Tudor Manchester: wrecks and relics
Worsley Old Hall Perhaps the most common building type over the last hundred years or so in Britain is the Tudor style house: the dream of any self-respecting middle-class aspirant; the waking...
View ArticleUrban folklore: Boggart Hole Clough
Clough is a northern English word for a steep valley or ravine cut into a hillside by fast-flowing water. The slopes of the Pennines between Manchester and Sheffield are perhaps the most obvious...
View ArticleMills: a Manchester metonym
‘Manchester, getting up the steam’, The Builder, October 1853. In October 1853, the British architectural journal The Builder pictured Manchester ‘getting up the steam’, an image of the city’s forest...
View ArticleThe rows of Manchester
Paul Dobraszczyk, Manchester Terraces, 2017. Ink, watercolour, chalk, pencil, pen and gouache on paper. The opening title sequence of Coronation Street, Britain’s longest running soap opera, hasn’t...
View ArticleCracks in the city: Manchester alleyways
They go by a variety of names; in common English parlance, they are alleyways, passages, lanes or paths; in regional variations, they are, to name but a few, jitties (West Midlands), jiggers...
View ArticleBack to black: Manchester smoke
Photograph of Ancoats in the 1890s On 16 October 2017, the sun turned a peculiar pinky shade of red, a product of Storm Ophelia whipping up Saharan sands as she approached the UK. The...
View ArticleSkyscraper deluxe: Manchester’s towers
Towers under construction near the Mancunian Way, Hulme Manchester, like many other cities today, has a fetish for tall buildings. Perhaps this is a result of the topography of the city centre,...
View ArticleStronger together: the Manchester bee
Bee mural painted by Peter Barber in September 2017, Warwick Street, Northern Quarter For over 150 years, the bee has been a symbol of Manchester. The city’s coat of arms was given royal approval in...
View ArticleThe Stones of Manchester
This month, I’ve finally published a website I’ve been building since February called The Stones of Manchester. It’s a photographic record I’ve created mainly over the last year of the metropolitan...
View ArticleRainy city stories
From Northenden to Partington, it’s rain From Altrincham to Chadderton, it’s rain From Cheetham Hill to Wythenshawe, it’s rain Gorton, Salford, Sale, pretty much the same What makes Britain great...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....