Stretford / Trafford Town Hall to be demolished
Trafford Borough have already drawn up plans a new civic centre on vacant land by the Manchester Ship Canal near the Trafford Centre.
Ironically part of the reason for the proposal is to do with tradition: Lancashire County Cricket Club want to stay in Old Trafford because they’ve been there for 150 years.
Stretford Town Hall was opened on 16 September 1933, the day Stretford received its royal borough status. The building was designed by architects Bradshaw-Gass and Hope. Built in attractive red brick and stone, the style is given as Georgian but I think it shows art deco influences and looks very similar to Los Angeles City Hall, completed 5 years previously. More about the building on the Trafford Borough Council website www.trafford.gov.uk/cme/live/cme1550.htm
EOM says: This is a shocking decision that will deprive Manchester of one of its most impressive pieces of civic architecture. At no point in any of the reports was there any consideration for the unique architectural qualities of this building with its 108 feet high tower, visible for several miles around and similar in outline to Los Angeles City Hall.
In the Trafford Borough Council press release - read it here - this is what Council leader Susan Williams had to say:
“Our options are limited with our existing building. Access is poor, particularly for disabled people and energy costs are mounting. It was built to suit the old-fashioned council of the 1930s, with lots of single-person offices and grand spaces. It’s over 70 years old and it’s now showing its age”
Showing its age? Like Salford, Manchester, Rochdale and Stockport town halls are showing their age? In my opinion, age is exactly what makes a building powerful and inspiring, and if buildings are in need of maintenance, they can be renovated, as Stockport has done.
I believe there are three underlying issues at play here:
A) The Millennium Myth: We often hear the words: ‘Fit for the 21st century’. Does this mean that because there is a 2 on the front of the year, it’s OK to destroy buildings which up till 1999 were considered viable? It seem as if it is. The Millennium Myth is causing the slow demise of scores of buildings and facilities all around us.
B) Misuse of disability issues: There is a tendency to use accessibility issues to tip the balance in favour of the demolition rather than restoration of a ‘difficult’ property.
C) Fragmented Manchester: Manchester - the city region of Manchester - is unique among the cities I know in that it is split up into separate and competing local authorities with no overriding city government or elected mayor. As is their remit, Trafford Borough Council have done their utmost to keep the LCCC with in its boundaries, and they have succeeded.
But if Manchester were one big city and Wigan were part of it, a move to there would simply be from one part of the city to another.
There is also the issue of practicality. The historic town hall is located 5 minutes walk from the Metrolink line and five minutes walk from the A56 Chester Rd with its frequent bus services. The new site in Trafford Park or Trafford Quays, is on the far outer boundary of the borough, by the M60 Barton Bridge, looking across the Manchester Ship Canal to Barton in the City of Salford, and the sewage works next to the bridge. The new location further away and less accessible by public transport from the more populated districts of Stretford, Sale and Altrincham. The move will probably generate countless additional car journeys, adding to traffic already using the Trafford Centre.
Conversely, an expanded LCCC ground wiil attract even more visitors, many travelling by car right into the heart of the Manchester conurbation, close to another traffic magnet, Manchester United. Surely traffic management would be much easier if the new LCCC were in an out-of-town location close to the motorway, like the Reebok Stadium in Horwich. And what will the site of the demolished town hall be used for. A car park, perhaps?
The move will take Trafford’s municipal headquarters away from the main north-south road and rail routes through the borough, and over to the north western edge, looking across the Ship Canal towards Eccles and the sewage works by the Barton Bridge
We come back to the issue of the loss of a precious piece of Manchester’s architectural heritage, a building that speaks volumes about municipal pride and prestige in times other than our own, a pride and prestige that seems at a low ebb in today’s era of larger, amalgamated local authorities. But old municipal buildings can be good for public image. Salford City Council, for instance, uses its 1930’s town hall building as a municipal symbol and logo.
Trafford’s proposed new civic building, not reproduced on the Trafford Borough Council website, but shown in a small cutout in the Manchester Evening News, looks on first impression like yet another copycat glass structure with a sloping roof, with, next to it, another clone Calatrava-style bridge with a sloping mast and wires.
Click to go to my Eyewitness in Manchester feature
Manchester Demolition City on the Manchester Online server
It’s strangely prophetic that, not so long ago, I published a feature on my Eyewitness in Manchester site entitled ‘Manchester Demolition City’ in which I included a photomontage of Manchester Town Hall being knocked down. It seems I wasn’t far off the mark.
Apart from some notable exceptions, the architecture of today cannot equal the aesthetic qualities of buildings from the classic era of the 19th and 20th centuries.
I believe Stretford / Trafford Town Hall should not be destroyed, and that this decision is fundamentally wrong. I will now be campaigning with the aim of securing the building for the benefit of future generations.
A friends group has been formed with the aim of saving Trafford Town Hall. The web address of the group is www.fotth.org.uk.