How incongruous, to find a little of the space age in a suburban provincial Cheshire street, keeping company with solid, stolid brick built homes and sensible Victorian stone structures.
Trinity is dominated by its diamond shaped stained glass, framed in unfinished concrete, emboldened like a wide ecstatic grin, extending beyond the bounds of the street, beaming towards heaven.
To the side are concrete columns pierced by irregular rectangular windows.
Completed in 1968, architect was Gorden Ball from VWB Architects.
This tiny gem deserves your attention – take yourself off to Mill Street pronto.
Wandering amiably down Whalley Old Road towards Blackburn one warm sunny day today, I came upon yet another launderette.
Somehow, somewhat frozen in time.
Front window cracked, but just about holding together, signage almost intact, machines formerly fully functioning – flagging, fluorescent tubes softly flickering, unguarded against the wood chip.
Patterned formica surfaces care worn and faded from use and abuse.
Washing done at home takes longer to dry (and costs you more).
If you walk far enough away, you’ll find yourself right there.
The sea to your right, Bridlington to your left. You could even catch the Land Train if you are so inclined, I declined and walked wet streets, in ever eager anticipation of my first visit to:
Bondville
A family run enterprise, tucked just away from the Yorkshire coast nestled in the village of Sewerby. Jan Whitehead and her team of willing helpers kindly allowed me to get a sneak preview of the village, as they prepared for the imminent Easter opening.
This one twelfth scale wonder is filled with everything you might wish to find in an idyllic village – but smaller and made lovingly by hand. Wandering its narrow streets, each tiny turn is a new and exciting surprise, an irresistible vista of diminutive figures, set in a cornucopia of architectural delights.
The trains always run on time, and the trawlers bob merrily in the harbour.
The wedding party remain forever almost snapped by the arched photographer, blink and they don’t move.
So step inside a world of wonder – I’ll be back when the sun shines, I promise.
One can only marvel at the ingenuity and vision that brings together modern architecture, technology and municipal functionality. It has produced an indoor market place of lasting and everlasting beauty and wonder.
Vaulted concrete roof columns and high side lighting from the pierced window strips between the split level roofing lead the eye up towards eternity.
The exterior and interior walls are both adorned by some of the finest mid-century public art.
A lasting provincial splendour that offers more with each visit – it’s irresistible.
I’ve always been fascinated by temporary and informal architecture from childhood dens to shotgun shacks, sheds and caravans, so here is a record of the so called Tin Tabernacles from around Greater Manchester and beyond. And a tribute to those local people that created them.
He was apprenticed to Messrs. Wren and Bennett, where he remained for some six and a-half years, and where he acquired a thorough knowledge of practical engineering. He then worked for about a year as a journeyman millwright at the Caloa Mills, and at the St. Helen’s Union Plate Glass Works; and next spent a year as a journeyman at Sir William Fairbairn’s works in the Isle of Dogs. The following year, the last of his actualworkshop life, he passed in the employ of the Liverpool Grand Junction Railway. On 1st July 1842 he started thefirm of E. T. Bellhouse and Co., which has carried on a prosperous business for the last forty years at the Eagle Foundry, Hunt Street, Manchester. Mr. Bellhouse, undertook the erection of many large bridges for various railways; and the whole of the stations required for the Arequipa Railway were constructed by him.
Another branch of engineering in which be took a great interest was the construction of iron buildings. He made and erected many custom-houses of iron; among others, that for Payta, Peru – a building unique of its kind.
Within Manchester he did a large amount of work, both for the corporation and for others. The construction of large roofs, and the general ironwork in connection with the erection of buildings, constituted the principal part of his Manchester business, although he did a large amount of hydraulic work, having among other things designed and made the hydraulic lifts in the new City Hall Manchester.
Apart from business he took an interest in every institution which tended to the benefit of his fellow-citizens, and showed especially an active desire to better the position of his workmen; for the latter purpose an extensivescientific library was formed at the Eagle Foundry. He was connected with the formation of the Athenaeum, was president of the Mechanics’ Institute, and a director of the Royal Institution of Manchester; and in many other ways he gave all the aid in his power towards benefiting the social life of his native town. After a life of hard work and disinterested generosity, the ravages of time and over-work began at length to be felt by a constitution which was not naturally of the strongest. Finding himself in failing health, be removed to Southport in hopes of regaining his strength; but on 13th October 1881 he died there at the ago of sixty-five.
St Antony’s Trafford Park
New Moston Constitutional Club 273 Moston lane
This example was made by Ginger Lee of Longsight but built in Mid Wales – along the A490 near Forden
What happens to functionalist architecture when it ceases to function?
It ceases to function.
Standing on the A6 in the centre of the town, once home to a warren of postal workers, sorting mail in preparation for the two delivery a day walks. This was a communications hub before they even thought of communications hubs.
The office stands empty, inside the paint slowly peels.
Following changes in working practices the posties now sort their own round, for a single daily delivery. The process has become mechanised, requiring new technologies and an appropriate anonymous architecture, on the edge of town.
The building however, continues to reflect a 70s optimism, monumental – fading, as optimism is apt to do.
An exciting composition of curved tiled volumes and boxy glass and steel modernism, in a delightfully battered brown and cream. Now in the ownership of the Greater Manchester Pension fund, its future would seem, to say the least, uncertain. This whole Grand Central site clustered around the railway station has been subject to a series of speculative leisure developments. As in other locations they seem to fade, just as quickly as the boarded hoardings, shrouded in designers’ digital piazza visualisations.
So we stand and stare at each other lovingly, our heads in a cloud of municipal stasis.
A local café group, that has the market cornered in West Riding mock-baronial dining.
Walking into a half-timbered, overwhelmingly cream and red, world of tea, toast and hot beef sandwiches, there is a dislocation in time and location. No longer March 2015 in the centre of a Yorkshire Town, but in a lukewarm Westworld totally lacking in animatronic psychopathic killers.
The furniture is brown.
Moves are afoot to refurbish and refresh the brand, one branch doing its best to emulate an Argos furniture showroom, with an incongruous suit of armour thrown in for good luck.
Clank!
Pop in make your own mind up – old new old, or new new old.
I’m no Urbex man, when all’s said and done, I feel the fear and the weight of the past, I guess I’m just a little too sensitive. So I made cautious ingress into this giant mill complex, always aware of the feet that trod this way in former times and a constant threat of the falling fragile structure.
The surfaces have, since it’s last occupants left, been shaped by intruders, the weather, taggers, blaggers, bloggers and inquisitive teens, I left only hushed footfalls.
We are all now complicit in its history.
– In 1819, Rylands & Sons were established with their seat of operations being in Wigan.
In the course of a few years extensive properties at Wigan, along with dye works and bleach works, were purchased. Valuable seams of coal were afterwards discovered under these properties, and proved a great source of wealth to the purchasers.
The mill was built in 1867, designed by George Woodhouse for John Rylands, one of the area’s largest cotton spinners. The Grade II listed complex includes the former spinning mill, weaving sheds, engine house and chimney, noted for it ornate brickwork.
It has now been acquired by MCR Property Group who are in the process of planning to restore the mill building which will house a mixture of apartments with views over Mesnes Park. The development will also comprise of a number of modern townhouses and office space over four levels.
All current planning applications have been withdrawn, its future remains uncertain.
Standing amongst a high density of housing, once homes to the thousands of mill workers that lived, loved, laughed and drank here, The Springfield prevails.
Built in 1903 by Heaton and Ralph for Oldfield Breweries it has retained much of its original character and features and is listed on CAMRA’s Historic Pub Interiors inventory.
Having walked from the centre of town, following a full day of snapping this and that I was ready for a swift half of well kept Tetley’s Bitter. The staff were more than friendly and happy to assist me in recording this fine and welcoming hostelry. By day quiet and on the dark side, by night it comes to life. Large family and function rooms, a cards and doms tap room, pool and TV caters for customers of all ages and interests.
I have tried to capture the weight of sunlight as it falls softly, through the etched glass of the pub, a unique quality known only to the daytime drinker.
It’s dark inside, you can feel the thin light at war with the murky interior.
Stall holders scurry between stalls, in and out of alcoves, cupboards, hidey holes and plywood worlds.
They made me welcome, chatted as they went about their business of simply getting by.
This is the land beyond time and at times motion and emotion.
Entering seems transgressive, there is nothing in here I want or need, I just had a compulsion to record this flickering fight against the distinct possibility of extinction.
Modern Mooch 