Free ........ James Fraser ........ and the other Albert Square Four

I wonder what James Fraser and his fellow occupants of Albert Square think about being locked up behind those tall walls in front of the Town Hall for another two years?

Mr. James Frazer, 2022

He shares the space with Prince Albert, John Bright, Oliver Heywood and William Gladstone.

And not for the first time I have pondered on the absence of a woman on a pedestal in the square.

Which I know is a cheap jibe, but none the less a pertinent one.

Still there is that one of Mrs. Pankhurst looking out on St Peter’s Square, which I think is more to a scale of memorial I like.

You can go and stand beside her, or better still position yourself just behind and share her gaze across the Square.

Conversely those grand, worthy, and eminent Victorians look down at you with all that lofty self-esteem and try as I can I don’t often get a good picture of them ……. just a crick in the neck.

Now, I know of course that their imprisonment will finish in 2024 when the final touches are put to the restored Town Hall and the enlarged Albert Square.*

Our Albert, 2018

The project should have been finished a year earlier but as everyone knows a mix of Covid and the inevitable surprises that any restoration throw up have delayed things.

Sharing the square with Mrs. Pankhurst, 2022

Still it won’t be long now before the walls come down and I can wander freely across the square renewing my acquaintanceship with the said five and popping into the Town Hall to see what’s been done.

And by all accounts there has been a lot done, bringing our Town Hall into the 21st century while bringing back much that has been lost, hidden and left a tad neglected.

Location; Albert Square and St Peter’s Square.

Pictures; looking across to Mr. Frazer, 2022, Our Albert 2018, and Mrs Pankhurst, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

 *Our Town Hall Project - the transformation,https://www.manchester.gov.uk/info/500354/our_town_hall/7297/our_town_hall_project_-_the_transformation/1