Society, I must say I have less than a passing interest in Building Societies generally.

I more of a building societies man myself.

But I do know this

In 1993 the former Hammonds Sauce Works Band was renamed as the Yorkshire Building Society Band. The building society supported the main band and also the YBS Hawley Band and YBS Juniors. The building society ceased its sponsorship in December 2004 although the YBS initials were retained in the band’s name until 2008. From January 2009 the band was renamed the Hammonds Saltaire Band.

Which seems a particularly cruel way, to treat a sauce works band.

Their former HQ has been standing on the corner, watching all the world go by.

For some time now.

Empty.

For sale, to let, facing an uncertain future.

Alone.

Kirkgate Market – Bradford

Posted on May 17, 2016April 16, 2024 by modernmoocher

Yorkshire is a county of market towns – Bradford is no exception, a mediaeval village expanding with the growth of the wool trade and the coming of the Industrial Revolution.

Flourishing.

The site was originally occupied by an imposing building of 1878.

Demolished in 1973.

To be replaced by a Brutalist build in the same year.

A structure of bold geometry, contrasting brick and warm, raw striated concrete.

The huge building, designed by John Brunton & Partners, was dubbed Bradford’s ‘space-age shopping centre’ when it opened in 1976. One of a series of American-style Arndale malls

Now the city council has purchased the centre for £15.5 million and agreed a deal that will see Primark – the largest of Kirkgate’s remaining stores – move to Bradford’s Broadway mall which opened in 2015.

The initiative will allow the authority to double the size of its proposed City Village programme, which it hopes will create better public spaces and 1,000 new homes in a ‘world-class sustainable urban’ across 5 acres of city centre land.

Architects Journal

The interior has several decorative features, tiles their authorship and origins unknown, consisting of four 2.5 metre, and one 6.5 metre square ceramic panels.

Alongside William Mitchell concrete reliefs.

We now know that they are the work of Fritz Steller – also responsible for Huddersfield’s Queensgate Market ceramics.

So farewell fair Kirkgate, I love your stairwell.

Well.

Eastford Square – Collyhurst

Posted on May 6, 2016April 5, 2020 by modernmoocher

Once there were homes, postwar social housing.

Once there were jobs, a measure of prosperity.

A settled community.

Time has not been kind to North Manchester, successive slumps, double-dip depressions, economic downturns, and centrally imposed recession hurts.

The local authority steps in, from 2009 the fate of Eastford Square is sealed.

Regeneration.

Spells demolition.

One wing is already gone, the maisonettes are tinned up.

The Flower Pot Café, still fully functional, fed me well for £2, Lee the proprietor is living on borrowed time though, hoping for relocation within the new development.

Other businesses have not survived the transition, awaiting CPO and who knows what.

The square is blessed with a concrete sculpture, whose fate I hope is secured, somehow.

Possibly by William Mitchell – possibly not.

This as ever, is a time of change, I hope that the area and its current inhabitants live to tell the tale, rather than fall victim to the tide of gentrification, forcing them further afield.

O Romeo Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?

Sandhills – Collyhurst

Posted on May 6, 2016February 13, 2018 by modernmoocher

So this is Sand Street, on the edge of Sandhills, former equatorial Permian desert, former sandstone quarry, former Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens, current country park.

I have written elsewhere of your particular peculiarities – Particulations.