UK – Page 23 – Modern Mooch

Shopping Precincts – UK

Posted on March 28, 2018March 28, 2018 by modernmoocher

I was brought up with Sixties’ shopping precincts and centres, they are so very dear to my heart, I spent my teenage years here in Ashton, Stalybridge, and latterly in Stockport’s Merseyway.

I’ve visited Hanley, Preston, Salford, and Coventry in search of a certain something – that exciting sweeping swoop of concrete, brick, glass and steel. Underpasses with overarching designs and luxurious layouts of leisurely interlocking levels. Each one different in a different way yet essentially similar – embodying a sense of civic pride, a sense of the future realised.

1571 – The Royal Exchange, a trading market in the City of London, is officially opened by Elizabeth I. Above the open-air piazza where dealers buy and sell commodities, there is a two-storey shopping mall, with 100 different kiosks – making it Britain’s first shopping centre.

1964 – It was a monument to provincial pride in reinforced concrete and glass. When the Duke of Edinburgh opened the Birmingham Bull Ring in May 1964, it was the largest indoor shopping centre in Europe, with a total floor area of 23 acres. Inspired by American suburban malls, the Bull Ring promised coatless shopping in an air-conditioned, temperature-controlled hall maintained at late-spring level.

2017 – Many are now no more, or redeveloped beyond recognition. The integrity of the architecture, street furniture, public art, space and usage a thing of folk memory.

So come with me now on a whirlwind picture postcard tour of this Nation’s saving grace – it’s modernist shopping spaces.

Aberdeen

Barlaston

Bedford

Bracknell

Brentwood

Brighton

Burton on Trent

Butts – Reading

Chelmsford

Corby

Coventry

Cowplain

Crawley

Crewe

Croydon

Cwmbran

Dudley

Elephant and Castle

Great Yarmouth

Hanley

Harlow

Hartlepool

Hebburn

Immingham

Irvine

Leamore

Letchworth

Leyland

Liverpool

Mexborough

Milton Keynes

Nantwich

Norris Green

Plymouth

Runcorn

Sleaford

Southampton

Stockport

Swanley

Telford

Wakefield

Walton on Thames

Westway – Frome

Wolverhampton

Worksop

Strangeways #3 – Black and White World

Posted on February 16, 2018February 16, 2018 by modernmoocher

I’ve been here for the last fifteen years on and off, snapping away, capturing something of the area’s ever changing moods, the old, the new, the borrowed and the blue.

Wading through the archives, or searching for the remains of modernity.

On this occasion I have chosen to work on black and white film – the medium conveying something timeless, at a time when things are forever changing.

Let’s take a contradictory look and walk around those familiar, unfamiliar streets of Strangeways – where colourfully clad industrial barn, collides with blackened brick and stone behemoth.

R.E & J. Parker Bakers – Leigh

Posted on January 16, 2018 by modernmoocher

I do have a particular penchant for pâtisserie – though close in spirit to their Euro equivalents, the vernacular bakers of the North are by comparison, sadly now a seldom seen, rare and precious breed.

My dad’s three sisters Alice, Jenny and Lydia all trained as confectioners, and he himself was a van man for Mother’s Pride. In my turn I worked as a van lad at their Old Trafford base.

Flour, eggs, sugar and fat are in my blood.

In their way the growth of the mass-market bakers, along with the motor car and supermarket hegemony sealed the fate of the local bread, cake and pie shop, along with the demise of the associated skills and attendant early morning work patterns. When I visited Cochrane’s in Audenshaw, it was clear that their youngsters no longer wished to take on the family baking business. So the once unremarkable sight of remarkable rows of fancies, growlers and tarts, is now a thing of familiar folk memory, rather than a sweet and savoury reality.

On both of my visits to Leigh I have passed Parker’s – the windows warm from the freshly baked confectionery – including the almost unique Singing Lily – sweet double crust pies, a large circle of shortcrust pastry folded over dried fruit and rolled until the fruit is visible, sugared and baked.

Next time I’ll go in and try one or two treats – get it while you can.

Northmoor Road Co-op – Manchester

Posted on September 8, 2017September 8, 2017 by modernmoocher

Cooperative Society shops and meeting hall. Dated 1912; altered. Red brick with liberal dressings of green and buff glazed terracotta, red tiled roof with geometrical patterned band and cockscomb ridge tiles. Rectangular plan. Edwardian Baroque style. Two storeys and attic, 11 bays; projected ground floor with dark green Ionic pilasters between the shops and a central recessed porch with dark green surround, light green Ionic columns and segmental open pediment ; inverted voluted brackets linking ground floor pilasters to alternate pedestals of 1st-floor colonnade, which has Ionic semi-columns with festoons and a thin cornice, all in matching light green terracotta; swagged frieze of buff terracotta with buff modillions to a green cornice; brick parapet with buff terracotta balustrades and triangular dormers in alternate bays, interrupted in the centre by a green segmental pediment with raised lettering “Beswick Cooperative Society LTD”. Tall segmental-headed windows at 1st floor including a canted bay in the centre with parapet lettered “Built AD 1912”, and coupled windows in the 2nd, 3rd, 10th and 11th bays, all with elaborate surrounds of buff terracotta including quoined jambs, moulded transoms and enriched keystones; and stained glass in the upper lights. Square Baroque-style turret at left gable.

Grade II Listed

The building itself was originally designed for commercial use with a department store on the ground floor boasting five departments including a butchers, shoes and boots, a drapery and a grocery. On the first floor there was a meeting room that was large enough to host dances with live music. Its inaugural event was an exhibition by the Co-operative Workers Society that also included a recital by the C.W.S. orchestra of Balloon Street; it was reported to have been a great success. It was also used for community events such as the Crowcroft Bowls Club prize-giving ceremony in 1914.

Northmoor Road was called North Road at the time the building was in use as a co-operative and was developed between 1899 and 1930’s. Its most famous resident was J.R.Tolkien who lived here between 1926 and 1947.

North moor Community Association

1965 Manchester Local Image Collection

Now home to Great Places Housing

This is such a substantial building exuding an opulent retail grandeur that easily leaves your local Tesco Local in the deep dark ignominious shade. From a time when the expanding Cooperative movement provide for most of the areas material needs – though the Beswick Society was disliked for its aggressive territorial ingress, outside of any recognised geographic constriction.

Externally it is still substantially as was – clearly visible from the nearby Stockport Road and continuing to command the street with degree of grace.

Go take a walk, take a look!

Myrtle Gardens – Liverpool

Posted on September 26, 2016September 27, 2016 by modernmoocher

Once again I wandered the warm and welcoming streets of Liverpool in search of houses.

Once again I found older housing, dressed up as newer housing with a new roof, windows and clientele, a stone’s throw from my former encounter in St Andrew’s Gardens.

Myrtle Gardens in Edge Hill was part of the larger project of Liverpool’s inter-war rehousing programme – a tale very well told by Municipal Dreams.

An area with a whole heap of history

And a whole heap more on this fine site The Liverpool Picture Book from whence these images were taken:

There is also a comprehensive visual history here in this clip:

Containing the poignant lost faces of the estate:

A familiar tale of bomb damage, decline and sale to private developers and here we are today, a mix of short student lets, newcomers and a handful of long term residents.

Eddie the porter – named Eddie Porter, a clear case of nominative determinism, proved the perfect host, I introduced myself as the man from the Manchester Modernists, doors opened and the conversation flowed like fine wine.

Tales of lads illicitly playing football in the roof voids, families leaving concrete structures in order to huddle in corrugated iron Anderson Shelters, A Hitler’s time in the ‘Pool and his resolve save the Liver Building, bombs that did fall on the now missing blocks of flats, a family celebrating the return of their son killed in an air raid.

We parted and I strolled amongst the elevated homes some 300 flats, over 80 years old and continuing to provide shelter and succour for the many, though sadly no longer under the sheltering wing of the Municipal Housing Department and their team of engineers, architects and builders.

Wavertree Liverpool – Pathfinder

Posted on September 26, 2016September 26, 2016 by modernmoocher

How does the modern world treat the past?

With a disdain bordering on a sociopathic destructive indifference it appears.

New Labour with an eye to rehouse the housed, tinned up hundreds of homes prior to demolition and redevelopment. They were and still are solid late Victorian terraces possibly in need of improvement – during the 1990’s, period housing stock was refurbished with central government funding, through a system of easily obtained grants. Improving the living conditions of many, maintaining the structures, and supporting the local self-employed building trade.

So several years down the line, I visited the streets of Wavertree discussed in Owen Hatherley’s article of 2013.

Little or nothing has changed there are some tenanted houses, interspersed between the blanked out windows in sadly deserted streets, save the two camera shy free runners, who had lived and played in the area for some seven years.

When one door closes another door closes.

If working-class areas are to defend themselves, they need confidence, both in themselves and in the places they live, otherwise the whole grim process will go on, with councils making the same mistakes and the same lives being destroyed, without interruption.

Allied Ironfounders – Audenshaw

Posted on September 16, 2016September 16, 2016 by modernmoocher

As I walked out one morning, in search of an industrial access cover or two or more, I found more, much more, dug deeper, unearthed a can of worms, a murky past cast in cast iron.

This is the cover closest to my home on Didsbury Road Stockport, manufactured by Glynwed of Corporation Road Audenshaw, the closest foundry to my former school.

Glynwed formerly Allied Ironfounders, the manufacturer of gas appliances, the humble Rayburn and the infamous stuff of sagas the Aga.

And the Meridian Grate – great! The foundry was also known as the Planet Works, the adjoining rough ground Planet Fields, where on wet winter days we would form a mud spattered procession of ragged schoolboys engaged in the joys of cross country running, over a factory’s spoil tip.

We never got to see the firm’s Mayfair showrooms, we never got to pass go – I guess it was just too far to run, cross country or otherwise.

The sleek Modernist lines of the Allied Ironfounders’ showpiece contrasts with the conditions of the work force manufacturing the grates and Agas.

So some fifty years and several miles separates me from my schooldays and my local gas inspection cover. Guess I’l just gas up the Thames Trader and head for the hills folks.

Yippie-aye-ay, yippie-aye-oh, ghost riders in the sky.

And underground.

Kirklees College – Huddersfield

Posted on September 15, 2016September 15, 2016 by modernmoocher

Kirklees College started life as Huddersfield Infirmary in 1831 up until 1967 when the Ramsden Technical College moved in, they paid £105,000 for the site.

In September 1968 the first students began lectures and the first new building on the site opened in 1969. The main new block was built in 1971 – the year the college became Huddersfield Technical College. In 2008 Huddersfield Technical College merged with Dewsbury College to form Kirklees College and relocated in 2013.

The campus incorporates 10 buildings over a 6.1 Acre site ranging from the old hospital complex to modern blocks of classrooms.

Some of the buildings have been used for the filming of the dramas Black Work, Remember Me where they changed some areas to be a care home, a hospital and a police station and the film Extremis.

The site is owned by Wiggett Construction Group, who have now confirmed they want to demolish the 1970s college buildings to make way for a Lidl supermarket.

Thanks to Derelict Places – they went inside, I didn’t, I don’t do that sort of thing.

I walked the lengthy perimeter, bobbing in and out of nooks and crannies in search of nothing in particular. Chatted to a Kirklees employee who had worked at the site, he regretted its closure and passing.

“This building had character, it was great to work here – now it’s going to be a supermarket.”

A curious amalgam of municipal classicism and hard edged 70s modernity, presided over by a sombre, care worn and patinated Edward VII.

“Worth a few bob, a bugger to shift.”

Bus Station – Huddersfield

Posted on September 12, 2016 by modernmoocher

Huddersfield bus station serves the town of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.

Which seems both serendipitous and heartwarmingly convenient.

The bus station was opened on Sunday 1 December 1974 and is owned and managed by Metro. It is now the busiest bus station in West Yorkshire. The bus station is situated in Huddersfield town centre, underneath the Multi-storey car park. It is bordered by the Ring Road – Castlegate A62 and can be accessed from High Street, Upperhead Row and Henry Street.

There are 25 pick-up and three alighting only stands at the bus station.

Forever in the shadow of its Red Rose almost neighbour in Preston.

Some forty five miles and a fifteen and a half hour walk to the west.

Yet still a thing of beauty and a joy forever – given the recent repairs to the membrane covering of its multi-storey car park.

On the day of my visit it was clean, compact, cheerfully bustling and well used, passengers busy going about their business, of busily going about their business of going.

Light classics played soothingly upon the Tannoy, punters popped in and out of Ladbrokes, the kiosk plied its trade, the café was full and an air of calm, clear functionality reigned.

I walked quietly away.

Caledonian Café – Huddersfield

Posted on September 11, 2016September 11, 2016 by modernmoocher

I often visit Huddersfield, and I often discover something new, exciting and different.

The Caledonian Café is everything that it isn’t, it’s the slow accretion of time, personal taste and accoutrements. Not frozen but slowly evolving, warm and welcoming. Owners Tony and Claire were more than happy to offer their company, tea and sympathy.

“The students come in to do their projects, sometimes they just ask to photograph the salt pots.”

I was more than happy to oblige and comply.

The prices are more than reasonable, and Tony goes out of his way to accommodate his customers.

” The families don’t always have a lot, so I give them two plates and split the burger and chips for the two kiddies.”

It was still early for me so I settled on a large tea, but I’ll be back before long for a bite to eat.

So best foot forward, get yourself down to the Caledonian, you won’t be disappointed.

Precinct – Ashton under Lyne

Posted on September 7, 2016November 5, 2019 by modernmoocher

Possibly my first brush with modernism and modernity, the shopping precinct in Ashton under Lyne. Typically in the mid Sixties, British towns reinvented themselves as space age retail experiences, in stark contrast to their middle aged, Middle Aged market centre, market centred identity.

Out with the cobbles and stalls, in with the travelator, frothy coffee, concrete and a pedestrianised, undercover, all weather, super convenient haven of heavenly fun!

And lo, it came to pass, let construction commence.

Simply add a few decorative embellishments courtesy of the Direct Works’ pavoirs.

You have built it and now they will come:

Little did you know you had created a punk rock icon.

Featured on the cover of fanzine Ghast Up #3 – many thanks to MDMA

Many thanks to the Tameside Image Archive

Ashton Moss – Expo 2025

Posted on September 3, 2016September 3, 2016 by modernmoocher

Why are we here?

A heady cocktail of capital, coal, cotton, cultivation, commerce and cricket created you.

The end of the age of celery heralded the construction of a new landscape of consumption.

Spoil and soil from the cuttings of the M60, added to by Etihad detritus created an elevated mound some hundred feet in height, across an area of seventeen hectares.

Where are we going?

Playing golf has been permanently postponed, the proposed light industrial units were knocked back by local authority planning officers, and residents’ objections.

So let’s get off to the Expo!

I took myself off there, take a look around, get a feel for the place. Currently the province of rebel dog walkers and guerrilla gardeners, I was informed that the rights of way are regularly blocked by an employee of Cordingley’s Estate Agents, who closes the gaps in the perimeter fencing, subsequently photographing his wiry handiwork. The gaps are then promptly reopened and walkways reestablished.

Short eared owls have been spotted.

I was told of the legend concerning Peg’s lantern – fearing for the well being of her son, Peg wanders the dark lanes in search of the errant offspring, later found drunk in a ditch.

This area is a locus of deep, deep energies and histories, monkey with it at your peril.

These are observations from a hill:

Ashton Moss – Leisure and Light Industry

Posted on September 3, 2016September 3, 2016 by modernmoocher

Absolute disgrace the food was disgusting and we’re we was sat it stunk of urine.

Never again will I go.

Welcome to the modern world, once home to the world’s finest celery, now home to the world’s worst online reviews.

The area, under cultivation for over a hundred years was bulldozed to one side, and left in a heap. The M60 arrived wiped its feet on the greensward and awaited the expected redevelopment.

Welcome to the brand new shiny nowhere, the dual carriageway expanse of Robert Sheldon Way carries you away to a strikingly inevitable array of chains, human bondage has never appeared so clean and bright.

Muse developments:

Good design is required as a key aspect of pursuing sustainable development indivisible from good planning. Good design involves seeking positive improvements in the quality of our built, natural and historic environment, addressing the connections between people and places.

Ashton Moss – The Past

Posted on September 2, 2016April 20, 2021 by modernmoocher

To the east of Manchester and the west of Ashton sits The Moss.

This map of 1861 shows an area criss-crossed with lanes, ditches and field boundaries.

A world that survived into the 1980s, captured here so beautifully by Brian Lomas, prior to the building of the M60.

Photographs from – Tameside Image Archive

Then came the railways:

With an attendant ghost:

And telecommunications installation

Its location on the south east corner of the Lancashire Coalfield, and the burgeoning demands of the Industrial Revolution saw the further development of mining in the area.

As the demand for coal outstripped the output, a deeper mine was opened in 1875, at Ashton Moss. This new pit had its own railway branch and canal arm for efficient transportation of the coal. In 1882 a second shaft was sunk – at 2,850 feet, the deepest in the world at that time.

The New Rocher pit closed in 1887 and Broadoak pit closed in 1904, after which time Ashton Moss pit was the only coal mine still in operation in Ashton. Although it produced 150,000 tons of coal a year in the early 1950s and employed over 500 men, Ashton Moss colliery closed in 1959 and part of its site is now the Snipe Retail Park on the boundary with Audenshaw.

Seen here in this painting by local artist David Vaughan.

Colliery lamp token.

Northern Mining

This tight little island of land was a contrasting mix of the agricultural and industrial, home also to the urgent demands of a leisured and growing working class.

The area boasted two motorcycle speedway tracks.

One located on the Audenshaw side, just behind The Snipe pub.

And one in Droylsden at the Moorside Stadium – home to local legend Riskit Riley:

The stadium later to become a horse trotting track, known locally as Doddy’s Trot

The Moss has also provided a home for Curzon Ashton football club

And Ashton Cricket and Bowling Club.

The cricket and the football have both survived the building of the Orbital Ring Road, and the development of the site as a light industrial, retail and leisure park.

The roar of Riskit Riley is heard no more.

Ashton Moss

Posted on August 31, 2016September 2, 2016 by modernmoocher

Ashton Moss is an area I have known for some fifty years or so, my grandfather was a collier at the Ashton Moss Pit, I worked trains around the triangle of rail that encloses the area – I returned some time ago to take a look at what remained of a once fertile area.

This area of low lying, deep peaty bog, just outside Ashton-under Lyne, was drained in the mid 1800’s to grow some of the best crops – It was world famous for its celery but also grew good cabbage, cauliflowers and lettuce, with cucumbers and tomatoes grown in glasshouses. The ground was apparently fertilised by marl dug from local banks or pits, and by dung brought by horse and cart from the elephant and tiger enclosures at Belle Vue Zoo, down the road.

Four brothers of the Kelly family came from Ireland shortly after the Irish potato famine of 1840’s, settled on the Moss and still have a descendent selling fruit and vegetables on Ashton Market today.

The Moss is also where Bill Sowerbutts, of Gardener’s Question Time fame, learnt his trade. Bill’s first memories were of his Father’s smallholding on the Moss, which had been bought from a market gardener called Tommy Knight in 1892.

http://kindling.org.uk/digging-around-ashton-moss

The celery is long gone, the land now in use as a retail leisure park, intersected by the Manchester Orbital ring road, a Metrolink tram track, several dual carriageways and the existing rail network.

Its passing does not seem to be matter of record save for this archived account of 1989.

I read today of plans to set the 2025 World’s Fair there.

In January 2009 it looked like this, heaps of spoil, recently relocated slag heaps, frozen lakes and puddles, rough tracks, barely preserved rights of way and restricted access.

Found Art

Posted on August 9, 2016August 9, 2016 by modernmoocher

For more years than I care to remember I have had an interest in Found Art.

The naturally occurring collision of printed material, the unseen hand and weather.

Our streets are literally littered with the stuff.

Conscious of the work of Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch, Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, I’m conscientiously out and about in search of the unconscious.

Here’s a sample of my findings so far:

Laundrette – Emlyn West Wales

Posted on June 1, 2016June 1, 2016 by modernmoocher

You could be in the middle of nowhere.

You are in the middle of nowhere.

Though never six feet from a rat, or a mile from a main road.

Moments away from a laundrette.

Imagine my amazement, on arrival in a town straddling the border of the counties of Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire in west Wales and lying on the River Teffi.

A launderette.

The heady of mix of interior austerity.

Functionally muted green, grey sky blue, nothing added.

An all too distinctive aroma of who knows what – warm water, soap and humanity?

Wash your dirty linen in public.

Lost and Found – Portwood

Posted on May 23, 2016November 30, 2025 by modernmoocher

Ὁ βίος βραχύς,ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή,ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξύς,ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερή,ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή.

I have no wish to take issue, with the finer thoughts and feelings of Deborah A. Ten Brink.

However.

There is a sense that our earthly endeavours, may serve to assist us in avoiding the void, the cold dark inevitability of eternity, that everyday here today, gone tomorrow feeling.

However.

Nothing lasts forever, except forever and nothing.

The cherished memories, condensed in a fraction of a second, rendered corporeal in photographic emulsion, carefully stored in family albums.

Are but a trick of light, a slight of hand, heart and mind.

Blink and they’re gone.

Blink again and you’re gone.

Here they were.

Here they are.

North Foreland Estate – Broadstairs

Posted on May 21, 2016May 21, 2016 by modernmoocher

Where the lone lawn ranger, meets the top of the range Range Rover.

Yippee ki oh ki-yay!

Forever out to out Lutyens.

I think you’re probably out to lunch.

To walk the shoreline path through North Foreland Estate, is to walk an intentionally unintentional free market, mash-up of architectural history.

Hey ho let’s go!

To begin at the beginning, 1636 a lighthouse is erected – leaping forward somewhat:

During World War II a number of radar stations were set up by German forces in France and the Netherlands to detect allied aircraft flying across the English Channel and a chain of top secret radar jamming stations were set up by British scientists along the south east coast of Britain. An array of transmitters was set out around gallery of the lighthouse controlled by equipment in the lower lantern as part of this chain.

The North Foreland lighthouse was last manned lighthouse in the UK, but was automated in a ceremony presided over by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1998.

It seems appropriate that the DoE should preside over the automation, however, I digress.

This is a gently rolling coast line, low chalk cliffs harbouring sandy coves and spies.

And the wealth of nations, £2,000,000 gets you this shiny hunk of real estate.

A gated community, double negated through further gating, ornamental railings, well clipped hedges, picket fences, high grey stuccoed walls, and attendant dogs.

Big dogs, very big dogs, fortunately with even bigger walls.

As is often the case in such areas the residents are short of nothing – excepting residents.

There was but on lone lawnmower owning owner to nod to.

Last seen, receding towards his quasi sixties, semi-dormered detached, hat intact.

So accompany me now through the New England homes of the new England, admire the Mock Gothic, Super Krazed Moderne, pseudo Tudo-Jacobethan delights that await us.

Too rich for your undernourished pockets, have you considered a drawing of a house?

High concept, conceptual housing for the under-housed.

So farewell the North Shoreland I’ll leave you to get on with your high value, property based, rise and fall bollard lifestyle I, like Felix – kept on walking.

Yorkshire Building Society – Bradford

Posted on May 17, 2016February 3, 2020 by modernmoocher

I don’t know much about the Yorkshire Building Society, I must say I have less than a passing interest in Building Societies generally.

I more of a building societies man myself.

But I do know this

In 1993 the former Hammonds Sauce Works Band was renamed as the Yorkshire Building Society Band. The building society supported the main band and also the YBS Hawley Band and YBS Juniors. The building society ceased its sponsorship in December 2004 although the YBS initials were retained in the band’s name until 2008. From January 2009 the band was renamed the Hammonds Saltaire Band.

Which seems a particularly cruel way, to treat a sauce works band.

Their former HQ has been standing on the corner, watching all the world go by.

For some time now.

Empty.

For sale, to let, facing an uncertain future.

Alone.