August 2025 – Modern Mooch

College Bank Flats – Rochdale 2025

Posted on August 31, 2025September 2, 2025 by modernmoocher

College Bank Flats aka The Seven Sisters, one sunny morning in late August.

Following visits in January 2017 and March 2017, I was in town to take a group of Modernists on a Rochdale Ramble.

In recent years these homes have been under threat of both demolition and refurbishment.

Rochdale Boroughwide Housing – RBH had sought help from a developer to pay for its £107m plans to refurbish the College Bank high-rise apartments, known in the town as the Seven Sisters.

But the social housing landlord has been unable to reach a commercially viable agreement to help improve the blocks where 250 people live.

Amanda Newton, RBH chief executive said the lack of a deal was disappointing but all options for the future of the site would still be explored.

Many of the apartments spread across the Seven Sisters remain unoccupied after a plan was announced to demolish four of the blocks in 2017, leading to an exodus of hundreds of tenants. RBH later reconsidered the plan, and instead signed a deal with developer Legal & General Affordable Housing last year, to find a viable way of refurbishing the apartments.

All 700 flats in the 1960s blocks were set to be redeveloped under the plans, but the pair’s agreement has now come to an end without a solution emerging.

BBC – October 2024

John Hurn, who has lived in the Tentercroft tower block with his wife Sharon, for 18 years, said:

Not knowing what’s happening, I get frustrated, this is home to me, Rochdale is home.

BBC – January 2025

So an unsatisfactory stasis prevails across the windswept piazzas, podium garages and towering towers.

Local photographer Ellie Waters has her pictures of the flats displayed in the underpass.

Notes From College Bank is an ongoing project which documents the College Bank buildings in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Known locally as ‘The Seven Sisters’, College Bank is formed of seven high-rise social housing blocks, four of which have come under recent threat of demolition.

Drawing from found imagery and photographs taken by my late Grandfather – M J Burgess – who like me grew up in Rochdale, I’ve been working with past and present residents to create a collective record of life in and around College Bank.

This project is ongoing, if you would like to share your stories of College Bank please get in touch via email – notesfromcollegebank@gmail.com

Here is a recent post from Municipal Dreams outlining the history state of play – Rochdale Housing Part II.

Fast forward to the present, the Seven Sisters still stand – an impressive architectural statement in the heart of Rochdale and, to my mind, as powerful a testament to municipal endeavour and aspiration as the town’s nearby town hall. But much has changed. In the slow evolution that affected council housing more broadly, the flats became less desirable, even, in some eyes, a ‘sink estate’. In Robin Parker’s view, the Council started re-housing people in the blocks ‘not suitable for high-rise living’ – a typical occurrence when the most vulnerable on the waiting list and those with least choice are allocated to so-called ‘hard to let’ estates.

Rochdale Homes

Stafford Railway Station

Posted on August 18, 2025September 15, 2025 by modernmoocher

Having passed through here on more than one occasion, it only seemed polite to stop and take a look around.

It is the second busiest interchange in the county, after Stoke-on-Trent. It serves the market and county town, as well as surrounding villages. The station lies on the junction of the Trent Valley line, the Rugby–Birmingham–Stafford line and the West Coast Main Line; it was also the terminus for the former Stafford–Uttoxeter and Stafford–Shrewsbury lines.

The current station was built in 1962, by the architect William Robert Headley, as part of the modernisation programme which saw the electrification of the West Coast Main Line.

Wikipedia

Headley was also responsible for the design of East Didsbury, Manchester Oxford Road and Coventry stations.

Archive photos: British Rail Architecture 1948-97

Illustration: John Greene

The station is light and airy, composed of a series of vertical and horizontal volumes.

Glazed walkways and bridges, concrete and timber cladding.

The station is not listed, and over time the signage, seating and entrance have all been compromised.

Magistrates’ Court – Preston

Posted on August 13, 2025August 13, 2025 by modernmoocher

Lawson St Preston PR1 UK

We have often walked by the Magistrates’ Courts on the Preston Walk.

So, it’s about time this low lying white tiled delight received some well deserved attention.

Though recently there have been structural problems:

The safety of everyone who uses our courts is paramount and the decision to temporarily close Blackpool and Preston Magistrates’ courts was made in line with professional advice following the detection of defective Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete. These court buildings will reopen once they are assessed as safe by professionals following the completion of required remedial works.

There have also been solutions:

Preston Magistrates’ Court is currently scheduled to reopen in January 2024.

They work for you

Local lad Tom Finney was unable for comment, though saddened to hear that the Microgramma sign was no longer in situ.

Microgramma is a sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese and Alessandro Butti for the Nebiolo Type Foundry in 1952. It became popular for use with technical illustrations in the 1960s, and was a favourite of graphic designers by the early 1970s.

The building is the work of the Borough Architects under John Hatton – though I am reliably informed that County Architect Roger Booth took an advisory role.

The Courts certainly echoes many of the stylistic and material characteristics of his work, particularly the County Archives, with similar piloti and glazing.

So let’s take a circuitous tour.

This is the seriously neglected seating area.

The Courts once had a Roger Booth Police Station as a neighbour.

Photographs – Richard Brook

Converted to apartments in 2013, with current plans for further developments.

More than 200 student flats are set to be built on part of Preston’s former divisional police headquarters. Preston City Council planning officers have recommended that councillors give the go-ahead to the scheme – at the junction of Walker Street and Lawson Street, to the rear of the magistrates’ and crown courts.

Blog Preston

The part of the plot where the new ‘studio apartments’ would be erected is currently occupied by a multi-level public car park, accessed from Saul Street, which has been operated as a pay and display facility by Chorley-based Parking Eye for the last nine years.

Other Roger Booth police stations have also been visited by the wrecking ball, Blackpool and Bury are now no longer extant.

Both Chorley and Morecambe are still standing.

Humberston Fitties – 2025

Posted on August 7, 2025August 8, 2025 by modernmoocher

Well well here we are again, third time around following a visit in 2018 and later in 2021.

Almost inevitably, changes have taken place.

There is an almost constant tension between order and/or disorder.

Between those who prefer the shambolic aesthetic of the shotgun shack, and those whose hearts and minds are in the double spread of Homes and Gardens.

It’s also a question of economics, there are those with capital who may wish to make investments in property. Buy to let, second homes that yield a return above the current savings’ rates. Thus raising the cost of housing, both ordered and disordered.

There are fifteen offered for rental on airbnb.

The chalet is a unique wooden clad cabin painted in lovely complimentary colours of Cream and Seaspray Green. A porthole window peers into a generous open plan living room and adjoined kitchen with subtle seaside touches of stripes, driftwood, shells, all quality wooden furniture and large comfy corner sofa plus two relaxing reading chairs with plenty of blankets to snuggle up in.

So the march of big money heralds the arrival of complementary after dinner mints, uPVC cladding, tasteful nautical bric a brac, prohibitive signs, off road parking and a Hampton’s aesthetic – a little bit of New England inna little bit of England.

Despite the incursion of those folks on a week long excursion, there is still an air of lukewarm anarchy which pervades the Fitties. An array of wonky homemade fences constantly askew, refusing to be aligned to the orthogonal.

Mañana never comes here on this little stretch of the Lincolnshire coast, get it while you can.

Abbey Walk Car Park – Grimsby 2025

Posted on August 4, 2025August 4, 2025 by modernmoocher

Here we are again, six years after the first visit.

What’s been happening hereabouts in the interim?

The Abbey Walk car park was built in 1969 by Holst & Company of Scunthorpe at a cost of approximately £200,000. Whilst a key asset for the town centre, the car park was closed in May 2024, after structural defects were found. This was water ingress into key structural supports, making the car park potentially unsafe to use.

It has now been approved to proceed with plans to demolish the car park, and replace it with a 120-space surface car park, but with the capability in the foundations of being built on in future years if needed.

But what of the unique concrete relief panels, you may ask?

The four abstract concrete reliefs depict parts of a car, which were inspired by drawings in the handbook of the artist’s Austin Cambridge estate car, and were installed when the building was constructed.

Designed in the 1960s by artist and sculptor, Harold Gosney, having been asked to carry out the car park commission by the architects, Nicholson and Rushton.

These panels were cast in situ, with metal bars running through them, which were integral to the car park structure, which is likely to make removal of the artwork incredibly difficult.

NE Lincs

Last month, it was confirmed conservationists from the University of Lincoln had 3D scanned the sculptures to create digital 3D models to preserve them.

Grimsby Telegraph

Photo – BBC

Which is all well and good, but will they ever be really remade and reinstated anywhere?

Only time will tell.

In 2023 the car park stairwell was transformed by young people from the local area, as part of a project by North East Lincolnshire Council and local artist Lynsey Powles, to try to tackle graffiti and anti-social behaviour.

Abbey Walk multistorey car park in Grimsby has been the site of a number of incidents of anti-social behaviour and graffiti in recent years.

NE Lincs

The demolition and subsequent construction will cost between £1.5m and £2.5m, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

St Andrew’s Methodist Church – Cleethorpes

Posted on August 2, 2025 by modernmoocher

1 Mill Rd Cleethorpes DN35 8HT

The current St Andrews Methodist church in Cleethorpes occupies the same site as the previous Primitive Methodist chapels.

The first chapel was built in 1857; it was replaced by a new chapel in 1877. This chapel was replaced by St Andrews in 1979.

My Primitive Methodist

The current church occupies this corner site by the mini roundabout – a very particular architectural style, an angular brick low level ziggurat, with buttresses to the side elevation and entrance. There are glazed brick details around the buttresses, windows and doors.