Tour Diary: Confessions of a guide

'UK's most horrifying sculpture?': Man on Fire, Imperial War Museum North

5/11/2025

I took a group of MSc young people from Henley Business School around this week. On the second day we did a tour of The Quays. At the Imperial War Museum North I showed them this work. It impressed them mightily. The Masters students were enthralled and horrified by its raw power. This is my review of it from a couple of years ago. It still has the power to shock.

What: Man on Fire, a sculpture installed on Friday 7 July, 2023.

Permanent or Temporary: Permanent

Where: Imperial War Museum North (IWMN), outside in the compound, adjacent to and visible from Trafford Wharf Road.

Who: The sculptor is Tim Shaw (pictured below) who was born in Belfast in 1964, went to college at Manchester Polytechnic and Falmouth University and has a studio in Cornwall. The word controversial doesn’t cover the hard and direct rhetoric of his work.

In the early noughties for the Eden Project, one of his sculptures, Silenus, a Greek deity of music, debauchery and drunkenness, was held back for fear of upsetting people. It did. When first on display in London, the sculpture was attacked by a man with an iron bar shouting "You're worshiping the wrong God!”

The sculpture certainly had presence. It was three metres high ‘naked, portly, and proudly erect’. Shaw’s main artistic theme, though, is conflict as this IWMN work, Man on Fire, emphasises.

What IWMN says: Monumental in scale, Man on Fire captures the dreadful moments of a person on fire, caught between life and death. Primarily based on images of the 2005 Basra riots during the Iraq War, it was also inspired by photographs of the 2007 Glasgow airport attack and by Shaw’s own memories of growing up during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

What Shaw says: Although this work was originally shaped by photographs of a soldier diving for his life from a burning armoured vehicle, Man on Fire bears witness to the universal horror of war. War is time old, and conflict does not discriminate between gender, age or country. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine testifies to the fact that we continually repeat the same tragic mistakes.

Opinion: This is one of the most powerful sculptures you might ever see. It is absolutely horrifying. It will remain in your mind’s eye long after you’ve walked away.

The almost five-metre work is a permanent shadow even in sunshine, a dark throb of pain outside IWMN. The material used is oily black-rendered bronze with the appearance of recently melted rubber. In wet weather the sculpture carries the sickly sheen of hot tar. At the rear, embeded in the work is a tyre, which makes you shudder and recall ‘necklacing’ in South Africa.

The main figure is of a man, running, swathed in black fire, flames forced behind as he bends forward in agony, his skin being stripped from his body by the heat. You can't help yourself but bend to look at his face. This excites even more horror. The eyes are bulging, lips peeled back, tongue obscenely exposed, in a desperate wrenching silent scream. You might want to look away immediately.

We live in an age where apparently harmless novels, plays and films are given trigger warnings so our sensitive selves won’t be offended by their content. The same thing happens in galleries. Trigger warnings usually insult our intelligence, so it’s almost surprising within this atmosphere of academic and curatorial anxiety that Man on Fire, given its graphic nature, doesn’t have a trigger warning posted 10 metres away. Heaven forfend IWMN ever posts one.

If comparisons are sought for the work then the obvious one is Francisco Goya’s, The Disasters of War set during the Napoleanic Wars in Spain. Shaw has updated those ghastly images, turned them 3D and scaled them up.
His skill with Man on Fire is to personalise the horrors of war, condense them into the fate of one doomed and terrified soul. These horrors are often made banal through the filter of screen, magazine or newspaper and is often played down in art exhibitions. Man on Fire shows us the heart of what war is; the violence, the pain, the death, the pure visceral hell of it.

The piece does a remarkable thing. This is a work of art that feels real, or as real as we can get without being involved inside a conflict. So much public art is meaningless tat, an afterthought, IWMN should be praised for delivering something with real punch to Greater Manchester.

You might find Man on Fire disgusting, it might horrify you, you might hate it, I think in many ways I feel all these things, yet, I guarantee you, as I did, you will also find it impressive, powerful and moving.

Rating: 10/10 for the sheer power of the work.

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Power, Pomona, Bobby, Bread

20/10/2025

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Hurrah, full steam ahead – at last

My favourite bit of the Science and Industry Museum, the Power Hall (picture above), is set to reopen on Friday 17 October. There will be all manner of engines and trains. There’s something deeply poetic about the massively mechanical. To see large components working in rhythm together is mesmerising and a million miles from digital miniaturisation and the accelerating take-over of AI. Standing next to these machines is akin to being in the presence of mighty metal dinosaurs.

The director of the museum, Sally Macdonald says: “This is a hugely significant moment for our museum, the Science Museum Group and for Manchester. Power Hall symbolises the city’s innovation, creativity and resilience. Ideas that began in this city have impacted people and places across the world and shaped life as we know it.”

The Power Hall has been named after Andrew Law who supported the renovation through his personal foundation, AL Philanthropies. Money from this will go to educational programmes for STEM subjects.

Albert Square’s coded messages

As Albert Square gears up for public access on 7 November the drains have been given distinction. Five designers are going to have their work walked all over with their decorative drain covers. These were manufactured by the excellent Jon Male at Studio Jon Male in Manchester. The artists are Barney Ibbotson, Faz Barber, Olivia Clermont, Eddie Campbell and Dan Birkbeck. A good example is Ibbotson’s which highlights some of Greater Manchester’s innovations and firsts: expect references to Dalton’s atomic theory, the programmable computer, graphene, the formation of the Football League amongst several others. They won’t look shiny silver as in these design illustrations, they’ll be Cor-Ten steel, so rusty orange; tougher, easier to walk over.

A Bobby Dazzler

Taking some guests around OId Trafford suburb recently a guest remarked about the Bobby Charlton mural on the Old Trafford pub wall. I recalled this story from Graham Stringer (ex-council leader and presently an MP) in his Charlton obituary in Manchester Confidential.

‘I only ever met one person who was completely oblivious to Bobby’s celebrity this was Kim Yu-Sun the North Korean Member of the International Olympic Committee. He had been instructed by the North Korean Government not to make himself available to the delegations, including Manchester, bidding for the 2000 Olympic Games. Glyn Ford, then an MEP for Greater Manchester, managed to get the instruction changed and Bobby, Glyn and I took Kim for a meal in Monte Carlo. Although Kim was an international footballer himself, he had no idea that he was in the company of greatness. The conversation was stilted to non-existent, and Bobby ended up producing a pack of cards and doing card tricks. At the end Kim thanked us all for the meal and in particular for bringing the ‘magician’.’

Nomenclature madness: a hat-trick

It still bewilders me that Malmaison Deansgate Hotel (pictured above) overlooks Albert Square on Princess Street and the King Street Townhouse is on Booth Street. For the former the Malmaison used ‘an algorithm’ to work out what was the best name for the hotel in the area. The algorithm said more people search for Deansgate than Princess Street. Tail wagging the dog eh? I’m sure if they’d put in Albert Square the result might have been different. But it shouldn’t have mattered about an algorithm; the name should have been Malmaison Albert Square or Malmaison Princess Street because that’s where the hotel is located.

Mind you it’s not just with recent names there’s a problem. The Bridgewater Hall is named after the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater who funded the Bridgewater Canal which is nowhere near the concert hall. However the latter sits above the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal and very close to the Rochdale Canal. Of course those wouldn’t have worked, they would have been confusing, especially the Rochdale Hall.

Tommy Ducks pub was close to the site though. This curious pub which weirdly sported donated underwear from customers on the ceiling was infamously demolished by the infamous Greenalls brewery in 1991. What about Tommy Ducks Hall? Would that have worked better? Er…no, but it would have been more relevant to the site.

Peel Group and the Pomona problem

Of course they’re a big company, of course they have to make money but many of us dreamt foolishly that as a legacy gift to the city region Peel Group might have turned the ‘island’ site of Pomona on the Manchester Ship Canal into a park. After all it was public money that created the canal so it would have been appropriate if Peel Group could have followed the example of so many regional bigwigs in the nineteenth century and given citizens something tangible back; a gift to beautify the region.

Ridiculous fantasy of course. Peel Group doesn't do fantasy.

Pomona lies between the Bridgewater Canal and Manchester Ship Canal between Castlefield and the Quays. There’s a consultation out for 2,600 homes, up to 100 care beds, 200 hotel rooms, and student beds plus 750,000 sq ft of flexible office and retail space. There will be green bits in between. The lead architects are Manchester’s Jon Matthews Architects. There’s an image above of what it might look like. You can join in the consultation here.

Scary scary AI and Pomona

AI everywhere. I decided to give AI a go at designing something for Pomona. Bloody hell. In about three minutes it came up with the image in the attachments.

Hidden bakery heaven

Sourdough is useful in many ways, not least the crusts are so sharp after toasting you can use them to shave. I find sourdough sour and soapy, sometimes ok, sometimes too much and definitely not for every occasion: so the sourdough take over in the last decade, especially in restaurants, has been mildly annoying.

At Half Dozen Other bakery there is more choice - if you can find it. The address is Unit 17, Red Bank, Manchester M4 4HF, but it really lies off Faber Street behind the railway arches housing Sparrows restaurant. We were shown the bakery on a fascinating walkabout of the huge redevelopment area of Victoria North. This was excellently led by Gemma Price of inhouse marketing and PR company FOUND for developers FEC (I’ll write about this trip on another occasion). The new woodland area of mature trees at St Catherine’s Island is going to be good when it opens in the first half of 2026.

At Half Dozen Other I spotted a rack of loaves in the warehouse that weren’t sourdough. Hallelujah. I entered the shop area and said: “If my eyes don’t deceive me, those loaves are not sourdough, they are Farmhouse.” They were. Freshly baked. I bought one. Bread like this has been a bit of a problem in the city centre.

Half Dozen Other belongs to the Pot Kettle Black group of coffee shops. You can get the bread and cakes too there or at their Circle Square, Oxford Road, outlet. The shop at the bakery is open from 7.30am-2pm every day apart from Saturday and Sunday when it’s 7.30am to 4pm.

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Manchester tales, Cyan lines, Morrissey and Churchill

13/9/2025

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Walkways and dreams
“He was blue and I was green,” says Pete Swift. The boss of landscape design company Planit is talking about his meeting with Tom Bloxham of developer Urban Splash and the inception of an idea that brought blue and green together. Cyan Lines, which I’ve mentioned in a previous newsletter, was launched at Aviva Studios on Wednesday with the intention of creating trails stretching 100 miles through Greater Manchester for ‘walkers and wheels’ (ones without engines of course) linking parks, country parks, canals and rivers.

The computer renders for paths along the River Irwell in the city centre look almost sci-fi. To prevent these ideas being future fodder for my Lost & Imagined books, the instigators have estimated they need £100m over ten years.

Some money has already been raised and the scheme is backed by some impressive muscle with both the Council Leader of Manchester, Bev Craig and GM Mayor, Andy Burnham, speaking in favour of the project on Wednesday. Other supporters include private sector big beasts such as Allied London, Bruntwood, Far East Consortium, Landsec, Renaker, Property Alliance Group and Urban Splash. Charity sector support has been given by the Nature Town and Cities Fund, National Trust and Factory International.

Pete Swift said to me: “I don’t imagine all of it will be realised but I do imagine it can be 100% better. There’s something in the universal desire to get reacquainted with the waterways from the simplicity of a water taxi to the complexity of a lido.”

“£100m for 100 miles?” said one wag at the event. “Easy. That’s about 40% of what this one building, Aviva, cost.”

I’ll be putting on a tour exploring the River Irwell shortly. It’s got a mighty story to tell.

Cask Boddington’s is back
After the cream of Manchester was demeaned and devalued by moving from its home city to Wrexham where it was seemingly brewed using slurry from Clywd farms, cask Boddies is back. Manchester brewer J W Lees will be producing 25,000 barrels a year under licence. The rights owners are Budweiser but when they ran the brand perception through algorithms it turned out Boddingtons was still right at the top of British ale name recognition. So Lees have the original recipes and are launching the ale on 23 September back in its rightful home. The specially designed commemorative glass is particularly handsome, see the attachment, but ignore the chrysanthemums showing through the glass.

Food halls and food halls
A very attractive food hall with a rather cheesy name, House of Social, has opened underneath new student accommodation from Vita Group. The epithet ‘social’ has been completely overused in hospitality in the last five or so years, but, still, the handsome interior from Manchester-based Tim Groom architects is a treat. Food is good but predictable for a food hall, burgers, pizzas, Indian and Mexican. I spent an hour before the Cyan Lines event doing a bit of reading and research on my computer and very pleasant it was, an easy atmosphere. The location is just south of HOME arts centre at 10 Coleman Street, M15 4ND. News has come in about another food hall as well, this time at Ducie Street Warehouse from Edinburgh Street Food and due to open in 2026. Not sure the market can sustain so many.

Morrissey’s not cut out for this
I took Morrissey out for a tour in August. It was a birthday tour and unlikely as it may seem he didn't say much. He was life-size but made out of cardboard. A group of North Easterners with that charming lilt to their accent had booked me to do a Smiths’ tour around the city centre. It was a stag do and the main man was allowed to be wig-less whereas all his chums had to wear very black wigs so as to appear like Johnny Marr – as you can see in the attached picture. The groom had to dress like the cardboard Morrissey but on a hot day those wigs couldn't have been very comfortable so he got off lightly.

A complication was that it was Pride weekend in Manchester and to take in the best Smiths’ sites we had to cross Peter Street. Doing this during the Pride procession with a large cardboard cut-out of Morrissey was problematic. Morrissey has said various things in his deliberately controversialist style about trans issues. He’s not popular amongst many in the gay community. I was leading the group so I scurried ahead wondering if the lads would get through unscathed. They did using the fine tactic of turning Morrissey’s cardboard cut-out to face the ground otherwise they might have been lynched. We live in noisy times and

Churchill in the Midland Hotel
Last Thursday I was asked to do an after dinner speech at the Midland Hotel for the St James’ Club which was celebrating 200 years. It was a black tie event. My job was to try and not drink too much and be articulate enough to deliver a few points about clubs of this nature (former gentlemen’s clubs but now open to all, of course, in the city of the suffragettes).

I included a couple of snippets spoken by Winston Churchill as a Liberal MP for Manchester. This is him taking aim at left and right, as a recent Liberal, in his inimitable style.

This is part of a speech at the Reform Club in 1906, now Grand Pacific, about Labour and Socialism.

“Liberalism is not Socialism, and never will be. There is a great gulf fixed. It is not a gulf of method, it is a gulf of principle. ... Socialism seeks to pull down wealth. Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private interests; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference ... Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital, Liberalism attacks monopoly."

The Tories got it in the neck too in an earlier speech for the Cobden Club in the Midland Hotel.

"We know perfectly well what to expect. [The Tory Party] has become the party of great vested interest; corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad; trickery of tariff juggles, tyranny of party machine; sentiment by the bucketful, patronage by the pint; openhand at the public exchequer; open door at the public house; dear food for the millions ... and ... cheap labour by the millions...”

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Meat hunters, delightful stand-up comedians and scary monikers

22/5/2025

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By way of introduction to this article let's start with the one of the weirdest intros I've ever had.

I was in Oldham to give a talk about architecture and development in Greater Manchester from 1945 onwards. The audience was a U3A group (the University of the Third Age, elderly folk in other words).

"Welcome everyone," the chair of group said. "Sad news first. Tom, who many of you knew, and a member for many years, has passed away. Moving on, let me introduce you to Jonathan Schofield who will talk to us today about post-war architecture."

I confess I didn’t quite know how to start: recent death and deck access flats all caught up in the same breath.

LS Lowry waits by the bar in Sam's Chop House

“Hey Mr Jonathan, if we want to eat meat where should we go?”

Strange the requests a guide gets. A tour of charming eighteen-year-old Spaniards visiting Alty boys grammar on an exchange programme featured such a request. “There’s a lot of meat out there, lads,” I said. The leader of the trio who were posing the question said: “We’d like a steak, a true British steak,” adding the word, “meaty.” His friend said, ‘We hear British steak is very good.”

I gave them choices, Hawksmoor, Blacklock, Black Friar but they went to Sam’s Chop House because they preferred somewhere “traditional and old” and they seemed excited about sharing the bar space with a big, bronze, moody miserabilist. In other words, the seated statue of ex-regular, the late Laurence Stephen Lowry who at Sam’s Chop House is anything but a ‘matchstick man’ (see the picture above).

I get a lot of questions about good restaurant recommendations which is to be expected given dining out is one of the joys of visiting or living in a city. This was unusual as it concerned a single food type. Still, it wasn't as strange as the request I received many years ago for a recommendation for a restaurant that specialised in carrots. That remains still an unexplored restaurant opportunity within Manchester’s hospitality sector. There were vegetarian and vegan options of course but not one that specialised in carrots.

Some of these young Spaniards are craving steak

Speaking of food stuffs, a couple of days after the steak question I was taking an Oslo-based housing association group on architectural tour. They were in Manchester and Liverpool on a ‘study visit’. In my experience study visits largely consist of a couple of morning sessions and meetings and then some tourism, shopping and finally it's “where’s the best pub?”

Northern European countries are particularly good at study visits, both civic and commercial, which retreat into inverted commas as ‘study visits’ the longer they go on.

At the end of this tour one of the guests asked me to wait with her colleagues for a moment. We’d finished at their hotel (Innside by Melia if anyone's asking). She skipped to her room and returned with a gift. Scandis have this finey custom of always bringing small gifts for the people they've arranged to meet.

The woman returned and said: “This is traditional Norwegian chocolate from Oslo.” It was branded ‘Freia’ and it was milk chocolate but as she was handing it over she read the wrapper. “Oh,” she said, “this was made in Lithuania not Norway, oh dear, ha, ha.”

The slogan of the chocolate is Et lite stykke Norge which means ‘a little piece of Norway’ but doesn't include the extra words 'sometimes, not from Norway'. Globalising and its cost cutting trips us all. Dyson vacuum cleaners - so British eh?

A Norwegian study group on a study tour

A little piece of Norway made in Lithuania

Taking so many people around reveals unexpected connections with Manchester.

Jed was a cheerful, American 'soccer' fan. His team is Minnesota United. After I’d played an Oasis song, Jed said: “The Minnesota United fans all sing Wonderwall if we win a match.” Bewildered, I asked why? He said, “We had this coach and before the players went out on to the pitch he used to sing them Wonderwall. When the team won promotion, they came over to the fans and sang Wonderwall to us so we now sing it back to them if they win. It’s become a tradition. The scarves even have Wonderwall on them.”

I said, “How strange, but from a Mancunian point of view, very lovely too."

Then something he’d said puzzled me: "You only sing it when you win?”

He said yes. I told him the phrase ‘You only sing when you’re winning’, was sung as sarcasm by UK fans to indicate the opposition fans were not true fans and didn't stick with the team through thick and thin.

I'm not sure he understood, the Americans often have a different mentality to the Brits.

Jed did understand about Oasis though. “Is it true the brothers are both real fans of Manchester City and hate Man Utd? Would they hate we sing Wonderwall as we’re Minnesota United?”

“Absolutely, they might fight you,” I laughed.

This is the link to the fans crooning like Liam, or something like that.

Jed is the third from the left

Music. The passions it delivers are immeasurable. One woman from Finland declared on a music tour how she was a massive fan of Joy Division and Nick Cave. She was in Manchester for the former not the latter of course. She surprised me by declaring she’s given her son the forenames of Ian Curtis Cave. Wow. As people probably know, both have tragic histories, one with his depression and subsequent suicide and the other with the death of two children and with his addictions. The Nick Cave Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 is at times a very difficult listen.

I think all I managed was a suprised "oh".

She wasn’t with her son though. She was with her daughter. "So what's your name then?" I asked. The young woman said: "She called me Eliza Day." That is the title of an unremittingly grim Nick Cave ballad featuring Kylie Minogue. It has a haunting dark beauty that ends with the male protagonist killing the female with a rock and throwing her in a river.

The mother, Hannele I think, was happy about one thing. While on a visit to Curtis’s grave in Macclesfield she’d bumped into Stephen Morris, the drummer of Joy Division and New Order in the humdrum surroundings of an Aldi car park.

"That really made my day,” Hennele said. “Did it give you True Faith?” I quipped referencing my favourite New Order song. Eliza Day nodded her head in agreement and carried on the joke with the line: "I used to think the day would never come." You’ll have to be familiar with New Order songs to get that reference.

The cover of the New Order single True Faith with its beautiful design by Peter Saville

One of the most remarkable and stimulating people who came on a recent Saturday music tour was Dasha. She was early thirties and from Russia although she currently lives in Spain. She had a far more comprehensive knowledge of music, British and international, than I will ever have.

We went for a drink after the tour. This often happens with guests. It’s a good way of getting to know people beyond the necessarily one way street relationship of a guide talking at people for ninety minutes or so.

Dasha was great company and had diverse interests and hobbies to say the least. She was naturally funny with superb English. Both the humour and the English would come in handy as the following evening she was off to an open-mic comedy night, not to watch, but to perform. In English.

Indeed, due to return to Spain on the Monday she stayed in Manchester for the best part of a week working remotely, won over by the city. She took part in several open-mic nights in Manchester and Liverpool and nearly in Chorley when she got on the wrong train.

Tour guiding is performance. A good tour guide entertains, a bad tour guide lectures. I use a lot of humour but people haven’t come on the tour for the humour as such, it’s a bonus. Stand-up comedy is there for one thing to make people laugh. Apparently Dasha made her audience laugh and while she had done some stand-up in Spain she’s really just started and is not a seasoned professional. You have to admire her bravery in coming to the UK and getting up in front of an audience.

I meet a lot of remarkable people on my tours and Dasha was one of them.

Dasha in full flow

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Buildings, new restaurants and 'We'll Meet Again'

13/4/2025

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I was doing some research the other day and I had no idea that the writers of one of the most famous British songs of all time were Mancunian. Ross Parker and Hughie Charles were the team behind ‘We’ll Meet Again’, the forces and people’s favourite wartime song and performed by Vera Lynn of course. I’m going to do more digging about the composers who also scored a hit with ‘There’ll Always Be An England’.

For foodies three excellent restaurants have opened in the city centre. Winsome is very British in style (here’s the menu) from the superb chef Shaun Moffat, big portions too and is at 74 Princess Street. Pip is modern British from another local and excellent chef in Mary-Ellen McTeague, elegant food this one with the menu yet to be posted online but the fish pie is excellent. It sits on Blackfriars Street in the old Renaissance Hotel, now the Treehouse Hotel. Then there’s Bruco in Ancoats on Murray Street with, I suppose, one would call, modern Italian and a coolly and beautifully simple dining space (here’s the menu).

Robert de Niro anyone? He wants to be involved with the new towering giant of Manchester’s growing skyline. This is Viadux Two, the 243m (that’s 807ft in old money) high residential block that will somehow be crammed in the already jammed spot next to Deansgate-Castlefield Station and Beetham Tower. This will the third tallest tower in the UK and easily the highest outside London, given that at present the highest tower outside London is South Tower at nearby Deansgate Square at 201m (659ft).

Viadux Two will include a high-end (literally) restaurant, 160-bed five-star hotel, and 452 luxury branded residences. The entire building will be operated by the American hospitality brand Nobu part-owned by Mr De Niro. The tower will be designed by Simpson Haugh, Manchester’s go-to tower designing practice. Here’s gentle criticism of the repeated use of one designer back before the Nobu connection.

Also here’s a short Instagram video of a ride past Strangeways Prison with in the text a bit of history. And here's another one about the mad monsters in Salford.

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William Mitchell's mad concrete monsters

8/4/2025

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This is Robert Waterhouse writing on 12 June 1967 in The Guardian the year these beasts appeared. Clearly Salford students were well up on classical allusion.

‘At the entrance to the inner square of Salford Technical College three concrete figures stand guard. They link the solid, functional north-west wing with the more elegant, sculptural lecture theatre. They are seen as easily from the main road as from a third-floor teaching room. They are of Florentine size, though the students have understood their more primitive nature and christened them the Three Aphrodites - Urania, the heavenly one. Genetrex, the earth mother, and Pome, purveyor of lust.

‘To William Mitchell, their creator, they are simply decorative objects, a landscaping commission which he completed in ten days, casting each figure on site straight from the mixer into four or five polyurethane moulds at the low approximate cost of £4,000. Mitchell's gay, gargantuan objects were included in the architects' contract for the college; it was they who suggested to Mitchell that he should work on three figures. They also felt that the large end wall of the first floor concourse needed decoration, but they couldn't afford to allow far this in their estimates.
‘Incongruous in Salford? The Victorians loved extravaganzas in the heart of their industrial miasmas. Here are worthy successors, and in much better planned surroundings.’

I love these monsters. Lots of people despise them. At first sight they seem as dated as footage from Woodstock with beads, mini-skirts and headbands. But get up close, walk around them, peep into their nooks and crannies, rub your hands over their folds and bulges, and there’s a certain sensual attractive horror to them. Mitchell deliberately mixed up the colour scheme, the types of concrete and even included bits of mosaic.

He was naughty though in offering no interpretation of what they might mean (his title was 'Untitled') although we know he was having an 'Aztec moment' as you can tell from the style? Was he teasing us with a work that subsequently he knew might sum up urban alienation? Probably not but the good news is that in 2012 the monsters were Grade II listed.

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Zurich, music, Corrie & love ain’t easy or is it?

2/4/2025

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It was a music tour and a man in a cap and in his mid-forties was telling me in perfect English how he’s from Zurich and called Etienne.

He said: “I’m here for this tour and it’s my birthday so my partner has treated me. I love Manchester music. It’s always talked to me. She’s also got tickets for the Coronation Street tour tomorrow”.

I said: “You like Coronation Street? A bit of a contrast to Zurich I imagine.”

Etienne said: “I like how it depicts the life here, I mean in Manchester, or I suppose it does. I love the accents and how people say things. I like the humour. I also like how The Smiths had the Coronation Street sign over their heads with that famous picture of Salford Lads Club on The Queen is Dead album.”

One of these places is Zurich and one is Coronation Street

Before I could say anything, he smiled and held up a hand. “Oh I know it’s not the same Coronation Street as on the album.” Etienne was proud of his Manchester knowledge.

“It’s not far away from the original,” I said. “I interviewed the original script writer Tony Warren many years ago. He said he’d based his first scripts on Archie Street which is the same area of Salford, a place called Ordsall. But I don’t watch the soap. I watched it for a while ages ago in the eighties when it was more like a sitcom, it was very light-hearted. I’m pretty sure it didn’t accurately depict life here then nor does it do now probably. Anyway, isn’t it supposed to be all issues-based these days?”

Etienne laughed. He said: “There is a lot of that.” He put on a stern tone and in a very convincing generic North Western accent recited: “If you have been affected by any of the issues in this programme please call…” He laughed and said: “That happens after almost every programme.”

He paused: “I believe I am the only Corrie, as you say I think, fan in Switzerland.”

I said: “Etienne, that would be difficult to prove that but I’m very prepared to believe you.”

“You know,” he said, “this weekend break with first Manchester music and then a tour of Coronation Street will be one of finest times of my life.”

His partner overhearing this laughed and gave him a hug.

Etienne is in the cap to the right of the man with the sunglasses and a cap

Music tours are very joyous things. All ages and all nationalities come along. Mostly they come for the famous eighties and nineties bands but get dragged in by other music too.

On a recent tour there was a Columbian and a Brazilian women, both previously unknown to each other along for the ride. They were both mid-twenties and both loved the eighties and nineties bands. But then they loved all the music.

The Columbian danced to every intro I played and clapped her hands in delight to a complete range of wildly disparate tunes and bands from Love Will Tear Us Apart through Relight My Fire, Supersonic, I Am The Resurrection, There Is A Light and Never Gonna Give You Up. Others started involuntarily joining in.

The two Latina women were friends by the end of the tour and went off to lunch together.

When I started the Manchester music tours I’d expected lots of people my age to respond, or even those a generation younger, but when twenty-something Americans, as happened this month, start singing along to the Buzzcocks this is clearly not the case.

As stated above the tours have pan-generational appeal.

The Smiths drag more music fans to Manchester than any other band

There can be dark shades to the tours. When I mentioned to a mid-fifties German couple who’d paid for a private tour how people can get married in The Smiths’ room in Salford Lads Club, they got excited and simultaneously exclaimed: “Let’s do that!”

I deadpanned that I might have to get to know them better first.

They explained their reaction in an unexpected way.

Or rather the woman did, saying: “We love our kids but we both hate our ex-spouses.”

“They are not ex yet,” said the man, “we are waiting for our divorces, then we can get married.”

“But when that happens we’ll come back and get married in The Smiths’ room,” said the woman ecstatically.

“Oh yes,” he boomed just as passionately and high-fived her saying: “And that will be us free at last.”

These were clearly a wealthy couple. They travelled ten times a year to watch gigs all across Europe and the globe. Apparently their exes had hated gigging which to quote Guy Garvey of Elbow had clearly become Grounds For Divorce.

The Smiths' room at Salford Lads Club

Earlier the tours that weekend had delivered a sweeter story while taking people around the mighty Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel, formerly the Refuge Assurance Building from the late 1890s and extended in the early twentieth century.

I always ask if anybody in the group had worked in the building before the founding company left in 1987.

David and Pat had.

They’d met at the Refuge in 1961 when she was 15 and he was 16. They’d starting flirting with each other as soon as they’d met and before they were twenty they’d married. They had now amassed upwards of 54 years of companionship and brought up children along the way. They appeared almost extravagantly in love as though the years hadn’t touched their affections.

Conditions were different back when they’d started. They both talked about how women were paid much lower wages (not exactly an extinct practice) than men even though as David said: “She was much cleverer than me.” And of course married women had to leave work if they got pregnant. The state believed that motherhood had become their job whether they wanted to give up work or not.

With a grin David said: “It was great at the Refuge, there was a 10 to one ratio of females to males. Great odds that.”

And then he added: “Why would anybody want to work from home? Especially if you’re young. How do you meet people?”

“Online,” said a member of the group in a tone dryer than the Atacama.

Next time: Steak, Spanish lads & Norwegian chocolate

David and Pat and the group in the Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel

There's sixteen pages of music tour in the new edition of my guidebook. You can buy it here. There's a picture of a happy customer from Switzerland below.

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Big Strangeways changes proposed plus a bit of background

7/3/2025

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Of all the scruffy areas of the central conurbation, the Strangeways/Cheetham Hill Road area on the border between Manchester and Salford is the worst. There are lots of wholesale retail, rag trade and food outlets with too much litter. Buildings are often rundown and look either temporary or obsolete.

For years the area was known as the counterfeit capital of Europe although this is now changing as the local authorities and police have clamped down.

Architecturally it’s crazy, with good, even significant buildings, cheek by jowl with the aforementioned decrepitude. Sadly even the good buildings are usually in a state of hopeless disrepair.

There are former theatres, a decayed ice skating rink, old synagogues, a former town hall, zillions of modern warehouses and a brewery - the magnificent Joseph Holt brewery. On the picture below a man who so loves Joseph Holt beer he's got the Derby Street entrance to the brewery tattooed on his back.

The biggest fan of Joseph Holt brewery has the entrance tattooed on his back.

Derby Street, the former Jewish School on the left and the former headquarters of Marks &Spencer on the right.

The traders in Cheetham Hill and around Bury New Road are largely of Asian and Middle-Eastern origin. Before these traders arrived there was a Jewish community here, hence the Jewish Museum on the main road. In Derby Street an Asian wholesaler sits inside a former Jewish School from 1869. This was built by the established Sephardic community (originally from around the Mediterranean basin) who wanted to teach the incoming Ashkenazi folk, poorer Jewish immigrants, how to be more British. Yiddish wasn’t allowed.

Across the road is the former headquarters of Marks and Spencer from 1901-1923, also a clothing wholesaler. The working class Ashkenazi came to Britain to make a living and find opportunity in a safe and stable place and that’s what many of the recent immigrants have done. It’s the way history in cities flows in these types of places, different groups replace each other.

Cycling around the location I also noticed the area is the home of Town Girls Manchester which opens from 11am to 5am every day apparently. No idea what that place does.

A film crew about to interview yours truly on a sunny day some years ago with the old entrance to Strangeways Prison behind.

There’s also the prison here; Strangeways Prison now known as His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Manchester.

And this is the big problem with redevelopment.

Manchester have politely asked the Ministry of Justice if they wouldn’t mind vacating the prison and building one somewhere else. They’ve asked coyly with a pretty please and a big-eyed disarming look. It hasn’t worked. The Ministry of Justice are going nowhere. The prison has a capacity of 745 and as anybody following the news will know the Ministry needs all the beds it can muster.

Still, despite the problems the councils of Manchester and Salford are approving a masterplan for the area which will go to public consultation at the end of March.

This is what they have released to the press.

The draft Strategic Regeneration Framework (SRF) reports will be heard by both Councils’ respective executive and cabinet committees outlining the vision that will guide wide-scale investment and development across the 130 hectare city fringe location over the coming decades.

The draft Strangeways and Cambridge (the Salford side of the project) SRF presents a high-level vision for the area, building on the work of the Operation Vulcan policing operation, to provide a platform for legitimate businesses to grow and thrive, alongside a major new urban park, significant new housing – including affordable homes – and significant commercial and employment opportunities.

The programme of investment estimates the combined development areas could see up to 7,000 new homes across seven distinct ‘neighbourhood’ areas, increased commercial floorspace of around 1.75m sqft, and the regeneration could support an additional 4,500 jobs.

The draft SRF presents a development approach that will support Manchester’s target to become a zero-carbon city by 2038 and reacts to other environmental factors in the areas, including potential flooding linked to climate change.

The SRF also reflects how HM Prison Manchester – formerly Strangeways Prison – remains a significant barrier to the regeneration ambitions in this part of the city and the framework will act as an engagement tool with the Ministry of Justice around the long-term future of the prison.

The key themes of the SRF include:
Business and Employment: Increase business and employment opportunities – supporting ongoing economic growth in both Manchester and Salford.
Green and Blue Infrastructure: Create a network of green spaces and celebrate the River Irwell – including the creation of a large new city centre park (working title: Copper Park) - and respond to flood risk
Movement: Prioritise a ‘people first’ approach to the regeneration, including active travel while carefully managing parking, servicing and delivery requirements.
Heritage and Culture: Celebrate the existing architecture and heritage buildings in the area as part of the comprehensive regeneration plans.

This draft Strangeways and Cambridge SRF document has been prepared on behalf of MCC and SCC by Avison Young with Maccreanor Lavington Architects, Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, Schulze+Grassov, Civic Engineers, Useful Projects and PLACED.

Following the respective Council approvals, consultation around the SRF document will begin at the end of March, the results of which will be reported to future Executive and Cabinet meetings.

Further information on the SRF can be found here.

Modern map showing the area where redevelopment is planned

Strangeways Prison in the 1940s with the bombed out Assize Courts on the right.

By the way the strange name of Strangeways, which seems totally appropriate for a prison, refers to a family name meaning a place next to a stream or a river with a strong current. Perhaps the Manchester family of the Strangeways derived their name from the River Irwell or River Irk both of which bordered their estate.

Strangeways must have been idyllic once. We have a picture of Strangeways Hall from the middle of the 18th century by mapmakers Casson & Berry when it was in the ownership of Francis Rynolds.

A later map, with the south at the top of the page, shows Strangeways Park with extravagant water features. The growing city blew all that away and in 1868 the vast and gloomy Strangeways Prison opened designed by Manchester Town Hall architect Alfred Waterhouse who had already completed the spectacular Assize Courts which were destroyed by bombs in World War II.

Maybe that promised new park can restore something of the former Strangeways Park beauty.

I am conducting a tour of this area on Sunday 4 May. Book here.

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NAPOLEON INVADES, THE LAKES, RARE TREES, AND THE PROBLEMS OF FARMERS' DAUGHTERS

6/2/2025

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This is a draft post I made in 2021 which I hadn't published on my website although I had in other media. Seems a shame to waste it so here it is.

I travelled up to the Lakes last week and met up with my brother to pay homage to a five acre parcel of land in the South Lakes my late dad purchased in the seventies. It’s a piece of paradise.

But let’s begin with an entertaining conversation I overheard on the way back. I’m all for a bit of travel eavesdropping on trains, especially when it’s accidental and the people chatting coerce you, in a manner of speaking, to listen.

I got the train back to Manchester from Oxenholme. I wasn’t the only passenger boarding. Two young women in their early twenties, boarded as well and sat on the table across the aisle from mine. Their volume control was broken and stuck on ten.

Initially I was thinking why aren’t you both staring silently and raptly at your phones like everyone normal at your age. Yet the conversation started to drag me in, complete with the girls’ lovely Westmorland accents, that odd combination of north Lancashire, Yorkshire and Geordie.

Here’s part of the conversation.

K: Do you think people can tell we’re farmers?
D: Farmer’s daughters you mean?
K: (laughing): It’s not like we smell of barns.
D: (laughing): Not usually.
K: Well, why do meet so few interesting lads?
D: Interesting people, you mean?
K: It’s the friends’ group. It’s too small. We all end up going with each other. Then it’s embarrassing.
D: I know. I broke out once remember. For a bit. I had that thing with that lad in Skipton. Another farmer of course and dead good-looking but thick and ate awfully. Chomp, chomp. It was disgusting. Like a pig.
K: And can you remember that one I went with up at Kirkby Stephen for a couple of months.
D (laughing): Yeah, he really did smell like manure.

That made me laugh too, but I gave up, as the volume became too much, and put my headphones on and watched Morecambe Bay pass by to music. There were glimpses of the sands and over them the Lake District mountains appeared, Old Man Coniston prominent and then the last outlier, the dark humped bulk of Black Combe. It’s curious how the Lake District is so-called given it has so many mountains. Did ‘the Mountain District’ ever look likely to stick? Lakes are more distinctive I suppose. The Lake District is better, describes a characteristic.

Then we crossed the River Lune north of Lancaster. The tide was out and it occurred to me, as a non-sequitur, that rail travel is far more like floating than flight. Flight is a pointless bouncy castle of an experience compared to rail travel, usually conducted in a fog of cloud. The train, tied by gravity to the earth, flies smoothly through landscapes, with just enough fluctuations of movement, bumps for want of a better word, to show we still have the soil under our rails. It’s fast enough to get to places quickly, slow enough to watch the landscape change, yet close enough to almost feel it.

The next major river, the chatty girls and I crossed, was the Ribble. Ah lovely Ribble, a noble river, that starts in the Dales and flows into the Irish Sea fresh as daisy from its ramble through the north west of England.

I wondered at geography and geology lately on a walk up Pen-y-ghent mountain in the Dales where we'd found rare purple saxifrage flowering close to the summit almost artfully sited next to some residual snow. On one side of that very good-looking Pennine peak the waters all flow east into the North Sea and on the other side they flow west into the Irish Sea.

One of those ‘waters’ is the River Ribble. I don’t know why the watershed there creates wonder in me but it does. It seems significant in intuitive ways. Something to do with how the planet moves, how gravity falls, how nature behaves, how brief it makes our lives appear when compared to a geological timescale. I find nothing melancholy in that thought, on the contrary it’s reassuring.

Anyway, as stated, the purpose of the visit to the Lakes was to stroll a parcel of land the family call with great cunning ‘the Land’. We do this on the anniversary of my late mum’s birthday. There are three pasture meadows with extreme height differences in the terrain, turned into a sanctuary for flora and fauna by my dad’s monomania with trees. Much remains grassed of course, often sprinkled with cowslips, but the list of rare trees and shrubs impresses anybody interested in such matters.

The views are superb, north up the A6 to the dramatic ridge of Whinfell and south over Kendal, seven miles away, then into Lancashire. To the south east, at night and three miles distant, the west coast mainline trains and their lit compartments appear as snakes, bodies sparkling with bright light, winding over the shoulder of Benson Knott.

After ‘the Land’ we went to Bowness for a drink and a meal in the sunny April chill. My brother Robert likes to discover rare books in charity shops so we had to stop off in one of those. There was nothing for him but I found Napoleon Bonaparte.

Or to give him his full name and title: ‘Napoleon Bonaparte, by the Grace of God and the Constitutions of the Republic, Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation’. Old Boney (as he was known over here) seemed a bit confused back then. Can you be an emperor through the constitution of a republic?

My Boney is about a foot high and ceramic. I knew he was small but not that small. He was priced £3 and is totally rubbish but it amused me to buy him and then we posed him all across Bowness, next to swans, on grassy mounds, on the lunch table.

The following day we went to Shap Abbey, which is perfectly hidden in a fold of the hills between the Lakes and the Pennines. It is a noble ruin with the principal feature the west tower. We posed old Bonaparte there too. Nobody was about, until as we left, over a footbridge, we passed a couple in their thirties with matching rambling poles. They did that tiresome Covid-shimmy to one side as though we had bubos popping out of our cheekbones, even though we were in miles of open country.

Best thing was as they retreated we heard one of them say, “That’s odd. Do you think Napoleon had something to do with Shap Abbey?” It’s the sort of thing that creates a rumour that turns into a myth that becomes a fact. So, when you hear somebody say that Napoleon made a secret visit to England and stayed at Shap Abbey you’ll know it started with a daft man who bought a tacky ceramic statuette from a charity shop as a laugh.

When I got back to the flat my subscription of ‘History Today’ was in the letter box. One of my sons bought me this subscription as a Christmas present. The main story was called: ‘Napoleon, Life after Death’, and there was Boney with exactly the same coat as my statuette on the cover.

I love a good coincidence, which was compounded when on a walk across town to the excellent Ducie Street Warehouse for a meal I discovered there’s a new casino, bar and restaurant, opening on Portland Street called Napoleon’s - although by then I was beginning to worry something sinister was afoot.

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Favourite Mcr buildings. Part 1: The Former YMCA

31/1/2025

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Here's the former YMCA (1911), now St George's House, on Peter Street by Woodhouse, Corbett and Dean. The first UK building to be built of reinforced concrete on the Kahn system, named after a German-born American engineer).

The buff and brown terracotta-faced building mingles tremendous Art Nouveau motifs with an essentially Baroque form. That Art Nouveau though. Wow. Look at that stretched Manchester coat of arms, bees and ship and all? Magnificent.

There’s a cracking copy of Renaissance artist Donatello's St George too. St George seems to be staring at the queue for coffee-shop Ezra & Gil wondering whether a coffee is worth queuing outside in all weathers. The festoons are hung vertically not dropping from two higher fold points. Crazy stuff.

The massive arched entrance could be the entrance to a fancy road tunnel under a mountain. The YMCA was strong in Manchester with its own sports teams in local leagues. Keeping a body beautiful was part of having a clean spirit in the Young Men’s Christian Association. To this effect the building hosted a gym, a running track, two fives courts on the roof and a top floor with a swimming pool.

If co-working had been a thing when the building was converted twenty years or so back then maybe these would have been retained. It’s a building that whiffs of the changes taking place in architecture in the early 20th century. Catch it in the sun and that terracotta glows.

The building replaced a building of 1833 for the Natural History Museum of Manchester. The collection was transferred to Manchester Museum when that opened down Oxford Road, the building closed but in 1876 the YMCA moved in and then demolished it and gave the city this real Manchester gem: a gem presently hosting excellent food and drink Haunt and Exhibition.

You can read more about Manchester buildings in some of my Manchester books at or on Manchester Confidential

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'UK's most horrifying sculpture?': Man on Fire, Imperial War Museum North

Power, Pomona, Bobby, Bread

Manchester tales, Cyan lines, Morrissey and Churchill

Meat hunters, delightful stand-up comedians and scary monikers

Buildings, new restaurants and 'We'll Meet Again'

William Mitchell's mad concrete monsters

Zurich, music, Corrie & love ain’t easy or is it?

Big Strangeways changes proposed plus a bit of background

NAPOLEON INVADES, THE LAKES, RARE TREES, AND THE PROBLEMS OF FARMERS' DAUGHTERS

Favourite Mcr buildings. Part 1: The Former YMCA

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