Pleasant Street Harpurhey – Manchester

Pleasant Street  Harpurhey M9 5XZ 

Walking along Rochdale Road yesterday, I was suddenly arrested by the Pleasant Street street sign.

Having already been suddenly arrested last week, by the Bland Close street sign.

With my expectations defined by the above definition, I ventured along the street in search of happy satisfaction.

Coincidentally – The 18th century entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood pioneered many of the marketing strategies used today, including the satisfaction or you money back guarantee, on the entire range of his pottery products. The money-back guarantee was also a major tool of early US mail order sales pioneers in the United States such as Richard Sears and Powel Crosley Jr. to win the confidence of consumers.

It is also a top tune by Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes!

In 1958 the street looked just like this:

Photo – L Kaye

Whilst ten tears later it looked just like this:

Photos – LH Price

Manchester Local Image Collection

However at someone between 1968 and 2024 the housing had been cleared away – also missing in action is the Golden Lion pub adjoining Pleasant Street on Rochdale Road.

The Golden Lion was a proper old pub on the very busy rochdale road in the Harpurhey area of Manchester. Once inside there was a decent lounge and a basic bar i had a drink in the lounge and this was quite a comfy room.


This pub was a Whitbread tied house and there were two real ales on the bar I had a drink of Chesters bitter and this was a nice drink the other beer was Chesters mild. I thought this was quite a nice pub but sadly this pub has now been pulled down in the name of progress.

Alan Winfield – 1992

So here we are here today – yesterday has long gone and tomorrow never knows no how.

What’s left to see?

Manchester Hand Car Wash

Manchester Tyres

Pleasant Street Allotments

The allotments have had issues with fly tipping back in 2021.

There is now a lockable barrier in place on the cobbled cul-de-sac.

Photo – Howard Bristol

It is understood that the heaps of rubbish, including bin bags full of waste and unwanted wood and cardboard, have been growing in recent weeks.

Howard Bristol, the Secretary of the Pleasant Street allotments committee, said the situation has been ongoing for some time but has worsened since the removal of nearby CCTV cameras.

He told the Evening News that the road has been – piling high with rubbish, and that the area also had issues with the woodland behind the allotments being used for drug dealing during summer.

Pat Karney, councillor for Harpurhey tweeted about the flytipping on Sunday, calling it – unbelievable and disgraceful.

He added that those responsible should be – locked up in Strangeways for a long time, before adding that the council will – get it cleared.

Manchester Evening News

How pleasant is/was Pleasant Street?

Google says wait until there are trees are in leaf and the sun shines in the bright blue sky.

Portwood Stockport 2021

We have previously taken a look at Portwood as was – let’s take a giant leap forward to today.

The industry to the east has gone west – no more bees and alligators, instead there’s Tesco and Porsche.

Why make when you can buy?

Meadow Mill has long since ceased to spin and weave – currently undergoing adaptation into modern residential living.

I though, have always been fascinated by the rough ground that now seems so left behind.

Where once I found a weathered book of lost photographs.

This is a scarred and neglected landscape, even the developer’s sign has given up the ghost.

There are brambles, buddleia, rough grass and teasels amongst the rubble.

The remnants of roads, kerbed and tarred, strewn with hastily dumped detritus.

Puddled and forlorn.

Enter beneath the M60, where the Tame and Goyt conjoin to become the Mersey, a dimly lit passage home to the itinerant aerosol artistes.

All that remains of the long gone mills – the concrete base.

Detritus tipped and strewn, amongst the moss.

The remnants of roads going nowhere.

Surrounded by cars going nowhere.

Contemporary architecture creating cavernous canyons.

A landscape forever changing, caught between expectation and fulfilment, paradise forever postponed.

This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.

John Milton