Spring’s in the air, let’s take a walk down leafy lanes, far from the traffic’s roaring boom and the silence of my lonely room – well not that far.
Burnage.
The housing estate of 136 houses known as Burnage Garden Village, a residential development covering an area of 19,113sqm off the western side of Burnage Lane in the Burnage ward. The site is situated approximately six kilometres south of the city centre and is arranged on a broadly hexagonal layout with two storey semi-detached and quasi detached dwelling houses situated on either side of a continuous-loop highway. The highway is named after each corresponding compass point with two spurs off at the east and west named Main Avenue and West Place respectively. Main Avenue represents the only access and egress point into the estate whilst West Place leads into a resident’s parking area.
The layout was designed by J Horner Hargreaves. Houses are loosely designed to Arts and Crafts principles, chiefly on account of being low set and having catslide roofs.
At the centre of the garden village and accessed by a network of pedestrian footpaths, is a resident’s recreational area comprising a bowling green, club house and tennis courts. The estate dates from approximately 1906 and was laid out in the manner of a garden suburb with characteristic hedging, front gardens, grass verges and trees on every street.
A rare and almost perfectly preserved example of Edwardian Mancunian suburban architecture, save a uPVC epidemic of identical doors and window frames. On a sunny day the variegated brick and render simply sings, like so many chirpy sparrows.
These homes are a variation on a theme, a fugue of tile, brick, pointy counterpointed gable, light and shadow – linked by scale, style and well laid wide concrete roads, filled with good intentions and cars.
Take a hike or bike south of the city, now that Spring is here.
I’ve been here before, innocently snapping – without incident.
A super-large Roger Booth cop shop and courts, concrete combo.
So why not go back just one last time, prior to demolition and redevelopment.
So I did.
Following the acquisition and demolition of Progress House the Bonny Street Station is to be relocated, and the former site, under the ownership of Blackpool Council, set to become who knows what – who knows?
Progress House, Clifton Road, Marton.
The Council knows, it plans to develop a new site for the defunct Central Rail Station
A giant of the steam age that became a car park
It is 50 years since Central Railway Station closed with the land being used for a car park ever since. It was proposed as the site for the super-casino until that bid failed to win government backing. Since then plans for an indoor snow-based attraction have also failed to make any progress.
Today happily, snow-based attractions are still failing to make any progress.
Blue skies and chill early March air greeted me, across the wind swept, precast concourses and piazzas – warmish grey, against brightish blue.
I simply didn’t expect the boy in blue – ten minutes of light/half hearted interrogation.
“Who, what, why, where are you?”
Responding in a clear concise and non-confrontational manner, I was free to go about my legal business, taking these pictures for you.
The things that you see from a passing train, those things that arouse your curiosity.
Blackpool bound, to the left a horizontal slab on stilts.
Well, well.
Whatever could that be?
Well we shall see, shall we?
Some days later alighting at Preston Station, I hotfooted it hurriedly down the road to who knows where.
Peeping coyly from behind the surrounding trees, in the shadow of County Hall – the Lancashire Archives, yet more of Roger Booth’s handiwork.
A low stone clad block stood elegantly on slender supports, inside the courtyard, a grid of aluminium and glass, the people peeping out. The core of the building shrouded in a solid serrated brick screen.
“The immediate problem after the war was to house those whose homes had been bombed. Longer-term objectives were to complete and extend earlier clearance programmes in order to reduce the population density and separate industry from residential areas, as reaffirmed in the County of London Plan of 1943. Some 5,000 people lived in temporary housing, including requisitioned properties and hutments or mobile homes, prefabs, of which the L.C.C.’s first in East London were in Florida and Squirries streets. All but 15 of its 190 ‘prefabs’ were in use in 1955, together with 309 requisitioned properties; at least 48 mobile homes were still in use in 1966. War damage had been repaired by 1953 and attention shifted to slum clearance; flats were to be allotted to those in cleared areas rather than by a waiting list. The L.C.C. and M.B. co-operated in drawing up five-year plans: by 1954 there were 16,852 permanent homes of which 2,434 were unfit, 1,711 in the L.C.C.’s clearance areas and 675 in the M.B.’s, together with 48 individual houses. The L.C.C. demolished 510 and the M.B. 550 between 1956 and 1960 and the M.B. demolished another 151 unfit and 46 other houses in 1961-2. Most were replaced by municipal estates, although both councils also acquired sites scheduled for industry, business, or open space. It was estimated that to find a site and build an estate took six years.”
The six-storeyed Mayfield House opened with 54 flats in 1964 on the east side of Cambridge Heath Road, south of the town hall.
Exploring London in an accidental and often tangential manner, often offers many surprises. Ostensibly in search of the V&A Museum of Childhood I tumbled into Mayfield House. The whole area, as can be seen in the above link, is home to several estates and homes, designed by the eminent architects du jour, Mayfield receives no such attribution, possibly the work of the borough office.
None the worse for that a building of some note, famously housing one of London’s first coin operated laundries, as seen in the promo video for The Streets – Dry your eyes.
The flats also contain a Somalian Centre, Bethnal Green having been home, for many years to Somali seamen – the subject of a recent photographic exhibition by Sarah Ainslie
“I first came to London by ship in March 1958. I stayed in Aldgate for a night and went to Newport where my cousin had a house. There are many Somalis there. From that day until I retired in 1990, I was in the Merchant Navy, and I brought my family over from Somaliland. In 1970, I moved back to London to Bethnal Green but my wife and daughters chose to stay in Newport.
In Somaliland, I owned over a hundred camels and sheep. Nobody keeps camels anymore, everyone sold them and moved to the city. They say, ‘It’s too much work.’ But keeping camels and sheep and living on a farm, it’s a good life because you eat every day. Everybody wants to do it again now.”
An intriguing structure with a dominant grid on the front elevation, sharp signage, extravagant exterior rear stairs, modular concrete screened, low-level car parking and a recently enclosed glassed gallery.
Built and opened in 1967, designed by the County Architect Roger Booth, who was also responsible for a whole host of buildings in Lancashire between 1962 and 1983.
Almost fifty years on, the building still speaks of modernity, optimism, light and learning. It’s well used and loved by the public and the charming and helpful staff – many thanks, for your time and assistance.
Application was made for listing, this was not accepted – there have been significant changes to both the external and internal structure over time.
The vertical, impressed cast concrete panels, shown above, have been replaced by brick.
The original suspended *bean can* lighting system has also been replaced. At night, I was told it was hard to navigate the building using the limited spot illumination, so a box of bike lights were kept and handed out, to permit the safe, well-lit passage of library users.
Concentric hexagonal rings of suspended strip lighting are now in place.
Sadly the vivarium, contained in a glassed link corridor, was short lived.
The Halifax was formed in 1853 as the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society. The idea was thought up in a meeting room situated above the Old Cock Inn close to the original Building Society building.Like all early building societies, the purpose of the society was for the mutual benefit of local working people.
Why are we not here?
In 2006, the HBOS Group Reorganisation Act 2006 was passed. The aim of the Act was to simplify the corporate structure of HBOS. The Act was fully implemented on 17 September 2007 and the assets and liabilities of Halifax plc transferred to Bank of Scotland plc. The Halifax brand name was to be retained as a trading name, but it no longer exists as a legal entity.
What have we here?
The Halifax Building was designed by the architecture firm BDP and constructed in 1968-74, as the headquarters for the Halifax Building Society and built with an unusually high budget. The rapid growth of the society over the twentieth century prompted the requirement for a new headquarters building, and in 1968 the aim of the architects was to design not only a practical building but a bold building for a confident client.
“Though necessarily large in scale, and centrally located in the town, the design is one of humanity, respecting both the townscape in which it was placed, and the employees it was to house…The high budget was reflected in the building’s finishes inside and out. Externally a limited colour palette and use of York stone cladding gave a homogeneity and showed consideration to the local character of the stone buildings of Halifax. Internally, materials were high quality and colour co-ordinated, with landscaping to both the public ground-floor spaces and the executive fourth floor.”
Ian Nairn thought well of it –
I wandered around amazed by the sheer mass of the main volume of the building, and the thin slithers of sunlight and blue sky which abutted its glass and stone skin.
When approached by a curious security guard, I quickly allayed his initial fears, on production of my Manchester Modernist Society membership card and badge.
However fellow urbanists, take care, for the public is often mutually private and public at one and the same time, don’t step over the line.
Possibly on the way to somewhere else, stranded at Oxford Road Station.
Tucked in behind Shaw’s Furniture and The Tatler Cinema.
I love every curvy corner, timber frame and canopy, concrete spiral, empty kiosk and precipitous steps – I’m happy to be stranded.
It opened in 1849 and was rebuilt in 1960.
The station was opened as Oxford Road on 20 July 1849 by the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway . The station was the headquarters of the MSJAR from its opening until 1904. It had two platforms and two sidings, with temporary wooden buildings. To allow for extra trains in connection with the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857, extra platforms and sidings were built. In 1874 the station was completely rebuilt providing two bay platforms and three through platforms. Further reconstruction took place during 1903-04. From 1931 it was served by the MSJAR’s 1500V DC electric trains between Altrincham and Manchester Piccadilly.
The station had become dilapidated by the 1950s, and in connection with the electrification and modernisation programme of the Manchester to London line in 1960, the old buildings were replaced by the current structure by architects W.R. Headley and Max Glendinning and structural engineer Hugh Tottenham. It was designed in a distinctive style in concrete and wood with curves bringing to mind the Sydney Opera House.
Use of the station increased from May 1988 when the Windsor Link was inaugurated between Deansgate and Salford Crescent, connecting lines to the north and south of Manchester.
The station is a grade II listed building.
One of the most interesting and innovative buildings of the period, the most ambitious example in this country of timber conoid shell roofing.
Set to the north-east side of the building’s entrance forecourt is a concrete sculptural screen wall by John McCarthy with an abstract relief to the south-west side facing into the forecourt. The wall is aligned at a right angle to the building’s main entrance and has a shallow rectangular pool (now drained) set in front. The wall includes numerous openings from which water originally flowed into the pool, but the system is no longer in working order. The pool also originally incorporated small fountains.
At a time when the whole of the centre of the city seems alive with construction, refurbishment, gentrification and more quarters than you could shake a stick at, this forlorn and seemingly unloved gem stands, shrouded in shrubs.
I’m a carpenter of love and affection, who would not care to see, this particular wall:
A church shrouded in history and mystery – and on the day of my visit:
Torrential rain.
How appropriate as:
On the eve of the Reformation came a reputed miracle for Robert Leche and his family who were saved from drowning after invocation of Our Lady of Doncaster.
Its location on the Great North Road seems to have placed it through the years at the centre myth and magic.
On 30 November 1350, licence was granted for alienation in mortmain by, John son of Henry Nicbrothere de Eyoun and Richard le Ewere of Doncastre to the Carmelite Friars who are coming there to dwell in the town of Doncastre, of a messuage and six acres of land there, to build thereon a church in honour of St Mary and houses to dwell in.
A shrine was established to Our Lady of Doncaster.
Time and the Reformation were not kind to the shrine and Our Lady.
She and the church of St Peter came and went over the years until:
A new church was opened by Cardinal Heenan on Palm Sunday 1973, octagonal in shape. John Bentley’s Tabernacle Door, the four reredos panels and the altar designed for the old church are incorporated in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the new church.
The statue of Our Lady of Doncaster now stands in a circular shrine chapel on the north side of the church. Phyffers’ statue stands in an oak reredos with modern stained glass windows depicting St Joseph, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Assumption.
A large and striking design by J. H. Langtry-Langton, incorporating important furnishings by J. F. Bentley from the predecessor church, along with good furnishings of the 1970s. The churches houses the modern successor to the medieval shrine of Our Lady of Doncaster.
Ambitious in scale, dotted with vertical detail, the main body of the church has an integrated meeting hall and clerical house. I remain however, more than somewhat unconvinced by its brick monumentality.
On September 23, 1974, the budding Liverpool star married his childhood sweetheart, Jean, at St Peters in Chains Roman Catholic Church in his hometown of Doncaster.
There was no fanfare, no fans, no celebrity guests and certainly no Hello! style deal. Kevin was just 24, his bride a year younger.
Watching them with a tear in their eyes were his proud parents, Joe, a miner, and Doris.
Kevin says: ‘Jean and I hadn’t planned to get married for months, but I had a five-week ban for fighting with Billy Bremner and, as they say, every cloud has a silver lining, so we decided to use the time to get married quietly.’
Beswick is a small district located on the east side of Manchester bounded by Ashton Old Road, Ashton New Road and Grey Mare Lane and was incorporated into Manchester in 1838. Pronounced Bes-ick the “w” is silent. Before 1066, in Saxon times, the district was called Beaces Hlaw – Hlaw was an old word for a small hill, often used as a burial mound. By the 13th century it had changed to “Beaces Wic” indicating that the area was predominantly farm land. Who or what the Bes element of the placename signified is open to interpretation, though the simplest and most plausible is that it belonged to a person called Bes or Bess.
In the 60s it was, as I remember it, a typically vibrant mixed East Manchester community, industry, housing, retail, entertainment and goodness knows what bumping along together incautiously, down tight streets of Victorian terraced housing. I worked in the area as a Mother’s Pride van lad, hauling bread, cakes and galvanised trays in and out of a plethora of superabundant corner shops.
The year of 1970, approximately, dawns, ushering in a decade of great change, slum clearance and the building of brand new homes – the end, by and large, of the back to back corner shop world.
10 years later, and long gone the years of postwar full employment, and the made round to go round world of the weekly wage.
The early 1980s saw growing unemployment and world-wide recession. The large new estates suffered most. Inner city districts of Manchester saw street riots in 1981, as did many other major cities around Britain. Manchester had suffered badly as a result of the recession. In 1986, over 59% of adult males living in Hulme were unemployed; in Miles Platting the figure was 46%; Cheetham Hill and Moss Side both had an unemployment rate of 44%. The main group of unemployed were young people under the age of 21. Hulme’s youth employment was recorded at 68%, and Cheetham Hill suffered 59%.
It is true that the new developments have great advantages in many ways over the terraces they replaced. Tenants who live in houses without baths or indoor sanitation and with no hot water are delighted to move into bright new flats and maisonettes, with indoor plumbing, with baths, and accommodation which has more rooms and far better kitchen facilities and central heating, even though they sometimes grumble at the cost of that central heating.
But although we can build a new housing development, we cannot easily recreate the warm community spirit which has vanished with the terraces which have been demolished. There is the noise from neighbours on the deck above and the deck below. The wind-swept balconies along which tenants have to walk are not as cosy as the streets from which they have come. Those welcoming corner shops, with their bright lights on winter evenings, have gone, and sometimes a new development has no new shops for too long a period. Even when they come, there are not enough of them.
The scale of the buildings is often daunting. I have in mind Fort Beswick and Fort Ardwick in my own constituency. The design is frequently all too forbidding. That is why the two estates are called Forts.
When the tenants of these development have lived in cosy old houses, however inadequate they were in terms of physical provision, they are bitterly disappointed by the shortcomings of new property which they have looked forward to occupying.
The year of 1990, approximately, dawns, ushering in a decade of great change, multi-storey development clearance and the building of brand new homes – the end, by and large, of the one on top of another topsy-turvy world.
Fort Beswick was subsequently demolished.
The beat goes on as Len Grant records the most recent redevelopment of East Manchester.
And the M.E.Nshouts loud and proud from the roof tops, heralding a brand new, privately funded public domain
The passengers’ every need was attended to with alacrity and style.
“As a Stewardess your appearance was paramount, a beautician would come in during training to teach us how to apply make up.”
But it simply wasn’t enough.
The life of Christopher Cockerell’s bold British invention, was short and bumpy.
Genevieve Payne, a former stewardess:
“I remember the summer of 1979 as a year of really bad weather and rough seas.”
“I was working on a craft in a force 8, so on this day we were literally hitting the ceiling, passengers were throwing up everywhere.”
“One lady became hysterical I had to slap her to calm her down.”
By the 1980’s Pegwell and the hovercraft were in terminal terminus decline.
It’s a lot less bother without a hover.
What prevails is the shoreline, a concrete landing skirt and the slow process of reclamation, as nature decides that the council is quite right to decide to create a nature reserve.
Following my previous post of archival images of Oldham Street, I took a walk along its length a week ago, to record what remained of the post war past.
Gone again the blackened façades, exuberant and differentiated signage.
Woolworth’s burnt out long ago, never to return, exit also C&A, don’t forget your coat and hat.
Affleck’s – same name different place.
Yates’s three down none to go, the last all-in is all out.
Three pubs prevail, some serving craft ale to the not so crafty.
Methodist Main Hall is mainly well-used and well, loved.
In low Winter light the upper floors dance in shadow and sun-glow, against a brighter than bright blue sky.
In the early 18th century, Oldham Street was apparently:
“An ill-kept muddy lane, held in place on one of its sides by wild hedgerows”.
In 1772, a privately owned track which is now known as Oldham Street was given to the public. The road took its name from Adam Oldham rather than from the place name. He was an acquaintance of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, which could account for the Oldham street location of the Methodist Chapel, opened by Wesley in 1781. Central Hall replaced the Chapel in 1885.
The area around Oldham Street became more affluent, with warehouses and shops, many of whose merchants lived within their shop premises. This is described by Isabella Varley, Mrs. Linnaeus Banks, a resident of Oldham Street, in her book The Manchester Man.
One Oldham Street shopowner mentioned by a number of writers is Abel Heywood, who spearheaded the mass distribution of books, supplying the whole country not only with penny novels, but also with educational books and political pamphlets. Heywood went on to become Mayor of Manchester.
The general well to do, mix of hustle and bustle, pubs, warehousing, grand stores, smaller specialist shops and services continued into the 1970’s. Woolworths, C&A, Affleck and Browns, Cantors, Dobbins attracted a steady flow of happy shoppers, I loved the mongrel nature of the mixed use architecture.
The focus if the city centre then slipped away to the newly built Arndale and pedestrianised Market Street.
Oldham Street awaited a new sense of place and purpose.
City streets are by their nature subject to movement and change, things literally come and go – in milliseconds, days and decades. People and places are shaped by the forces of function and fashion, economics and history.
Before the Arndale, pre-pedestrianisation, Market Street, from the Fifties until the Seventies, was one of Manchester’s key arterial, retail thoroughfares. Mixing mixed traffic, shops, cafés and restaurants, bars, cinemas, offices and administration.
The architectural skyline, had the raggedy silhouette, of a century of build and rebuild.
Lower your eyes, there’s Classical, Gothic, Baroque, local Rococo, Deco, Moderne and Modern – that’s right Madam no two the same, four for a pound, get it while you can.
Lower still, things are still never still, a riot of colour in black and white Vitrolite.
Neon abounds, the names are never changed to protect the innocent.
Local traders are slowly replaced by national and international multinationals.
You have nothing to lose but but your chain-store now.
Henry Cohen came to Manchester around 1880. In 1910 he opened a men’s clothing outlet at the corner of Market Street called the Smart Outfitting Company. Having turned down a chance to join Marks and Spencer, he eventually built his department store in Market Street which opened in 1923. Henry’s Stores was redeveloped in the early 60’s acquiring an extension and a unifying Modernist façade, the site and store was acquired by BHS in the mid 60’s.
Rylands Building is a Grade II listed building in the building was originally built as a warehouse by the Rylands textile company which was founded by John Rylands. The building was designed by the eminent Manchester architects, Fairhursts, in an Art Deco style. It is clad in Portland stone and features a decorative corner tower and eclectic ‘zig zag’ window lintels.
Following a fire, in 1957, which totally destroyed the premises of Paulden’s Department Store, in All Saints, the company acquired the Rylands warehouse building and converted it to a store. This was then a direct rival to the Lewis’s store, on the opposite side of Market Street. In 1973 Debenhams, the owner of Pauldens rebranded the store in their name. Since that time it has remained Debenhams.
Marks and Spencers and Burton’s both undertook extensive Modernist building in the early 60’s on on the Corporation Street site, neither have survived. The Chelsea Girl steel frontage, UCP Restaurant beloved of the Manchester Modernists, Kardomah Café and countless other landmarks are long gone. Lewis’s has become Primark.
The double indignity of the Arndale and a bomb have changed things forever.
Once a beacon of Modernist design, now a listed concrete grid, in arrested decline, an essay in status and stasis, high above the city of Sheffield.
A handful of former residents of the once acclaimed social housing, cling to the western edge.
Phase one of the Urbansplash redevelopment has carefully coloured in a portion of the eastern corner, then exited, their cladding tucked tightly under their arms.
Impasse.
All tinned up with nowhere to go, to walk the walkways, is to enter a ghost town, where no tumbleweeds tumble. Billy the corporation cleaner is happy to work alone, sweeping the empty spaces.
“Some don’t like working up here, I don’t mind my own company. Even if there was just one resident left, we’d still have to keep the place in order. You’d love my house, it’s an Army Barracks in the centre of town. Wife’s the caretaker, been in her family for three generations.”
This is the second of three visits I have made from across the Pennines.
Mark – “Why are all these photographers coming here from Manchester?”
“Been here some time, this is the second flat I’ve had, just missed out on one of the new ones though. Had this one nine years. Bloke threw himself off last week, he had a wife kids, parked up and just jumped.”
127 Dale Street, corner of North Street, just by the Ship and Mitre, across from the Queensway Tunnel entrance?
Yes that’s the one, Liverpool’s most remarkable, least remarked upon building.
So clean, so modern, so new, a delightful grid of materials, glass, steel, polished marble, brick and patinated beaten metal.
Stand back and wonder, move in and sigh with delight.
As I went about my snappy business, I was approached by a local – Mark.
Surprised by my curiously, up close, slow scrutiny of the building, he went on to explain that he was familiar with the architect Derek Jones who had worked on the design for Ormrod and Partners in 1964.
Formerly home to Higson’s Brewery offices, now housing the Merseyside Museums administration and design teams, the exterior is largely intact.
A chance meeting with two aged cordial bottles, a little nudge in the right direction from Christine Studley-Yates, encouragement from Natalie Ainscough, and learned guidance from this erudite site:
Here we are on the edge of Ardwick Green, outside Tanzaro House, former home of Jewsbury and Brown – J&B.
So called as many of their soft drinks were branded Tanzaro.
J&B are long gone, bought out by Schweppes in 1964 – the building is now home to a range of photographic, clothing and design studios. Happily the majority of the internal and external architectural features remain intact.
It stands in a small corner of Manchester, surrounded by a rich variety of architectural styles, by the side of a well-used public park – take a trip down there, just a moment away from the city centre.
Modern Mooch 