Once there was a river there, formed by the thunder of Irish Sea ice gouging a great glacial valley, bowling along boulders and millstone grit through phyllosilicate clays and sedimentary sandstone.

Then there wasn’t.
The Mersey, formed in Stockport as the Tame and Goyt conjoined, inconveniently filled with industrial grime and mire, then conveniently covered over in 1936.

Creating the thoroughly modern thoroughfare Merseyway.

The giant concrete culvert and bridge leaving the river cowering cautiously below.

Of time and a river – little stands still and the town is whisked briskly into the late Twentieth Century with plans for a pedestrianised precinct.

Completed and opened in 1965 the shopping precinct was concrete poetry in motion, incorporating the surrounding topography and extant architecture with grace and aplomb. Combining retail, restaurants and car parking facilities in a manner that critic Ian Nairn considered to be amongst the finest in the land.

We had travelators, integrated paving, street furniture, and lighting across several levels. A carefully considered whole, combining all that was best in modern design with style, élan and panache – along with Freeman, Hardy and Willis.



A clock tower, an Alan Boyson concrete car park screen and public art.


Would that it was still so, a variety of additions and subtractions have left Merseyway in architectural limbo, concrete legs akimbo across the river below, striding towards the future in a more than somewhat bewildered manner.
Yet we still continue cast our eyes upwards towards a clock that isn’t there, ride a non-existent walkway to the sky, try on an imaginary crop-top in C&A’s Clockhouse.




Photographs Stockport Image Archive
Why did they spoil it. Why did they alter it? It is now a space without any heart. Why do you want my e.mail address? Perhaps you need to ask me for some advice on why Stockport Market, Precinct and Mersey Square are so unappealing
LikeLike
Almost every 60s development I have visited Kathleen has been altered in some way – detracting from the integrity of the original plans. I think WordPress require your email to monitor and validate comments, rather than me. Despite 70 years of post war planning the Town still lacks cohesion, and heart – living in the cultural shadow of Manchester, rather than realising its full potential as a fairly prosperous mixed use satellite.
LikeLike