THERE are two arterial routes out of the Deansgate that will lead you to Prestwich. Neither are glamorous but, both are interestingly and intensely urban. I chose the western road, Bury New Road, past that long row of bargain bucket menswear wholesalers and the brooding towers and turrets of Strangeways. This continues uphill through Lower then Higher Broughton to where you’ll encounter a place where the rules are different.
"You can get a three or four bed house here still for a similar amount to the cost of a two bed terrace in Chorlton or Didsbury,” says Campbell. "You have to look a little harder here for the good places to eat and drink- they're not all laid in a row for you.
Here old ladies dripping in thick old gold lunch at Panama Hattys (Unit 2, The Radius, Fairfax Road) just steps away from shell-suited scratchers counting copper outside 99p Universe (Unit 11, Longfield Centre). A place where England's greatest living poet, a long term resident, can be found most days skulking in the shadows of an exact replica of a sixties council estate boozer (The Forresters Arms, 444 Bury New Road). This is a few doors down from a shop where you can snap up (yes, I know) a crocodile (Viper And Vine, 404-406 Bury New Road).
This in turn is over the road from a Michelin recommended (and surely soon to be starred?) restaurant Aumbry (2 Church Lane) and just down the lane from the parish church whose 12th century graveyard holds the fictional remains of Corrie's Mike Baldwin and Fred Elliot (I say Fred Elliot).
Meanwhile all of the area was the stamping ground of Howard Jacobson, one of the UK's most acclaimed writers and a Man-Booker prize winner. Read his Mighty Waltzer for stories of the area.
Prestwich - Howard Jacobson
Prestwich has money…
Prestwich has money - that's clear from the impressive housing stock which peels back right along the Bury New Road. None of it is dilapidated and much of the larger examples still hold single families - invisible beyond long driveways off leafy lanes.
Out on the main road, where the well to do come to shop, they may treat themselves to a Two Can Dine from a huge Marks and Spencer (492 Bury New Road) heading toward the deafening M60 at the top end of the New Road. But unlike Didsbury, or even Chorlton, no one here wants to sit outside a coffee shop to inform the world they don't mind paying three quid for a cup cake, or clothes shop for anything more that a warm pullover and some sensible shoes. There is no showy spending here and precious little sign of that changing. Prestwich may have money but it’s more careful.
The sparse and bare brick modern Cuckoo (395-7 Bury New Road) has been open a mere twelve weeks and suggests the arrival of a newer kind of Prestwich resident - one who likes his pork pulled and his onion chutney caramelised - according to an inviting and extensive daytime menu.
Paul Campbell, an online vinyl record retailer runs his Vox Pop business from premises nearby and has lived here all his life. He welcomes the arrival of a decent independent cappuccino - beyond the perfectly useful ones served by a brace of butty shops clogged at lunch time by men in yellow tabards with hard hats waiting impatiently on bacon on white with brown.
"You can get a three or four bed house here still for a similar amount to the cost of a two bed terrace in Chorlton or Didsbury,” says Campbell. "You have to look a little harder here for the good places to eat and drink- they're not all laid in a row for you. But they are here. And there's history too".
Authentic Tudor from 1974…
He points me to the uniquely named Railway and Naturalist (464 Bury New Road) a short walk up the road and across the treacherous motorway - feeding the fearsome main drag that's not to be attempted without the aid of a pedestrian crossing.
The pub has character for sure but would probably frighten the life out of the average media type used to Burton Road manner. There is some strange, large white tiling and beams that I'm pretty sure aren't Tudor. It looks a bit like my mum's front room in 1974.
Railway and Naturalist
Sky Sports holds sway and John, enjoying what could well be his first of the day, tells me he's been coming in here "fifty year". I ask him about the history of the place in the manner of some urban Tony Robinson. He keeps one eye on the big telly on the wall and directs me to a framed picture in the back room which will tell me all I need to know.
I feel about as 'local' as one of those students in American Werewolf in London. In the back room, beyond a bijou snooker table you might buy your younger brother from Argos, a fading photocopy tells the tale of Railway and Naturalist - opened 163 years ago in 1850 and so called for being the haunt of railway workers who built the line to Radcliffe (opened in 1879) and local Naturalists who, in the late 19th century, would scour Prestwich's plentiful green space, far beyond the burgeoning industrial hum of Manchester, for evidence of newly-discovered and rare species. Fascinating stuff which might be used to weave a lucrative thematic tale, perhaps also being reason to refurb this homely space into something 'heritage' related. It isn’t going to happen soon.
Milky Dreams and kosher burgers…
Prestwich proper though, begins where the road out of Manchester intersects with King's Road. Here, you're hardly buying the tongue in cheek reputation of the area as a 'posh Salford'- though there may be a hint of luxury to be found beyond the (Monday afternoon shuttered) doors of Milky Dream (23 Bury New Road).
I had imagined it to be some kind of breast feeding emporium but discovered on closer inspection a Kosher takeaway. Chris, chef at Rare Grill restaurant (25B Bury New Road) is doing his pre-lunch prep and tells me their posh Kosher burger menu is popular with locals and that the area is "just about all kinds of people getting on. People here won't be fooled by decor and design. They want quality and they will pay for it if it's right."
Rare Grill has gone ahead anyway and created a clean-lined modern space together with a reasonably priced menu that would raise no eyebrows in Hale. I leave Chris to his Kosher onions and head across to Judaica World (2-4 Kings Road) which was maybe once a religious bookshop.
Now you can buy a cornucopia of cultural markers - from nine-branched Menorah candlesticks and Kippah hats to stamps, a newspaper with yesterday's word from Tel Aviv, or a kosher Smirk chocolate bar.
Prestwich as a whole is home to many of Manchester's estimated community of 40,000 Jews and the largest British Jewish community outside London. I can't tell you how many local Jews have enjoyed a Smirk themselves, but I can tell you it's a bit like a Mars Bar. Fine with me.
Two old fellers at the counter appeared to be counting money from various collection boxes in the pursuit of some change. I introduce myself several times, each more loudly, but they shrink further into their earnest task without speaking. Was this a sign of Charedi, an Orthodox and inward looking form of the religion that 98 per cent of the local community is said adhere to? I'd say they just couldn't be arsed, to be honest, with some nosey sod from something called a 'website’.
Tea and cakes in real china cups…
I tramp uphill further in search of the true town centre. Lots of assisted homes for the superannuated (somewhere posh where you have a flat but you have your soup in a communal area in front of Homes Under The Hammer) being promised by flashy road-side advertising and a place further on called Butt Hill Court. I'd wager its residents cannot get their keys in the outside entrance for laughing about that each day.
The historic St Mary's church tower can be spied beyond The Clough. That's not a football manager but more green space. It's uninvitingly damp today but on a sunny morning it sings out - an impressive civic garden and park mapped out in 1906. Prestwich is blessed by good walks, Heaton Park, to the east, The Clough to the west. And unlike the flat byways of south Manchester, these places have proper topography.
Prestwich - The Clough
A big lump of growing brick work featuring the Aldi signage is in construction on the other side of the road - just near Holt's neat and proper 'pub-like' Red Lion (398 Bury New Road).
Julie at the quaintly charming Time For Tea (416 Bury New Road) just beyond it is surprisingly looking forward to the opening in early 2014 as its car park will mean her customers can drive by for a brew from a real china cup. I take tea with Julie as she tells me hyper busy Bury New Road has never been an easy place to stop and park. She has, hence, never benefitted much from passing trade.
Julie does lovely looking home-made cakes and stews for a regular clientele. It's thankfully the kind of check table-clothed mini home-spun front room where there's little point in asking for the wi-fi password. Julie has a Costa in the precinct a few hundred yards away to compete with and lots of sit-in butty shops like The Quirky Cafe (429 Bury New Road). She tells me a cooperative community supermarket idea is looking for funding and has its eye on a Blockbuster space further up the road- with a view to creating something like Chorlton's defining Unicorn. A sign that former tough times are changing, she believes, and an example of a proud and spirited local community.
The Sorry Mum Tattoo Studio and pizza wars…
Not much sign of that change at the mouth of the Longfield Shopping Centre, just a scones throw away from Julie's lovely little traditional respite and opposite the brilliantly named Sorry Mum Tattoo Studio (449a Bury New Road). There are pigeons in flight overhead and pound shops galore. Bet Fred is thriving next to Iceland and the 'chazzer' shops are revving up for a thrifty Christmas- with window displays of old board games and jigsaws-with 'all 1001 pieces complete'. An old man crosses my path with the demeanour of someone who has just discovered he's won the lottery but lost his ticket.
Amazingly, this depressing recession hit black hole gives way to an open square, the aforesaid Costa, a trusty Croma (The Radius, 30 Longfield Centre) and Panama Hattys scrapping it out side by side for the posh pizza pound. I survey its acres of plate glass window on the way up to the Metrolink stop.
Croma
Hard not to make the instant judgement that the well-heeled mums and daughters, middle-aged sisters and moneyed looking OAPS inside clearly aren't short of the price of a panna cotta. I hole up temporarily in Pinto's Sandwich Bar (3 Fairfax Road) across the way, It's an agreeable little cafe adept at a reviving brew. I see they sell tickets for Chorlton based disco enterprise Bop Local's Prestwich club night - beloved of mid-thirties to mid-fifties mums and dad who still like to cut a rug, setting off home before the babysitter wants an extra twenty quid after 1am.Their bi-monthly Bops at Heaton Park Social Club (315 Bury Old Road) are a much-needed addition to a restaurant and pub-led local evening economy.
Top nosh, poets and ancient boozers…
But if you really want to spend some money in the evening round here, you could cross the road from Shameless Precinct and blow a couple of hundred quid with Gordo and the gang at Aumbry (2 Church Lane). Though you don't neccessarily have to raid the cashpoint to experience the skill and magic of a husband and wife chef team who both trained at Heston Blumendaft's Fat Duck. There’s a profile of the chef Mary-Ellen McTague here.
Prestwich - Mary Ellen McTague
Julie at Time For Tea says the £25 a head Tuesday 'taster' menu is, "to die for". I know the place has been reviewed to death by palettes greater than mine.
Over at the Forresters Arms, I survey the red-nosed boozers enjoying a different kind of amuse bouche and possibly starting the long road to chips and gravy at 11pm.
I wonder if Bet Fred in the precinct have odds on anyone having ever knocked back a pint here before nipping over the road for a scallop ceviche - a journey that would be the very essence of the Prestwich experience.
Perhaps The Fall's Mark E Smith, the greatest living English poet cited above (reputed to frequent the Forresters) has the dosh, you'd guess, in his snazzy Lakeland leather jacket.
Two old fellers in the corner, Tom and George are mid-way through a glass of Holts' finest. They say they've never heard of him before George's bitter fog subsides temporarily. "I know who you mean! Off the telly. Singer! " Tom is none the wiser.
Mark E Smith
You can see why Smith would hole up here. An invisible means of surveying the mood of the modern working (and non-working class). Source material for the Hip Priest's latter day songs and masterpieces like 'Bury'. You can just see him here, scowling magnificently despite a stubborn midday winter sun flooding the room through smudgy windows. Prestwich makes the Fall make even more sense. A wonderful and frightening world reflected in the fact the town had an asylum that was once the biggest in Europe, the anti-Didsbury defiant nature of the place, even at its most moneyed, and the 'Witch Way' Buses speeding ruthlessy up the killer main drag to Pendle and the Luciferian Lancashire hills beyond.
Ambling down Church Lane for a swift half at the Church Inn (40 Church Lane) right next to St Mary’s church at the bottom, you're struck by an immediate dose of relative silence away from the main road. A tidy and anonymous recent looking refurb makes it look like it could be anywhere in rural Lancashire. There is no sense of a history proudly announced to stretch back to 1600 on the sign outside.
The Church Inn
The Church of St Mary The Virgin itself dates back to possibly 1200. It's a favouite location of Corrie directors. Walking across the grave stones with the not so distant rush of M60 traffic an ambient backdrop, it's easy to lapse into a reflective reverie while feeling the weight of the history here......Jason Grimshaw getting out of the bog window on bottling it at his wedding to Sarah. Fred Elliot and Mike Baldwin somewhere here too. Makes you think.
Aliens, lunatics and scorpions...
The real history of the town which grew around the church has its origin in Saxon and Norman settlements. The name itself seems to relate to it being known as a retreat for priests. Prestwich seemed to miss the start of the Industrial Revolution and thrived instead as pastoral land suitable for raising animals and sheep in particular. No wonder naturalists were drawn to its peaceful fields. The sheep story may go some way to explain its association with traditional crafts of weaving and cloth dyeing. In 1828 a route close to an old Roman road and the track of the current Bury New Road became a turnpike connecting Prestwich with the wealthy of Manchester who moved in and built many of its fine houses. A Lunatic Asylum founded in 1848 became the largest in Europe by 1900. The madness in my area, indeed.
Prestwich - the old loony bin
Which may explain the unnaturally extensive collection of vintage Star Wars figures. They fill up every corner Endless Music (418 Bury New Road) that isn't already piled high with records and music memoribilia. This used to be a confusing and untidy place to find anything but, 12 years after it opened, Dylan is separate from Cohen and, thankfully , there's no space for Union J in this Mojo styled mini universe of 'real' music. Pressing the jeweller's style entry bell will gain you access to this proper spotter's treasure trove.
Owner, Mike surveys his kingdom from behind two massive computer monitors and muses on Prestwich itself. "It seemed like it was dying a few years back. The internet, ebay and the like have really sustained me here. But I'm full at weekends and Prestwich won't give up. There are plenty of tiny little independents like me who will always hang on. And it's changing, I think. This road has history anyway. It will always be here. Along with most of us".
I turn back towards Manchester, a straight line ahead past exotic pet shop Viper and Vine again - surely the sort of shop that might appeal to born and bred Prestwichian Victoria Wood. I decide not to bob in for a crocodile before I get a proper lead. Still, I do think I should put that Xmas Special Scorpion Starter Kit (38.99) on my list for Santa.
The Manchester Beat Part One: West Didsbury
Prestwich - the ancient parish church (photo by Iain Peacock @iainpics)
