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.
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.
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.
This is Oldham Road Manchester – this also Memory Lane.
Walking from the city centre to Failsworth I noted the absence of public houses, some long since demolished, some now serving other purposes – very few open selling beer.
Many of the breweries no longer trading.
Much of this the consequence of changing economic circumstances, the decline in manufacturing and subsequent serious absence in regular drinkers.
I do remember the huge Winston Churchill relief in the Room and R100 Airship wooden panelling in the lounge. Also of note were the ornate plater work ceilings and pendulous lighting, much damaged as the pub awaited restoration.
The A6 is Britain’s fourth longest road. Its route varies greatly from the lower lands of the South East, though the Peak District, right though the heart of Manchester city centre, then onwards towards Preston. It then goes though the historic city of Lancaster before skirting the Eastern fringe of the Lake District before ending in Carlisle, bang on the start of the A7.
North from Stockport towards Manchester, the A6 was a wide, four lane road, but still 30 mph, which usually flowed pretty well. According to Mudge, it looks like it has now been massacred by bus lanes and red paint. Shame. We meet the A57 from the east, just south of the city centre, and multiplex until we reach Mancunian Way, the A57 heading off as a short urban motorway, the A6 heading into the city centre via London Road/Piccadily, where it loses its number and vanishes. It would have gone straight down Piccadily/Market Street to meet Deansgate, and then across the River Irwell into Salford, and up Chapel Street, where the number reappears. Market Street has been pedestrianised for years, so the A6 has long ceased to be a through route.
The road now begins slightly further south than it used to. Instead of starting on Fairfield Street in Manchester city centre, it begins immediately as the Mancunian Way ends, which at this point is the unsigned A635(M). The motorway flows directly into our route. There’s a TOTSO right at a set of lights, and we pick up the old alignment, which now starts as the B6469.
We can see the new City of Manchester Stadium on the left, site of the 2002 Commonwealth Games and now home to Manchester City FC. The road switches between S2 and S4 as it passes through the rather run-down urban areas of Ardwick and Gorton. A short one-way system at a triangular-shaped junction with the A662 leads onto a wider stretch as we near the M60 junction. This area is set to see significant industrial growth, with whole swathes of land either side of the now D3 road cleared and ready for development.
The obvious place for the A664 to start is on the A665 Manchester & Salford Inner Relief Route, which at this point is actually two parallel one-way streets. However, many maps show the road continuing a short distance into the city centre to end at traffic lights by the Shudehill Interchange – this is presumably for historic reasons: the road originally continued along the High Street to its terminus on the A6 Market Street.
The road heads northeastwards through the suburbs, the street name Rochdale Road, already emphasising its destination. Initially dual, the road narrows just before crossing the bridge over the railway line east of Victoria station. It continues through Collyhurst and widens again just before crossing the A6010 Intermediate Ring Road, which here is made up of two parallel one-way streets, requiring two separate sets of traffic lights to cross.
Now non-primary – but still dual for a short distance more, the road runs in a more northerly direction through Blackley, where it becomes wooded for a short distance as it passes the Boggart Hole Clough park. Slightly further on the road has been straightened, after which it bears right to widen considerably and cross the A6104 at traffic lights just before M60 J20, which only has west-facing sliproads. The road narrows again on the far side of the motorway and leaves Manchester for Rochdale at the same point.
Oh how I loved this place my family drunk in here for years and years, I remember waiting outside on a weekend with a packet of crisps and a glass of coke, waiting for them to come out. I think it was the first place I had my first legal drink, loved the place hate to go past now and see it as a Premier. Anyone seen Dave and Ann lately once upon a time landlord and landlady, does anyone know how they are doing?Â
Sunday afternoons karaoke and everyone sat outside in the summer – oh the memories.
I used to Drink in there around 1975/76, it was OK in those days, a local wrestler used to drink in there, his name was Alan Kilby, I saw him fight on TV a few times.
The former pub’s striking roof is still striking – sadly the last orders bell stopped striking long, long ago.
The shop was busy and the chips from the chippy were just the job on a cold damp November day.
Changes in the demographics of the area, social trends and the general economic malaise, have ensured that many estate pubs are no longer able to thrive and prosper.
Hyde Road was a football stadium in West Gorton, Manchester, England.
It was home to Manchester City FC and their predecessors, from its construction in 1887 until 1923, when the club moved to Maine Road.
Billy Gillespie on the ball.
Before its use as a football ground, the site was an area of waste ground, and in its early days the ground had only rudimentary facilities. The first stand was built in 1888, but the ground had no changing facilities until 1896; players had to change in a nearby public house, the Hyde Road Hotel.
As a Chester’s house, a condition of the club’s official link to the pub was that supporters and club officials and players would sup Chesters ales, and in return Stephen Chesters Thompson of the brewery helped finance stadium improvements.
The move of MCFC to Maine Road in 1923 following a fire at the Hyde Road ground, didn’t adversely affect the Hyde Road Hotel and it continued to serve the West Gorton community and the once-bustling Hyde Road thoroughfare.
As late as the 1980s, renamed the City Gates, it was a popular watering hole before the match for supporters travelling in from East Manchester. It was kitted out in all sorts of MCFC memorabilia and was run by George Heslop, City legend of the 1960s, after he’d had the Royal George in town.
Sadly, as the community around it was decimated, the pub struggled and its last hurrah was as the City Gates theme pub. The business failed in 1989 and the pub sat empty and rotting for twelve years until it was demolished, despite a half-hearted fans campaign to save it. Two keystones from the Hyde Road Hotel reside in the MCFC memorial garden and are all that remain of this significant Manchester pub.
By 1904 the ground had developed into a 40,000-capacity venue, hosting an FA Cup semi-final between Newcastle United and Sheffield Wednesday the following year.
The stands and terraces were arranged in a haphazard manner due to space constraints, and by 1920 the club had outgrown the cramped venue. A decision to seek an alternative venue was hastened in November 1920, when the Main Stand was destroyed by fire. Manchester City moved to the 80,000-capacity Maine Road in 1923, and Hyde Road was demolished shortly afterward. One structure from the ground is still in use in the 21st century, a section of roofing which was sold for use at The Shay, a stadium in Halifax.
Maine Road – which in turn closed on May 11th 2003, City losing 1-0 to Southampton
City are now at home at the Etihad – formerly the Commonwealth Games Stadium.
I had always known the area as the Olympic Freight Depot – seen from the passing train.
I cycled by the other day and the containers are long gone – the site is being cleansed to a depth of two metres.
Loitering by the gates, I asked if I may take some snaps .
Please y’self – so I did.
So what’s next on the cards, for this little corner of local history – set twixt Bennett Street and Hyde Road?
New homes is on the cards – and on the hoardings.
Plans have been revealed for a 337-home development on the Olympic Freight depot in West Gorton.
Brought forward by Sheffield-based Ascena Developments, the planning application to Manchester City Council outlines proposals for 191 houses and 146 apartments, split across two blocks.
Kellen Homes has been granted planning consent to redevelop the thirteen-acre Olympic Freight depot on Bennett Street in Manchester into 272 homes.
The developer, owned by Renaker founder Daren Whitaker, lodged plans for the West Gorton scheme last year following the withdrawal of an earlier and larger scheme drawn up by Sheffield-based Ascena Developments.
More than once, though that’s no reason not to do so again – so I did.
Saying hello to Harold.
Harold saying hello to us:
Nostalgia won’t pay the bills; the world doesn’t owe us a living; and we must harness the scientific revolution to win in the years to come. This scientific revolution is making it physically possible, for the first time in human history, to conquer poverty and disease, to move towards universal literacy, and to achieve for the whole people better living standards than those enjoyed by tiny privileged classes in previous epochs.
He warned change would have to reach every corner of the country; The Britain that is going to be formed in the white heat of this revolution will be no place for the restrictive practices or for outdated methods on either side of industry.
Standing sentinel over one of Nikolaus Pevsner and John Betjeman’s favourite railway station front elevations.
Through a passage darkly.
Emerging into the light of day and the demolition of the Kirklees College 1969-72 by Borough Architect Charles Edmund Aspinall.
My thanks to the Metropolitan team who invited me in beyond the barriers.
We provide safe and efficient demolition services across a broad range of projects, from the small domestic dwelling to large scale industrial units – we offer the complete solution. With excellent communication and impeccable health and safety standards, we can project manage the decommissioning a structure on time and on budget.
Edward VII is under wraps.
Everything else is up for smash and grab – including the later concrete block immortalised by Mandy Payne.
LIDL is coming – and some homes
The final details have now been signed off by the council and work on the six-acre site – which includes the Grade II-listed original Huddersfield Royal Infirmary – can now begin.
The vandal-hit and fire-damaged late 1960s and early 1970s college buildings are to be demolished and Lidl will build a new supermarket with a 127-space car park. The store will eventually replace the store on Castlegate.
The former hospital will be retained and the site will see 229 apartments and an office complex. The apartments are expected to be for older or retired people.
Huddersfield’s £20M game-changing bus station is set to be completed by the end of 2025 with a living grass roof, sixty bike cycle hub, upgraded shops and new facilities
Crossing the road to the Civic Centre and the perennially empty piazza which along with the Magistrates Courts and Police Station was the work of the Borough Architects team – led by Charles Edmund Aspinall.
Walking excitedly toward the Exsilite panels set in the stone faced columns – a brand name for a synthetic, moulded, artificial marble.
Magistrates Courts
Police Station
Dick Taverne served under Harold Wilson’s premiership in the 1960s, he served as a Home Office Minister from 1966 to 1968, Minister of State at the Treasury from 1968 to 1969 and then as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1969 to 1970.
In 1970, he helped to launch the Institute for Fiscal Studies, now an influential independent think tank and was the first Director, later chairman.
The vision is to create an inclusive space where families, residents and visitors can enjoy a vibrant mix of music, arts, food and more in one central area, overlooking a stunning new urban park.
The council plans to demolish the Piazza Centre and create a new events/live music venue, a food hall, a museum and art gallery, a new library and a new multi-storey car park, all centred around a new Town Park.
Named after one of the Twentieth Century’s finest artists, the space nurtures a new and inspired generation of designers. Through visual and physical connection, the environment encourages students to work together, stimulating communication and ingenuity, the ingredients of successful collaboration.
Take that to the bank/s
Keep savin’, keep buildin’ That interest for our love Take that to the bank Keep savin’, keep buildin’ That interest for our love Take that to the bank
HSBC was designed by Peter Womersley, who also designed the thoroughly modern private house, Farnley Hey, near Castle Hill, which won the RIBA Bronze Medal in 1958.
Halifax Building Society
Having walked around town for more hours than enough I sought respite in The Sportsman and a glass of Squawk multi-berry fruited sour
Another great looking estate pub that was on the same estate as the Hipp which it was also fairly close to.
There was the usual two rooms inside, I had a drink in the bar room which was quite busy on my Friday afternoon visit, there was also a more comfortable lounge.
The pub was a Robinsons tied house, there were two real ales on, I had a drink of Robinsons Bitter which was a nice drink, there was also Robinsons Mild on.
We are committed to the growth and development of individual, our local and international communities. In the interim may I use this medium to invite you to be part of the move of God in our church, the Pathfinder.
The Lord bless your richly as you navigate through in Jesus name.
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 –Â 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.Â
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.
Back out onto Dorning Street in search of telephone exchanges, three telephone exchanges.
Inter-war
Sixties.
Seventies.
Just around the corner is an expansive GPO Sorting Office of 1959.
Across the way is the Technical College.
The foundations of Wigan & Leigh College date back to 1857, and the current institution was formed in April 1992 through the merger of Wigan College of Technology and Leigh College.
Partly formed from the Thomas Linacre Technical School.
Architects: Howard V Lobb G Grenfell Bains & Hargreaves 1954
Curious decorative brick motif – a floor plan of the building.
My thanks to Mark Watson for his erudition and insight.
Across the road the former Grammar School now an NHS Centre.
Wigan Grammar School was founded in 1597 and closed in 1972 as part of the comprehensive education movement. it became Mesnes High School until 1989, and then the Mesnes Building of Wigan College.
Construction began on the County Playhouse in 1916. However, due to a shortage of materials and labour during World War I, it was not completed until 1919.
Finally opened on 22nd December 1919 with The Peril Within – starring Dorothy Gish.
Onwards to the Wallgate News.
Finally to The George public house.
All ages, all different, all characters all like a bevvy.
Now I’m going east to Dalton Street, home to the Collyhurst cowboy.
Photograph: Dennis Hussey
This is an illusion within an illusion, twice removed.
The Hollywood recreation, recreated on the rough ground of post war Britain.
In 1960 the area was a dense network of streets, industry and homes – demolished during the period of slum clearance.
Escaping the dark, dank Irk Valley onwards and upwards to Rochdale Road.
The Dalton Works Arnac factory survived until 2008
Photograph: Mikey
The tight maze of Burton Street and beyond, reduced to rubble.
Dalton Street was not home to the Dalton Gang, they lived here in Oklahoma
It was home to imaginary gangs, committing imaginary crimes, in an imaginary Manchester, in ITV’s Prime Suspect Five.
Kangol capped criminals doing business outside the Robert Tinker on the corner of the very real Dalton and Almond Streets.
The Robert Tinker was an estate pub in a run down area of Collyhurst. The pub looked pretty grim from the outside, but it was smarter than I expected inside, I had a drink in the lounge which was carpeted and comfortable. This was a Banks’s tied house and there were two real ales on the bar, I had a drink of Banks’s bitter and this was a decent drink, the other beer was Banks’s mild. This pub closed about two years after my visit and looked derelict, it has now been demolished.
Robert Tinker was the owner of the Vauxhall Gardens, a Victorian pleasure venue.
At the openingthere was a special attraction, a giant cucumber which had been grown in the gardens reaching a length of seven feet and eight inches and a large and beautiful balloon was to be liberated at 9pm
Much of the red sandstone used for building in Manchester and the surrounding area, including stone for the Roman fort at Castlefield, St Ann’s Church in the city centre, Manchester Cathedral and the original buildings of Chetham’s Hospital, came from Collyhurst Quarry. Geologists use the term Collyhurst Sandstone for this type of soft red sandstone, which occurs in North West England
Tinker died in 1836 and gradually his gardens were whittled away, the subsoil was sold to iron moulders who cherished its certain properties and before long the trees were chopped down and houses were being built on the former site.
Those houses are in their turn whittled away, replaced in the 1960’s with fashionable tower blocks.
Architects: J Austen Bent 1965
In total five thirteen storey blocks – Humphries, Dalton, Roach, Vauxhall and Moss Brook Courts
Subsequently purchased by Urban Splash and refurbished:
Designed by Union North Architects, the names for the Three Towers were decided in a public competition and the winning names were Emmeline, Christabel and Sylvia – naming the towers after the Pankhurst sisters and their mother.
The remains of the remaining Eastford Square homes tinned up and secured awaiting who knows what.
So let’s take a short walk, see how things stand.
The area now forms the core of the latest municipal Masterplan – Victoria North.
Victoria North is a joint venture programme between Manchester City Council and developer Far East Consortium.
An internationally recognised developer, FEC specialises in residential led mixed-use developments and hotels, along with its casino and car park operations throughout mainland Europe.Â
The cowboys are now long gone – or are they?
When I was a cowboy out on the Western Plain Well, I made a half a million Working hard on the bridle reins
Come a cow-cow yicky come a cow-cow yicky, Harpurhey
New Inn 121-137 Greenside Lane Droylsden Manchester M43 7UT
It’s the 1830’s and Droylsden consist of farms, a smattering of industry and little else.
Greenside Lane has a farm, appropriately named Greenside Farm.
Where at some point in the 1930’s a pub appears – the appropriately named New Inn.
This such an anomaly in this setting, an architectural style more commonly found on the coast, the Seaside Moderne of Morecambe’s Midland Hotel, or Bexhill’s De la Warr Pavilion.
A streamlined ocean liner of a boozer, truly Tameside Moderne.
For the new housing in the area.
Air like Blackpool – and pub architecture to match!
I discovered on Carl Flaherty’s Flickr post some of the pub’s deep history.
My parents were the first licensees of the New Inn, I was six months old when we moved in, that was in 1936. It was always very busy even more so during WW2, the Home Guard put an old Lewis Gun on the roof which bought down the ceiling when they fired, crazy.
The roof used to have heaps of shrapnel after the bombing raids, the cellar was used as an air-raid shelter until the government built one for each home. We had a German fighter pilot housed in the cellar till the regular army came and took him away, he’d been shot down over Daisy Nook. We moved to Gatley in late 1949 and came to Australia in 1956. I remember the New Inn and Droylsden with fondness,the people were so friendly all the time.
I had a stack of those old photographs of the inside as it was then the Lewis gun and Karl -the pilot, plus ones of George Formby who was a mate of Dads he had a pinky red coloured Bentley which he used to park in the yard on the left of the pub. When I was in the army I was for a while in Germany I visited the pilot Karl Lehmann he lived in Hamburg, strange days mate.
John Leigh.
Copyright Gerald England – Geograph UK
George had a passion for the Rolls and Jag – but it seems he also had a pinkish 1939 Mercury Eight Series 99A Estate during the war years.
Commissioned by Sir Malcolm Campbell and later owned by George Formby.
The pub now closed is currently mixed use – apartments and retail, some detail has survived though as with many other examples, the victim of replacement uPVC and re-rendering.
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.
The original master plan would have swept away the Victorian Technical Institute and Salford Art Gallery.
Across the road are the Maxwell Buildings.
They were built between 1959 and 1960 to a design by the architect C H Simmons of the Lancashire County Architects Department.
The interior decorative order of Sixties’ institutions was integral to the architectural design, sadly this is no longer so.
The hall has a great musical heritage.
Featuring the Fast Cars who we have previously encountered in Swinton at the Lancastrian Hall.
Which may be the subject of ambitious redevelopment.
Take a turn around the corner to the Cockcroft Building.
The east facing mural painted out and obscured by retrofitted infrastructure.
These incised stone panels obscured by plants.
To the left is the Clifford Whitworth Library – this is the original architectural impression – signed Peter Sainsbury.
The original fascia was tile clad.
Subsequently replaced by uPVC boards.
Yet again the original interior was integral too the architectural scheme and period.
Across the way the Chapman Building.
It was designed by WF Johnson and Partners of Leamington Spa, as a lecture theatre block and gallery. It sits with its long axis running parallel to the railway behind. The series of grey volumes, occasionally punctuated by colourful floods of red and green trailing ivy, hang together in a less than convincing composition. The orientation and access to the building seem confused and detached from any cohesive relationship to the rest of the campus, but there is something perversely attractive about the right essay in the wrong language. The reinforced concrete building contained five lecture theatres, communal spaces, an art gallery, AV support areas and basement plant rooms. Following a major refurbishment in 2012, several additions were made to the exterior and its total concrete presence somewhat diminished. It still houses lecture theatres and a number of other learning and social spaces.
To the rear of the building there are some of the original details, now painted a series of funny colours.
A ways down the road the former Salford Technical College.
Now the part of the University of Salford, this grouping is probably the most significant work by Halliday Meecham during this period. The blocks wrap to almost enclose a courtyard and they step up in height towards the rear of the site. To the front is a lecture theatre block in dark brick. The multi-storey elements are straightforward in their construction and appearance and have had their glazing replaced. Perhaps the richest elements here are the three totemic structures by artist William Mitchell, which were listed at Grade II in 2011. Mitchell was actively engaged with the experiments of the Cement and Concrete Associations during the 1960s and produced a wide variety of works for public and private clients; other works regionally include the majority of the external art and friezes at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral and the Humanities Building at Manchester University. These textured concrete monoliths appear to have an abstract representation of Mayan patterns and carry applied mosaic. They were made on site using polyurethane moulds. There is another Mitchell work hidden behind plasterboard in the inside of the building.
April 1965 saw the Salford City Reporter proudly boast in an article that
The Ellor Street dream begins to come true – complete with interviews with residents of the newly constructed Walter Greenwood, Eddie Colman and John Lester Courts all which towered some 120 feet above the Hanky Park skyline.
These particular blocks of flats were of special significance because their completion was the end of the first stage of the Ellor Street redevelopment scheme which was to provide 3,000 new homes, the £10 million pound Salford Shopping Precinct and a new civic centre – which never got built – making this A Salford of the Space Age.
The tower blocks are now clad and the site a construction base for cladders.
Full details of Salford’s complex and extensive redevelopment can be found here at Tower Block.
Walter Greenwood Court was demolished in 2000/2001, whilst Eddie Colman and John Lester Court are now student accomodation for the nearby Salford University.
The construction of the shopping centre and surrounding areas continued and on 21 May 1970 the new Salford Market officially opened. From 1971 onwards new shops inside the precinct itself began to open.
However, due to a lack of funds and a political scandal which saw chairman Albert Jones jailed for eight months construction of Salford Precinct was halted. The site had only 95 shop units compared to the proposed 260, the hotel and two storey car park were never built.
The architectural core of the site has been retained, including the 23 storey Briar Court residential tower.
Tucked in behind is Mother of God and St James RC Church.
Clearances took place from the middle of the twentieth century and new high-rise housing blocks were built, as well as a shopping centre.
There was a Catholic presence in the area from 1854, when schools were built. What was described in The Tablet as a beautiful church, an Early English Gothic design by M. Tijou – presumably Herbert Tijou, architect of the chapel to Loreto College, Manchester, was opened by Cardinal Manning, Archbishop of Westminster in 1875.
One hundred years later this church was demolished and replaced by the present building.
The architects were Desmond Williams & Associates, the design bearing some similarity to their St Sebastian, Salford. In 2010 the church of All Souls, Weaste, was closed, and the marble sanctuary furnishings brought to the church.
Description
All orientations given are liturgical. The church is steel framed with brick walls and a monopitch roof (originally covered with copper, now with felt). Bold brick forms create a presence, and the design is somewhat defensive, with few windows. The building is entered from a lower porch which forms a narthex. The slope of the roof and the stepped clerestory lighting create a striking impression inside, and full-height windows towards the east end incorporate stained glass figures said to have originated in the previous church. Marble sanctuary furnishings are presumably those from the church in Weaste and appear to be of later twentieth century date, while the font is of traditional type with a clustered stem and may have come from the earlier church.
Returning to The Crescent the High Street Estateis all but demolished, save for one resident and their row.
This is an area which has seen a succession of clearances, redevelopment and shifts in demographics during a relatively short and intense period of change.
That process of change continues to hastily unfold.
The building was originally developed by C&A and it is thought that funding for the reliefs might have been provided by the store and/or Northern Arts. It became BHS which subsequently closed, the building is now occupied by Primark, C&A estates still own the site.
Taking a bold leap into the unknown I left the city centre, unwisely following unfamiliar roads, predictably becoming very lost.
I sought assistance from a passing fellow cyclist, very kindly he guided me to Tynemouth, following a mysterious and circuitous course across the undulating terrain – thanks.
The city quickly becomes the seaside with its attendant retail bricolage.
An all too familiar redundant lido – opened in 1925 and closed in the mid 90’s – but a Friends Group aims to breathe new life into the site.
The Park Hotel built in the 1930’s and recently refurbished has been bought by The Inn Collection Group.
A simple three-arched entrance had been built facing the seafront and the area was now completely enclosed within a boundary. In 1909, large rides appeared, including a Figure Eight rollercoaster and a Water Chute. Elderton and Fail wanted to make a statement and create a new, grand entrance to the fairground. They hired the Newcastle architects Cackett& Burns Dick to survey the site and begin drawing up plans for new Pleasure Buildings.
Building began in February 1910 and the construction was completed by builders Davidson and Miller 60 days later. The use of the revolutionary reinforced concrete technique pioneered by Francois Hennebique was perfect for the job, being cheap and fast. The Dome and surrounding buildings – a theatre and two wings of shop units – opened on 14 May 1910 to great fanfare. Visitors marvelled at the great Spanish City Dome, the second largest in the country at the time after St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, which provided a spectacular meeting place with uninterrupted views from ground level to its ceiling, 75 feet above.
Telegraph-wire cyclists, acrobatic comedians, singing jockeys, mermaids, they all appeared at the Spanish City during its first decade. One of the wings hosted the menagerie, where visitors could see hyenas, antelopes and tigers! This was converted into the Picture House cinema in 1916.
A little further along, a selection of Seaside Moderne semis in various states of amendment and alteration.
Before I knew it I was in Blyth.
The town edged with military installations
Gloucester Lodge Battery includes the buried, earthwork and standing remains of a multi-phase Second World War heavy anti-aircraft gun battery and radar site, as well as a Cold War heavy anti-aircraft gun and radar site. The battery occupies a level pasture field retaining extensive rig and furrow cultivation.
During WW2 Blyth Harbour was used as a major submarine base and that combined with the heavy industry in the area it made a very good target for the Luftwaffe.
827 men of the 225th Antiaircraft Artillery Searchlight Battalion of the U.S. Army, arrived at this location in early March 1944 and were attached to the 30th British AAA Brigade. Here they sharpened their skills in the high-altitude tracking of aircraft.
The cycle route took me off road along the estuary and under the flyover.
Encountering a brand new factory.
And the remnants of the old power station.
Blyth Power Station – also known as Cambois Power Station, refers to a pair of now demolished coal-fired power stationsThe two stations were built alongside each other on a site near Cambois in Northumberland, on the northern bank of the River Blyth, between its tidal estuary and the North Sea. The stations took their name from the town of Blyth on the opposite bank of the estuary. The power stations’ four large chimneys were a landmark of the Northumberland skyline for over 40 years.
After their closure in 2001, the stations were demolished over the course of two years, ending with the demolition of the stations’ chimneys on 7 December 2003.
UK battery tech investor Britishvolt has unveiled plans to build what is claimed to be Britain’s first gigaplant at the former coal-fired power station in Blyth in Northumberland.
The £2.6 billion project at the 95-hectare Blyth Power Station site will use renewable energy from the UK and possibly hydro-electric power generated in Norway and transmitted 447 miles under the North Sea through the ‘world’s longest inter-connector’ from the North Sea Link project.
By 2027, the firm estimates the gigaplant will be producing around 300,000 lithium-ion batteries a year.
The project is predicted to create 3,000 new jobs in the North East and another 5,000 in the wider supply chain.
Modern Mooch 