Happiness is a sign on a University Building …………

Now I have taken this golden sign for granted across the decades.

But today I stopped and snapped away.

It’s the Williamson Research Centre, “which houses a range of research laboratories and equipment for investigating our environment and the effect of human behaviour upon environmental systems”.*

And that is about it.

Location Oxford Road

Pictures; the Williamson Research Centre, Manchester 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Williamson Research Centre, https://www.ees.manchester.ac.uk/wrc/about/

Walking the University ……… on an October morning two years ago

It will be a full half century and more since I regularly passed the University buildings on Oxford Road.

And even then, it was just a passing whizz on the bus which took me on to what was still the College of Commerce on Aytoun Street, or as we called it the College of Knowledge.

The 42 Corpy Red which passed the University at 8.30 was a tad too early for most of the students, but it didn’t stop the bus conductor shouting out “Lazy bones school” “loafers paradise" and other slightly more derogatory comments.

Fast forward 50 years and settle on midday and I was amazed at just how many students were walking in a purposeful way in both directions along Oxford Road.

Not one seemed over bothered by the twin towers of the Contact Theatre, and many were drawn to the food stalls along the way managing to mix breakfast and lunch into the same meal.

I toyed with exploring the history of the University and the Contact but both have been done and done better than I elsewhere.

So that is it.

Location; Oxford Road

Pictures; the Contact, breakfast and getting away from the crowds, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking the ghost campus ………

I wasn’t quite prepared for the silent emptiness that is the former UMIST campus.

Iconic staircase, 2023

It boasts a heap of trees and bushes, a green and some seats along with an “interesting” iron structure but no people.

Barnes Wallis Building, 2023

I sat there in front of the former Barnes Wallis Building with the Reynold Building behind and flanked on my left by the railway viaduct.

I was last properly here half a century a go and as you would expect back then it teemed with students and staff.  

Many of them were taking in the sun on the lawn or making purposeful strides to a lecture somewhere.

But today I was alone, with just the noise of tourists who had wandered out of Vimto Park and under the railway viaduct looking for that statue of Archimedes in his bath.  

A few carried on to the steps that take you down to the green but perhaps uncertain as to why the area was so quiet and empty just retraced their steps.

Leaving me blissfully alone in the little oasis of green space, with my memories.

The Reynolds Building, 2023

In the early 70s I occasionally ran across Marc who I had gone to school with and who had come to Manchester the year before me.  I remember that he was most insistent that I refer to it as the Tech and not UMIST which echoed our name for the College of Commerce on Aytoun Street which we always call the College of Knowledge, and never ColCom.

Those who did call it Colcom were invariably the serious ones, who bought the college scarf, never cut a lecture and never missed an essay deadline.

Doubtless they never dressed up in baby doll nightdresses and attended the “Milk Snatcher’s Ball” which was held in the Barnes Wallace Building in the spring of 1971.  

Me and my mate Jack did, having borrowed the nightdresses from the girls upstairs, and to my shame never returning them.

The details of that night have happily faded from memory, along with where we changed into them and more importantly how we got out of them.

And I rather think that was the last time I was there. 

Happy faces, 2023

After I graduated I rarely went back to that bit of the city, until I had retired and once gain began wandering the streets taking pictures and thinking about the past.

I was vaguely aware of the merger between UMIST and that other university on Oxford Road, and have more recently clocked the succession of plans which flitted off drawing boards on what to do with the site.*

What most have in common is a total disregard for the buildings which are fine examples of 1960s architecture and which many of the plans would demolish.

So it ain’t just old Victorian and Edwardian warehouses which are under threat from Derek the Developer, these examples of 60s build could also vanish.

Leaving me just to thank that group of young people I encountered who like me were just hanging out and  as kids do asked to be photographed.

They at least were the most youthful I came across and reminded me of what the place had once been like.

Location; UMIST campus

Pictures; the ghost campus on a May day, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*“It seems just another Spinningfields” – The plan set to whitewash Manchester’s modernist gems, October 20, Mancunian Matters, Richard Baker, https://www.mancunianmatters.co.uk/news/20102021-it-seems-just-another-spinningfields-the-plan-set-to-whitewash-manchesters-modernist-gems/