A Day Out in the Ruins of Modernism With Steve and Brian

Photography by Bob Dickinson

An Autumn Walk Around the Recuperated, Unrepentant City

Good to go wandering round Manchester yesterday with Steve Hanson, and to meet for the first time Brian Baker from Lancaster University. We started on London Road and the concrete brutalist wall, designed by Anthony Holloway and built in 1968 outside what used to be UMIST to reduce the sound of the busy road outside from interrupting science studies inside. Steve talked about the homeless camp that was here a couple of years back before being forcibly removed. I remembered the same grass verge nearby was also the site of Mazel Radio, a shop that sold just about anything electrical with valves, as well as second-hand records, back in the 70s.

We made our way to Oxford Road and the remnants of Chorlton on Medlock Town Hall, where the first Pan African Congress took place in 1945, attended by among others future president of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta and of Ghana, Kwame Nkruma. For many years what you see is just a façade fronting part of MMU’s School of Art. Thence to Hulme, and the Epping Walk bridge made famous in 1979 by Kevin Cummins in his series of wintry shots of Joy Division.

We Examine Proof of why Facades are so Aloof

With rain falling and intensifying we retreated to Eighth Day for an hour, and then to another of Steve’s favourite facades: that of the old Free Trade Hall, where I saw my first gig, Taste, in 1970, and bought my first underground magazine, Oz 29, the “female energy” issue, from the late Mike Don, who had a stall in the foyer. The whole place is now - as we all know - an upmarket hotel, which presumably makes money from its nearness to Manchester Central conference centre, immediately behind. Soon to welcome the 2021 Tory Conference. Business as usual.: So presumably, someone may well be thinking, “Let’s make money out of these Brexit profiteers.” But no - sorry - It sticks iin the craw. And unfortunatley much of Manchester now has this very same effect. Therefore we got out of there..

Along Deansgate the crowds were thronging, many of them seemingly off to get married, or, shall we say, slightly inebriated,, in the bars of Spinningfields. There followed an incident in which a person diguised as a potted plant suddenly erupted from his plastic container and shocked a group of subsequently-shrieking female celebrants. Much hilarity. Were we too old and cynical for all this?

We found silence in Parsonage Gardens, where Steve says Engels had his office, back in the 1860s, when Marx visited him and went to borrow books from the library at Chethams School. Here is where we ventured to next, but we couldn’t gain entry because of Horrible Histories Day, according to which you needed to be a child, and this none of us now can possibly claim to be. But the best of luck of all children.

Somehow we managed to leg it to Angel Meadow, another park-like island in the middle of vast, head-numbing redevelopment. On the way up to Oldham Street my energy levels started to diminish rapidly - the result I am sure of age and recent surgery. Apologies to all. These things happen. So I had to say goodbye at Koffeepot and make my way to Piccadilly Rail Station.   Good to see all..