Gaze upon Red Lion Street all you who are curious ….. and lament its passing

Now, I am of course playing a little hard and fast with the passing of Red Lion Street.

Red Lion Street, 2021

Even after the planning application has been acted on and a new set of apartments have risen from what is presently open land, the street will still be there.

Andy was on the street this week and the clue in his picture are those builder's boards, which led me to the planning application, and the news that the site will become 38 apartments, taking in the plot of land from Church Street up to Catlow Lane and incorporating the former Bulls Head on Union Street.*

Like all such planning applications the submission includes a heritage statement which is always a fascinating read, and places the site in its historical context.

Red Lion Street, 2014

Not that I am going to quote the document, because it ain’t mine to do so, but if you follow the link I think you will not be disappointed.**

Instead I shall quote Andy and include a picture he took of the same place back in March 2014, which he says “is one of the very first of my pictures to appear on the blog. 

As you can just about see from image 1 it has now been demolished”.

Since that first picture he had kindly provided over 640 photographs for the blog, many of which have chronicled the slow decline of a building, its demolition, and the stages by which a new one has risen from the ground.

As I keep telling him, there are a unique record of how the city and some of the surrounding areas of Greater Manchester have been transformed over the last two decades.

Red Lion Street, 2014, of the first on the blog

That said his back catalogue dates from the early 1990s, allowing for heaps more pictures and stories.

Location, Manchester, 

Pictures; Red Lion Street, 2014-2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*CDN/19/0126 | Discharge of conditions 5 (Details), 10 (SECBD), 11 (Surface Water), 12 (Archaeology), 13 (SUDS1), 14 (SUDS 2) and 19 (Noise) attached to application ref no 113713/FO/2016 | Red Lion Street / 2 Union Street Manchester M4 1PT, Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=PMUZTNBCKSV00

**Written Scheme of Investigation, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/files/A06413E85A9DFC3ACF427D56A8EDAA14/pdf/CDN_19_0126-WRITTEN_SCHEME_OF_INVESTIGATION-1104144.pdf