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

Bramhall is a residential suburb to the south of Manchester. Though part of Stockport MBC it has a distinctive character of its own very different to Stockport proper. Bramhall had its own Urban District Council until 1974.

Bramhall is centred on the village where three roads meet. It preserves a traditional look despite the addition of a 1960s style shopping centre.

Around the old village centre are endless curving tree lined roads with a variety of homes from terraced cottages to impressive detached properties. There’s an attractive mixture of styles, from solid and respectable late 19th century through to inter-war semis and interesting designs from the 1960s.

Needless to say property prices around here are not the cheapest. Bramhall is considered without doubt to be one of the most desirable places in the Manchester area to live.

The oldest house in Bramhall is of course the celebrated Bramall Hall, regarded as one of the finest medieval half-timbered houses in the country. Bramall Hall is set in the magnificent Bramall Park, and is owned and run by Stockport MBC. Note the hall is named ‘Bramall’ and the suburb ‘Bramhall’.

The railway station, just north of the old village, provides a fast connection with Stockport and Manchester. The disused London Midland line runs to the north of Bramhall and I think could also provide a valuable transport link if it were reinstated for passenger use.

To the south, the incomplete A555 provides part of the route to Manchester Airport. When this road is completed, Bramhall will be better connected. Maybe that’s not such a good thing.

Bramhall seems a world away from the more working class suburbs closer to the centre of Stockport. The Cheshire countryside is only a stone’s throw away to the south. Even the name sounds somehow melodic, echoing the ancient hall and perhaps words from nature such as ‘bramley’ or ‘bramble’

Bramhall is built on interesting terrain. There are hills and valleys, including the Ladybrook Valley. The Lady Brook flows through Bramhall Park and on to Cheadle and the River Mersey.

It’s one of the few places around Manchester where you can still get lost along the gently meandering tree-lined roads that seem to lead to yet more tree-lined roads.

All in all, Bramhall is in the opinion of EOM… a very nice place!

It’s fascinating to hear older people talking about Manchester as it was in other eras. Recording and archiving descriptions like this is an important part of documenting the city for present and future generations. On Tuesday 23 October 2007 I visited the Oasis Group at Holy Trinity Church, Platt Lane, Rusholme. The Oasis Group is chaired by Oliver Hall and Graham Brooks and welcomes retired folk from the local area for prayers and socialising.

The reason for my visit was to record members of the Oasis Group talking about Platt Fields in past times. Some of the members have reached an impressive age and have vivid memories of a very different Platt Fields. They all gave fascinating decriptions of the park from as far back as the post-World War 1 years.

Graham Brooks began by going over what was discussed the previous week. On that visit I discovered at the end of the session that my Edirol MP3 WAV recorder hadn’t been recording, as I’d not set it up properly, hence my return this week.

Topics included the paddling pool, swimming pool and boating lake, and the Manchester Show, which offered all kinds of exhibits, horse and motorcycle displays as well as the Red Arrows and Red Devils. One of the main organisers was Hugh Kelly, now in his nineties. His wife Dorkas talks about the show later.

Kenneth Waters talks about going to Platt Fields before World War Two and remembers the statue of Abraham Lincoln, which was moved to the city centre in recent years. He also remembers the World War 1 tank which was placed in the park as a memorial to the conflict. The tank, like many other the features mentioned, disappeared many years ago from Platt Fields.

Majorie Cooper remembers the paddling pool, which was located at the Yew Tree Road end of the park, and remarks on how many things were going on in Platt Fields and how safe it was for children.

Margaret Thompson came from Kiel in Germany in 1967 and remembers wonderful times spent in the old playground and at the boating lake with her children and alsatian dog.

Edna Brown describes the closure of the paddling pool after children had made it unsafe by throwing broken bottles into it. She reckons this was some time before the 1950s.

Marjorie Cooper continues with a description of the air raid shelter under Platt Fields Park.

Beryl Gee remembers the lake being frozen, and sliding – not skating – on it. She describes how the swimming pool was replaced by the Pets Corner some time in the late 40s or early 50s.

Margaret Thompson describes Pets Corner with its donkeys, hens, geese and other animals. She describes how it had to be closed in the 80s due to cruelty of hooligans towards the animals.

Marie Costello gives a vivid and humorous description of a ride on the boating lake where they ended up on the island with the birds, much to the amusement of the attendant. She remembers the Flower Show and Manchester Show with famous rider Harvey Smith.

Syliva Martigneau talks about times spent as a member of the choir of the Manchester School of Music. Every year they put on Gilbert and Sullivan concerts in the bandstand and performed madrigals in the Shakespearean Garden. The bandstand has gone but the Shakespearean Gardens are still there.

Dorkas Kelly, wife of show organiser Hugh Kelly describes the Manchester show and how it was in planning for most of the year. There was great excitement on the Thursday morning as the tents were cleared for the judges. The show was always packed and took over most of the park. The Manchester Show stopped some years ago.

Mary O’Brien, a local resident for the last 60 years, describes her enjoyment of the tennis courts and bowling greens, which are no longer there and also mentions Marie Louise Gardens, around 2 miles to the south on Palatine Road.

Oasis co-chairman Oliver Hall from Holy Trinity church describes how they have gone to the mound and held church services there, attracting many people who would not normally have gone into a church.

Finally Margaret Reynolds describes the meetings held in Platt Fields similar to those at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London, where people would argue over religion and politics.

Platt Fields ‘Speakers Corner’, like the WW1 tank, the paddling pool, the swimming pool, Pets Corner, the Manchester Show, the bowling greens, the Abraham Lincoln Statue, not to mention the cafeteria by the lake are aspects of Platt Fields which are no longer there.

Nevertheless things are still happening and to conclude, I asked Ann Tucker of the Friends of Platt Fields Park to bring me up to date with what is happening today. She is involved with Manchester International Arts who organise many of the events which attract large crowds to Platt Fields in contemporary times.

She talks about the reasons for the decline of the park and how there have been improvements, though progress is slow. The talks about plans to relocate the bandstand that used to stand in what is now Exchange Square.

The Friends of Platt Fields website is at www.plattfields.org.

To discuss this recording and provide your own insights and information, please contribute to the Manchester Forum.

I’m sitting here in Kro Bar, located on the ground floor of the office building Number One Piccadilly Gardens, built on the Portland Street end of the gardens around 2002.

Around me are today’s young people and not so young people out for a night of drinking, partying, clubbing, carousing, boozing in Manchester 2007. Kro Bar is nothing like the watering holes of the old Manchester: Marble floors, minimalist walls, backlit opalescent screens, with a views out on all sides through plate glass windows.

It’s 23.40 and the bar is not only open but looks as if it will stay open until… who knows when. It’s not too crowded, ‘chilled out’ in today’s language.

Replay the video back to 1974 when I used to come here as a 16 year old on nights out with school friends including girl friends from St Joseph’s Technical school for girls, on the site of which I currently live.

Piccadilly Gardens was still a magnificent square, with a wide, open airy feeling. The exact spot where I’m sitting was in the middle of a flower bed. The concrete bus station, built in 1958 demolished 1992, stretched the full length of Parker St on the west side of the gardens. That’s where I used to get off the bus, and meet Carol and her friend Tib next to the statue of Queen Victoria.

Then it would be the Portland Bars – or maybe the Shakespeare – and later Pips or Placemates. All flared trousers, floral frocks and the excitement of cheap perfume. The music was Barry White, maybe Roxy Music.

To take us home at the end of the night, there were all night buses, but they stopped at 2am. Piccadilly could be a threatening place around that time, as people spilled out of the night clubs, queueing for taxis or the orange Selnec buses, which then had conductors.

To me, Manchester felt exciting, glitzy, faintly glamorous, but also grimy and rough. Today it’s a bit more glitzy and glamorous and superficially sophisticated, but underneath, it’s still rough.

It’s fascinating to see the latest crop of young people in their fashions, stepping out for the first time as I once did. With each cycle of a year the fashions change imperceptibly. Today there is not overriding fashion, it all seems to be just… casual. The boys, some of them, have feathery hairstyles. The girls wear less.

The old Piccadilly Gardens have gone, but they are still there in my mind. I just ignore the new ones, they are simply irrelevant.

I feel no nostalgia. In many ways today is much easier. I just like to compare Piccadilly, then and now, before and after. This moment in 2007, that moment in 1974. There doesn’t seem much space in between. Manchester may have changed enormously in a superficial sense, but in many other ways, it hasn’t changed at all.

Uploaded from the Portland St end of Piccadilly Gardens, inside Kro Bar, 23.51 Saturday 20 October 2007.