Looking out from Salford ….. and reflecting on the changes to the twin cities … no.1

Now the other day Andy took himself off to wander the Salford and Manchester border.

And as ever he took his camera to record the changing landscape.

Over the years he has photographed derelict and abandoned buildings, demolished ones, and chronicled the transition of many brown sites from the moment the builder’s broke ground to the slow rise of new properties.

The collection has already become an invaluable history of how the twin cities are changing, and the scope and the detail of his work is both outstanding and is a major contribution to our history.

I only wish he had been around during the early 19th century and again in the two decades after the Second Word War to record in the same detail how Georgian Manchester and Salford were torn down and replaced by mills, dye works, foundries and terraced housing, and likewise after the Blitz and the clearance programmes of the 1950s and 60s.

But that would of course put him at over 200 years old and I doubt the painting in the attic would have continued to deliver that youthful appearance.

So that just leaves me to return to last weeks pictures which were taken while walking past the River Irwell and around the Water Street/Quay Street development.

Location; on the Salford Manchester border

Pictures; looking out from Salford, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson