This is where we lived for one carefree year when we were very young.
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| Home, Butterworth Street, 1986 |
It was the January of 1972, and we had been married for a month. We were just 23 and 21 years old and starting out on an adventure.
And where better to do that, than in a block of former fireman’s flats on Butterworth Street which was one side of the Mill Street Police Station in Bradford Manchester.
There were six flats, and they comprised the entire stock of student accommodation at that time owned by Manchester Polytechnic, and we were the first six families to occupy them.
It was a complete contrast to south Manchester and student land where we had both lived for two years but we loved it. The winding gear of Bradford Colliery was just down the road, there were still heaps of small iron works and on certain days the sky could be a different colour depending on the stuff coming from the chimneys of Clyton Aniline.
The city centre was just a short train or bus ride away and directly outside our door was Grey Mare Lane Market which offered up all we wanted including a wonderful record stall from which I bought and still have the LP, Easy by Marvin Gaye and Tammy Tyrell.
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| Flats and a police station from Rhyl Street, 1991 |
The summer of 1973 I spent working in the scaffolding yard of SGB on Pottery Lane and at weekends we explored what was left of area, from Philips Park and out along Ashton Old Road.
But the place was already undergoing redevelopment. Across from us was the new Grey Mare Lane deck access complex which at night resembled an ocean liner.
And all around there were open grassed spaces which was all that was left of the rows of terraced houses which had once been home to hundreds of families.
The colliery had closed just five years before we arrived, but the head gear was still there, until one day when we were out it was demolished.
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| Butterworth Street, 1948 |
It is easy to become nostalgic about our time there, but even then you couldn’t escape the industrial side of the area with its noise and smoke.
We lasted just a year which had less to do with the factories but simply that at the end of the year we had graduated, and while the Polytechnic allowed us to say for a while eventually were given our marching orders.
As it was we just moved up Ashton Old Road to Ashton Under Lyne which meant for a few years we passed Grey Mare Lane most days on the 218 into town.
And then I moved again and that was it apart from occasional forays out towards Philips Park, until this week when I washed up at the Etihad Stadium and on an impulse went looking for Butterworth Street and Mill Street.
I already knew that the complex had gone and worked out that our flats were now under Alan Turing Way.
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| All that remains of Rhyl Street, 2012 |
That said nothing quite prepares you for the moment when you locate the precise point where you lived.
Mill Street still exists and so does the remains of a short stretch of what was Rhyl Street which ran along side the Police Station and led into Butterworth Street.
It is just a few yards of tarmac, which in places has worn away to reveal the original stone setts.
Not much but all there is left.
And I guess it won’t be long before it too vanishes.
Already much of the original street plan from the early 20th century has been swept away by a new network of roads which run in different directions.
I wasn’t surprised and certainly not upset, it is only to be expected in an area which is being redeveloped, but I am glad I got close to the old flat.
And it will give me a topic of conversation the next time I meet up with a former policeman who walked the beat from Mill Street Police Station.
Which just leaves me to quoute from that excellet site Architects of Greater Manchester who posted three newspaper articles about the Police Station's opening on October 2nd, 1903.
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| Inside the police station, 1991 |
This was one is from the Manchester Guardian from October 2nd, 1903 reporting that
"A new police station which has been erected in Mill-Street, Bradford, Manchester, was opened yesterday by Mr. W. Trevor, chairman of the Watch Committee of the Corporation. The station has cost £25,000, and will take the place of the old headquarters of the C Division in Fairfield-Street, as well as of several sub-stations. The building contains separate departments for police and firemen, together with housing accommodation for several men of both forces. In the police department there are thirteen cells, and these, like the rest of the building, are lighted by electricity.
The fire department, at. the corner of Mill-street and Rhyl Street, has been arranged on most modern lines. with open stalls for the horses on either side of the engine-house, and sliding poles from the men's quarters on the floor above. The new station contains a section of the Horse Ambulance Corps".*
And that is it, other than to say the sky could be different colours. I had begun to doubt that, but my friend Chris who had grown up off Grey Mare Lane confirmed it.
And from David Bullock came this "Great article Andrew. You’ve got the location spot on in the modern photo, opposite the doctors. What colour was the sky, yellow, orange or a bit of each? Walking the quiet streets at night you could hear the low hum of machinery that never stopped and the sporadic blasts of steam being vented. There was also the ever present chemical smell in the air. I’m sure you were kept awake at night by the stray dogs in the kennel in the station yard barking. It was uncanny how the dogs who wouldn’t stop barking always managed to escape.
Location; Mill Street, Butterworth Street, and Rhyl Street
Pictures; Butterworth Street, 1986,m 15551, and Rhyl Street, 1991, m55776, Inside the staion, 1991m55773, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Mill Street and Rhyl Street, 2012, courtesy of Google Maps, and the area in 1948, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1922
*Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940
