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.
The Cornbrook drains the urban area South of the River Medlock, it rises in Gorton and follows a tortous path through Manchester’s Southern ‘inner city’ suburbs and empties itself into the Manchester Ship Canal at the Pomona Docks.
It’s a tram stop – primarily an interchange, though the brand new shiny residential new build has produced a brave band of brand new shiny residents in transit. Slipping and sliding ‘neath the bridge, skating over the age old accretion of filth, oil, diesel and detritus produced by the surrounding scrap yards.
We are one of the first recycling companies operating in the North West, Bennett Bros was founded in 1948 by Francis William Bennett and Bernard Bennett, and remains a family-run business to this day. Bennett Bros was originally involved in loaning ponies to the many rag and bone men who collected unwanted household items and sold them to merchants, and while the recycling industry has now embraced modern technology, we are very proud of our heritage as innovators in what was then a new industry.
In 2017 I visited the area to snap the gates of their older site – as they had moved the business just across the street.
I returned in December 2023 to discover what had become of the gates.
Remnants of the drop shadow block lettering remain, beneath a palimpsest of tags and grime.
We awoke, we dawdled around Deal, prior to our delightful breakfast.
Though the pier appeared to be closed.
Extending elegantly over a still, still sea.
The present pier, designed by Sir W. Halcrow & Partners, was opened on 19 November 1957 by the Duke of Edinburgh. Constructed predominantly from concrete-clad steel, it is 1,026 ft in length – a notice announces that it is the same length as the RMS Titanic, but that ship was just 882 feet, and ends in a three-tiered pier-head, featuring a cafe, bar, lounge, and fishing decks.
The lowest of the three tiers is underwater at all but the lowest part of the tidal range, and has become disused.
Pausing in Ramsgate to admire Edward Welby Pugin’s Grade II Listed – Granville Hotel.
The Granville development, so named after George Leverson Gower, second Earl Granville (1815-1891), was a venture undertaken by Edward Welby Pugin, together with investors Robert Sankey, George Burgess and John Barnet Hodgson on land acquired from the Mount Albion Estate in 1867. The scheme was to be an important new building in the eastward expansion of the town and the emergence of a fashionable new suburb. At the outset, the intention was to build a relatively restrained speculative terrace of large townhouses with some additional facilities. However, as the scheme progressed and it became apparent that buyers could not be secured, revised plans for an enlarged hotel complex were adopted in 1868 and brought to completion in 1869. These plans, which added a series of grand rooms including a banqueting hall, receptions rooms and an entrance hall in addition to a tunnel to connect to the railway line on the seafront, gardens, a complex of Turkish baths and a vast landmark tower (originally 170ft high, although truncated at a relatively early date), were remarkably ambitious. Ultimately, as it would transpire, the scheme was rather too ambitious on Pugin’s part; with his increasing reliance on loans eventually culminating in bankruptcy in October 1872, an event which precipitated his demise as an architect, tragically followed by his death just three years later.
Overlooking the sea, the ornamental gardens were laid out and presented to the Borough of Ramsgate by Dame Janet Stancomb-Wills in 1920 and opened to the public in June 1923 by the Mayor of Ramsgate Alderman A. W. Larkin. They are maintained by Thanet District Council and were Grade II listed on 4 February 1988.
The gardens were designed by the architects Sir John Burnet & Partners, and constructed by Pulham and Son. The main feature of the gardens, is a semi-circular shaped colonnade carved into the pulhamite recess.
On the upper terrace, approached by broad flights of steps, the gardens proper are reached. In the centre, and immediately over the shelter, is a circular pool enclosed on the north side by a semi-circular Roman seat.
On leaving the town we encounter this engaging flint church – Holy Trinity
Erected 1829-1830. David Barnes Architect, extended 1925.
Built of flint and rubble.
One of the first visitors to this church was Charles Dickens who offered a very unflattering description in his work, Our English Watering Place:
We have a church, by the bye, of course – a hideous temple of flint, like a petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary, who, to his honour, has done much for education, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, healthy gentleman, who has got into little local difficulties with the neighbouring farms, but has the pestilent trick of being right.
In Margate the tidal pools are full of waveless sea water and kiddy fun.
The former crazy golf course is undergoing an ongoing programme of involuntary rewilding.
Time now for tea and a welcome plate of chish and fips at the Beano Cafe.
I miss my haddock and chips from Beano in Margate, brought to you with a smile and he remembers everyone.
Great customer service and friendly staff, see you soon.
The food is awful and the customer service is even worse: when we complained about the food the staff argued with us and wouldn’t do anything to change the food or refund, avoid at all costs!
Commercial building with ground-floor retail units and offices to the upper floors, c1883, by W H Crossland with sculptural work by C E Fucigna. Sandstone ashlar, slate roof, substantial ashlar ridge stacks. C19 Queen Anne style with French influences and classical Greek sculpture. One of the ground-floor shop units was remodelled in 1935 by Sharp and Law of Bradford with Moderne shopfronts and interior fittings.
The cultural and visual collision is immediate – the pairing of Huddersfield’s grand Victorian manner with the latest of European Moderne.
Neaverson’s – purveyors of pottery and glass began life in 1893 in premises on Cross Church Street, before moving to the Grade I-listed Byram Street building in 1935.
Set to the ground floor of bay 4 is a 1935 Moderne shopfront by Sharp and Law of Bradford. The shopfront is of grey and pink/beige marble with unmoulded windows that are curved to eliminate reflection, and has a glazed door set within a recessed porch. Set below the top of the shopfront is a ribbon window with dark tinted glazing and slender vertical and horizontal muntin bars arranged in a geometric pattern. The original metal signage in stylised sans-serif relief lettering reads ‘NEAVERSONS’, ‘pottery’ and ‘four’.
Thought to echo Susie Cooper’s London shop and unswervingly now – the fascia must have been something of a shock to the taciturn Tykes.
There is not a day goes by when I don’t see some of my customers asking what went wrong. They think I was a failure and that is so not the truth.
Along came a restaurant:
The Grade II 1930’s interior has been refurbished by the new owners and exudes understated sophistication.
“Wow, I feel like I’m in London,” said Trish as she stepped into the newly-opened Neaversons restaurant, having just arrived on the train from the capital.
1-3 Sandside, Scarborough, North Yorkshire, YO11 1PE.
Do you remember the first time?
Sometime around 2011, I fell in love with the Harbour Bar Scarborough.
A family business serving home made ice cream since 1945.
It’s a magical world of mirrors, melamine, signs and ice creams.
Since then I’ve been back for a banana split and take the opportunity to take a few more snaps, I never leave anything less than overwhelmingly happy and full.
Modern Mooch 