So what is stirring in Spinningfields? ..............

Now here is a bit of street furniture well worth looking up when the development is finished.

I would love to see the original design brief for the four structures and look forward to looking at them when they are finished and unveiled.

For now that is all you get other than to reflect on the way Spinningfields continues to change and in the process seems to recreate some of those narrow streets which were a feature of much of the city a century and a bit ago.

So for those who have wandered down there recently there is the new build between Quay Street and Hardman Square along with the one just round the corner which has the giant lampshades added to which as the HSBC has moved out across from Carlucci’s there are new bars and restaurants opening up all the time.

You can be sniffy about Spinningfields dubbing it just a version of Docklands where the buildings have no originality and remind you of any one of a dozen modern cities.

But I like it and I suspect the criticisms of it today could have been replicated by those a century and a bit ago who saw the Victorian equivalent going up in the commercial centre of Manchester and mourned the passing of those old ramshackle wood and daub properties which stretched back into the 17th century.

And that is it.

Location; Spinningfields







Pictures; Spinningfields 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson