Available online here or call in the Modernist Shop on Port Street Manchester.
Tameside Moderne
By Steve Marland
A comprehensive guide to the Borough’s modern architecture.
Almost two years in the making.
Tameside east of Manchester – a volcanic explosion of concrete, glass, steel, brick and wood!
From sacred sites to suburban substations, a rollercoaster ride through provincial style.
Softcover, 84pages,
B&W
148 x 210xmm – landscape
£10 well spent – be quick these will fly!
The first school of design in the UK, the Government School of Design, was established in 1837 and went on to become the Royal College of Art. It marked the beginnings of the development of technical education in the UK, which expanded in the remaining decades of the 19th century, and was largely instigated by the Science and Art Department of the Board of Trade, formed in 1853. In 1856 the Science and Art Department transferred from the Board of Trade to the Education Department and administered grant-aid to art schools from 1856 and to schools of design and technical schools from 1868.
The Technical Instruction Act 1889 permitted local authorities to levy rates to aid technical or manual instruction. County and borough councils began to provide technical instruction by day and evening classes.
The Local Taxation Customs and Excise Act 1890 diverted ‘whisky money’ from publicans to local authorities for assisting technical education or relieving rates, boosting investment in technical instruction.
By the end of the 19th century continuing education was provided by a variety of bodies in a number of forms:
Under the 1902 Education Act, changes to conditions attached to government grants encouraged the expansion of technical education. Local Education Authorities took over most of the evening continuation schools.
Major changes occurred after the Second World War. Junior technical schools , commercial schools and schools of art were fully integrated into the revised system of secondary education.
The development of technical and art education were inextricably linked to the industrialisation of the north of England.
The Textile Court or main gallery space of the Arts and Crafts Museum of the Manchester Municipal School of Art, photographed in 1898-1901.
Manchester School of Art was established in 1838 as the Manchester School of Design. It is the second oldest art school in the United Kingdom after the Royal College of Art which was founded the year before.
The school opened in the basement of the Manchester Royal Institution on Mosley Street in 1838. It became the School of Art in 1853 and moved to Cavendish Street in 1880. It was subsequently named the Municipal School of Art. In 1880, the school admitted female students, at the time the only higher education available to women, although men and women were segregated. The school was extended in 1897.
The mill towns which encircled the city of Manchester each had their own independent colleges of Art and Design.
Textiles in particular required practitioners in surface pattern and garment design and construction, innovative and skilled students were in demand for print, engineering, architecture and general manufacturing – who also required the services of typographers, illustrators, commercial and graphic designers.
Having left school aged sixteen in 1971, all I ever wanted to do was go to Art School.
My local college was the then Ashton under Lyne College of Further Education – the full-time mode of study was then a two year Pre-Diploma Course.
It had begun life as the Heginbottom School of Art based at – Heginbottom Technical Schools School of Art and Free Library Old Street Ashton-under-Lyne.
The new Technical Schools and Free Library, which has just been completed were opened for students without any formal ceremony. The building has been erected from designs prepared by Messrs John Eaton and Sons, architects, Ashton, at a cost, including fittings of £16,000.
The building is now Grade II listed and the library and college long gone.
A blue plaque in the main entrance celebrates the former student Raymond Ray-Jones.
Father of photographer Tony Ray-Jones.
This is the syllabus of 1924-25 – courses take place in evening as students would have been working during the day.
Many of the classes were clearly defined by gender.
Drawing was a seen as a skill which underpinned he majority of disciplines.
Some of the provision was non-vocational.
Forward now to 1959-60.
There are now full-time courses in Art and Design – though there were no degree courses until 1974, students would find employment, places on a teacher training course or possibly progress to one of the London colleges, which did have graduate status.
There were still clear distinctions in what were considered women’s skills, which also reflected the patterns of employment.
There was also an increasing distinction between specialisms, Fine and Applied Arts taking diverging paths.
An astounding range of skills were available on a part time evening basis, opening up vocational or non-vocational options.
These were always affordable and well attended.
Art and design education had undergone a major transformation in the early 1960s. The Coldstream report -1960/ 1962 had restructured art education: the existing National Diploma in Design had been replaced with a three year Diploma in Art and Design in 1963. The Dip.AD was conceived as providing ‘a liberal education in art’ and had four areas of specialisation: textiles/fashion, three dimensional design, graphic design, and fine art. Other subjects, such as electronic media, photography and film, were incorporated into fine art or graphic design courses.
The Dip.AD was intended to be the equivalent of a university degree. To achieve this academic entry requirements, at least five O’ levels, were introduced; although exceptions could be granted for “students with outstanding artistic promise”, very few were: only 36 were made in 1967 . The Dip. AD itself contained a compulsory academic element and enhanced art history component: taken together these accounted for 15 per cent of course time and 20 per cent of the final pass mark. One year Pre-diploma (latterly Foundation) courses termed Basic Design, were also introduced, these a product of the Bauhaus approach to art education, pioneered in the UK by and Richard Hamilton, Tom Hudson, Harr Thubron, Maurice de Sausmarez, and Victor Pasmore. Basic Design was a form of creative education involving basic analytic experiment and a clearing of the slate.
Centre for Global Higher Education
The college which I attended was opened on March 3rd 1964.
Gone were the autocratic Victorian stylings of the Heginbottom School – The College of Further Education represented a more open democratic age.
The communal areas were light and airy, with full-length windows, wooden floors, contemporary furniture and fittings.
The teaching rooms and workshops well equipped and staffed, with ample support from technicians and lecturers.
This was a no expense spared build – we were made to feel valued, in an institution purpose built for our education and future lives.
The full-time course was five full days a week, with one late evening for photography and art history.
I attended ever single day for two years, we were eager to learn and following an introductory merry go round of design disciplines, students were able to choose their own route.
I was privileged to have been taught by Bill Clarke as a student of Fine Art – of whom fellow Ashton student Chris Ofili said:
After six months on the foundation course I chose to specialise in painting and drawing. The teacher there, Bill Clarke, introduced me to painting in a way that didn’t make me feel restricted or limited. Not only was it something completely new, but it was something that allowed me to investigate further into who I am. He taught us that it wasn’t so much about painting a scene and making sure you got the shading right, but trying to get to a point where the thing that works is absolutely critical and essential to you as a living, breathing person. I was obviously aware of famous artists, but I suppose I never really thought that was what you could do with your life. He opened the door enough to make me think that it was worth going into the room.
Photo: Andy Duncan 2023
A huge emphasis was placed on observational drawing in the life-room, in addition to more exploratory work in a variety of media.
I also spent a great deal of time in the Print Room working in both etching and lithography with lecturer Colin Radcliffe.
Returning to the college four years ago, I found that the life room was now in use by the Animal Management course.
The site had been undergoing refurbishment and new development.
Built by Kier and designed by IBI Taylor and Young the Advanced Technologies Centre has been constructed following a £10.5 million investment.
Levolux designed, supplied and installed a customised architectural facade solution as part of the £10.5 million development of the Advanced Technologies Centre.
ITP supplied our VCL 250 vapour control layer as a protective solution underneath a stunning façade design. With a mono-filament reinforcement scrim for tensile strength, its polyethylene-based membrane ensures that the building envelope is properly sealed to control ventilation, prevent heat loss and protect insulates from interstitial condensation.
The single storey building was previously home to the Ceramics and Textiles rooms.
The Construction Skills Centre has been designed by Manchester-based architects 10 Architect.
Heckford Signs work with Willmott Dixon approached on a new coloured acrylic sign for the new Construction Skills Building at Tameside College. The aim for this new sign was to create a showcase of the college logo at an eye-catching size, to include 3D elements which would be housed on the East elevation of the impressive new building on campus.
The rolling curves of the original workshops have been retained and updated.
Since leaving the college in 1973, I graduated from Portsmouth Polytechnic with a BA(Hons) Printmaking, subsequently spending thirty years of my working life teaching in a variety of Further Educational sites across Manchester.
Fielden Park College seen here in 1973 – where I taught design to the printing apprentices.
Originally designed by the City Architect SG Besant Roberts in 1965, refurbished by Walker Simpson Architects.
Closed.
Wenlock Way – an annex of Openshaw Technical College, a former primary school which housed courses in Sign Writing, Jewellery, Horology and Retail Display.
Demolished.
Openshaw College – since demolished and rebuilt, becoming Central Manchester College in the 90s.
We were relocated to Taylor Street in the former Bishop Greer School – renamed the East Manchester Centre.
Since demolished to make way for an old people’s home.
Following the reorganisation of Manchester’s FE provision we were moved again to the former Yew Tree High School, Arden Sixth Form College – renamed City College Manchester.
This block was eventually demolished to make way for the new Northenden Centre – which closed last year, which has in its turn been demolished.
Everyone was relocated to the brand new building on the former Boddington’s Brewery site.
Everyone but me, as I left in 2014 to become a modern moocher.
Manchester College City Campus
Following build completion in July, the long awaited 27,000 square metre, four-storey campus, designed by Bond Bryan and Simpson Haugh, offers a range of facilities, creating an exceptional student experience. It becomes the home of the College’s Industry Excellence Academies for Hospitality and Catering, Creative and Digital Media, Music, Computing and Digital as well as its Centres of Excellence for Visual Arts and Performing Arts.
It accommodates a range of Higher Education courses such as the UCEN Manchester’s School of Computing and Cyber-Security, The Manchester Film School and The Arden School of Theatre and the School of Art, Media and Make-up.
Things may come and things may go but the Art School Dance goes on forever.
My thanks to the Tameside Local Studies Centre for assisting me in accessing their archive material.
On the day of HM Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee I cycled around Ashton under Lyne.
Recording and commenting upon the material changes which had occurred, during her reign of some sixty years. In turn many of these things have in themselves disappeared from view.
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow.
Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lao Tzu
Celebrating the gradual decline in spelling – Gill Scot Heron meets Tameside, everyone’s a winner.
Celebrating the proliferation of California Screen Blocks, hanging baskets and vertical blinds.
Celebrating the Pound Shop a profusion of road markings and pedestrian safety barriers.
Celebrating High Visibilty Workwear and the proliferation of the logotype
Celebrating advances in Information Technology and the decline of the retail sector.
Celebrating advances in fly-posting, street skating, youth culture and musical diversity.
Celebrating the re-use of redundant banks, sun beds, tattooing and t-shirts.
Celebrating advances in charity chop furniture pricing and the proliferation of leather sofas.
Celebrating the proliferation of the shuttered window, babies and home made retail signage.
Celebrating niche marketing in the child-based, haircare market and developments in digitally originated vinyl signage.
Celebrating street art and British popular music and modern cuisine.
Celebrating Punk Rock, wheel clamping and British can-do!
Celebrating the introduction of decimal coinage, raffle tickets, cheap biros, affordable imitation Tupperware, raffles and the Union Flag
Celebrating the huge importance of Association Football, hazard tape, shuttered doors and the ubiquity of the traffic cone.
Celebrating the ever growing popularity of Fancy Dress.
Celebrating pub tiles, the smoking ban, the use of plywood as an acceptable window replacement material and the current confusion regarding Britishness and Englishness.
Celebrating satellite telly, faux Victoriana and the development of the one way traffic system.
Celebrating plastics in the service of the modern citizen.
Celebrating laser-cut vinyl, adhesive lettering, regional cuisine and the imaginative minds of those who name our modern retail outlets.
Celebrating the welcome Americanisation of our youngster’s diet – Slush you couldn’t make it up!
Celebrating the welcome Americanisation of our youngster’s diet – Slush you couldn’t make it up!
Celebrating the return of the £1 pint, here at Oliver’s Bar, formerly The Cavern, a superbly appointed Bass Charrington owned, underground pub.
My thanks to Emma Noonan for kindly appearing in the doorway.
Celebrating our ever widening range of ethnic cuisine and the use of the ingenious A4 laser-written poster montage.
Celebrating the wide variety of vernacular tribute bands – Reet Hot Chilli Peppers?
Celebrating the ever popular art of colouring-in and the wide availability of the felt tip pen.
BT Roundabout OL6 6QQ
In 1913 Ashton is already a crowded town, a cotton town.
The first telephone exchange arrives and sweeps away property at the junction of Scotland and Bedford Streets.
The second arrives along with the bypass and establishes a roundabout, an island of telecommunication.
There they sit betwixt St Michael’s Parish Church and Albion Congregational.
A marriage of inter-war brick Revivalism and post-war concrete Brutalism.
Ninety nine point nine percent of the passing parade pass by onto the bypass by car, I took time to circumnavigate the site on foot.
This is what I saw.
Dale Street East OL6 7ST – behind the Safe Start.
Formerly the Friendship – which suddenly became surplus to requirements, when the Old Street area was redeveloped, and the adjacent Magistrates Courts built.
So far so good, these are the facts we are located.
In an unfamiliar street, in an unfamiliar town.
I myself had the good fortune to grow up here and drink in the Friendship.
Even so I have no recollection of this distinctive concrete column, neither does the whole of the internet.
Do you?
Though very much in the style of the day – exemplified by William Mitchell there is currently no attribution for this work.
Was it at some point relocated, if so from where?
There are more questions than answers.
We have already said goodbye to all the previous incarnations.
And eagerly awaited the rebirth.
This time as an interchange, where bus, tram and train converge – the most modern of modern ideas.
The brand-new Ashton-under-Lyne Interchange is now open, providing passengers with much-improved facilities and a modern, accessible gateway to the town.
The Interchange supports the economic growth of the town and helps people to get to and from their places of work as well as Ashton’s great shops, markets, restaurants and bars in a modern, safe and welcoming environment.
The Interchange has been developed by Transport for Greater Manchester in partnership with Tameside Council and funded with support from central government’s Local Growth Deal programme.
The building contractor was VINCI Construction UK.
Architects were Austin Smith Lord
I managed to get there, just before I wasn’t supposed to get there.
So goodbye to all this:
No more exposed pedestrian crossings, draughty shelters orange Ms, and analogue information boards.
It’s an integrated, enclosed, digitally connected, well-lit, secure unit.
I found it to be light, bright and well-used; a fine mix of glass, steel, brick, concrete and timber.
Spacious, commodious and clearly signed.
Linked to the shopping precinct.
It’s almost finished – I hope that everyone is happy?
They even found Lottery Heritage monies to fund public art.
The work of Michael Condron and a host of local collaborators.
In my memory of days long gone by, I call to mind the stops strewn around St Michael’s Square – all points east I assume, Stalybridge, Mossley, Micklehurst, Dukinfield, Glossop and beyond.
Prior to 1963, Ashton-under-Lyne’s buses and trolleybuses stopped at a variety of termini throughout the town centre. Manchester Corporation services called at Bow Street and Old Square, by Yates’ Wine Lodge; Ashton-under-Lyne Corporation’s buses opted for Market Street and Wellington Road by the town hall.
SHMD’s stopped at St. Michael’s Square.
So says Mancunian 1001 so sagely.
In 1927 there’s no room for a bus station, the town’s full of old houses.
But following extensive demolition, the site was cleared for a brand new bus station, with toilets, shops, offices, staff canteen and depot.
To be followed by the completion of the Shopping Precinct, Beau Geste and Ashton Arms.
Ashton zooms forward into the future, its flat-roofed modern facilities complemented by ranks of low-level shelters and edged to the east by a walled lawn and flower bed – where we all loved to sit of a sunny day.
And the under the cover of the canopy at night, ready for the time of your life, at the Birdcage, pub or pictures.
I remember the kiosk on the corner, a jewellers around the other corner.
I’ll meet you under the clock.
Photo: Ron Stubley
Here we see that the original shelters have been replaced and realigned.
Temporary Queensbury shelters were put in place prior to the addition of GMPTE’s standard shelters, seen in Stockport and Oldham bus stations. By the close of 1983, the recognisable GMPTE ones emerged. The cover at the precinct end was later glazed and became stands A to C.
The second version of Ashton-under-Lyne’s bus station opened on the 18 March 1985. After two and a half years refurbishment work, it was opened at 11.30 by Councillor Geoffrey Brierley.
Mancunian 101
And that’s the corner where we would deck off the open backed buses, hitting the pavement at speed.
That’s the deep blue and cream Ashton livery later superseded by SELNEC, GMPTE and TFGM – the wonderful full fare, unfair world of Margaret Hilda Thatcher’s privatisation, Arriva, First and Stagecoach first.
Then in the 1995 with the development of the Arcades Shopping centre, the whole site is reconfigured, now seen nestling in the shadow of the Dustbin.
Though as we know, nothing lasts forever and the shelters, passengers and buses get shunted and rebuilt yet again,
Even the Dustbin has gone west.
Opening in 2020 – the current version.
The majority of photographs are taken from online sources – please contact me if you are aware of the author’s name – I will post a credit.
I’ll be posting some pictures of my visit to this brand new Interchange, mixing it up with trams, trains and a tuppence one to the Cross.
Prompted by Gillian and Adam’s – A Different North project, my thoughts turned once again to notions of the North, similar notions have been considered in my previous posts:
A Taste of the North and A Taste of Honey.
I recalled the 2016 season Sky Football promotional film, it had featured a street in Ashton under Lyne, it had featured Hamilton Street.
A street spanning the West End and the Ryecroft areas of the town, the town where I had lived for most of my teenage years. The town where my Mam was born and raised in nearby Hill Street, nearby West End Park where my Grandad I had worked, nearby Ashton Moss and Guide Bridge.
This is an area familiar to me, which became the convergent point of a variety of ideas and images, mediated in part by the mighty Murdoch Empire.
Here was the coming together of coal and cotton, an influx of population leaving the fields for pastures new.
In the film, Leytonstone London born David Beckham is seen running down the snow covered northern street.
A credit to our emergent mechanical snow generation industry.
According to snowmakers.com, it takes 74,600 gallons of water to cover a 200 by 200-foot plot with 6 inches of snow. Climate change is cutting snow seasons short, we make snow to compensate, more energy is spent making snow, more coal is burned, more CO2 is released.
It is to be noted that locally there has been a marked decline in snowfall in recent years, the Frozen North possibly a thing of the past.
The temperatures around the UK and Europe have actually got warmer over the last few decades, although when you are out de-icing your car it may not actually feel as though it has. Whilst this can not be directly link to climate change, it is fair to assume that climate change is playing a part.
It is also to be noted that Sky Supremo Rupert Murdoch has described himself as a climate change “sceptic”.
Appearing arms raised outside of the home of a family clustered around the television, in their front room.
Filming the ad was great and the finished piece is a really clever way of showing that you never know what might happen in football, I always enjoy working with Sky Sports and I’m proud to be associated with their football coverage.
The area does have a football heritage, Ashton National Football Club played in the Cheshire County League in the 1920s and 1930s. They were sometimes also known as Ashton National Gas, due to their connections with the National Gas and Oil Engine Company based in the town.
Illustrative of a time when sport and local industry went hand in glove.
The National Ground was subsequently taken over by Curzon Ashton who have since moved to the Tameside Stadium.
Ashton & Hyde Village Hotels occupy the front of shirt sponsors spot on our new blue and white home shirt, while Seed of Speed, our official conditioning partners, feature on the arm, and Minuteman Press occupy the back of the shirt. Meanwhile, Regional Steels UK Ltd. are the front of shirt sponsors on our new pink and black away kit.
Illustrative of a time when sport and local industry continue to work hand in glove.
Local lad Gordon Alexander Taylor OBE is a former professional footballer. He has been chief executive of the English footballers’ trades union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, since 1981. He is reputed to be the highest paid union official in the world.
His mobile phone messages were allegedly hacked by a private investigator employed by the News of the World newspaper. The Guardian reported that News International paid Taylor £700,000 in legal costs and damages in exchange for a confidentiality agreement barring him from speaking about the case.
News International is owned by our old pal Rupert Murdoch, the News of the World no longer exists.
The view of Hamilton Street closely mirrors LS Lowry’s Street Scene Pendlebury – the mill looming large over the fierce perspective of the roadway. The importance of Lowry’s role in constructing a popular image of the North cannot be overestimated.
He finds a grim beauty in his views of red facades, black smoke and figures in white, snowy emptiness. He is a modern primitive, an industrial Rousseau, whose way of seeing is perhaps the only one that could do justice to the way places like Salford looked in the factory age.
For many years cosmopolitan London turned its back on Lowry, finally relenting with a one man show at the Tate in 2013 – I noted on the day of my visit, that the attendant shop stocked flat caps, mufflers and bottled beer, they seemed to have drawn the line at inflatable whippets.
Drawing upon other artists’s work, in a continuous search for ways to depict the unlovely facts of the city’s edges and the landscape made by industrialisation.
But Murdoch’s Hamilton Street is as much a construct as Lowry’s – the snow an expensive technical coating, Mr Beckham a CGI apparition. Our contemporary visual culture is littered with digital detritus, saving time and money, conjuring up cars, kids and footballers at will.
An illusion within an illusion of an illusory North.
Green screen chroma keyed onto the grey tableau.
Mr Beckham himself can also be seen as a media construct, for many years representing that most Northern of institutions Manchester United – itself yet another product of image manipulation, its tragic post-Munich aura encircling the planet, with an expensive Empire Made, red and white scarf of cultural imperialism.
David’s parents were fanatical Manchester United supporters who frequently travelled 200 miles to Old Trafford from London to attend the team’s home matches, he inherited his parents’ love of Manchester United, and his main sporting passion was football.
Mr B’s mentor was of course former Govan convener – Mr A Ferguson, who headed south to find his new Northern home, creating and then destroying the lad’s career, allegedly by means of boot and hairdryer.
Here we have the traditional Northern Alpha Male challenged by the emergent Metrosexual culture, celebrity fragrances, posh partner, tattooed torso, and skin conditioner endorsements.
It is to be noted that the wealth of the region, in part created by the shoemaking and electrical industries, have long since ceased to flourish, though still trading, PIFCO no longer has a local base.
The forces of free market monopoly capitalism have made football and its attendant personalities global commodities, and manufacturing by and large, merely a fanciful folk memory.
Hamilton Street would have provided substantial homes to workers at the Ryecroft Cotton Mills.
Ryecroft Mill, built in 1837,was the second of a series of four mills built on the site, the first was built in 1834. In 1843, over 10,000 people were employed in Ashton’s cotton mills – today there are none.
This industrial growth was far from painless and Ashton along with other Tameside towns, worked long and hard in order to build the Chartist Movement, fighting to establish better working conditions for all.
The tradition of political and religious non-conformity runs wide and deep here, the oft overlooked history of Northern character and culture.
Textile production ceased in the 1970s and the mill is now home to Ryecroft Foods, a subsidiary of Weetabix.
Ashton like many of Manchester’s satellite towns created enormous wealth during the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. The workers of Ashton saw little of that wealth, the social and economic void left by the rapid exodus of the cotton industry to the Far East, is still waiting to be filled, in these so called left behind towns.
Here is a landscape nestled in the foot of the Pennines, struggling to escape its past and define a future.
This is a short history of a park, a short history of my family and me.
The movement of earth and people, a tale until now untold now told.
West End Park is a public park, opened in 1893. The site is bounded by Stockport Road, Manchester Road and William Lane. It was developed on land associated with St Peter’s Church.
St Peter’s was built between 1821 and 1824, and was designed by Francis Goodwin. A grant of £13,191 was given towards its construction by the Church Building Commission. The land for the church was given by the patronage of George 6th Earl of Stamford and Warrington, whose cousin, Revd Sir George Booth, had been Rector of Ashton from 1758 until 1797
The benevolent Victorian landowners thought it politic to provide parks for the working folk, fresh air, exercise and perambulation being preferable to the demon drink.
The area around the park was a dense warren of housing and industry.
The parks provided a welcome relief from the tarmac, brick and concrete – very, very few homes having had access to a garden.
During the 1930s local councillors simply can’t resist the charms of the rocking horse.
And a burst of colour in the summertime.
The West End was transformed in the 60’s, through slum clearance, the subsequent building of high rise and the introduction of light industry.
My Grandfather Samuel Jones lived in the area – at one time next door to George Formby Senior.
Later moving to nearby Hill Street.
There’s a plaque for George – there isn’t one for Sam.
During the Great Depression men were required to work for the Dole – Sam was required to dig out a sunken garden in the park – he was a collier by trade, a good man with a shovel, built for back breaking work on Ashton Moss.
This is the sunken garden in the 1960s
Thirty yards wide, forty yards long and three yards deep, shifted by hand.
Three thousand six hundred cubic yards of earth.
One cubic yard of topsoil weighs about two thousand pounds on average.
Seven million two hundred thousand pounds of earth.
I worked there in the 1970s along with Alec and Danny bedding out the sunken garden, maintaining the bowling green, tennis courts and playground.
There were two permanent gardeners in the park, and a keeper in the summer – plus Danny Byrne and me brought in to help at busy times.
Throughout the 70s and onwards, economic decline hit the area hard, the closure of the cotton mills and little hope for the future. Rising unemployment and severe cuts to public spending did little to assure a rosy future for West End Park, or anything or anyone else for that matter.
Help was at hand – one of many public projects funded by our old friends the EU. Changes in the way that parks were used and further spending cuts sounded the death knell for the flowers and bowling. Large open grassed areas were cheaper and easier to maintain.
And so the sunken garden was filled in, this time by mechanical means – all in a days work for a bloke with a JCB.
So I sit and reflect on the labour and conditions that created this and many of our public parks, our legacy is a much impoverished version of the original vision.
I think of my grandad Sam and his comrades, the sweat of their collective brows buried forever.
Our legacy the small state, a bring and buy your own world economy.
It would make you weep.
Lees Road Ashton-under-Lyne OL6 8BA
Architect: Francis A. Kerr 1955
A post-war design consisting of an upper church over a lower hall, the prominent campanile making it something of a local landmark. The portal frame construction, materials and design are standard for the time. The interior has been reordered but retains some original furnishings.
A new post-war parish was created to serve the growing residential area in Hurst Cross, previously served from St Anne’s, Ashton. Fr Kelly built the new church, whose foundation stone was blessed by Bishop Marshall on 5 June 1954. The first Mass was held on Easter Monday, 1955.
The church is conventionally orientated with the sanctuary to the east. Less conventionally, it is a two-storey building, with a ground floor parish hall and a first floor church. The church is reached from Lees Road by a reinforced concrete bridge and steps. A brick campanile marks the southwest corner. The structure of the portal-framed building is expressed externally by raking brick buttresses to side elevations. The west gable end is faced in aggregate panels with a concrete relief depicting St Christopher over a plain three-bay flat-roofed portico. The aisles are faced in ceramic tiled panels to the upper level with render to the parish hall level. The nave is lit by three-light clerestory windows with smaller windows to the aisles. The shallow-pitched roof is laid with mineral felt. A two-storey block containing a large sacristy connects to the contemporary presbytery.
Inside, the six-bay upper church has a plain west gallery above a narthex with glazed screen. The aisles have arcades of square brick piers and plain plastered walls. The clerestory windows are leaded with coloured glass margins. The ceiling is lined with acoustic panels and the concrete floor is laid with carpet or linoleum tiles. The reordered sanctuary retains the original polished concrete altar in a forward position; the 1950s altar rails and pulpit have been removed. The east wall is now hung with wallpaper, but was originally fair-faced brick; the Crucifix and painted timber high altar canopy are part of the original arrangement. The side chapels also retain original 1950s polished concrete altars. The octagonal font with oak cover dates from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, of unknown provenance. The hardwood pews were designed for the church.
I have known this church for some fifty years – living just up the road.
It was probably along with St Mary’s Denton my first experiences of Modern Architecture.
I went to the youth club in the social area beneath the church.
It is typical of the Italianate styling of the time, a functional mix of glass brick and concrete, far from ostentatious – and sitting comfortably in its setting.
On the day of my visit the country is in lockdown, Mass suspended and the body of the church used as a homeless shelter, prior to rehousing – signs of the times.
Gambrel Bank Road Ashton under Lyne
I have been here before in 2015 en passant, snapped the homes chatted to a resident and off, she had informed me that they had been post-war experimental concrete homes.
I thought no more about it – but subsequently I did, returning to the road to take another look.
Here’s one I didn’t make earlier.
There are four semi detached homes constructed from concrete, rendered painted and clad over the years, windows replaced, additions and amendments made.
Though the basic design characteristics have been retained.
There are no local archival images or histories, I assume that they were post-war, an addition to the inter-war Smallshaw council estate.
In an area which in 1848 was given over to mining and agriculture.
I have subsequently learnt from an online contact Mr Sid Cat, that the homes are Beanland No 2.
They are listed on the BISF site – 102 were built.
More than this I cannot say – further searches for Beanland proving largely fruitless.
In addition there are also several semi detached houses of identical shape and proportion faced in brick – why?
Suffice to say here we are now and here they all are.
Opened 22 April 1920 with “The Forbidden City” and designed by Arnold England, the Majestic Picture House was part of the Provincial Cinematograph Theatres circuit. With 1,233 seats in stalls and balcony and a splendid facade faced in white faience tiles on two sides of the building on its prominent town centre corner site of Old Street and Delamere Street, the cinema was a great success.
It had an oak panelled foyers which had beautiful coloured tapestry’s on the walls. The interior was in a Georgian style and it was equipped with a pipe organ and a seperate tea room and cafe which were located on the upper floor.
It passed, with all the other PCT houses to Gaumont British Theatres in 1929, but it was not until 12th July 1946 that it was renamed Gaumont. The Majestic Picture House was renovated in July 1936, with new seating installed and a re-recoration of the foyer and auditorium. A new Compton 3Manual/6Rank organ was installed that was opened by organist Con Docherty.
Later being merged into the Rank Organisation, the Gaumont was re-named Odeon on 11th November 1962. It was eventually sold to an independent operator who renamed it the Metro Cinema from 6th November 1981.
With capacity now down to 946 seats, the Metro Cinema continued as a single screen operation until the middle of 2003, sometime after a multi-plex had opened in the town. In 2008 (with seats and screen intact) the building was unused except for the long foyer area, linking the front and back elevations of the Metro, which was a Slotworld Amusement Arcade. By 2011, the entire building had been stripped out and stood empty and unused.
The cinema was used as a location for the film East is East.
Archive images Metro Majestic
It was my local cinema as a lad – attending Saturday morning matinees as a member of the Odeon Boy’s and Girls club. Hundreds of the nosiest kids. regularly warned by the manager that the film would be stopped if the raucous behaviour continued.
Now it’s just an empty shell, superseded by multiplex and latterly a lost Slotworld.
Unlisted unloved sitting at the heart of the town – too late for the last picture show.
In almost every town or city worth its salt stood a modern white tiled tailor’s shop, almost every man or boy wore a Burton’s suit.
Harry Wilson had become the company architect by the early 1920s, and was responsible for developing Burton’s house style. Montague Burton, however, maintained a close personal interest. The company’s in-house Architects Department was set up around 1932 under Wilson. He was followed as chief architect around 1937 by Nathaniel Martin, who was still in post in the early 1950s. The architects worked hand-in-hand with Burton’s Shopfitting and Building Departments, who coordinated the work of selected contractors. Throughout the late 1920s and 1930s they were kept phenomenally busy: by 1939 many of Burton’s 595 stores were purpose-built.
The very first made to measure gear I owned came from Burton’s in Ashton under Lyne – mini-mod aged fourteen in a three button, waisted, light woollen dark brown jacket, four slanted and flapped side pockets and an eighteen inch centre vent.
Just the job for a night out at the Birdcage, Moon or Bower Club
The story of the stores begins in the province of Kovno in modern Lithuania – Meshe David Osinsky (1885-1952), came to England where he initially took the name Maurice Burton.
The distinctive architecture stood out on the high street, Art Deco motifs and details abound – elephants chevrons and fans.
Topped off with the company’s distinctive logotype.
This example in Doncaster is one of the few remaining examples many having been removed – as the stores have changed ownership and usage.
This Neo-Classical Burnley branch is a rare example of a Burton’s which hasn’t gone for a Burton.
The group maintained a distinctive graphic style in labelling signage and advertisements.
Often including ornate mosaic entrances, ventilation covers and obligatory dated foundation stones – as seen in this Ashton under Lyne branch.
Stores often housed dance halls or other social spaces.
In 1937 Burton’s architect, Nathaniel Martin, collaborated with the architects Wallis Gilbert & Partners on a subsidiary clothing works on the Great Lancashire Road at Worsley, near Manchester. Conceived as a Garden Factory and built in a modern style, this was dubbed ‘Burtonville Clothing Works’. It opened in October 1938 .
Where machinists worked on Ashton built Jones equipment.
Time changes everything and the inception of off the wall unisex disco clothing saw the made to measure suit fall into a chasm of loon pants and skinny rib grandad vests.
The Ashton branch becomes a motorcycle then fitted kitchen showroom, topped off with a succession of clubs and various other modern day leisure facilities.
Currently home to the Warsaw Delicatessen and Good News Gospel Church
Formerly Club Denial.
This is the tale of the modern high street grand ideas, architectural grandeur, entrepreneurial immigrants, style and fashion – disappearing in a cloud of vinyl signage and fly by night operations. Though if you look carefully the pale white shadows of Burton’s are still there in one form or another, however ghostly.
William Walton’s and Sons – 152 Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 6AD
Founded in 1832 – when Stamford Street looked a lot like this.
Much has changed during the ensuing years, Walton’s it seems has not.
On Monday 24th October 2011 I had the privilege of meeting current owners Marilyn and Dave, spending time chatting and taking photographs.
Thank you.
They tell their own tale – take a look.
Absolute disgrace the food was disgusting and we’re we was sat it stunk of urine.
Never again will I go.
Welcome to the modern world, once home to the world’s finest celery, now home to the world’s worst online reviews.
The area, under cultivation for over a hundred years was bulldozed to one side, and left in a heap. The M60 arrived wiped its feet on the greensward and awaited the expected redevelopment.
Welcome to the brand new shiny nowhere, the dual carriageway expanse of Robert Sheldon Way carries you away to a strikingly inevitable array of chains, human bondage has never appeared so clean and bright.
Muse developments:
Good design is required as a key aspect of pursuing sustainable development indivisible from good planning. Good design involves seeking positive improvements in the quality of our built, natural and historic environment, addressing the connections between people and places.
To the east of Manchester and the west of Ashton sits The Moss.
This area of low lying, deep peaty bog, just outside Ashton-under Lyne, was drained in the mid 1800’s to grow some of the best crops – It was world famous for its celery but also grew good cabbage, cauliflowers and lettuce, with cucumbers and tomatoes grown in glasshouses.
This map of 1861 shows an area criss-crossed with lanes, ditches and field boundaries.
A world that survived into the 1980s, captured here so beautifully by Brian Lomas, prior to the building of the M60.
Photographs from – Tameside Image Archive
Then came the railways:
With an attendant ghost:
And telecommunications installation
Its location on the south east corner of the Lancashire Coalfield, and the burgeoning demands of the Industrial Revolution saw the further development of mining in the area.
As the demand for coal outstripped the output, a deeper mine was opened in 1875, at Ashton Moss. This new pit had its own railway branch and canal arm for efficient transportation of the coal. In 1882 a second shaft was sunk – at 2,850 feet, the deepest in the world at that time.
The New Rocher pit closed in 1887 and Broadoak pit closed in 1904, after which time Ashton Moss pit was the only coal mine still in operation in Ashton. Although it produced 150,000 tons of coal a year in the early 1950s and employed over 500 men, Ashton Moss colliery closed in 1959 and part of its site is now the Snipe Retail Park on the boundary with Audenshaw.
Seen here in this painting by local artist David Vaughan.
Colliery lamp token.
This tight little island of land was a contrasting mix of the agricultural and industrial, home also to the urgent demands of a leisured and growing working class.
The area boasted two motorcycle speedway tracks.
One located on the Audenshaw side, just behind The Snipe pub.
And one in Droylsden at the Moorside Stadium – home to local legend Riskit Riley:
The stadium later to become a horse trotting track, known locally as Doddy’s Trot
The Moss has also provided a home for Curzon Ashton football club
And Ashton Cricket and Bowling Club.
The cricket and the football have both survived the building of the Orbital Ring Road, and the development of the site as a light industrial, retail and leisure park.
The roar of Riskit Riley is heard no more.
Ashton Moss is an area I have known for some fifty years or so, my grandfather was a collier at the Ashton Moss Pit, I worked trains around the triangle of rail that encloses the area – I returned some time ago to take a look at what remained of a once fertile area.
This area of low lying, deep peaty bog, just outside Ashton-under Lyne, was drained in the mid 1800’s to grow some of the best crops – It was world famous for its celery but also grew good cabbage, cauliflowers and lettuce, with cucumbers and tomatoes grown in glasshouses. The ground was apparently fertilised by marl dug from local banks or pits, and by dung brought by horse and cart from the elephant and tiger enclosures at Belle Vue Zoo, down the road.
Four brothers of the Kelly family came from Ireland shortly after the Irish potato famine of 1840’s, settled on the Moss and still have a descendent selling fruit and vegetables on Ashton Market today.
The Moss is also where Bill Sowerbutts, of Gardener’s Question Time fame, learnt his trade. Bill’s first memories were of his Father’s smallholding on the Moss, which had been bought from a market gardener called Tommy Knight in 1892.
http://kindling.org.uk/digging-around-ashton-moss
The celery is long gone, the land now in use as a retail leisure park, intersected by the Manchester Orbital ring road, a Metrolink tram track, several dual carriageways and the existing rail network.
Its passing does not seem to be matter of record save for this archived account of 1989.
I read today of plans to set the 2025 World’s Fair there.
In January 2009 it looked like this, heaps of spoil, recently relocated slag heaps, frozen lakes and puddles, rough tracks, barely preserved rights of way and restricted access.
Cycling along Curzon Road one sunny Sunday afternoon, I found to my surprise, facing me across the Whiteacre Road junction.
– An empty yet extant launderette.
One lone drier tumbling, lonely – an absence of presence, save myself.
The usual spartan interior almost unkempt, enlivened by four legged, almost alien, ovalish plastic laundry baskets. A sunlit shimmer of brushed steel surfaces, low lit and deeply shadowed linoleum tiles.
Under the illuminating hum of bare fluorescent tubes.
I snapped and exited, unwashed.
Great!
There is a stall in Ashton Indoor Market that almost defies description, an Aladdin’s cave, a cornucopia of kitchenalia – if they don’t have, it probably doesn’t exist.
I visited here as a little lad with my Mam, me holding happily on to her left hand, her right forever clutching a shopping bag. On our way to Queenie’s for woolies, eagerly awaiting a hot Vimto treat, stopping to stare at the toy stall, constantly chatting with all and sundry – pals, passers by, stall holders, the vacant and the aimlessly vagrant.
The most convivial of worlds.
Bailey’s prevails, big, bold and beautiful a temple to the domestic, staffed by the wonderfully helpful Susan, Sandra and Mel – happy to let me snap happily and sell me two enamel pie dishes. It was pleasure to make their acquaintance.
Take some time to pop in sometime.
Pick up a cup hook or two.
http://www.tameside.gov.uk/ashton/market
Modern Mooch 