One milkmaid ….. 14 telephone boxes …. heaps of pigeons .... and some flower beds ……… Piccadilly Gardens

 Everyone will have their bit of Piccadilly.

Deckchairs, and flower beds in the sun, circa 1955

For most it will be the sunken gardens with the rows of wooden benches, stunning floral beds and of course the pigeons.

To which you could add afternoom musical performances, the lunchtime invasion of office workers and the banks of telephone kiosks which stood guard on three of the fours sides of the Gardens.

Mine is sitting in the Milk Maid looking out onto the bus station with the gardens beyond.

It specialized in milk shakes, along with frothy coffee and sweet things.

The bar was light, spacious and had a figure of a milk maid picked out on the tiled side wall.

A Milk Maid, 1906

I doubt many others will remember the place.

Or so I thought but over the last few days people have messaged me with their own fond memories.  “Pancakes”, “frothy coffee” and “wonderful ice creams”, seem to be uppermost in what many remember, along with calling in after shopping or waiting to get the bus home. 

And for one it was “tomato soup with a swirl of cream followed by a cake” which characterized the place.

We frequented it in the early 1970s, usually after a day at the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street.  What we had is lost in time, but I guess it would have been during my frothy coffee period.

Piccadilly Gardens, 1963

I do remember the tiled figure of a giant milk maid on one of the walls.

Just when it opened and when it closed I have yet to discover and I still travel in hopes that someone will have a picture.

And that image will form part of the chapter on our next book in the series, "The History of Greater Manchester By Tram” which tells the story of our city region, using the 99 stop along the eight routes of the Metro tram network.*

Books one and two began in the suburbs of south Manchester, rolled into the heart of the city and finished at Exchange Square.  Book three picked up the stories and explored the route from Market Street via Shudehill to Victoria Railway Station.

The next crosses the city out from Piccadilly Gardens to Piccadilly Railway Station, New Islington, and Holt Town finishing at the Etihad Stadium.

And this is  the one I am currently engaged in, which will also feature Piccadilly Radio, the wartime allotments, the YMCA building along with the library, and the grand plans which were floated to use the site after the hospital had been demolished.

Piccadilly, 2024

Not forgetting the bus station, Lewis’s, and the destruction brought by the Manchester Blitz, which in turn left the area full of car parks till the arrival Piccadilly Plaza.

All of which will just be in that first chapter, leaving plenty of history to uncover about the railway station, Ancoats, Holt Town and that area which is now home to a football team but which for a year was where we lived, surrounded by the remains of Bradford Colliery, Clyton Aniline and assorted workshops.

But for today it is the Milk Maid, and another request for memories, pictures and perhaps even a souvenir menu, taken and saved in a cupboard.

Location; Piccadilly

Pictures; Piccadilly on a sunny day in the 1950s, from the cpllection of Suzanne Morehead, The Milk Maid, from a 1906 picture opostcard from Tuck and Son, courtesy of Tuckdb, http://tuckdb.org/about  Piccadilly Gardens from Leisure and Pleasure in the Open Air, Parks Committee, Manchester Corporation 1963, Piccadilly, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

**A new book on the History Of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram

It's all in the changes .......

Just how many changes do you clock over 55 years in one city?

New and old, Exchange Square, 2024

It is of course a silly question because all places undergo some change and for most of us those changes can be quite imperceptible and do rely on a good memory.

That said the lazy will just resort to one of those then and now books but that is cheating, and anyway most such publications report on a series of transformations across a century and more.

Added to which they take just one place and show one change, when the fun is to remember the series of instalments which have nibbled away at somewhere you have come to know..

Corn Exchange & Triangle, 2024

So yesterday I was in Exchange Square, reflecting on a time before the metro tram, before the Urbis building and indeed before both the Arndale and the square itself.

Looking across the square down towards the river it is very difficult to conjure up that this had once been a place of narrow streets, half closed courts and large numbers of warehouses, and commercial properties which vied with offices, restaurants and pubs.  

Here could be found Blue Boar Court, Bulls Head Yard, Cock Pit Hill and Sun Entry some of which narrowed to twisty entries which disappeared into buildings before reappearing on a new street.

Many of the properties were destroyed during the bombing raids of the last world war, and so while the courts and streets were still there many of the buildings had gone.

The transformation was piecemeal during the redevelopment from the 1960s and again after the 1996 IRA bomb.

Piccadilly Plaza, 2024

And in the same way there will be all too many who remember the slow demise of the old Piccadilly Gardens.  

During the 1950s into the 60s it was a favourite place of office workers, shoppers and kids who sat on the benches in the sunken area, took into the municipal floral displays and just watched the city get on with things.

The later reincarnation of the open space has had few friends but at least that concrete wall has come down.

And on another positive note, it has also opened the statue of Queen Victoria, although I am less convinced about the fast-food encampment further along the square.

Standing beside Her Majesty I was struck by the view of the old Piccadilly Hotel with its restaurant in the air.

Changes from Piccadilly Gardens, 2024

Back in 1969 when I arrived in Manchester the hotel with its neighbouring tower and the striking Chinese style-roof of Bernard House struck me as the epitome of the modern when set against all the Victorian and Edwardian buildings which just said old.

I might say shouted the future which chimed with all that was exciting about the 1960s.

But then I was just 19, and yet to become a fan of the Town Hall or all those soot covered relics of the 19th and early 20th century.

Happily, 55 years on I have matured and have come to see that those very buildings were expressions of Manchester’s confidence at over half a century of innovation built on cotton and engineering, and best summed up constructing the first passenger railway and then that equally daring enterprise which was the ship canal.

A bit of a hotel, 2024

But that isn’t to gloss over the dark side of rapid urbanization characterised by mean streets, closed courts where the sun rarely penetrated to lighten the substandard housing, or the lack of sanitation and the absence of clean drinking water.

What was once ... the new, 2024

All of which can be found in history books, and which some would argue were replicated again by the rush to develop new social housing in the 1960s and 70s based on the high-rise towers and deck access properties.

Many of those have now vanished or been modified leaving places like Hulme to have gone through its first housing boom in the 19th century, its second in the decades of the next century and yet a new transformation in the 1980s and 90s.

Which brings us back to where we started with 55 years of change.

Location; Manchester

Bridgewater Hall, 2024

Pictures; of the city, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson