Jonathan Schofield takes a look at some stories and recommends a couple visits
Cyan Lines sounds just fine
This is a grand idea. There’s a plan to link and transform Manchester’s green and blue spaces - its squares, pocket parks, rivers, canals and viaducts - to enable residents and visitors to enjoy, understand and better connect with nature and each other.
The full plan will be launched on 10 September. Ultimately the ‘100 mile Cyan Lines network will connect existing and proposed linear parks, green corridors and traffic-free walking routes and, where needed, bridge gaps by building new connections across Manchester and Salford city centres and link to the rest of Greater Manchester’s boroughs’.
Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash has been musing on this idea for years and during the dreary post-lockdown tiers I went for a walk with him around parts of Manchester and Salford that will be incorporated into the plan. I’ve also conducted guided walks linking the many new gardens and squares in the central areas.
The most predictable and increasingly dull repeated statement about the city centre is ‘there’s not enough green space’. Tom has a great quote about this: “We did not have hunting grounds for kings, dukes and lords in Manchester, so we have no grand central parks, but we do have excellent green, blue and brown spaces which, if joined up will provide an amazing legacy for future generations.’
Exactly. To paraphrase an American election slogan about economics: ‘It’s the history, stupid’. And why ‘cyan’? I guess because the colour cyan is greenish-blue.
Impressive but over-engineered?
Manchester City Council sent a gushing press release last week about a new bridge crossing the Ashton Canal at New Islington over a Grade II lock. The previous bridge was very narrow and difficult to negotiate for disabled people and impossible while riding a bike but not impossible while walking with one. The engineers were AE Yates of Bolton and the designers were Hawkins Brown who have an office in Manchester although head office is in London. Landscaping comes from local company Planit.
Hawkins Brown describe the bridge this way. ‘The bridge and ramp alignment preserves and emphasises the unique canal-side setting, tying into the tranquil and more-human scale nature of the existing towpath and lock. The woven balustrade maximises visibility through the vertical metal members, flowing up the towpath and over the proposed bridge. Warm timber wraps around the balustrade, providing a softer leaning and handrail, with integrated lighting that guides both cyclists and pedestrians along their route.’
Apparently the bridge ‘has been developed to complement the Northern Quarter walking and cycling route, providing two routes parallel to the Inner Ring Road, but away from traffic to help improve air quality on the route and make them more appealing to a wider group of people.’
It's very impressive but because of its nature – accessibility and tight location being the key here – it looks very over-engineered to cross seven feet of water. In appearance it’s a sledgehammer to crack a nut. And the cost? Well I’ve asked the question because the press release doesn’t say. Rumours put it north of £3m. Oh and a gem off the internet made me laugh reading how the bridge ‘took 13 months to build’. This was followed by the sentence: ‘This was longer than the originally stated 6 months’. Yep, I believe that’s longer.
Speaking of water - or the lack of it
Yes, it’s not rained much and water levels are low so canals are being effected but they mostly still contain that basic requisite of a canal: water. Sadly Rochdale Canal and parts of the Ashton Canal in the central area of Manchester have no water at all and are an unsightly ditch of dried mud and human detritus. It has been like this for weeks including through the time we had thousands and thousands of Oasis tourists.
I asked for an explanation from the waterways charity The Canal & River Trust. They said: “Our charity is dealing with the after-effects of people purposefully draining water from the Ashton Canal, and from lock 84 downwards on the Rochdale Canal. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time this has happened recently, and we’ve reported it to the police.
“Lock 91 has also been damaged, which means we cannot fill that pound until the repairs have been completed. On top of that we’re in a drought, which is having a serious impact on the reservoirs that supply water to our region’s canals.
“We’re working extremely hard to manage water levels in the area, and the canal above New Islington Marina is improving, but the lack of water is extremely challenging and means the situation can change very quickly. Our priority remains to reopen the canal as soon as we have enough rain to top up our reservoirs to sufficient levels.
Let’s hope there is some liquid in the canals when the Cyan Lines project launches in earnest.
‘Purposefully draining’
I rang the understandably downbeat press officer for the Canal & River Trust after receiving the press release and asked who were ‘purposefully draining’ the canals. And more to the point why? The police are also investigating a similar occurrence on the Trent and Mersey canal in Cheshire.
As to the who and why people are doing this it seems because they can, they’re simple vandals. There is a 21st century twist, of course, they may be filming their vandalisation and posting it on social media 'for likes' – according to the press officer and other sources.
Vile vandalism goes a lot further than a sycamore tree on a Roman wall and the eyesore created by these empty canals is bad for tourism and a nightmare for people who use or live on the canals.
Recommendation part one: Astley Hall and Park
Unlike Bloxham's point in the Cyan Lines story above about Manchester city centre, there is a very large park in the centre of a town in the North West created by nobility. This is Astley Hall and Park in Chorley. It’s beautifully maintained park with a fabulous walled garden area, maintained by the Friends of the Park. In the ancillary buildings, the coach house etc… there's a gallery, a shop, a café, an excellent wineshop and on our visit some Morris Dancers doing their thing.
The Hall, the former home of the Charnock family is a real surprise. This is architectural guru Nicolas Pevsner, a man not known for his hyperbole writing in the sixties. ‘As you arrive in front of the house after the long walk through the park it hits you hard and squarely. There are nothing but right angles and the grid of mullions and transoms dominates to an extreme degree over the solids of the walls. Few houses of the 1930s would have gone as far.’
That date of the façade of the building is from the 1660s. A visit inside will reveal how the house as a whole evolved over the years and there are lots of artworks and fabulous plaster but it’s that extraordinary façade that remains in the memory.
It's a fiver for adults to enter.
Recommendation part two: St John’s mosaic in Rochdale
Is this the most spectacular mosaic in the region? I can’t think of anything to match it. This Byzantine style church (think a smaller Hagia Sofia in Istanbul) was designed by E Bower Norris and Oswald Hill before WWI but only completed in 1925. The treasure lies inside the church behind the altar.
The whole lofty arched space here provides a wow moment with an immense mosaic. This is the Eternal Life mosaic centred on Christ the King. There are details that catch the eye everywhere, there are the righteous souls on one side and a very frisky looking devil on the other (see top image).
The artist was Eric Newton part of the Manchester-based Oppenheimer family. Newton was originally Oppenheimer too but changed to his mother’s name to make him less German-sounding after WWII. It was Eric’s grandad, Ludwig Oppenheimer, originally from Brunswick in Germany, who created the Old Trafford-based mosaic company in 1865. The whole story is fascinating and was researched by Robert Field here. Eric Newton has been in the news recently with the rescue of one of his mosaics in Chorlton.
Good news for Chorlton food and drink
Speaking of Chorlton, the pub on the Green, the Horse and Jockey, is having a change of ownership. So what? Well, this is not just any change of ownership. Neil Burke who runs the very excellent pub over the river from Manchester city centre in Salford, The Blackfriar, is due to take over the Chorlton boozer.
The Blackfriar provides excellent modern and traditional British food, the service is spot-on and the property is looked after immaculately. The Horse and Jockey will be all the better for the arrival of the Blackfriar crew.
Celebrity couple at Piccadilly Station
One of the Manchester tourist guides was surprised to see this pair at Piccadilly Station last week. Andy Burnham it appears was seeing Nicola Sturgeon off from her visit to Manchester. She’d been plugging her autobiography, Frankly, at Stoller Hall the previous night and had then been interviewed in the morning on Radio 4’s Today programme. Given how her tenure ended in Scotland I hope he wasn’t taking leadership tips. Or maybe he was telling her off for how she’d written about him. In one passage in the book she compares Burnham when he was Health Secretary to Alan Johnson: “I got on well enough with Andy, but he was nowhere near Alan’s calibre.” Ouch.
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