Eye On Manchester blog by Aidan O’Rourke Tutor Photographer

Personal & professional diary on photography, languages, Français, Deutsch, local interest, art, music, travel and more

Manchester Market St and obelisk 1997

Manchester Market St after removal of obelisk 1998

Forum is the newspaper of the Manchester Civic Society and appears several times a year.

Today I in the Manchester City Art Gallery I picked up a copy of the latest edition of Forum and was heartened by what I read.

On the front page is Eddy Rhead’s article about Trafford Town Hall, currently threatened with demolition. He outlines the situation succinctly and set out the issues plainly and without mincing words. Eye On Manchester concurs 100% with his analysis.

On the third page is Jonathan Schofield’s witty and outspoken investigation into the advantages and disadvantages of pedestrianised streets, most notably Market Street – and mostly disadvantages.

“Blanket pedestrianisation is one of the last of the Modernist ‘bad ideas’ (there were some good ones too) that needs to go,” he says.

In his work as a Blue Badge Tour Guide, he avoids taking visitors to Market Street in the evening. He explains why: “Paradoxically, devoid of the buzz of vehicles, the place becomes less human, sinister even, like a walkway between flats in the old Hulme Crescents”.

Again Eye On Manchester is in 100% agreement. The doctrine of ‘two legs good, four wheels bad’ has proved to be a false one. I can just remember riding on a bus along the glittering Market Street of the 50s and 60s, its northern side still intact. Manchester was in certain ways a much better place that it is today.

To read these and other opinionated and constructive articles on Manchester, you’ll need to grab a copy of Forum, or like me become a member of the Manchester Civic Society and get it sent free. More info on the Manchester Civic Society website www.manchestercivic.org.uk.

See all images from photo portfolio on the keyword pedestrian.

And while we’re on the subject of Forums, I am happy to announce that I have just launched a new Manchester Forums section on my aidan.co.uk photo portfolio website. I will use it to answer questions, provide information and hopefully to stimulate some interesting discussions.

Click on this link to go straight to the Manchester Forums.

Manchester Cathedral is an unchanging landmark in the midst of a constantly changing city

Most of the exterior we see today dates from the Victorian era, but underneath there are parts of the building that date from medieval times.

Its full name is The Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George in Manchester, and it is an Anglican or Church of England place of worship.

Manchester Cathedral has been the venue for many services and commemorations. One of the most publicised this year was the service of remembrance for George Best, held 16 March 2006.

Down the centuries and up to the present day, marriages have taken place at Manchester Cathedral. And it’s on this point that family history researchers have noticed a mysterious aspect of the marriage registers: Why are such a huge number of marriages recorded in the earlier part of the 19th century and before?

This is a question that family history researcher Henry Mantell has looked into, and found an answer to, which tells us many interesting things about the Manchester of that time.

Read Henry’s article Family History: Why so many marriages in Manchester Cathedral?, hosted on my aidan.co.uk site.

Click on the thumbnail graphic (right) to view photos of Manchester Cathedral from the Aidan O’Rourke photo portfolio.

And to find out more about Manchester Cathedral, visit the official Manchester Cathedral website www.manchestercathedral.org.

‘Victoria Station could rival Piccadilly in trains shake-up’

That’s the headline in an article which appeared yesterday (Saturday 11 November 2006) in the Manchester Evening News. Read it here.

It’s reported that Network Rail are looking at ideas to improve the rail network in Manchester and the north west, particularly with reference to stations.

Here’s a checklist of possibilities mentioned in the article, none of them yet approved:

• Victoria may be revitalised to be the ‘rival’ or ‘peer’ of Piccadilly
• Many train services could be switched from Piccadilly to Victoria
• New transport interchanges at Guide Bridge, Stalybridge, Eccles, Cornbrook
• Eccles Station to be linked to Eccles Metrolink terminus to provide a way to Salford Quays
• Salford Crescent Station to be moved and extended.
• Ardwick Station to be closed
• Denton and Reddish South stations closed (and presumably also the line they are on too)

The article presents some interesting snippets of information:

• 23 million passengers use stations in ‘Manchester’ (presumably Greater Manchester) every year
• 19 million passengers use Piccadilly Station
• Ardwick is used by just 5 regular passengers a day
• Denton and Reddish South have just one train a week.

In the opinion of EOM, this article raises a lot of questions, and some of the information needs clarification:

• The reason Denton and Reddish South have so few passengers and trains is because it has been decided that the line will have only one train a week. See my description of riding the Stockport to Stalybridge weekly train.
• The idea that Victoria could be a ‘rival’ to Piccadilly in transport terms is absurd. I presume what is meant is that it would be a rival in terms of its striking architecture.
• There is a factual error. Salford Crescent isn’t a quarter of a mile north of Victoria, it is just over one and three quarter miles to the west (one mile and 66 chains*). Salford Central is just over half a mile (around 45 chains*) to the south west of Victoria.

EOM has the following suggestions:

Don’t close quiet lines, revitalise them. Reinstate more disused lines and build new ones, to give a dense rail network.

To get a better network in the future, we need to look to the past. A quick glance at this detail of the old Lancashire and Yorkshire railway map in Victoria Station shows us how dense the railway network was in times past. And the map doesn’t show all the lines that existed, many of which were closed in the 1960s.

Here are some related themes from the photo portfolio:

Metrolink, Victoria Station, Piccadilly Station, transport in Manchester

*Chains refers to a measurement used by the engineers who built our railways. There are 80 chains to one mile. The distances I’ve given here are my estimates.