Andrew Simpson: When your life comes packaged in just eight pages…….

Tuesday, 26 August 2025

When your life comes packaged in just eight pages…….

It’s a silly title really but it sprang to mind after seeing Michael Kay’s post featuring the brochure for Manchester Polytechnic.

It is dated 1970 and must have been produced just a few months after I washed up in the city to do an Arts degree at the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street.*

I had arrived in the September of the previous year, with a suitcase, an address for a bed sit and no idea what was ahead of me.

Indeed, as a lad from southeast London Manchester was only the second city I had ever experienced.

And pretty much soon after I arrived, I embraced the place spending the hours when I should have been in the library wandering the city centre, which gave me a fascination for the buildings, and the history.

Along the way I made some lasting friendships and many more which have dropped away over the years.

As for the degree, well I learned a few things, but like others not as much as I had done during A levels.

But the three years also introduced me to the other two faculties that made up the Poly, and while I did visit John Dalton the science place, it was the Art College, All Saints and the old Till Kennedy Building which were a second home.

The three faculties of Art, Commerce and Science had been separate educational institutions and mine betrayed its origin with the title of Commerce which offered many vocational courses, making it an odd mix of students.

Till Kennedy, Student's Union, 2015

Over the years I have written about the famous Saturday nights which hosted a pile of groups which straddled the late 60s and early 70s, along with equally memorable times at the Students Union which to many of us will always just be the Till Kennedy Building.*

It was built in 1905 for William Righton whose name appears above the main entrance.

He was a draper and the building offers up plenty of clues to its origins as a drapers shop.

The spacious ground floor was perfect for accommodating a vast range of fabrics while the large windows allowed the maximum amount of daylight into the building, a feature complimented by the top-lit gallery with the cutaway floor providing extra light to penetrate down into the main shop.

The Art College, 2024

Now this had always puzzled me as had the benching around the gallery and only now have I discovered that these benches were where “the cloth was measured.”***

The College of Knowledge, 1969

Over the years I have explored the history not only of the College of Commerce but also the Art College with its links to many of the artist I admire, as well as Mr. Dalton.

Much of which came flooding back with the brochure with its images of the city and its optimistic take on Manchester in the 1970s.

And what is remarkable is that a full fifty-six years after it was published many of the buildings and places it featured are still there.

Sadly, my own College was found wanting and now is at the centre of a residential complex, while On the Eight Day has moved slightly further up Oxford Road and now inhabits a new build, while Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station was transformed by a make over at the start of this century.

Still the eight pages make for an interesting read, but not a nostalgic one, after all I never left the city and so took the changes in my stride.

That said I do remember that two years after the Poly came into existence, its entire collection of student accommodation comprised six flats for six married couples in the former Fireman’s block of the Mill Street Police Station off Grey Mare Lane.

We had married in the December of 1972 and moved in a few months later as one of the first six couples.

For all of us living in east Manchester was a tad different from the south of the city but perfectly fitted with how we saw ourselves.

Leaving me just to thank for posting and giving me permission to use the pictures.

Location; Manchester in 1970

Pictures; Manchester Poly brochure, courtesy of Michael Kay, The College of Commerce, 1969, Butterworth Street, Luft M 1991, m55776, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, The Art College, 2024, and the former College of Commerce, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the former Till Kennedy Building, 2015 courtesy of Andy Robertson