Uncategorized

To begin at the beginning high on a hill overlooking the city – Park Hill.

Park Hill was previously the site of back-to-back housing, a mixture of two and three storey tenement buildings, waste ground, quarries and steep alleyways. Clearance of the area began during the 1930s.

Following the war it was decided that a radical scheme needed to be introduced to deal with rehousing the Park Hill community. Inspired by Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith under the supervision of J. L. Womersley, Sheffield Council’s City Architect, began work in 1953 designing the Park Hill Flats.

Construction began in 1957 – officially opened on 16 June 1961.

The complex remained structurally sound, unlike many system-built blocks of the era, and controversially was Grade II* listed in 1998 making it the largest listed building in Europe.

A part-privatisation scheme by the developer Urban Splash in partnership with English Heritage to turn the flats into upmarket apartments, business units and social housing is now underway.

Plan for Sheffield 1963

I’ve been here before and again, visited pubs that don’t exist – The Parkway, Scottish Queen, Link or Earl George are all long gone.

Let’s go down town.

Take a look at Elements Fire Steel Brian Asquith’s work unveiled on May 10th 1965 at the former Westminster Bank – subsequently sited here on the Sheffield Hallam campus. He was also responsible for the sculptural work in the Peace Gardens.

Onwards to the Co-op’s former Castle House Store.

Grade II Iisted  Co-operative department store described by Historic England as  ‘1964 by George S Hay, Chief Architect for CWS, with interior design by Stanley Layland, interior designer for CWS. Reinforced concrete with Blue Pearl granite tiles and veneers, grey granite tiles and veneers, buff granite blocks, glass, and brick.’

The original branch was destroyed in the Blitz, to be replaced by a temporary prefabricated shop.

Seen here in Sean Madner’s wonderful photographs.

Vulcan by Boris Tietze commisioned by Horne Brothers 1961 for their head office building No. 1 King Street. Glass fibre on a metal armature the 8 foot high figure holding a bundle of metal rods.

Off to court – Sheffield Magistrates Courts of 1978 designed by B Warren City Planning Officer and Architect, along with the adjacent Police Headquarters of 1970. Described by the Pevsner guide as – coherent in design if not particularly loveable.

Under construction 1977

1989

Passing the Graves by City Architect WG Davies 1929-34, with a friendly nod to inter-war Modernity. Intended to form one side of an unrealised civic square proposed by Patrick Abercrombie in 1924. The exterior carved work is by Alfred and William Tory.

Visualisation by Geo Daniels

There were major exhibitions in both 1945 and 1963 illustrating the plans down up for the redevelopment of the city.

1945

1963

Off to the shops and the former Cole Brothers Stores by York, Rosenberg and Mardall, clad in their trademark white tiles opened in September 1963 – currently trading as John Lewis.

1969

Tucked around the corner my go to guy for up to the minute cast concrete public art William Mitchell.

Along The Moor to the Moorfoot Building of 1978 by the Property Services Agency, former Manpower Services Commission HQ – now home to council offices.

Under construction 1977

Crucible by Judith Bluck located outside the Manpower Service Commission Building, commissioned for the Property Services Agency of the Department of the Environment in 1979. It is a large bronze-coloured plastic fountain sculpture. The artist referred to it as an exploding crucible.

Finishing up at the renowned Moore Street Power Station

Electricity substation. 1968 to designs by consulting architects Jefferson, Sheard and Partners, Sheffield, led by Bryan Jefferson, in association with the Regional Civil Engineers’ Department of the CEGB North East Region. Contractors, Longden & Sons Ltd, Sheffield. Reinforced concrete frame with board-marked finish with formwork bolt marks, construction and daywork joints emphasized, concrete floor slabs, blue engineering facing bricks, cladding panels of Cornish granite aggregate.

A short circuitous tour around the town’s post war architecture.

Stockport along with every other town in the country was asked by central government to draw up a plan for reconstruction, to be implemented at the end of WW2. The result was invariably a wholesale rebuilding of bomb damaged and aged industrial, civic and domestic architecture.

Post 1945 such plans were seldom realised, Coventry and Plymouth being the exceptions. Changes in government, shortages of materials, labour and finance all played their part. We are left with a piecemeal implementation taking place over a much longer time scale than was originally envisaged.

The proposed Market Hall remains a fantasy in line and wash.

The Town Hall was spared and the planned civic sector took shape over some sixty years, the station approach area is now in its second phase of rebirth and rebuilding – the original 80s development of Grand Central now largely rubble – a new new plan is now in play.

A whole new transport interchange is to be built, replacing the existing 80s Bus Station.

Some 60s structures have been and gone, others are to be demolished or transformed into apartments, as towns strive to repopulate the centres following decades of abandonment to the moribund absence of a thriving night time economy.

So as of January 2019 we find ourselves at the centre of a town with change at its very centre, some of that which we see will be transformed, some will disappear.

All That Is Solid Melts into Air.

Petersgate House

A compact 70s block, that combines the roughest of precast panels, with the smoothest of *V* shaped supports, housing the car park below. The north face is a solid block of rough mid-toned aggregated recessed concrete, the remaining elevations pierced with windows and to the east a brick service tower.

I miss the Water Board offices, formerly adjoining the site.

Hilton House

Sixties built Hilton House is the former home of local furniture manufacturers New Day. It continues to impress, more or less unaltered, with its dramatic interlocking volumes confidently occupying the topography of the site. A commanding block of some ten storeys, with well proportioned bands of windows and mixed stone and concrete cladding. Linked to two further horizontal blocks, which are finished in contrasting styles. 

The building is currently in occupation as office space but there are imminent plans to convert the development into apartments following a Studio KMA concept design.

Stopford House

There had been proposals to extend the Town Hall provision since 1945, which were finally realised in 1975. Designed by JS Rank OBE and built at a cost of £1,500,000 – to provide additional office provision for the Local Authority. A further two blocks were planned but never built.

The main block is clad in 1400 exposed aggregate precast panels and the link blocks have ribbed walls constructed with in situ concrete, bush hammered to expose the limestone aggregate. The precast panels were carefully matched in order to harmonise with the existing Town Hall, the mix contained coarse aggregate from the Scottish Granite Company of Creetown, a fine Leemoor sand from the Fordamin Company, together with white cement.

There are tow levels of underground parking beneath the whole of the development. The piazza between the blocks was to have had a water cascade falling into a pond running the whole length of the area.

Though exciting and expansive in the modern manner the piazza area, sadly, seems little used.

Missing in action Covent Garden Flats once a little inter-war Berlin style low rise development now a Barratt Home urban paradise.

Merseyway

The story of Merseyway begins in 1936 with the quarter mile bridging of the river. It continues with a series of post-war integrateddevelopment proposals, finally completed in 1965. It has accommodated much earlier buildings, notably the Co-operative Store, now Primark, and the properties on the adjoining Prince’s Street. The multi storey car park with its pierced cast concrete screen and tower dominates the site. Many original features are missing, sympathetic paving, sculpture, exterior travelators, signage and kiosks. The use of the upper tier is negligible and piecemeal additions have left a rather cluttered feel, replacing a former well structured integrity. Just recently a small portion of the river has been exposed, following the repairs to the bridge of 1891. There have been discussions regarding the opening up of the whole extent of the river, revealing it through reinforced glazing.

Shopping Precinct

Opened in 1965, and extensively refurbished in the 1990s, it is a large pedestrianised area built on stilts over the River Mersey with two levels of walkways giving access to the retail units.

The scheme was developed by a consortium of interested parties who formed as Stockport Improvements Limited. In partnership with the Stockport Co-operative Society. The architects were Bernard Engle and Partners in conjunction with officers of Stockport Corporation. The separation of pedestrians and cars, the service areas, the multi level street, the city block that negotiates difficult topography to its advantage, are all planning moves that are of the new, ordered and systemised, second wave modernism in the UK.

Notable is the pierced concrete car park screen by Alan Boyson.

Constructed from three basic modules, each one being rotated to form six options in a seemingly random order.

BHS Murals

At the side of the BHS store in Merseyway are five concrete panels depicting local people, events and symbols. Commissioned by BHS in 1978 – To fill space on the blank wall at the side of the shop. They are the work of Joyce Pallot 1912-2004 and Henry Collins, 1910-1994 – two artist/designers, who along with John Nash, establishedthe Colchester Arts Group, during the 1930s. Their work was featured in the Festival of Britain, GPO Tower and Expo 70, along with other retail outlets in Bexhill, Cwmbran, Southhampton, Newcastle and Colchester.

M60

The Hatton Street footbridge has two spans of in-situ u-section deck, is at ground level on the north side, but is reached by steps or ramp from Great Egerton Street on the south.

By 1974, the motorway had reached the outskirts of Stockport , running onto the congested A560. The 2.5-mileStockport East-West bypass opened to traffic in July 1982 as far as the Portwood Roundabout, then junction 13 of the M63, now junction 27 of the M60. A significant feature of the bypass is where the motorway passes through two of the arches of the large railway viaduct  in the centre of Stockport – one of the largest brick-built structures in Europe. In much of the cutting on the eastern side of the viaduct, red sandstone, on which much of the town is built, can be seen very close to the motorway. The section of motorway was widened from two to three lane carriageways in 1999 and 2000, around the time when the M63 was renumbered to M60.

Thanks for coming along, it was a pleasure to meet you.

But how and why did we all get here?

Much is made of Park Hill’s relationship with Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation and there are clear links both visually and conceptually.

The open rectilinear concrete structure and integrated services and surrounding space – replacing a grid-iron of back to backs considered unfit for purpose.

Architects Jack Lynn and Ivor Smith under the supervision of John Lewis Womersley, Sheffield Council’s City Architect, began work in 1953 designing the Park Hill Flats. Construction began in 1957. Park Hill Part One was officially opened by Hugh Gaitskell, MP and then Leader of the Opposition, on 16 June 1961.

The initial success of the development was followed by a period of slow decline, mirroring the fate of post-industrial Britain. Unemployment, lack of investment and the public and central government perception of social housing all contributing to Park Hill’s eventual closure.

Despite the problems, the complex remained structurally sound, and was Grade II* listed in 1998. A part-privatisation scheme by the developer Urban Splash in partnership with English Heritage to turn the flats into apartments, business units and social housing is now underway. The renovation was due to start in around 2007 but was put on hold due to the recession with work starting in 2009 with the first phase open to residents in 2010/11.

So today we see a site in transition, partially resuscitated, half tinned up and stripped out.

How then do we photograph present-day Park Hill?

My answer it to walk and look, take time to explore the site and consider your response.

You can approach the project as an entirely formal process, considering:

Viewpoint – where you physically stand and look.

Light – naturally occurring, from the ever changing sun or artificially from flash, its source and your relative position to it and the subject, are of primary importance.

Composition – framing the subject carefully on screen or through the viewfinder, taking care to include only the elements you feel are of consequence.

Are those elements organised in a grid, symmetrical or diagonal?

By changing the camera angle the composition can be radically modified.

All the visual arts rely on a common vocabulary:

Shape – the physical form both geometric and organic.

Line – the implied or actual path between points that lead and direct the eye.

Tone – the range from dark to light.

Colour – the chromatic value from bright primary to dull non-colour.

Texture – taking the rough with the smooth.

Pattern – the repetition of shape

These elements can be composed to form contrast and/or harmony, as straight meets bent, whilst red and grey collide.

Historically record photography has taken such a dispassionate view of a site or subject, and this objective approach was taken up by the New Topographers.

Many of the photographers associated with new topographics including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Nicholas Nixon and Bernd and Hiller Becher, were inspired by the man-made, selecting subject matter that was matter-of-fact. Parking lots, suburban housing and warehouses were all depicted with a beautiful stark austerity, almost in the way early photographers documented the natural landscape.

Alternate to this formal approach is a more subjective narrative style of photography.

What do you think and feel?

Fashioning a personal response, through that which you choose to include or exclude, in the pictures that you produce.

Roger Mayne in 1961 framing the optimism of the newly opened estate.

Bill Stephenson in 1988 capturing the later days Park Hill set against a backdrop of decline.

As seen in the recent S1 Artspace exhibition Love Among The Ruins.

Both photographers have chosen to consider the relationship of the residents to the estate, rather than simply make a formal record, theirs is generally considered to be a Humanist documentary position.

This does not preclude the consideration of the formal elements listed above – it is a question of emphasis.

Working with people can be a longer term project – where access and privacy are negotiable – to be handled with care.

We can however record the evidence of where people have been – it just requires a patient and curious eye.

In building up a personal response consider the use of a wide or establishing shot to set the scene, giving context for that which is to come.

Moving in ever closer for telling details.

I’ve been here once or twice before.

Why are all these photographers coming here from Manchester?

Last train to Park Hill 

We’ve all changed.

So ta-ra Sheffield and Park Hill see you again soon.

This a journey to work, my mam’s first day at work, cycling from her family home in Hill Street Ashton-under-lyne, to Ashton Brothers Mill Hyde.

Clara Jones was born in 1924, daughter to Nelly and Sam. She grew up in the west end of Ashton, tough and bright – an eldest sister who stood up for her own and looked after herself. On passing her entrance exam to grammar school, she was then denied entry, the family having little or no money for the expenses of uniform and books.

So in 1938 aged fourteen, she found a job and a second hand bike, found herself on the way to work. So in 2017 aged sixty two I followed her, the three miles along the very same roads, the very same roads that had not remained the same.

Hill Street was a mix of poor quality two up two down terraces, industry and pubs. There are no archive photographs to be found, an area thought too unremarkable to record. There remains traces of that industry and newer dwellings.

Above is the site of her former home.

The view at Hill Street’s junction with Cavendish Street would have taken in the Brougham Inn, where her father drank and I would later play in 1970 with our band, along with Clive Gregson.

Once a Gartsides Ales pub, my father Eddie Marland had worked at the nearby brewery as a drayman, and told tales of deliveries, where Neddy had much more horse sense, than the drunken drivers.

It closed in 1972 under the auspices of its last landlord Arthur Davies.

All archival photographs from the Tameside Image Archive

Today all thoughts of horse drawn drays, bands and draught bitter have been washed away by progress, pampas grass, by-passes and ASDA.

From here we turn right towards Dukinfield, moving from Lancashire into Cheshire, under the railway and over the Alma Bridge – named for the Battle of Alma in Crimea and the local men who served.

Ahead on the left is the site of Greens Cycle Shop, I bought my first touring bike from Laurie Green, a Dawes Galaxy – he and his partner Eileen were and possibly still are members of one of the oldest cycling clubs in the country, the Dukinfield CC. The shop was once announced by a sign written gable end, now all that remains is this sad fragment.

Up the hill along King Street she would have passed shop after shop, long established businesses, serving a local community that neither drove or travelled too far, in order to sustain their everyday needs. Broad open-eyed windows displaying varied wares, unhindered by intrusive steel shutters.

On her left was the Princess Cinema, which can be seen to the right of the photograph below. Opened as the Princess Picture Theatre with 700 seats, the proprietor was W.B. Holt. Later it was operated by Ashton New Theatre Ltd and became part of the H.D.Moorehouse circuit. Its final years were under the operation of Orr Enterprises Ltd of Coventry. Dukinfield was once home to two other cinemas the Palladium and the Oxford – both long gone, swamped by the unstoppable stampede of bingo and telly.

It currently trades as the Pyramid Snooker Club, there are small remnants of its former self visible to the right and left of the building, unhidden by the tastefully intrusive red and green cladding.

Today’s fascias exhibit the final, vital, vinyl abandon that characterises the contemporary visual environment of the high street, along with a kaleidoscopic array of international  fast food outlets.

The Town Hall still stands tall, its clock chimes, boinging down on the diminutive figure of Sir Robert Dukinfield – conqueror of the Isle of Man, the tiny fellow also defended Stockport Bridge against Prince Rupert and conducted the Siege of Wythenshawe.

The constituent parts of the almost recently created Tameside, were once independent UDCs, all with their individual civic pride and unique identity, before that the fiefdoms’ of local dignitaries, afore that just there.

What were once mighty boozers overflowing with customers and kindness, are now dwellings, overflowing with cold comfort and UPVC windows. When cotton was king, her route would have been peppered with pubs, slaking the thirsts of thirsty workers, hot footing it from the surrounding places of industry and commerce.

There were once well appointed post offices their architectural type formed in the kilns from local clay, the wholesome white-hot, fired earth technology of the nineteenth century.

The road now crosses rail at the White Bridge, to the right is the site of the former Dewsnap Yard, where my grandfather Sam and I found work as plate layer and freight guard respectively.

A view down Victoria Street opens up on the way to Hyde, everywhere, in industry, street and pub names we find evidence of queen and empire – an age of empire, industry and deference that did not survive intact.

On the right stands the refurbished Newton Hall:

This cruck-framed buildings, stands on the corner of Dukinfield Road and Dunkirk Lane in Hyde, Cheshire. Carbon dating placed the construction of this building to c.1370 and it survived because much later it was encased in a brick building having a blue slate roof. By the 1960s it was in a ruinous condition and in 1968 Sir George Kenyon, the Chairman of William Kenyon & Sons Ltd of Dukinfield, Cheshire, rescued it. Browns of Wilmslow undertook the restoration work and this was completed in 1970.

During the Roman era, a track connecting the Roman garrison town of Mamucium (Manchester) and the fort of Ardotalia (long known as Melandra at Gamesley near Glossop) crossed the river Tame hereabouts and passed close by the site of the future Newton Hall. To cross the Pennines, the Romans then made use of an ancient British ridgeway from Ardotalia. This track was in use until medieval times as a packhorse road.

An finally here we are at the Ashton Brothers‘ factory gates mam, you along with hundreds of others, would walk on through. She doubtless, with no small sense of trepidation, entering into the whirring world of cotton spinning.

But it’s all gone, long gone – all that remains is a rusty A and the dusty footings.

But I remember,

I remember you Clara Jones,

Your bike, your journey to work,

Your kind  smile.

Unfortunately, the retail market has changed quickly and dramatically and there is now no demand from the retail sector to meet the original plan, which was for a large supermarket to take over the sites of the former police headquarters and the Castle Leisure Centre, with the proceeds going towards building a new leisure centre on top of the Q Park in Knowsley Street. However, we are still determined to fulfil the potential of the old police headquarters site, where the building is now nearing demolition.

In 2010, Bury police’s headquarters in Irwell Street relocated to a brand new facility at Castlecroft Road, leaving the old site derelict.

Bury Council owns the site and had intended to sell it to a supermarket firm as part of an £8 million project.

That deal fell through in January last year when the supermarket chain suddenly decided to scale back its expansion plans.

Almost a shadow, a shadow of it’s former self, the police station in Bury – a concrete gem by Lancashire County Architect Roger Booth, is in the slow process of absenting itself from the material world.

Closed since 2010, on the day of my visit the podium tower, surrounded by rubble, was little more than a playground for the local kids and urbex intruders. A vista of broken windows, distressed prestressed concrete and tortured steel.

Hurry along nothing to see here – soon.

Other Roger Booth cop shops are available – in Morecambe and Blackpool

The Manchester Modernist Society are proud to presents an exhibition of Galt toys, games, puzzles, catalogues and books.

At the Manchester Central Library

Commencing Tuesday 4th April running until  Wednesday 31st May 2017

St Peters Square, City Centre, M2 5PD

• Monday: 9am-8pm
• Tuesday: 9am-8pm
• Wednesday: 9am-8pm
• Thursday: 9am-8pm
• Friday: 9am-5pm
• Saturday: 9am-5pm
• Sunday: closed

Entrance is free.

Launch – Wednesday  12th April  6.00 -8.00.

There will be nine cases on the library’s first floor, by the entrance to the reference section, literally filled with fun and games, which were produced by Galt Toys of Greater Manchester in the Sixties and Seventies.

Under the direction of Ken Garland Associates they rebranded, designed and produced an innovative range of modernist educational and entertaining products, using a simplified, graphic, bold and colourful approach to children’s play.

Come along and take a look!