That bit of art down by our Precinct ......

It may yet be saved but I doubt it, and so this murial on the outside wall of the doomed shopping centre will soon be gone.

There will be some who judged it and found it not to their taste, but I liked it, and often wondered who the artist was and who commissioned it.

And I recently reflected that someone should record it before it becomes broken rubble destined for hardcore on some motorway development.

All of which is a lead into Peter Topping’s photos. He took up the invitation and snapped the murial earlier in the week, along with the closed and shuttered former retail outlets.

I suppose it is the way of things that street art has a short life.  I remember two pieces by the artist David Vaughan.*  

One was on the side of the railway viaduct behind the replica Roman fort in Castlefield, and the other was on the gable end of what was once a butcher’s shop on Egerton Street in Ashton Under Lyne.

The first was of a group of Roman soldiers on the march and fitted with the Roman fort, while the Egerton Street painting was of a smiling image of the old Queen and painted for a street party held in the Jubilee year of 1977.

Sadly, both are gone, the first after a slow flaky decline was obliterated sometime in the early 2000s, and the Queen just vanished.

So that just leaves me with Peter’s paintings of the happy murial and yes I used the word murial …… which of course only makes sense if you knew Hilda Ogden.

And raises the question of what has happened to the wooden sculptures in memory of Harry Goodwin the Celebrity photographer who was born in from Chorlton.

He died in 2013 and the two pieces were installed in his memory on the corner of the Precinct close to the car park entrance.

Answers to the blog on the Chorlton history site.

Location; Chorlton Precinct

Pictures; art and the doomed Precinct, 2024, from the collection of Peter Topping and Roman soldiers, Beaufort Street in Castlefield from David Vaughan, undated

*David Vaughan, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=david+Vaughan

**Celebrity photographer Harry Goodwin dies aged 89, Chorlton-born Harry was well-known as the resident photographer on the BBC's Top Of The Pops, Paul Britton Reporter. MEN, September 24th 2013,  https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/celebrity-photographer-harry-goodwin-chorlton-6085656