Mayfield Station, the forgotten one

It’s the forgotten Manchester Station and one that I had not thought about for over 30 years until Michael Thompson of Hardy Films reminded me of its existence.

You see it every time you are on platform 14 at Piccadilly Station, or on the rare occasion you are on Fairfield Street which runs close by it.

And for a big chunk of the 1970s Fairfield Street was where we caught the bus out to Grey Mare Lane and later to Ashton and you couldn’t avoid the site.

Even now this brick slab of a building dominates the view from the road but few who pass it have much idea of what it was or perhaps what it might become again.

It was opened in 1910 and had been designed to relieve the pressure on what today is Piccadilly Station and remained open until 1960 when it was closed to passengers. Now I am not one to lift the research of other people especially when they have told the story in detail so I will point you to http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/m/manchester_mayfield/index.shtml which has an excellent account of the station and where I not only learned of its reuse as a parcels depot, and film location but just possibly its return again to use as an overspill station for Piccadilly.

And I have fond memories of the place.

It was also where my old school colleague Norman Parry brought me sometime around 1974.

We had been talking about growing up in Manchester and Norman had been born close to Fairfield Street, had learned to swim when his father threw in him in the canal nearby and could show me the spot where a horse and cart went down Jutland Street to crash into a round pillar on the wall at the bottom on Store Street.*

Jutland Street or to use its old popular name of “stony brew” connects Ducie Street and Store Street and even today is an impressive sight.  It crosses the canal and then falls down towards the road below in what must be one of the steepest inclines of any street in Manchester.

Even now vehicles take the gradient carefully and back in the 1930s it proved too much for a tired horse hauling a heavy load.  In 1974 the round stone block was still there and with a little gruesome pride Norman pointed to the evidence of that crash on the stonework.

We had gone there also to look at the stables, ramps and storage areas which all the big stations maintained.  It is easy to forget just how much was shifted by horse and cart.

Each railway company had their own stables and in all there were 157 carriers listed in the 1911 street directory.  Look at any picture of the city from the 19th century well into the 20th and the sheer number of horses is everywhere.

I have gone back to look for them but they have long since gone, as has the wall, the stone stump and almost all of the buildings Norman knew and we visited in the summer of 1974.

*Jutland Street was originally called Junction Street and the area was teeming with timber yards, saw mills foundries and cotton factories and I rather think it was the entrance to a timber yard which was where the horse and cart crashed.

Pictures; Mayfield Station, April 1975, by T.A. Fletcher, m63159, and August 1957, by A Brownhill, m63159, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, remaining pictures courtesy of http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/