Chester Road

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Walking from Cornbrook toward Stretford along Chester Road – which is one half of my Tram Trip to Altrincham

There is a cluster of former industrial buildings around Empress Street.

First up is the Empress Brewery.

The Empress Brewing Company was established by Charles Dawes in c. 1880, although the company was sold to William Henry Fulford in 1884, who had recently sold the Monarch Brewery in Salford. Fulford was based at the Empress Brewery on Clarence Street in Manchester, but had relocated to new premises on 383 Chester Road. These had been built in 1889 and operated initially as the Old Trafford Brewing Company, but the name had changed to the Empress Brewery Company by 1895. The company acquired a number of breweries and associated licenced house during the early 20th century, however, in 1929 it was taken over by Peter Walker and Son. The brewery closed in 1955.

Local Heritage List

The building was converted into offices in 1992 as part of the development of the Empress Business Centre, which saw new office and business units built to form a courtyard.

Empress had 236 public houses. 

Including the Queens Arms on Honey Street Red Bank, one of the first independent real boozers back in the 1980’s, subsequently it has seen various uses last seen on my Collyhurst Circular walk.

1967 Local Image Collection

This is the brewery building over time.

Here it is in July 2025

Across the way is the National Works.

The development of the site can be traced from the sequence of Ordnance Survey 1:2500 maps. The First Edition of 1893 shows the site as undeveloped. The First Revision map of 1908 shows 384 Chester Road to have been developed, and the site of the National Works to have been occupied by an open-fronted L-shaped range along the western and southern sides, with a detached rectangular building in a central courtyard. It is possible that these buildings all formed part of 384 Chester Road, listed as being occupied by H, G & O Lewtas, lamp manufacturers, in Slater’s trade directory for 1911. The Second Revision map of 1922 shows the early building to have been subsumed by the current building.

1961 Local Image Collection

Later the home of Lion Foodpackers Ltd and Crimpy Crisps.

1947 Local Image Collection

The building has been converted into apartments.

Situated on the lower ground floor of a gorgeous, red brick, landmark building, this 2 double bedroom apartment merits further inspection. A good size living room opens on to a good fitted kitchen. It also has a great, spacious shower room. It also benefits from a parking space, although a great attraction is the location, being just 1 mile from Deansgate and the City along with being 10 minutes walk to a Metro station.

Then we have the Veno’s Building, which was once a pharmaceutical company founded by William Henry Veno. He established a company in the US before returning to Britain and founded the Veno drug Company in Manchester in 1898.

In 1925 the company was sold to Beecham Estate and Pills Ltd. In the 60s the building was under the name Progress House and was home to the Co-Operative Press Limited, later to become Trafford Press. 

Derelict Places

Rare sighting of a Profil aka Stymie Bold Italic hyphen.

Designed by brothers Max and Eugen Lenz and first cast by Haas in 1947.

The front elevation was originally in red brick, with a later faience facade applied.

Veno’s a stalled and cursed development. In 1925 William Henry Veno sold his company for £500,000, a decision he later rued. He sought to enhance his million pound fortune but lost everything through speculative investments and the 1929 Depression. He shot himself at his home during a fit of impulsive insanity.

It was also the home of Germolene, a thick antiseptic ointment with a distinctive pink colour and scented with oil of wintergreen

Manchester Arterial – A662

Posted on by modernmoocher

Starting at traffic lights on the A665 the road heads northeastwards, initially with the Metrolink on the left and a factory building on the right. The road then bears right at traffic lights marking the first section of on-street running for the trams, which lasts until just before a bridge over the River Medlock, after which the road passes to the south of the Sportcity complex whilst the tram line runs through the middle.

The A6010 is crossed at traffic lights, after which we see the tram lines on the left once more. We go over the Ashton Canal, then the tram lines at grade before bearing to the right to pass Clayton Park before another section of on-street running for the Metrolink begins, which continues for some distance. Just after crossing the Manchester city limit there is a set of traffic lights, after which the road becomes D2 for a short distance to allow a tram stop – Edge Lane, to be located in the central reservation. The tram leaves the road to the right for the next stop – Cemetery Road, and the stop in Droylsden town centre is once again in the central reservation. In all three cases the street running recommences after the stop.

Sabre Roads

In 2014, having taken early retirement from teaching photography, I embarked on a series of walks along the arterial roads of Manchester.

See also Bury New Road and Cheetham Hill Road and Rochdale Road and Oldham Road.

Spillers Mill Car Park

Posted on by modernmoocher

Tyne Mill is one of a trio of mills designed by Oscar Faber for Spillers Ltd – the others are in Cardiff and Avonmouth and led to subsequent commissions from the company. Spillers began with a single mill in Bridgwater in around 1833, and during the 20th centruy had mills all over Britain.

Spillers operations were flour milling and manufacturing animal feeds, and they came to Newcastle in 1896. Grinding grain to flour produces both heat and fine dust a combination guaranteed to be a fire hazard. The fire retardant properties of reinforced concrete, and its relative cost effectiveness, made it a popular choice for mills and other industrial buildings.

Construction took place during the winter and a warming plant heated the concrete constituents before and after mixing, to control the setting time which governs how soon the slip-form shuttering can be moved to the next lift. The concrete was usually kept at 15.6 deg C, though this could be varied to speed or delay setting times.

The mill building has the actual mill above a warehouse area. Its footprint is 88.4m by 27.4m with 12 storeys and a maximum height of 51.2m. It has reinforced concrete columns and beams, but timber floors of 100mm thick Columbian pine with a 25mm thick maple strip finish. The walls are of 280mm thick brickwork with flashing on each floor to drain the cavity.

When completed, Spillers Tyne Mill was the largest flour mill in Europe and apparently the tallest milling building in the world. It could process 254,000 tonnes of grain annually, brought to the mill by ship via Spillers Quay or by rail on the track extension along Quayside.

28 Days Later

A goods line down to the Newcastle quayside from Manors Station was agreed in 1845, but not authorized until 28th June 1863 and opened on 1st June 1870.  

The Quayside Branch Line closed on 16 June 1969. The railway was in use for ninety-nine years and its eventual demise reflects the changes in the Quayside and Ouseburn themselves from shipping and industrial use to one now of housing and leisure facilities. The northern portal of tunnel 2 was removed when the Metro system was constructed in the late 1970s. The cutting above Lime Street was filled in in 1977 and the tunnel at the quayside bricked up and landscaped over in the 1990s. Only the Red Barns tunnel remains as a metro overrun facility. 

Ouseburn Trust

Demolition began in June 2011 and was completed by January 2012.

Newcastle Photos

All that remains is a car park:

24/7, completely free and always spaces! A hidden parking gem of Newcastle! 10 minute walk to Millennium Bridge. Security is almost non-existent but busy enough that trouble should be deterred.

Parkopedia

However:

A popular Newcastle car park will be staying locked up overnight in an effort to crack down on boy racers. Council bosses have confirmed plans to permanently close the Spillers car park in Ouseburn at 10pm each night after it was plagued with – significant anti-social behaviour.

Chronicle Live

The future of the car park is uncertain, with major redevelopment plans having emerged for the area.

While planning permission has expired for the controversial Whey Aye Wheel project, which would have seen Europe’s biggest observation wheel built at Spillers Wharf, there remain proposals to build housing on the riverside plot.

ITVX

However as of September 2023 a car park is a car park – a car park with embedded remnants of the railway yard, interspersed with rapidly emergent plant life, and crumbling concrete obstacles.

Along with a discarded packet of Wotsits.

The ingredients list of Wotsits Cheese reveals that cheese and dairy-derived components play a significant role in creating the mouthwatering flavor. The primary ingredients include corn and rapeseed oil, which form the base of the crunchy corn puffs. However, it is the cheese flavoring that truly brings the cheesy goodness to Wotsits cheese.

Electricity – Chester

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The weir and former causeway stands across the River Dee. It was originally built in 1093 by Hugh Lupus, first Earl of Chester. It was built for St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey – now Chester Cathedral. It channelled the water to allow it to power a series of mills along the Dee. These mills were amongst the largest and most valuable in England during the 13th century. They were in use until 1910.

The weir was restored in the early 20th century to serve the City Council’s hydro-electric power station

Chester generated its own clean carbon-free electricity for almost half of the city’s needs from the hydroelectric building on Castle Drive between 1914 and 1949.

From 1932 the city was buying electricity from the Central Electricity Board’s embryonic national grid in order to cope with demand which grew to over 23,000 consumers by 1946.

The Hydro Electric Station on the River Dee is a Grade II listed building.

Photo: Len Morgan

At nationalisation in 1948 the corporation’s system came under the Merseyside and North Wales Electricity Board – Manweb, which in 1968–70 built its administrative headquarters in Sealand Road.  The buildings had as their centrepiece a seven-storey Y-plan office block, which dominated the skyline looking west from the city centre until it was demolished in the 1990s.

I was wandering the streets of Chester when I came upon this decorated doorway in Newgate Street.

In consultation with the current owners panda mami – we concurred that the building was once in service to the electrical generating industry.

Architecturally pre-National Grid, this implies that it would have been part of Chester’s independent provision.

It can be seen in the top left of this archive photograph.

Electricity House in the days of Chester Corporation Electricity Department.

Later subsumed by MANWEB.

My thanks to Richard Brook aka Mainstream Modern for his invaluable research

The building has the most shockingly assertive Futurist emblems embedded within the window grilles.

Any work of art that lacks a sense of aggression can never be a masterpiece.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti

If she’s put together fine and she’s reading my mind
I can’t stop I can’t stop myself
Lightning is striking again
Lightning is striking again and again and again and again

Lou Christie and Twyla Herbert

The arch above the entrance is adorned with these carved stone electrical emblems – also rendered in the Futurist Moderne manner.

The pumping house is to become a visitor’s centre – named the Hydro Hub.

Singin through you to me
Thunderbolts caught easily
Shouts the truth peacefully
Electricity

Don van Vliet

Fairfield Road – Edge Lane

Posted on by modernmoocher

In 1802 there’s mostly nothing here, nothing to speak of.

A few buildings on Ashton Old Road and fields, lots of fields.

Then along comes the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing is in the ascendancy, mostly.

Vision of Britain

Ferguson Pailin Electrical Engineering are established in 1913 on Fairfield Road/Edge Lane.

By 1939 the factory is fully formed and the area a dense warren of industry and terraced housing.

Makers of heavy duty electrical switchgear and general electrical engineers, of Higher Openshaw, Manchester.

1913 Ferranti Ltd sold its switchgear patents and stock to Ferguson, Pailin Ltd. Samuel Ferguson and George Pailin had worked for Ferranti as switchgear engineers. They left in 1913 to set up their own switchgear business at a factory in Higher Openshaw, Manchester.

Graces Guide

The company was acquired by Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) in 1928. Following the restructuring of AEI in 1960, Ferguson, Pailin & Co ceased to be a separate subsidiary and was merged into AEI switchgear. Following the takeover of AEI by GEC in 1967, the Higher Openshaw works became part of GEC Switchgear. In 1989, GEC merged its electrical engineering interests with those of Alsthom to form GEC Alsthom. The factory was later closed by Alstom in 2003, with most of the employees finishing on 22 November 2002.

Wikipedia

The company has a Facebook page which shares former employees memories – from which these archive photographs were taken.

Notably the firm provided extensive leisure facilities for their employees.

The company acquired Mottram Hall to give employees an opportunity to go on affordable holidays during World War II. The company bought three properties in 1939/40 in order to provide holidays for staff and workers during the war. Mottram Hall was bought for the works, a small hotel in Llandudno for the middle level staff and a property in Criccieth for senior staff. Mottram Hall was sold as surplus to requirements by GEC in 1968 and is now a luxury country house hotel.

Sadly the days when benevolent employers thought to take care of their employees in such a manner, are largely a thing of the past.

For business guests, our sleek and sophisticated conference rooms feature the latest technology to get your agenda off to a prompt and professional start. Plus, catering facilities and a plush break out space for comfortable downtime between meetings.

Last time I passed through many of the factory buildings were still extant though underused. A portion of the site lost to the development of the Lime Square Shopping Centre.

Lime Square is a shopping destination which is helping to put the heart back into Openshaw district centre here in east Manchester. Lime Square is home to the stunning Steamhammer sculpture and a host of great High Street names.

By and large replacing the plethora of busy local businesses which once thrived in the area.

Part of the site became the site of a car park for B&M Bargains.

Empty car parking and to let signs in superabundance.

So there we are the end of an era – the decline in manufacturing, the structure ending life as an empty warehouse.

But wait, what’s all this?

Your Housing Group, the Warrington-based affordable housing provider, wants to build a residential scheme on the site of a former warehouse on Edge Lane, with work starting this summer subject to consent.

The project in Openshaw comprises 216 homes available on a mix of tenures, according to a planning application submitted to Manchester City Council. A total of 72 will be for sale as shared ownership schemes, another 72 will be for private rent, and 72 will be for affordable rent.

Place North West

The development, to be known as Edgefield Green

Your Housing Group

As of Friday 13th November 2020 – the site has been cleared, little or no signs of its former occupants save for a dilapidated fence or gate.

This land is your land.

Our hearts beat as one as we had our fun but time changes everything.

Tommy Duncan of the Texas Playboys

So there we are another phase of development for one small area of Manchester, should you change to pass, just spare a moment to recall those thousands of souls that laboured their whole working lives – right here on Fairfield Road and Edge Lane.