This is Albert Square in 1956, and while it would be a full thirteen years before I discovered it, the scene in front of us was pretty much the same.
Except of course for those soot blackened walls which were the product of a century of coal fires and other industrial pollution.
Not that Manchester was alone in this. As a child playing in the local parks in Peckham, I could get pretty dirty from climbing the trees which like the buildings were caked in the stuff.
But when I arrived the Town Hall had just undergone a clean up. And not before time. The interior of the Town Hall had been cleaned in 1925, and although the Council in 1964 estimated it would cost £25,000 the project was delayed.
I am not quite sure why there was a time lapse, but Ian Nairn in an article for the Guardian in 1965, had called for caution arguing that “such action could ruin the stone of many British buildings”, and asserting that some “town hall and stations have gone jet black, covered with a crystalline deposit which sparkles in the sun and seems to defeat the gloom by annexing it to a deeper darkness”.*
Adding that in uncleaned these public buildings could “become lustrous pools of darkness in grime-free cities, appreciated for their innate qualities and freed from any moral taint of being ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’”.
It didn’t however seem a popular idea, and most people I met back in 1969 were very pleased with their newly cleaned Town Hall.
Whether they were equally happy after Albert Square was closed to buses and was no longer used as a car park is unknown to me.
But I suppose it must have taken a wee bit of adjustment, and that takes me back to the picture which offers up other fascinating details, like the presence of a J. Lyons Tea Room across the square, or the partial cleaning of the Northern Assurance Buildings.
There is more to discover but that I will leave for now.
Location; Manchester
Picture; Albert Square, 1956,Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY
*Think before you wash! Ian Nairn, The Guardian, June 27, 1965
Not that Manchester was alone in this. As a child playing in the local parks in Peckham, I could get pretty dirty from climbing the trees which like the buildings were caked in the stuff.
But when I arrived the Town Hall had just undergone a clean up. And not before time. The interior of the Town Hall had been cleaned in 1925, and although the Council in 1964 estimated it would cost £25,000 the project was delayed.
I am not quite sure why there was a time lapse, but Ian Nairn in an article for the Guardian in 1965, had called for caution arguing that “such action could ruin the stone of many British buildings”, and asserting that some “town hall and stations have gone jet black, covered with a crystalline deposit which sparkles in the sun and seems to defeat the gloom by annexing it to a deeper darkness”.*
Adding that in uncleaned these public buildings could “become lustrous pools of darkness in grime-free cities, appreciated for their innate qualities and freed from any moral taint of being ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’”.
Whether they were equally happy after Albert Square was closed to buses and was no longer used as a car park is unknown to me.
But I suppose it must have taken a wee bit of adjustment, and that takes me back to the picture which offers up other fascinating details, like the presence of a J. Lyons Tea Room across the square, or the partial cleaning of the Northern Assurance Buildings.
There is more to discover but that I will leave for now.
Location; Manchester
Picture; Albert Square, 1956,Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY
*Think before you wash! Ian Nairn, The Guardian, June 27, 1965
Some buildings were sand blasted by a firm called CleanWalls Ltd. The contractors working up scaffolding underneath huge tarpaulins wore visors and helmets that covered their heads and upper boddies and had piped compressed air to breath via the helmets like old fashioned divers.
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