Landscape – Page 14 – Modern Mooch

Strangeways Manchester #2

Posted on February 13, 2018February 13, 2018 by modernmoocher

Way back in the Twentieth Century – Cheetwood Industrial Estate was built.

The future was functionalist flat-roofed, concrete, steel and brick boxes.

Adorned with the flowing scripts and signage of the multi-nationals, nationals and local companies, intent upon rendering corporeal the post-war optimism, attendant full-employment and the buoyant business of business.

Fast forward to the future – the roofs have been pitched up, the windows bricked up or shuttered or both, walls encased in sad cladding.

The semi-permanent signage replaced with terminally temporary vinyl.

Joe Sunlight’s neo-classical pediments have been painted a funny colour.

Strangeways Manchester #1

Posted on February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 by modernmoocher

Strangeways?

– How strange.

The Strangeways family themselves are certainly recorded in antiquity at the site, although the name appears differently over time; Strongways in 1306, Strangewayes in 1349 and Strangwishe in 1473. In the late 1500s in records at Manchester Cathedral the surname is spelt Strangwaies.

My thanks to Thomas McGrath for his – Long Lost Histories: Strangeways Hall, Manchester

Before panopticon prisons entered the public imagination, and incarceration was the order of the day for the disorderly, it was all fields around here – with the odd house or baronial hall.

Swire’s map of 1824

Strange days, over time the prison is built, the assizes appears and disappears and tight groups of tired houses cluster around the incipient industry. The fiefdom’s of old become tie and tithe to successions of industrial plutocrats.

Broughton Street 1910 – Photograph J Jackson

Kelly’s map of 1920

The area becomes the centre of the city’s rag trade, a large Jewish Community, the largest outside of London, grows up around Strangeways, Cheetwood and Cheetham Hill – houses, mills, wholesale, retail, warehouse, ice palace, beer-house, brewery. The area is home to several of Joe Sunlight’s inter-war industrial developments – his Jewish family were named Schimschlavitch, his father a cotton merchant. The family emigrated to England in 1890 and settled in Manchester.

So much for Joe Soap – the area was also the location for local lads, Karl Marx, and Marks & Spencer.

Derby Street 1901 – 1924

Further developments took place with the building of the Cheetwood Industrial Estate – a postwar group of flat-rooved, blocky brick and concrete utilitarian units.

So let’s take a look at the ever so strange streets of Strangeways, in that period of change during the latter part of the Twentieth Century, when manufacturing, retail, repair and distribution were almost, just about to disappear in a puff of globalisation, economic depression and Thatcherism. Where Jack and Jill the lads and lasses, traded, ducked, dived, wheeler dealed from Cortinas, Transits and low milage, one owner, luxuriously leather-seated and walnut-dashed Jags. A vanishing or vanished world, where however briefly – Manchester went architecturally mod.

Bent Street

Broughton Street

Carnarvon Street

Chatley Street

Cheetwood Street

Derby Street

Julia Street

Knowsely Street

Sherbourne Street

Stocks Street

All archival photographs from the Manchester Local Images Collection

Gorsey Bank – Stockport #3

Posted on January 24, 2018January 24, 2018 by modernmoocher

Once there were homes – 200 homes tucked between the M60, River Mersey and A560 Stockport Road.

I’ve been here before, many times, seen those homes demolished and the site returning to nature, brambled and overgrown, as the long standing lampposts disappeared for scrap, the kerbs covered in thick grass and moss.

Then the diggers arrived, the trees felled and the site cleared – no longer any trace remained of the lost homes of Gorsey Bank.

Building commences, steel erected, fences, roads and paths instated.

Welcome to the Aurora Industrial Park – open for business.

Emerging from the houses, the undergrowth, the Mersey clay and sandstone – a shiny new assemblage of state of the art industrial sheds. I’ll wander by from time to time, listen to the ghostly chatter of busy neighbours, going about their business.

Wait for the trees and brambles to take over again.

Mottram Street Flats – Stockport

Posted on October 22, 2017July 28, 2024 by modernmoocher

A post-war northern town, facing the problems of bomb damage, poor quality housing, and the pressing need for new homes.

In 1963 there seemed to be space and the will to build, the site at the centre of the image flanked by ageing Victorian terraces and industry.

Soon to become the Mottram Street Development.

Back in 1965 these were the highest housing tower blocks in Greater Manchester.

The work of borough architects John Rank and Clifford Fernley.

1960’s Photographs from the Stockport Image Archive

1980’s photographs from The Tower Block

Typically they incorporated concrete street furniture, sculptural and decorative detail, in keeping with the age.

Like many other developments of the period they have subsequently been clad, fenced, painted and secured beyond recognition.

There was a raised concrete play area, of which nothing has survived.

A little of their original character however has prevailed – a William Mitchellesque fallen obelisk, along with some panelling and planters.

The monolith was designed by Peter Shuttleworth, a newly qualified architect at Stockport Council

Curious to see public art behind bars

– would that they were removed.

Gore Brook – A History

Posted on September 19, 2017September 20, 2017 by modernmoocher

To begin at the beginning, well actually to begin in the middle and walk to the current beginning. The Gore Brook flows from the Lower Gorton Reservoir and from there onwards to meet the Chorlton Brook in the west, though I should imagine that prior to the construction of the waterworks, it was fed by more distant moorland waters.

Manchester being on the eastern edge of the Lancashire Plain and the western edge of the Pennines is riddled with rivers, rivers which now wriggle in an under and overground web, across heavily developed urban areas. Following the Industrial Revolution former meadow, common and farmland was overwritten by factories, housing and roads, the rural character of the rivers and brooks soon becoming darkened and polluted by the surrounding industries.

I was lead here by my search for a lost pub The Garratt on Pink Bank Lane, then drawn in further by this site The Red Path of Longsight.

The Red Path is a pedestrian link between Pink Bank Lane and the Gorton boundary at Buckley Road. It roughly follows the course of Gore Brook. The original footpath, running from Buckley Road to the bank of the brook, was made using black cinders. It was probably made in the 1940s to provide access to the allotments located on either side. In the early 1950s , a concrete bridge was laid across Gore Brook and the footpath extended to Pink Bank Lane. This section used red bricks in it’s construction, probably supplied by Jacksons brickworks . Crushed bricks were then used as a topping to make the path smoother and fill in any cracks. The thoroughfare soon became known as the Red Path.

So wide eyed and mapless I bowled up at Brook Terrace, just off Stockport Road Longsight, in search of The Gore and its source.

In the early 1900’s the river was still open and bridged, here at Stockport Road, later culverted and covered – anticipating the arrival of Tesco’s and Granada TV Rentals.

From there we pass under the railway along Brook Terrace and into Parry Road.

The underpass is still there and very much in use, as is Stanley Grove School – the Manchester Central Schools’ Kitchens are long gone, along with the food filled, insulated aluminium cases, that fed the hungry mouths of many, with semolina, pink custard, meat pies and lumpy mash.

Onwards to Elgar Street and still no sign of the river, hidden beneath our feet, the corner of Northmoor Road, can be seen on the corner, no longer distributing dividends, but now providing social housing.

We arrive at Pink Bank Lane, a rich mix of terraced homes, flats and factories – and the long lost Garratt, and the long lost Gore.

Though the lazy, lazy river has been confined in a brick lined wind, to meet the ever pressing needs of the Gorton Sewage Works.

The river then hugs the edge of Annie Lea Playing fields on Buckley Road, until it disappears again as it meets Mount Road, the playing fields are still open ground – the Manchester Cleansing Department, seen on the left – is no more.

Here on Knutsford Road we see the construction of the tunnels and culverts, the footbridge to the left spanning the railway, is still there.

1907

1911

1914

Finally we see The Gore reemerging clear, clean, wide, proud and resplendent in Sunny Brow Park, where it is still maintained as a decorative, duck-filled lake.

1907

1910

1964

Briefly underground again and into the back of Far Lane, skirting the Brookfield Church graveyard.

1920

1937

1964

Then tunnelling under Hyde Road at the back of the church lodge, appearing once again alongside Tan Yard Brow.

1904

1922

1964

The manmade waterfall continues to cascade, the Fairfield to Old Trafford railway is now the Fallowfield Loop, Manchester Cycleway, young lads no longer mess about in wellies and torn Tek Sac jeans on the bank, the Tannery no longer tans.

Then we end our journey by the broad expanse of the Lower Gorton Reservoir, implausibly dotted with jolly yachts, and home to a now absent stepped outflow stream. Look up to the east, and there you’ll see the moors, you could go further.

All archive photographs from Manchester Local Image Collection.

Pleasure Gardens – Battersea

Posted on August 29, 2017August 29, 2017 by modernmoocher

So suddenly the war ended and all of a sudden the fun began, followed with indecent haste by a wholesale national lack of fun, no fun anywhere no how.

Well why not have a festival, a Festival of Britain!

The south bank of the Thames had once been home to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.

Why not put it there or thereabouts.

‘This was always a raucous place, but a temple of the muses too. Under the management of its gifted, quixotic master of ceremonies, Jonathan Tyers, it was perhaps the first public art gallery, hung with paintings by Hogarth and Hayman. The buildings – first Palladian then Gothic and exotic – were splendid and the music inspired. The Vauxhall season was unmissable. Royalty came regularly. Canaletto painted it, Casanova loitered under the trees, Leopold Mozart was astonished by the dazzling lights. The poor could manage an occasional treat. For everyone it was a fantasyland of wonder and pride.’

It was decided there and then, the government would enforce state funded fun!

Programmes were printed and works undertaken.

Posters were pasted, let the fun begin in Battersea – and all the rest is history.

Then just as suddenly the fun was all but blown away, by the chill wind of the incoming Tory Government.

Much to my surprise there are still remnants and reminders to be found on the site, planting, fountains furniture and sculptural structures abound, restored in 2011 by Wandsworth Council – a timely reminder of a time when we were encouraged to have fun on the rates.

Chesterfield – Magistrates Courts

Posted on August 21, 2017October 25, 2021 by modernmoocher

Mysteriously lacking much evidence of its past, save for this Historic England listing.

Chesterfield Courthouse – II Magistrates Court house. 1963-65. Designed by Prof S Allen and Robert Keenlyside for Chesterfield Borough Council, altered in 1975. Reinforced concrete, with decorative stone cladding, and timber roofs clad with copper sheeting. Double fan shaped plan, three storeys. Original east entrance front has recessed ground floor with central double glazed doors now blocked with glazed side lights. Either side four windows with concrete louvres to the offices. Above eleven bays topped with gables, the three central bays have recessed windows to both floors. Either side the two storey courts have grey slate panels with side lights and set back grey! green slate cladding. West front has recessed ground floor with eleven windows each with concrete louvres. Above eleven gabled bays, the central three and outer tow with grey slate cladding and side lights with set back grey green slate cladding. The four remaining bays on either side have recessed windows. The north and south sides have recessed angled facades with slightly recessed ground floor with glazed entrance at centre of east section with large glazed windows above. Flanking wings have concrete louvres set in grey slate cladding. Interior has original Y-shaped entrance hall way which rises up through all three floors. East entrance now blocked and converted to offices. Entrances from north and south into hallway with marled floor and marble clad columns with wooden ceilings and recessed lights. Central imperial type staircase marble clad with metal and wood balustrade. Upper floors have wooden clad walls and movable glazed screen for dividing access from juvenile court when in session. Two storey courts on upper floor retain original wooden cladding, ceilings and courtroom fittings, including magistrates bench, dock, seating for lawyers and the public.

And self evidently facing a very uncertain future:

2015 – The Grade II listed building, which is located between Rose Hill and West Bars, has received planning consent allowing it to be used for a range of purposes including office, retail and leisure facilities. Stuart Waite, associate director at Innes England in Derby, who is handling lettings on behalf of a private client, said: “We have been in serious discussions with a number of occupiers regarding this building for a variety of uses. “Occupier confidence is growing and with the economic forecast for 2015 looking positive we are confident that will see early interest converted into deals. “We are working closely with Chesterfield Borough Council which has identified the Rose Hill and West Bars area of the town as a key strategic location for growth.”

It has stood empty for the last few years and been a hotspot for vandalism.

Last July, arsonists set a wheelie bin on fire and pushed it up against the building, causing the flames to spread.

2017 – Chesterfield’s former magistrates’ court is being used as a drugs den, shock pictures reveal – and a council chief has warned that the building poses a danger to public health. Extremely concerning images obtained by the Derbyshire Times today show hypodermic needles and what appears to be heroin inside the historic property – as well as extensive damage in rooms and excrement smeared up walls.

Derbyshire Times.

It’s seen better days.

It remains on the market for £450,000 a steal if you ask me.

Thread Architects have proposed redevelopment as an Arts Centre

On the day of my visit there was little evidence of arts activity, save for a short performance piece by a heavily intoxicated mini-mosher and her partner – funding sources having proved to be at best illusory and subject to market forces.

Talk is cheap.

Take a walk on the wild green sward side of town, it remains a marvel, open and accessible, just requires a tender touch, of cash.

Bromley Street Manchester

Posted on August 16, 2017August 16, 2017 by modernmoocher

Bromley Street – its northern tip joining with Dantzic Street in the valley of the River Irk, so far so very bucolic, so very, very nice, the street that was going places, tucked cosily beneath the shade of the old L&Y bridge.

The south bank of the Irk is here very steep and between fifteen and thirty feet high. On this declivitous hillside there are planted three rows of houses, of which the lowest rise directly out of the river, while the front walls of the highest stand on the crest of the hill in Long Millgate. Among them are mills on the river, in short, the method of construction is as crowded and disorderly here as in the lower part of Long Millgate. Right and left a multitude of covered passages lead from the main street into numerous courts, and he who turns in thither gets into a filth and disgusting grime, the equal of which is not to be found – especially in the courts which lead down to the Irk, and which contain unqualifiedly the most horrible dwellings which I have yet beheld. Below it on the river there are several tanneries which fill the whole neighbourhood with the stench of animal putrefaction. The view from Ducie Bridge, mercifully concealed from mortals of small stature by a parapet as high as a man, is characteristic for the whole district. At the bottom flows, or rather stagnates, the Irk, a narrow, coal-black, foul-smelling stream, full of debris and refuse, which it deposits on the shallower right bank.

So said Mr Friedrich Engels.

“Not only the blackest but the most sluggish of all rivers” – was surrounded by road, rail, dwelling and factory, high density industrialisation through most of the last century.

Then all of sudden along came a series of events, that saw a shift away from inner-city manufacturing, the outsourcing of all sorts and the demolition of homes. The area and the city became a pale shadow of its former self. Help however was at hand, the boom in buy to let, overseas investment and an ever expanding professional middle class, eagerly paddled up the murky Irk, emulating the massed forces of 7th Cavalry and the Lone Ranger combined – hurrah!

If you earn a minimum of £300,000 a year, have a net worth in excess of £3m and want an exceptional mortgage service that is designed to suit your individual needs, get in touch.

What have you got to lose?

It’s the gravy train as thick, dark and rewarding as the very inky Irk itself!

The stylishly designed living areas and carefully considered external finishes within the new buildings, have been designed to compliment the rich industrial architectural style of the area.

A development that even Mr Friedrich Engels himself would be proud of.

But wait, all is not rosy in the digitally constructed flower box garden, that you may see before you, in our online presentation and brochures.

Pinnacle Alliance plans to build 344 luxury apartments on a site near Dantzic Street, as part of the ‘Northern Gateway’. Dozens of investors have paid up to £350,000 for the off-plan apartments in the proposed scheme. But two years since many first paid out for their home, no work has actually begun on the £30m scheme.

The dispute has led to a demonstration in Hong Kong, where around 50 buyers took to the streets over Christmas urging local authorities to take up their concerns. And in an unusual twist, protestors even recorded their own campaign song – to the tune of Jingle Bells – criticising Pinnacle.

On the day of my visit the site was home to several jackdaws, the charred husk of a burnt out car, hastily discarded childrens’ toys, the most curious of plywood constructs and a sense of anything and everything, ceasing to make any sense whatsoever.

This stunning development will be an original and inspiring place to live.

Buxton Raceway – High Edge

Posted on July 14, 2017July 15, 2017 by modernmoocher

About 340 million years ago, the area which is now the Peak District was covered by a warm, clear, shallow sea. The sea was full of microscopic shell-creatures, and on the sea bed there were several coral reefs and beds of shellfish. Over a long period, millions of years, these creatures lived and died in this area, gradually laying down a thick bed of calcium deposits from their shells up to a depth of 600m in places. This is now the rock which is known as Carboniferous Limestone and this rock lies under the whole of the Peak District.

Then suddenly in 1972 the Buxton Rock Festival relocated from the nearby Pavilion Gardens to an area high atop the moors, on High Edge.

Don’t recall rain but it was very cold at night. The beer tent was selling Party Seven cans of beer, with seven pints in them. The queues for them were so long you had to make an important decision one can or two? Unfortunately I chose the latter, while one wasn’t enough, two was too much for a sixteen year old. Part way through the second can, I got up to dance to Easy Livin’ by Uriah Heep and fell flat on my face – Tim Hardman

Then suddenly in 1974.

I raced at the first meeting at High Edge Raceway and competed in that first year when the track was just a bulldozed dirt oval with earth banks and tyres for protection. I remember going to the Quiet Woman pub in Earl Sterndale for the first drivers meeting to see if there would be enough support for racing to take place. The people who went included a group of disillusioned hot rodders seeking to get away from the Belle Vue promoter, others ranged from truckers and farmers to car-nuts who just wanted to race anything. The first meeting I well remember those earth banks because I spent most of my first race sat on one, I couldn’t get the car off the top where I had been shunted by another racer. I wasn’t a successful banger racer and I didn’t continue after that first year but I am glad that racing has kept going at the venue – Alan Inwood

2017 and the track continues to grow and thrive currently trading as Buxton Raceway.

Offering a wide range of motor sports, racing anything with wheels and an engine, including bangers, buses and speedway bikes, being home to the Buxton Hitmen.

I often cycle or walk by and was privileged on this occasion to be given a guide tour by track worker, keen racer and self confessed car-nut Shane.

Pop in if your passing, you won’t be disappointed.

Sea Front Shelter – Hastings

Posted on July 9, 2017July 9, 2017 by modernmoocher

I have been here before, adoring the full range of Hasting’s sea front shelters.

They form an integral part of the general scheme designed and overseen by The Concrete King Sidney Little.

On my most recent visit the most distant shelter was receiving a wash and brush up, a brand new coat of paint or two, restored to bright red and white shipshape order, this land locked delight looked ready to set sail across the adjacent Channel to who knows where.

Offering a somewhat occluded view of blue skies and faraway shores, the bus stops here and goes on forever and forever.

Fire Station – Bury

Posted on May 25, 2017 by modernmoocher

Curvilinear, cantilevered, concrete canopies wave – wave goodbye.

Opened in 1967

Closed in 2012, it continues to stand idly by, as the Bury Town centre doughnuts the site with shiny new developments.

A striking tower topped by a hyper parabolic roof with a cheeky twist, it remains an elegant feature on The Rock.

Facing an uncertain future it can only be a matter of time, as the new build proliferates that the fire station disappears in a puff of smoke.

Who you gonna call?

Subway – Scarborough

Posted on May 3, 2017 by modernmoocher

When is a subway not a sandwich?

When it’s a doughnut!

Hard by the seafront linking Foreshore, Cleveland Way and Valley Road sits a neat little tight little island, giving pedestrian access to almost everywhere – and a car park.

As with every other torus worth calling a torus, at its very centre sits the presence of absence, darkened concrete subterranean causeways, linking everything to nothing.

There’s a world going on underground.

Paddling Pool – Whitby

Posted on May 2, 2017May 2, 2017 by modernmoocher

High atop West Cliff Whitby is a pale blue imitation of the deep blue North Sea below.

A TG Green Cornishware blue and cream striped pot, reimagined on the distant Yorkshire coast, in paddling pool form.

Scarborough Borough Council has resurfaced the paddling pool, re-concreted and repainted the bottom and the sides. The railings adjacent to the footpaths at Whitby Pavilion have been repaired and re-painted and seating next to the crazy golf has also been improved.

Martin Pedley, Scarborough Borough Council’s asset and risk manager said:

The council has, in conjunction with the voluntary sector, invested both time and money in continuing to revitalise the West Cliff area in preparation for the summer season and the influx of visitors to Whitby.

West Cliff councillor Joe Plant added:

The improvement works that have been done both last year and this year is most welcome. Not only the visitors will benefit, but local people also and it again shows working in partnership with the voluntary sector does make a difference.

The Big Society in action, replacing railings improving lives.

I arrived in late April the pool as yet sans d’eau, more of a pedalling pool than paddling pool as the BMX bandits invaded the space, in direct contravention of the rules and regulations.

The water when present is some twelve inches deep, clearly better suited to larking, splashing and cavorting rather than performing The Twister, a bewildering blur of twists and turns two and a half back-somersaults with two and a half twists during the 1.5 seconds between launching and entering the water at 40mph.

The pool is flanked to the north by a sweeping Lubetkin style, flat roofed pavilion complete with fully functioning toilet facilities.

Turn your back on the Abbey, go wild – take a wet walk on the West Cliff side.

Salford Shopping City

Posted on April 11, 2017April 11, 2017 by modernmoocher

The construction of the shopping centre and surrounding areas continued and on 21 May 1970 the new Salford Market officially opened. From 1971 onwards new shops inside the precinct itself began to open.

However, due to a lack of funds and a political scandal which saw chairman Albert Jones jailed for eight months construction of Salford Precinct was halted. The site had only 95 shop units compared to the proposed 260, the hotel and two storey car park were never built.

In 1991 the building was refurbished at a cost of £4 million, this included the installation of roofs across various walkways, making large swathes of the centre undercover. The shopping centre which at the time was known as Salford Precinct was renamed Salford Shopping City.

On 9 August 1994 the Manchester Evening News reported that Salford City Council was planning on selling off Salford Shopping City to raise money for local housing repairs, these plans split the ruling Labour Party council, one councillor telling the press that it would be like selling off the family silver.

In 2000 Salford Shopping City was eventually sold to a private company for £10 million in an effort to cut the council’s deficit. It was then later sold in March 2010 to Praxis Holdings for £40 million, the company stated that it wanted to invest in the precinct and link it to the new food superstore.

This is a tale of our times – 60s and 70s redevelopment designed and built in the rampant spirit of free enterprise and uber-buoyant consumerism, falling foul of an economic downturn, subsequent unemployment and shrinking retail spending. Property is ping-ponged between local authority and speculative developers.

Following the riots of 2011 pledges were made regarding the future of the site, plans are still afoot, as yet to be rendered corporeal. Although the area has benefitted from an influx of students and a refurbishment of housing stock, there is pressure on the prosperity of the precinct from thriving retail developments in nearby Manchester and the Trafford Centre.

The architectural core of the site has been retained, including the 23 storey Briar Court residential tower, though diluted by more recent additions, misguided post modern detailing that threatens the integrity of full many a post war development.

Tiviot Dale to Norris Bank – Stockport

Posted on April 5, 2017August 1, 2020 by modernmoocher

This is a journey I made as a BR Guide Bridge goods guard in the late 1970s, often with driver Eric Clough, into the George’s Road scrap yard. It was also at one time the Cheshire Lines passenger route out of Stockport Tiviot Dale Station to Liverpool, Southport, St Pancras and beyond.

This is a journey I made on foot through bramble, puddle and scrub on a now disused line, cheek by jowl with a motorway and the passing crowd, blissfully unaware of its existence.

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Merseyway – Stockport

Posted on April 1, 2017March 21, 2021 by modernmoocher

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.

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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

Lansbury Estate – London

Posted on March 28, 2017March 29, 2017 by modernmoocher

The Lansbury Estate, to the north of East India Dock Road, is the most important, largest and best-known council estate in Poplar. It demonstrates the different trends in post-war council house design and layout. The interest of the estate lies as much, if not more, in the story of its planning and construction, as in what was actually built. This is especially true of its first phase, which formed the basis of the Live Architecture Exhibition in the 1951 Festival of Britain.

Originally outlined in the 1943 plan for London, replacing the bomb damaged homes of displaced dockers, the estate has weathered well enough, though changes in demographics, the ever greater engulfing tide of gentrification and the containerisation of all ports, brings a fresh set of challenges and changes.

Go east – I visited the V&A Micro Museum, which has become a focus for residents’ and visitors’ memories and projections of a certain uncertain past and future. Arriving by the Docklands Light Railway, I was immediately drawn towards my destination, by the prominent Lansbury Tower, its clock patiently ticking away the time to and from 1951. Welcomed by staff and fellow travellers at the Chrisp Street Market site we began our tour at the heart of the Festival area – further details of which can be found here at Municipal Dreams.

A mix of market, shops, Festival pub, warm cream London brick terraces and low rise, later tower blocks, schools, churches and open grassed communal areas. On a cold and getting colder late winter’s day, a smattering of residents went purposefully about their business.

Life goes on.

Next time everything’s going to be different.

Seven Sisters – Return to Rochdale

Posted on March 23, 2017 by modernmoocher

I’ve passed this way before, they’re hard to miss, seven substantial tower blocks towering over the town on College Bank.

But what goes up, may come down.

Construction in 1963

Demolition in 2017 is one suggestion – following years of poor maintenance, problems of heating and ingress, plus a whole host of other reasons outlined here.

The housing trust in consultation with residents, have produced a tentative plan.

This may or may not include the demolition of one or more blocks. On the day of my visit, the tenants I spoke with understood that the blocks faced an uncertain future, and were rightly concerned by the rumours and conjecture. The majority would prefer to stay put, having lived there for several years, raising families and building homes.

Whatever the outcome I hope that the wishes of the residents are not overwhelmed by political expedience, or the will of the developer.

Take a look for yourself.

Barmouth Street – Bradford Manchester

Posted on February 11, 2017April 10, 2019 by modernmoocher

Once again I am following in the footsteps of Rita Tushinghan and the Taste of Honey film crew, this time my research has lead me to Barmouth Street, Manchester.

To the east of the city centre, Bradford Park School was the scene of the opening scene, Jo’s netball match. The school is now long gone, now the site of a much enlarged public park, as can be seen from the map above.

Shelagh Delaney, author of the original play on which the film was based, can be seen fleetingly in this opening scene, appearing momentarily over the games teacher’s shoulder.

I have found one archive image of the school, as the scholars prepare for the annual Whit Walks, this along with many other community traditions and conventions, have all but disappeared from the streets of the city.

This was once a tight knit community, surrounded by industry, full employment and a short lived period of post-war growth and optimism.

A corner shop on very corner, though by the time I worked as a Mothers Pride van lad in the late sixties, many were already on their last legs. A lethal cocktail of closing factories, incipient supermarkets, and an urban renewal programme, which lead to slum clearance, would change the character of the area forever.

I am indebted to the photographic work of T Brooks who seems to have spent much of the mid Sixties documenting the streets, his pictures are now kept here in the Manchester Image Archives. Sadly I have found no further reference to him or his images, but have nothing but admiration for all those who pass unnoticed amongst us, camera forever poised.

Central to the social and sanitary life of that that community were the Barmouth Street Baths and Washhouse, where citizens would swim, wash, dry, iron, chat convivially, and surprisingly – play bowls.

Now long gone, along with the provision of local authority nursery care. There were similar low level pre-fabricated buildings dotted all over the city. Built quickly and cheaply, to provide for a growing population, of largely working-class families, with no shortage of work opportunities.

This was a time of great social change, a time which the film attempts to anticipate -a more diverse, and hopefully more tolerant time, a time of possibilities and opportunities for all.

Holt Town Manchester – Part One

Posted on February 9, 2017February 10, 2017 by modernmoocher

1785 Established by David Holt, and described as the only known example of a factory colony in Manchester, that is, an isolated mill complex with housing for the workers.

1794 Mills advertised for sale following the bankruptcy of David Holt and Company.

Things, as we know, have a tendency to come and go – ’twas ever thus.

A whole history of the area can be found here.

River Medlock Holt Town

The area has seen a transition, in some two hundred year or more, from a leafy rural idyll, to smoke choked industrial hell and back again.

Pollard Street

Photographs from the Manchester Image Archive.

In 2014 I visited the site of the former Distillers Company, later Air Liquide UK, production had ceased. The factory was just about standing, litter and detritus strewn, unloved and unwanted, temporary home to the homeless.

The Industrial Revolution has been and gone – bye bye.

There are plans for redevelopment, couched in the terms of the professional new-speak of the new urban renewalists.

The international design competition for Holt Town looked for a solution to the dilemma of providing a sustainable, distinctive, high density family-led residential community in close proximity of the Manchester regional centre.

Promising open green spaces and housing based on the traditional European perimeter block model, not a mention of a mill.

Possibly lasting a little longer than David Holt’s dream, and subsequent manifestations.