Petersfield and Castlefield

Petersfield and Castlefield

Leaving Albert Square via Lloyd Street, on the corner where the registry office is now, once stood the Oasis Club where The Beatles played four times, The Rolling Stones in 1963, Small Faces (Rod Stewart) and The Who, to name a few.

Next we head towards Southmill Street and right into Bootle Street, past the police station and onto the Sir Ralph Abercromby pub with the Stone Roses mural in the beer garden, you might have to purchase a beer to see the mural!

Carry on and left down Jerusalem Place and cross over Peter Street, at the lights, to Great Northern Square and the amphitheatre.

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Back onto Peter Street via Watson Street and right to the Albert Memorial Hall and Free Trade Hall, a little known London group, at the time, called the Sex Pistols played there on 4 June 1976 with tickets costing 50p it became the gig that change everything, over the years, thousands have claimed to be in the 150 capacity hall but the number was more like 42. One person who absolutely was there was Peter Hook, with his mate Bernard Sumner, two people who would go on to create ground breaking bands and change perceptions about Manchester and its music.

From the Sex Pistols to Shakespeare, only in Manchester, with the curious statue above the main entrance to the Theatre Royal, the oldest surviving theatre in Manchester.

Carry on down Peter Street to Manchester Central Library, one of the most iconic buildings in Manchester, look out for the Sculptural Group Adrift, 1907, by John Cassidy, a male figure standing on a rock waving a piece of cloth, his wife and children lying exhausted below (apparently survivors of a shipping accident), the statue used to sit in Piccadilly Gardens before they 'refurbished' it.

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Follow the library back round anti-clockwise to Library Walk, through the gate with the bees on it and you’ll miss another of those listed decorative cast-iron electricity junction boxes by Hardy and Padmore.

In the glass walk way look up at the 30 tonne steel sculpture called 'Cloud' supported only by the glass panels and look down at the mosiac tiles of cotton flowers.

There's a door on your right which goes into the library. Time for a brew.

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Head to the centre of the library and look up. Manchester Central Library was designed by E. Vincent Harris and opened in 1934. The form of the building is a columned portico attached to a rotunda domed structure, much like the Pantheon in Rome.

Make your way to the Shakespear Hall which is the main entrance, look up at the ceiling and the stained glass window.

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Turn left out of the library and head towards the Town Hall Extension, also designed by E. Vincent Harris in the Gothic style, opened in 1938 and cost £750K.

Have a look up at the side of the building and the intricate carved stone details, what symbols can you see?

The pair of K6 Telephone Kiosks between the library and the Town Hall Extension are listed, designed in 1935 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, he also designed Battersea Power Station amongst others.

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Walk through St. Peter’s Square towards the Cenotaph, pausing for a moment.

The area around St. Peter's Square, then known as St. Peter's Field, was the site of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre.

The square underwent massive changes in the 2010s when the Cenotaph was moved from where the tram interchange is now to its current location.

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From the Cenotaph cross over Princess Street, look both ways for the trams, and up Cooper Street for two little hidden pubs on Kennedy Street, the City Arms and the Vine Inn.

Back onto Princess Street turning left towards Manchester Art Gallery on Mosley Street, it’s free to enter if open, you can exit onto Princess Street next to the Athenaeum, turn right back to St. Peter’s Square and right again along Mosley Street.

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At the junction of Charlotte Street we’ll see the Portico Library and the Bank pub, look out for the Queen Victoria post box on the corner, one of the oldest surviving post boxes in the city, turn right into Charlotte Street and fourth right into Faulkner Street.

Manchester’s streets have been used many time as a double for New York City, easy to see why.

We’re now in the Chinatown district of the city centre with the gardens on the right and the Chinatown Arch spanning the road, continue on Faulkner Street until Princess Street.

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Right on Princess Street and second left onto George Street, an unassuming back street that kept a secret for decades, 55 George Street was home to the Guardian Exchange, a top secret cold war nuclear bunker that led to tunnels all over, or is that under, the city centre.

Turn right into Dickinson Street, at Dickinson House, where we’ll meet Emmeline Pankhurst stood on a chair and we’re back in St. Peter’s Square with the Memorial Cross to your left. The cross commemorates the church of St. Peter which stood on this site until 1907, the graves in the church yard are still there under your feet. You can see the design on the church in the floor tiles around the cross.

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What do Posh & Becks have in common with Rolls & Royce?

Well, they both apparently met their partners at the Midland Hotel, built by the Midland Railway to serve Manchester Central Railway Station, the hotel was designed by Charles Trubshaw in a highly individualistic Edwardian Baroque style, costing £1 million in 1903. Pop in for afternoon tea but make sure you are appropriately dressed as the Beatles were famously refused access!

We’re travelling down Lower Mosley Street by the side of the Midland, at the back of the Midland and in front of Central Station The Smiths had some famous promotional photos taken, Google it.

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Manchester Central Railway Station served as the terminus for Midland Railway express trains to London St. Pancras, opened in 1880 and closed in 1969. It was redeveloped as a concert venue and opened again in 1986 as the G-Mex Centre, some of the bands to have played there include The Smiths, New Order, James, U2, Metallica and Oasis. The venue was also used in the Commonwealth Games of 2002. Manchester City Council bought the complex in 2005 changing its name to Manchester Central as an exhibition and conference centre. Bands returned in 2006, Snow Patrol, Morrissey, The Verve, Manic Street Preachers, Artic Monkeys and Status Quo, to name but a few.

Outside the station is the Peterloo Memorial, commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre. The Peterloo Massacre took place at St. Peter's Field, hereabouts, on Monday 16 August 1819. Fifteen people died when the cavalry charged into a crowd of around 60,000 people who had gathered from all corners of Manchester to demand the reform of parliamentary representation, at the time of chronic economic depression when Lancashire only had two MPs. Records of those who died, were injured or arrested can be viewed online and used by many for family history research.

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Crossing over the tram tracks into Barbirolli Square with a view of the Rochdale Canal Lake. Sir John Barbirolli was a British conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester and a cellist. The new home of the Hallé Orchestra, the Bridgewater Hall opened in 1996, the building sits on 280 springs to insulate it from the noise of the passing trams outside.

Also in Barbirolli Square is an 18 tonne polished rounded stone, made out of Carrara marble by Kan Yasuda called Ishinki - Touchstone, Ishinki meaning 'form returning to its heart’.

Further down Lower Mosley Street is the Tower of Light, a 40m tower which lights up at night, a kind of mini power station supplying electricity to many of the city’s municipal buildings.

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Across the road on Great Bridgewater Street is the pub The Briton’s Protection, getting its name from the fact it was a former army recruiting venue and now offering over 360 whiskies. The interior including the toilets date from the 1930s.

Travel the length of Great Bridgewater Street under Central Station to the 47-storey skyscraper Beetham Tower, one of the thinnest skyscrapers in the world, the bottom half is the Hilton Hotel, floor 23 is the skybar, Cloud 23, with a 4m cantilever and the top half is residential.

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From the corner of Deansgate and Great Bridgewater Street, outside the Hilton Hotel we can see the Deansgate / Castlefield Information Centre, the former Market Hall and another K6 Telephone Kiosk, all have listed status.

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We can now walk up the steps or take the lift (opposite the entrance to the Life Centre at the bottom left side of the steps) up to Deansgate Mews and through the Great Northern Warehouse.

Lots of places here for a rest, refreshments or a bite to eat.

At the far end of Deansgate Mews are some steps down to Deansgate and a lift just to the right.

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Cross over for St. John’s Street, a quite remarkable place, eleven Grade II listed buildings and another listed K6 Telephone Kiosk in this small street.

At the end of St. John’s Street is St. John’s Gardens, once the home of St. John’s Church, the tombstones are still there under 18 inches of soil. Just to the right of the gardens is St. John’s Passage whose entrance is adorned by two bollards, two vertically mounted cannons, Artillery House is close by, at the other end of the passage are two more cannon bollards, you guessed it, they’re all protected with listed status. The blue plaque on the wall of Artillery House explains the connection to Bonny Prince Charlie.

Just a bit further up Byron Street was the Manchester and Salford Hospital for Skin Diseases and back in the day the road had wooden cobbles or setts, to reduce the noise of horse drawn carriages for the patients. If the road is in a state of disrepair you might be able to see them, watch out for the cars though.

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Going through the gardens or passage brings us to Lower Byron Street, we’ll turn left towards the Museum of Science & Industry (MOSI) on your right and the Air & Space Museum on your left, both worthy of a more detailed inspection.

On the Liverpool Road side of the Air & Space Museum is a blue post box, before World War II blue post boxes were used for Air Mail and would be emptied and transported by special vans to the airport for onward delivery abroad.

Opposite the post box is the White Lion pub and the Castlefield Urban Heritage Park, but more on that later.

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Across Liverpool Road is the Oxnoble pub, named after a potato, well we’re not far from Potato Wharf and next door the former St. Matthew’s Sunday School.

We’ll head west along Liverpool Road for about 350m, where we find the Liverpool Road Railway Station Master’s House and behind it the Liverpool Road Railway Warehouse, Liverpool Road Railway Station was the Manchester terminus of the world's first inter-city passenger railway, opened on 15 September 1830 and closed to passengers 4 May 1844, when the line was extended to Victoria Station.

The Railway Bridge across the Irwell, designed by George Stephenson to carry the line of the original Liverpool and Manchester Railway, is also Grade I listed.

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Cross over Liverpool Road and walk back, turning right into the cobbled street called Potato Wharf, as the name suggests, this where the barges unloaded their cargo of potatoes before the trains came to town. Turn left under the viaduct and through the car park to Giant's Basin.

The Giant's Basin is a basically a massive plug hole, 7 metre wide and 7 metre deep, a stone weir that carries the overflow from the Bridgewater Canal into the River Medlock, designed by James Brindley, the engineer who built the Bridgewater Canal.

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Follow the path around the basin to the left in the direction of Castlefield Bowl and the Castlefield Hotel, the other side of the bowl is the Roman site, the site dates back to the Stone Age from evidence found, but Mamucium or Mancunium was a Roman fort from AD 79 and was occupied until around AD 410 when the Romans withdrew from Britain. The site remained untouched for centuries before the Industrial Revolution ploughed straight over it with viaducts and steam engines. In recent year some of the areas, like the gateway, have been reconstructed.

Wander round the Roman Gardens, watch out for the sheep, they're quite friendly, who came second in a sculpture competition in 1986, to celebrate the fact that Manchester had just declared itself a nuclear-free area, the first city in the world to do so.

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From Duke Street we can take a worthy detour to the Castlefield Viaduct, via the lift or stairs, a project run by the National Trust to create a garden in the sky along the 300m disused viaduct, it’s free but you will need to book in advance.

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Follow the Bridgewater Canal Tow Path, over footbridge which goes under the Castlefield Viaduct and over the modern sweeping Merchant’s Bridge for a good view of Merchant’s Warehouse.

Continue on the tow path to the swing bridge.

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Continue on the tow path to Castlefield Basin and the former Congregational Chapel, there are three more of those Electricity Junction Boxes here. Someone sure likes those boxes.

The tow path continues under Chester Road, through the modern building and over the cobbled Deansgate, looking back at Knott Mill Bridge you might be able to see the Floodgate and the Boundary Stone.

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If you wander anywhere around Manchester city centre, you’ll see the Manchester bees on everything from bins, walls, mosaic flooring, signs and bollards, in the summer of 2018 there was even a swarm of giant bees as part of the public art event ‘Bee in the City’.

The bee is the symbol of Manchester and being a city of industry, there’s no other creature better than this hard-working insect to represent it. The symbol of the bee dates back to the 18th and 19th centuries, when Manchester was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Technology and industry were thriving in the city, known to some as ‘Cottonopolis’ because of the amount of cotton fabric it produced.

The Mancunian factories were also sometimes referred to as ‘bee hives’ because the workers within them were so occupied and productive like ‘busy bees’. In 1842, the bee was first officially incorporated into the Manchester coat of arms, which included a globe with seven bees to show how the people of Manchester worked and traded across the seven seas.

Post your photos of Manchester bees on Twitter with #ManchesterCircular and we'll add them to our Bee Gallery.

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