A bit of our industrial past ....... walking towards Collyhurst

Now if like me you were born in the first half of the last century, grew up with free school milk, thrilled to the sound of She Loves You, and thought the light had gone out of the world at hearing of the death of Ottis Reading and Dr King, then the de-industrialization of great chunks of east and north Manchester will be familiar.

When I lived off Grey Mare Lane in the early 1970s, there were still plenty of steel and engineering works, and if Bradford Colliery had closed there was still Clayton Aniline and a host of small workshops, garages and yards within walking distance of our house.

But in the following two decades pretty much all of it has gone.

All of which makes Andy’s picture of one of the gates posts at the Oldham Road Goods Yard both sad and a reminder of what we have lost.

Not that this is nostalgic trip aimed to call back a golden age.  Working down the mine or in a foundry could he hard and at times dangerous and the rewards were not always that good, but it was how many of us derived a living.

Location; Manchester

Picture; gate post, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Urban landscapes ....... the view from the Rochdale Road

Now I like Andy’s picture, and I wish he had been on the same spot a century ago to take the classic then and now photograph, but would be asking a lot.

All too often this sort of image gets ignored, partly because it looks a bit grim, and because few people see any beauty in a brick wall.

But I do.

Location; Manchester


Picture; view from the Rochdale Road, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Urban landscapes ....... the shops and flats

It is a design replicated across the country with slight variations and so familiar that most of us do not give them a second glance.

But Andy did.

These are on Hamerton Road which runs parallel with Rochdale Road.

Location; Manchester

Picture; view from the Rochdale Road, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

The street to nowhere, a river and the once popular Vauxhall Gardens .... walking to Collyhurst

Now Andy’s picture of Vauxhall Street intrigued me.  

Vauxhall Street, 2018

It is off Collyhurst Road, hard by the river Irk and apparently leads nowhere.

That large block of timber straddling the road was there in 2011 and for all I know could have lain on that spot for decades.

And as you do I wanted to know more.

I suppose I should have taken up the clue of the name of the street which if I had thought hard enough and pulled down my knowledge of Manchester’s amusement parks would have taken me to Vauxhall Gardens which were highly popular in the first half of the 19th century.

Vauxhall Street and Gardens, 1849

Its story pops up regularly, and so rather than rehash that excellent article on the place I will just direct you to the site where I first read about the gardens.*

They were situated on the north side of Vauxhall Street, survived the death of the man who laid the gardens out and closed in 1852.

And for those interested in why such a popular place should be lost to the fun loving residents of Manchester, you have to look no further than the map dated 1849.

Vauxhall Street, 1894

Just to the south there was a Dye Works with three more to the east and north of the gardens.

These competed with a saw mill and textile factory, and the onward rush of residential streets.

So that by the 1890s much of the area around Vauxhall Street was built up with our street extending down from Collyhurst Road to Rochdale Road.

I have yet to discover when that corridor was cut and Vauxhall Street reverted to a road which went nowhere.

The River Irk, 2018

But I shall, and if I don’t someone will come up with an answer, leaving me only to include Andy’ pictures of the Irk at this point, complete with wier.

Location; Collyhurst

Pictures; Vauxhall Street and the River Irk, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson and the area in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, and in 1894 from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Vauxhall Gardens, http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/vauxhall.html

Walking the railway .......... the Collyhurst series no.1

Now we are walking the subway between Bromley Street and Dalton Street and if you ever wanted to get a sense of the power and permanence of the railway these two pictures do it for me.

2018

They are part of the new series by Andy Robertson, who one fine day this week walked out towards Collyhurst.

His journey took him from Miller Street via Dantzic Street and on to Collyhurst Road with a stop to capture the River Irk in full flow.

It is an area waiting for something to happen and with the onward march of the developer it won’t be long before flats, offices and shops fill the empty wasteland.

2018

Of course it wasn’t always so, had Andy walked his walk, a century and a bit, the place would have looked very different.

A little to the south east there was the Rochdale Road Gas Works and in a bend in the river by what is now Warford Street there were two more gasometers while the rest was a maze of small streets filled with houses.

And for good measure just a short stroll away and there were dye works, and chemical works, a mill and a tannery all of which competed for noise with the railway and its complex of sidings known as Newton Sidings.

1894

This was the busy but unfashionable bit of the city, and tomorrow there will be more.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; down by Bromley Street, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson, nd detail from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/