Manchester was the first stop on my visit to Northern England (on my own) and Scotland (with Marcy) in 2010. Here I found the home of the industrial revolution, it's factories now gone quiet, hulks of ruined industrial buildings crowding the city. Some of these were re-purposed, or might be soon, but many are not. Nonetheless, though it grows not, Manchester remains vital, with a bevy of handsome new buildings scattered throughout the city. Spinningfields, a completely refurbished area in the core, struck me as one of the finest "from scratch" neighbourhoods I've seen. Salford Quays, somewhat less so, though impressive in its own way.
Photo List (Total 380 Photos)
Click bolded headers below to view, or click "just the best" for quick tour
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Central Manchester (150 photos) - This series of photos covers the larger part of the central city. It starts at the Manchester Cathedral, beside the river Irwell, and continues through the commercial zones around the Arndale Centre and Exchange Square, through Picadilly Gardens, to the art gallery, library, and City Hall, and then to where my hotel was located (on Portland Street near the Piccadilly Rail Station). It goes a bit beyond my hotel, to the gay village and the decrepit areas past the Rail station. This area was mostly lively, and featured a fine mix of 60's buildings, older architecture, scattered throughout with newer structures. Only the areas on the northern edge of the central city, towards the end of the gallery, were decrepit. Photos were taken on several different days, in different conditions of light.
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Spinningfields (36 photos) - Spinningfields district, forming the western part of central Manchester, is a large retail, office and residential development containing a lot of stunning modern buildings, and has also managed to create a district that is very lively at the street level. These photos show the street life and modern architecture of the area, including the stunning Civil Justice Centre, and the nearby People's History Museum.
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Castlefield (32 photos) - Castlefield, a historical district criss-crossed with canals and railways bridges just slightly to the west of Spinningfields, was a beautiful and lively revelation, where I sat and had lunch one day after exploring. I loved the combination of older buildings and infrastructure, dotted through with modern and repurposed buildings. A lovely place to while away a few hours.
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New Islington and Miles Platting (66 photos) - I took a walk east of Manchester's core, crossing the traffic funnel that is Great Ancoats Street, towards a set of new residential buildings in a former industrial area now called New Islington. There, I found some quite novel buildings, and the Ashton Canal there led me on, through increasingly abandoned (but sometimes beautiful) areas, until I arrived at the City of Manchester Stadium, and then the lovely Philips Park and Cemetery. I walked back through Miles Platting, a semi-abandoned housing development.
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Salford Quays (48 photos) - Out to the west of the central city, these large quays along the Manchester Ship Canal are a showcase of redevelopment for the city. I took the LRT there, and found the experience interesting, but quite mixed - the architecture was sometimes great but overall incoherent. Libeskinds Imperial War Museum North was fantastic, and its silvery counterpart across the canal, the Lowry, was also quite nice. Some of the other buildings would have been rejected by Shanghai as tasteless, and a few were downright unfriendly. Lovely afternoon, though.
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Oxford Street (39 photos) - Sunday I walked down Oxford Street, through Manchester Metropolitan University and then the University of Manchester. I made a brief foray into the Manchester Museum, then hopped on down to the Whitworth Art Gallery, where I saw a fabulous show on the theme of wallpaper called Walls are Talking.
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Transit Shots (9 photos) - A few shots of the LRT, the Piccadilly Station, and out the window of the train while travelling.
