Now this is one or those buildings which will mean many things to many people.
For some it will be the old show rooms and for me and some of my generation Manchester Polytechnic’s first proper Student Union.
Before then the three colleges pretty much did their own thing with their own bars.
The College of Commerce on Aytoun Street where I went was known for some pretty spectacular Saturday nights with big bands, the Art College may have done the same but I doubt that much happened down at John Dalton
All of which is outrageously biased but fits with someone who wasn’t even aware of the other two sites until sometime in late 1970 almost a year after I begun at the “college of knowledge.”
Nor can I be fully sure when the Till Kennedy Building opened for pints, bands and much more.
One source has it throwing back its doors in 1969, before which it had been Till & Kennedy’s the ironmongers.
It was built in 1905 for William Righton whose name appears above the main entrance.
He was a draper and the building offers up plenty of clues to its origins as a drapers shop.
The spacious ground floor was perfect for accommodating a vast range of fabrics while the large windows allowed the maximum amount of daylight into the building, a feature complimented by the top-lit gallery with the cutaway floor providing extra light to penetrate down into the main shop.
Now this had always puzzled me as had the benching around the gallery and only now have I discovered that these benches were where “the cloth was measured.”*
It had a short life as a student’s union and has been used by various faculties of the Poly and the MMU.
I remember visiting it to look at the collection of taped memories of life in Manchester in the first half of the last century but as much as I tried my mind wandered to disco nights and of a particularly magic evening with Osibisa.
Added to which there were those endless student general meetings where our own version of politics was played, all of which was I suspect a long way from Mr Righton’s bolt of blue cloth or Till and Kennedy’s taps and assorted iron ware.
Pictures; the Righton Building, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson and in 1958, H.W.Beaumont, m19060, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Manchester An architectural history, John K Parkinson-Bailey, 2000, Page 317
 |
| Righton's Buildings in 2015 |
Before then the three colleges pretty much did their own thing with their own bars.
The College of Commerce on Aytoun Street where I went was known for some pretty spectacular Saturday nights with big bands, the Art College may have done the same but I doubt that much happened down at John Dalton
 |
| Detail including Mr Righton's name, 2015 |
Nor can I be fully sure when the Till Kennedy Building opened for pints, bands and much more.
One source has it throwing back its doors in 1969, before which it had been Till & Kennedy’s the ironmongers.
 |
| Righton's in 1958 |
He was a draper and the building offers up plenty of clues to its origins as a drapers shop.
The spacious ground floor was perfect for accommodating a vast range of fabrics while the large windows allowed the maximum amount of daylight into the building, a feature complimented by the top-lit gallery with the cutaway floor providing extra light to penetrate down into the main shop.
 |
| Righton's in 2015 |
I remember visiting it to look at the collection of taped memories of life in Manchester in the first half of the last century but as much as I tried my mind wandered to disco nights and of a particularly magic evening with Osibisa.
Added to which there were those endless student general meetings where our own version of politics was played, all of which was I suspect a long way from Mr Righton’s bolt of blue cloth or Till and Kennedy’s taps and assorted iron ware.
Pictures; the Righton Building, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson and in 1958, H.W.Beaumont, m19060, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Manchester An architectural history, John K Parkinson-Bailey, 2000, Page 317
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