Manchester in the September of 1969, memories from the new boy

Manchester sky line the old and new, 1970

Now had I been born just a decade earlier the chances were I would have done my time as a conscript in the army.

As it was at the tender age of 19 in the September of 1969 I arrived in Manchester with a suitcase and an address in Withington and the promise of an academic career at the newly formed Manchester Polytechnic.

There were those at the time and since who have bemoaned the end of National Service, but not I suspect many of the young men who for eighteen months marched and drilled.

Three years after the last world war the Government decided to retain conscription which meant that healthy young men aged between 17 and 21 years old were expected to serve in the Armed Forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years.

They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years. Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": coal mining, farming and the merchant navy for a period of eight years. If they quit early, they were subject to being called up.

The future College of Commerce, 1965

But all that I missed and instead a year later than most of my friends I left home with all that brash confidence of youth to do three years with John Donne, William Shakespeare the odd romantic poet and lots of dead historians.

And fifty-four years later I am still here and hence this occasional series of reflections on the city that adopted me and in particular the places I remembered as a young Londoner in the September of 1969.

Not that this will be one of those sentimental journeys into a comfortable world which was better than now.

Just a few miles from where I read Wordsworth and explored the events of the Industrial Revolution and the complexities  of the French Fifth Republic, the Corporation was sweeping away a century of sub standard housing and coffee meant a lukewarm brown liquid with a hint of beans and a mass of frothy milk.

But there was a buzz about the place.  It was there in those bright new buildings of glass and steel which were going up around the city, the modern station concourses at Oxford Road and Piccadilly and the Mancunian Way.

For me it was the contrasts.  Sitting in the old Milk Maid facing the gardens, there was a panorama of the old Victorian city with its mix of elegant show warehouses, offices and shops while above us was the impressive Piccadilly Hotel.

And yet just a few minutes away were the tiny side roads dominated by shabby industrial buildings where somehow the light and warmth of the sun rarely penetrated.

The City Barge, Rochdale Canal, 1970

Now many of these places I discovered on long walks around the city when we should have been in the library.

I guess Canal Street pretty much sums up those walks.  I was drawn to it because it was close to the college and was bounded by the Rochdale Canal.

Back then both the canal and the street were drab, non descript and a little tired looking.  The attempt at something more exciting was summed up by the City Barge Restaurant in the stretch of the canal from Chorlton Street to Princess Street.

It was of course out of our price range but had the promise of something new and exciting and something to aspire to.

Still we had those wonderful three course meals offered at lunch time in the city centre Chinese and Asian restaurants for just three shillings a head.  Even now fifty six years on I smile at how sophisticated I thought I was when eating Banana Fritter and captivated by the Chinese version of custard.

Looking at the City barge from Princess Street, 1970

Which I suspect is just beginning to border on nostalgic tosh, so I shall close with that more serious reflection that in that drive to bring Manchester into the 1960s there was a serious attempt to sweep away all that Victorian heritage.

And so between new office developments, shopping precincts and traffic flow schemes some fascinating buildings and important bits of our history disappeared.

And more of that serious stuff another time.

Pictures; the new College of Commerce in construction, W Highham, 1965, m64167, and City-Barge-Restaurant Canal-Street, Dawson-A, 1970, m49402, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

It’s the history …. not the quality

I am on Camp Street looking across the Rochdale Canal.

The quality of the images is not wonderful but then they were taken with a cheap camera in 1978, and the negatives have sat in the cellar for 40 odd years.

The original prints were lost a long time ago, but today I digitized those negatives, and they reveal a bit of Manchester now vanished.

Back then the area was waiting for something to happen, so while the Courts were just up the road doing the business of dealing with lawbreakers, and the College of Commerce was still introducing students to the wonders of accountancy, the law, and even a mix of Arts degrees Camp Street was a pretty forlorn spot.

For three years at the start of the 1970s I had wandered down it, exploring this part of the city instead of going to the library in the Aytoun College of Knowledge.

Back then there was an old-fashioned transport café, and those line of parking meters, while the skyline was dominated by buildings most of which have long gone or been turned into other uses.

And that really is that.

Location; Canal Street

Pictures; the Rochdale Canal, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Fish and chips on Richmond Street

This is Richmond Street forty-seven years ago.

Back then I still used it as a cut through from Minshull Street down to Chorlton Street and for a decade was a place I knew well.

I had washed up in the College of Commerce a decade earlier doing an arts degree along side trainee lawyers, accountants and heaps of night school courses. The place had just become part of newly created Manchester Polytechnic, although it still felt like a separate entity miles from the other two colleges.

And that may have increased our sense of isolation or independence which led to its irreverent nickname of the College of Knowledge.

Sadly those not in the know called it ColCom.

That said in the late 1960s and 70s the students Union had hosted some memorable groups which added to our sense of feeling a tad special.

I don’t remember the fish and chip shop, but I will have fallen across the café on Chorlton Street, which was never as popular as Bert’s its close rival on Whitworth Street.

The Minshull Street Courts are still there, although they closed briefly just a decade after I took the picture.

But all those untrendy, traditional little outlets like the transport cafés have gone, and with it a bit of my youth.

Location, Richmond and Canal Street

Pictures; Richmond and Canal Street, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson  

The canal, some lost buildings and a moment from 1978

 This is Canal Street in 1978, and for me and those friends who went to the old College of Commerce it is  familiar scene.

Canal Street and the Rochdale Canal, 1978

Now the blog doesn’t do nostalgia, it is a pernicious and deceptive trick, where the sun always shone, Wagon Wheels were always big, and people left the doors unlocked.

The fact is that there was never  a perfect golden time, and if people did leave their doors unlocked it was simply because there was nothing in the house worth stealing.

The canal, 1955

That said, the picture does conjure up nostalgic memories.  By 1978, my student days at the College were six years in the past, I was gainfully employed, and still finding lots of time to wander the streets of the city, with a camera and heaps of historical curiosity.

But perhaps because I walked Canal Street so many times I don’t think I ever photographed the canal from this angle.

David Ward-naden did, and it is a perfect piece of history.  Beyond the bridge and to the right the buildings which fronted London Road and have long gone, as has the cark park of the college which was behind that white wall.

David reminded me that this has once been an arm of the Rochdale Canal which serviced a series of warehouses, one of which in the early 1970s was converted into the library of the college.

And that in turn led me back to a series of stories I did of that spot, and in particular of Back Canal Street and Little David Street which ran parallel to Camp Street.  

Only Little David Street still exists and it is now just an alley which at present id fenced off.  Back in the early 19th century the two streets which ran off Chorlton Street terminated at the edge of the canal arm.*

In 1841, 81 people lived in 22 of the 28 back to back properties which had been built as one up one downs at the beginning of the 19th century.

The area, 1955

Here lived a mix of families who earned their living as labourers, textile workers with the odd craftsmen.

The properties were swept away and replaced by a new commercial building, but as late as the 1950s, the canal arm was still in use, and the site was not cleared until the middle of the next decade when the College of Commerce was built.

That too has now gone, with the old tower block redeveloped for residential purposes, and a new block standing on the site of the old car park.

Such is the passage of time over 40 or so years.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Canal Street and the Rochdale Calana, 1978, from the collection of David Ward-naden British Waterways narrow boats, proceeding to Hassall's Warehouse, Ducie Street, leaving Chorlton Street Lock, 1955, m54248, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .... nu 64 Little David Street, a lost canal a cafe and a plan, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Little+David+Street

That impressive building on Canal Street ................ once the offices of Michael Nairn & Company

Now I will have passed this building on Canal Street countless times in the early 1970s.

The old College of Knowledge which had me as one of its students is just around the corner, and Canal Street was a convienent short cut which avoided the busier bigger roads, and of course it had the canal.

Back then the Rochdale Canal had seen better days but it was still a fascinating spot to stop, and just watch the water cascade over the closed lock gates and ponder on what you did to rent that house that straddled the water.

All of which is leading up to Andy Robertson’s latest set of pictures taken on a bright sunny day down by the canal.

As ever there is a shed load of interesting pictures, but this one of the door way of nu 4 Canal Street caught my attention.

M Nairn & Co Ltd were the firm of Michael Nairn, specialising in floor-cloths, power looms and linoleum.

And according to that excellent site Grace's Guide to British Industrial History "at the 1862 Exhibition in London and the 1867 Paris Exhibition Nairns Floorcloth came into its own and won the prizes.  

In  1870 Nairn and Co built a six-storey factory in Kirkcaldy and by 1877 with the introduction of linoleum, Kirkcaldy soon became the largest producer of the new floorcovering in the world.

In the 1920s the family joined forces with a supplier in Erie, Pennsylvania, which manufactured a three-foot wide simulated wood grain product used to border area rugs and linoleum. 

This product was known as "Congoleum", because the asphalt materials used to make it came from the Belgian Congo in Africa. 

The new company called itself Congoleum-Nairn.

Congoleum-Nairn continued to sell "Congoleum Gold Seal Rugs" and "Nairn linoleum" through the late 1930's, until its researchers started experimenting with a new material called vinyl. 

However, further research into developing vinyl flooring was interrupted when World War II began. 

Following the war, the company continued to grow in the rapidly expanding housing market of that period.

2008 Forbo-Nairn is now the UK's only linoleum manufacturer. Forbo-Nairn have their own website."*

None of which I had a clue about when I regularly walked past the building.  

Nor would I have clocked the Latin inscription the meaning of which escapes me.  

And yes I did go to google translate but that didn’t help over much.

In time I will start looking for the history of the building.  I know it was there by 1903 which just leaves a patient trawl of the directories.

Location; Canal Street

Pictures; Canal Street from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Michael_Nairn_and_Co