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Lancashire / Re: The Terraces of Ardwick
« on: Tuesday 13 April 10 10:28 BST (UK)  »
My thanks to Eric for your welcome to these pages and to Gaille for adding more facts into the fuzzy mix that is my memory of Ardwick 60-odd years ago. My mis-remembered house number - it was 12 Aden Street, not 20 that we occupied - which underlines the fragile nature of our witness. But some things very definitely do stick reliably to the old brain. There was a mortar-making works in Lime Bank Steet, and their lorries left cement tread marks on the street. The works was close by another - the Candied Peel Factory - that was on the 1922 map I have of the area. I bet there wasn't much local call for their products.

We used to go to Blackpool or Morecambe for our holidays, and went in a coach run by Claribel, a firm just along Ashton Old Road past Viaduct Street.

As a nipper, I walked for miles on my own and recall many areas of open waste land, especially between Ardwick and Ancoats, where deserted churches or industrial buildings stood in the middle of nothing. And there were murky, toxic waters where the Medlock and sundry canal tributaries had run through the remains of dyeworks and iron foundries.

That 1922 map - a Godfrey reproduction of the original county plan - shows that the whole area was festooned with industry of every kind, most of it grossly polluting, and all serviced by an extraordinary network of railway lines reaching out from London Road and Ancoats stations to Ashton and beyond.

I wonder whether any of the streets and structures remain, hidden away and overlooked by the developers and planners. Just a nostalgic thought . . .

Ian


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Lancashire / Re: The Terraces of Ardwick
« on: Monday 12 April 10 11:45 BST (UK)  »
My thanks to earlier correspondents on these pages for reviving memories and linking to startlingly clear photographs of Aden Street and its surroundings. My mum and dad moved to 20 Aden Street after the war (when dad got back from Burma in fact), there being no council houses available in the district (Withington) where my mum and I had lived in rented accommodation since 1942.

At one end of the street was a bombed and partly demolished sauce and pickle factory: the rubble was liberally sprinkled with broken bottles and strongly smelled of vinegar. At the Hillkirk St end was the newsagents and confectioners shop, run by Richard Kershaw and his wife. The oposite corner had a grocer's, which might have been a small branch of the Co-op.

Air-raid shelters were still there when we moved and were progressively demolished over the next couple of years. I recall cranes with heavy steel balls that were dropped on the reinforced concrete repeatedly until the roofs gave way. Since the end of the war, they had been been used by drinkers and young lovers and were desperately dirty - old mattresses and god-knows-what-else on the floors inside.

But signs of regeneration were around too: flats were being built at the far end of Every Street, and I watched, as a kid, while huge sewerage pipes were connected beneath the new foundation level of these buildings.

Birley Street was my school: a real culture shock after having attended the relatively tranquil little primary on Mauldeth Road, a world away from Ardwick. I recall huge brick walls, a vast playground with some very tough kids, and a "dining room" that was a daily battlefield. But I fell in love for the first time  - with a girl in my class: Ann Blakeborough, daughter of a butcher on Ashton New Road.

My grandparents were in Openshaw (Ashton Hill Lane) and Audenshaw (Thrapston Avenue) and we would go to alternate homes on Sundays. In Audenshaw, Dad and I availed ourselves of the bath - a luxury unknown in Aden Street.

I tried to walk into this area some years ago, but found myself blocked - completely disoriented: no familiar land- or streetmarks to guide me back to the old roots. It was of course a huge improvement to flatten this area and start again. My parents, I know, hated their time there, with dad parodying the politicians' promise of "Homes fit for heroes". And yet . . . it was where my conscious life really began, and I still have pangs of affiliation for the post-war mix that was this part of Manchester. And maybe it gave me a resilience for which I ought to be thankful.

Ian B
Hexham
Northumberland

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