Bus stations I knew and some I wish I had never known

Bus stations don’t do much for me.  

I suppose it’s partly because for a great chunk of my life bus journeys have been something to endure with that ever present threat of feeling ill on one of them.

And trolley buses were far worse.

Even now that smell of warm leather seats, disinfectant and the low hum of the machinery bring back unpleasant memories.

But it’s also that they lack any romance.  Unlike a railway station or even an airport they are just drab work a day places which all too often are pretty smelly.

And the worst example was the one built beside the Arndale in the 1970s.  It was dark, grim and beset with engine fumes.

Catching a bus there was just a practical thing, something you had to do to get somewhere, and the best thing you could say about it was that usually you weren’t in it for long.

Now I can talk from experience.  Over the years I have waited in bus stations in the most boring and ugly places.

All too often they are tucked away behind an office block or the wrong side of a market.  Most are just tolerable in daylight but take on a sinister feel at night.  Not helped by the absence of people which makes the odd passerby take on an altogether unwelcome appearance.  And all of them compete for a wind tunnel award.

But perhaps that is a bit harsh and so I have decided to go in search of the bus stations of the city centre.

Some like Piccadilly, which was once called Parker Street are stilll doing the business, while others, surplus to requirement or just in the way have vanished.

The old Arndale horror and the one down near the Cathedral I remember but others like the ones at Chorlton Street and Lower Mosley Street are places I did not know.

Now I say that but as soon as I started researching the one on Lower Mosley Street I discovered that it closed in 1972 and the site demolished the following year which was a full three years after I had arrived in Manchester.*

So much for the power of memory then, which I guess is one in the eye of those who triumph the power of oral history.  Not that I have anything against oral history it’s just that the memories have to be accurate. And in my case they are so wrong, or at least I should say vague because I cannot remember the bus station or for that matter what took its place.

All of which is a bit embarrassing given that after its demolition in 1973 it served as a car park until the Bridgewater Hall was built on the site. This might seem an easy slip of memory perhaps but one that lasted for twenty years from 1973 till the Hall’s completion in 1996.

The Lower Mosley Street Omnibus Station was opened in 1928 on the corner of Lower Mosley Street and Great Bridgwater Street, and was used by the long distance coach operators.  These were mainly the North Western Road Coach Company and the Ribble Motor Services along with vehicles from Lancashire United, Trent Motor Traction, Northern General, United Yorkshire Woolen District, Yorkshire Traction, Crossville, East Midland, and Midland Red.  And added to this there were also buses from Manchester Corporation and the Stalybridge, Hyde Mossley and Dukinfield Transport Board.

Given that it was opposite Central Station it was one of those examples of integrated transport hubs that are so useful.

None of which excuses the fact that its presence just passed me by.  But then that does raise that interesting observation that we often let history slide by.

At best we take places for granted and at worst do not even clock that they have gone which I suppose is a salutary lesson to anyone interested in history.

All of which just leaves me to reflect that the price of maintaining our past is eternal vigilance, or something like that anyway.

Pictures; Parker Street Bus Station, 1934, A. Dawson, m56922, Parker Street/Piccadilly Bus Station at 5pm, W. Higham, 1961, m56932, Chorlton Street Bus Station, at 2pm W.Higham, 1961, m56889, Lower Mosley Street Bus Station, H. Milligan, 1955 m56903, Lower Mosley Street Bus Station, H. Milligan, 1955 m56905,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/mosleybus.html