Old and new: Bradford Iron Wroks revealed in the shadow of the City of Manchester Stadium

It’s the site once earmarked for the ‘super casino’ but not so many decades ago it had been the epicentre of east Manchester’s industrial past. Bradford Colliery’s two shafts, each 18 feet wide and a mile deep, satisfied the local industry’s veracious appetite for coal and had done for more than 100 years.

Over the last few weeks archaeologists have been exploring the surrounding area prior to its preparation by New East Manchester for future development.

“We knew there was a medieval timber-framed, moated hall not far from here in the 13th century,” explains Ian Miller of Oxford Archaeology North. “Some evidence of that was found in 2002 whilst digging the tunnel wall for the Metrolink to travel under Alan Turing Way, but we’ve not been able to find anything new on that site.”

Early maps from 1761 show the remains of a moat and the beginning of coal excavation: shallow pits where miners would have recovered coal very close to the surface.

“By the 1840s,” continues Ian, “there were the beginnings of some major development here. Bradford Colliery had been established, a canal arm from the nearby Ashton Canal had been progressively extended towards the two pit heads, local streets had been laid out and houses built.

“But, by 1893, this whole place had exploded into a major industrial powerhouse, centred on Bradford Colliery. Unlike other areas of the first industrial city that peaked during the 1880s and 90s, this small area of east Manchester just continued to grow exponentially.”

Adjacent to Alan Turing Way, the archaeological team has uncovered the remains of what would have been boiler, fan and engine houses for the colliery. Steel-reinforced concrete foundations from a 1950s redevelopment of the colliery sit amongst Victorian brick remnants. A search for the actual mine shafts has not been a priority as these were capped with huge inverted concrete conical ‘plugs’ in the late 1960s when the colliery eventually closed.

Alongside Alan Turing Way: the colliery buildings

Victorian brick remains and more recent concrete foundations

1950s reinforced concrete atop of brick remains

“We have also uncovered,” explains Ian, “the intact remains of the nearby Bradford Iron Works, which contains some early examples of modern furnace technology.”

"The Iron Works were right here next to Forge Lane"

In the shadow of the City of Manchester Stadium the excavations clearly reveal a series of boilers each connected to two steam hammers used to pound the molten iron. The hammers themselves were invented and produced locally at Patricroft, but it is the system of brick-lined flues which indicate the experimental re-use of exhaust fumes.

“Red hot exhaust gases from the foundry’s furnace were sent down a brick-lined flue,” explains Ian’s colleague Graham Mottershead.

“Once the bricks were white hot the air flow was reversed and cold air was drawn in and rapidly heated by the hot bricks. Alternately switching the flow meant the whole boiler system was much more efficient.”

"The bricks were laid out in such a way as to maximise their surface area and take up as much heat as possible from the exhaust fumes."

These early innovations at Bradford were adapted and improved until, by the 1920s, foundries and other steam-powered processes were 80-90% more efficient.

“There was huge innovation on this site,” says Ian, “ideas were being tried and tested on an astonishing scale. Being able to see the tangible remains really brings home the incredible industrial heritage we’re celebrating in this area.”

“Have you done all this Grandma?” Two year-old Sophie Ledward, admires the handiwork of GVA member, Rita Oakley.

Our ’Ouse is inspired by the exposed wallpaper revealed in the once private interiors of half-demolished houses scattered around east Manchester. “It was the condemned terraced houses of Beswick that first gave me the idea,” says the group’s lead artist, Ian McKay. “Those exposed living rooms and bedrooms signify the area’s transformation and I thought it would be good way to record people’s memories of the past.”

Each member of the group has chosen images, or drawn their own pictures of treasured childhood memories. Family pets, long-demolished cinemas, gas lamps, cups cakes, clogs and even the pit heads at Bradford Colliery have all been featured in this day-long exhibition.

The accompanying text by each of the artists, all Gorton residents, offers another strand of reminiscence. Noreen West recalls, “…clogs that mother had bought with the Divi she had saved from the Co-op. They were green, that’s my favourite colour, and they laced up at the front.”

Margaret Greenhalgh remembers her father, an engineer, taking the whole family to visit the pit in 1941. “He made sure his four girls were aware of Manchester’s vast, diverse industry: something to be proud of.”

Elsewhere Freda Wallwork writes about her inspiration for her ‘vanilla slice’ wallpaper: “I worked at Sharples Brothers as an apprentice confectioner in the 1950s… We had a small kitchen for our lunch breaks, very like the one in the underwear factory in Coronation Street. We were a very happy, but busy, group of friends.”

As part of this 13-week project the group were invited by the Whitworth Art Gallery to view their current wallpaper exhibition and were able to ask questions of the gallery curators. Back at their base at the Angels in Gorton the group set to work creating their individual designs using traditional woodcut printing processes.

Without pausing for breath Gorton Visual Arts is now working a mosaic about the Beyer Peacock railway engine works in Gorton. “The factory was at the bottom of our street,” recalls the group’s oldest member, “and every day I’d watch as thousands of men streamed into work. Until we started on this new project, I never had a clue what went on behind those high walls.”

Wallpaper exhibition at Whitworth Art Gallery

… or, as Gortonians say, the City of Manchester becoming part of Gorton! Now there is a new book that records the 12 months of passion and pride as well as some of the achievements of the last 100 years.

Out on the 27th March: the Gorton 100 celebration book

The book – Gorton 100: Best Viewed from Within – is an 80-page pictorial account of the area’s historical features such as Belle Vue, Crossley Motors and Beyer Peacock as well as capturing the people of Gorton at play during the centenary celebrations.

Some highlights include images of the K1 steam engine, the first Beyer-Garratt produced by Bayer Peacock, being transported from the Museum of Science and Industry to its birthplace in Gorton… and then cheered by former employees of the engine works. Brilliant.

Childhood recollections have also been recorded. This is from Maria Koudellas as she recalls her wartime evacuation to Macclesfield. “A hot meal waited for us and for afters was the most delicious creamy rice pudding I have ever tasted. ‘Made from a beaten fresh egg,’ said Mrs Johnson. Then it was bath and bed, what bliss. Coming from a small two-up, two-down in West Gorton, no bathroom, two boys and two girls sleeping in the same bedroom, I thought I was in heaven.”

The book will be launched on 27th March at Gorton Market from 12-2pm with a host of free entertainment including Manchester’s own exciting, colourful band of drummers and dancers, Bloco Novo, the multi-skilled street entertainers, Curious Eyebrow, and the foot-stomping sounds of Dr Butler’s Hatstand Medicine Band.

Also available, at £5, by calling Gorton 100 committee member Rose Cusack on 0161 231 3532.

The book, and many of the events, was made possible by generous funding from many organisations including the Heritage Lottery Fund, New East Manchester and Manchester City Football Club.

And here’s a ‘shout-out’ for anyone who lives, works, studies (or just visits) Gorton…

The ‘Gorton Heart’ Facebook group is at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=170456026552&ref=ts and is for all to share local and family history; highlight educational achievements and opportunities; showcase Gorton arts – from Gorton Visual Arts and Gorton Voice to music, dance and literature. Find out what’s on at the cinema or when the local pub quiz nights or karaoke evenings are taking place and explore local opportunities for training and personal development.

The Facebook group is an opportunity to promote any local event to the whole community.

Clayton Hall: once home to the Byron family and the Chetham brothers

East Manchester continues to amaze me. The diversity of what goes on here and the commitment of local people is astonishing. This last week I found myself taking photographs in Clayton Hall, the 16th century ‘moated’ hall concealed in the middle of the unassuming Clayton Park. Each of four rooms are now decked out in the late Victorian style to give visitors a real taste of history in east Manchester’s most notable historic building.

Come and see the sunken cold store, dining room, kitchen and outside wash house

Yes, I’ve seen this sort of thing before in National Trust properties and in museums run by local councils. But here in Clayton – with the trams lines being re-laid outside on Ashton New Road – this piece of historical restoration has not been put on by a team of full-time curators but by local volunteers from the Friends of Clayton Park.

Over the last couple of years these dedicated volunteers have sympathetically renovated four previously empty rooms into what is now a cultural high spot and an invaluable learning resource for local schools.

Small grants have paid for some of the items – the kitchen range was bought from ebay – but others have been donated by friends and relatives and, since the displays have been open to the public, from visitors supportive of the Friends’ work.

Experience a Victorian kitchen: no fridge or microwave here!

The Grade 2 listed hall is open to the public every third Saturday of the month between 1–4pm (so that’s this Saturday, 20th March) and children are particularly welcome. There’s an ID quiz so youngsters can identify items in each room and plenty of hands-on activities from helping out in the kitchen to ‘ironing’ clothes in the wash house.

As a backdrop to the National Curriculum the Friends are keen to encourage more schools to book visits and use the hall as a teaching resource.

To contact the Friends email info@friendsofclaytonpark.org.uk or ring Manchester Leisure on 0161 231 3090.

The Friends of Clayton Park website

Last Man Standing: David Hibbert was one of the last Rolls-Royce employees to leave Crossley Works

When David Hibbert first joined Crossley Premier Engines in 1968 he was expecting to working as a fitter or an engineer. His career path changed after he returned from a stint at the local college. “As apprentices, we’d all done 40 weeks next door at Openshaw Technical College [now the Manchester College] before reporting back to the factory to be assigned our jobs. Some of the lads were taken to the shop floor but I was sent to the drawing office and started work as a junior draughtsman. There was no explanation, I was just told to get on with it.”

These were turbulent times for the engine manufacturers who – as Crossley Brothers – had built a new factory at Pottery Lane in 1882 after outgrowing their Manchester city centre premises. At the turn of the century business was booming. Francis and William Crossley at first made gas-fuelled engines, and then diesel and petrol engines. The potential for motor car engines was not lost on the two brothers – indeed Henry Ford visited Openshaw to see how they did it – and a new factory was established in Gorton in 1906 from which another branch of company history unfolded under Crossley Motors.

Industrial engines, for railways and shipping, continued to be designed and manufactured at Pottery Lane. In the early 1960s the company took out the licence to build a French engine called the Pielstick and, although they were selling well, the company went into liquidation and was bought out. Almost as soon as David had picked up his pencil and slide rule, the company became part of the Amalgamated Power Engineering Group and the sign on the side of the factory changed again to APE-Crossley Ltd.

In later years Rolls-Royce at Crossley Works became a spares and serice centre

“The shipbuilding industry was shrinking at that time and although we still supplied some engines to the Ministry of Defence – our engines still power HMS Ocean – we switched to producing engines for industrial power generation mainly in developing countries like Sudan, Fiji and Bermuda.”

Rolls-Royce took over the business in 1988 and continued Pielstick production for another eight years. “Understandably Rolls-Royce were more interested in producing their own world-beating engine rather than someone else’s under licence,” recalls David. “At their Bedford base they designed the Allen 5000 and tested it here for 1,000 hours. All was well until it went into the field and then problems occurred. By the time design changes were made the project had to be scrapped because it had been tarnished with a bad reputation.

“Over the last decade or so, Crossley Works has become a spares and service centre for the Pielstick product,” continues David. “We’ve had numerous redundancies over the last 25 years and it’s been sad to see the business slowly shrinking. We stopped operations all together in February and since then what’s left of the business has been transferred to Rolls-Royce in Scotland.”

At the end of 2009, David and a few colleagues were packing up, ready to leave Crossley Works – the last employees after 127 years – and make way for demolition workers preparing the site for future redevelopment.

Below is slideshow of historical and contemporary images of Crossley Works. It’s automatic: no need to click.

Rev David Grey leads the service at the war memorial

It’s been Remembrance Day today: 91 years since the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany marked the end of the First World War. Now, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, thousands of services are being held up and down the country as people stop in their tracks to remember the fallen in conflicts past and present.

Respect from across the generations

I’ve come to Gorton Cemetery where schoolchildren from 17 primary and high schools are joining ex-servicemen, young men from the local training corps, serving police and fire officers and local families to commemorate the lives lost.

St Clements, Openshaw: “We’re here to remember everyone who has died.”

Sharon Adesiyan is here with her classmates from St Clements School in Openshaw. They have been learning about the Second World War at school. What, I ask, have you found out? “All the women took over the men’s jobs while they went off to fight,” she says. “And did they do a better job?” I ask, rather unfairly. “They did just as good a job as the men,” she replied, diplomatically.

A brass band from Wright Robinson College strikes up to signify the start of the service. “It’s not about us old folk”, says Rev. David Gray, “those who put their lives on the line did so for the world their children would inherit. Today is about you and about all of us honouring them by doing all we can in our time to build peace for you and with you for future generations.”

There are prayers, readings, more from the band and a procession of wreaths. Then, at 11 o’clock, the bearers lower their standards and their heads in silent contemplation.

Les Worthington: “This is the ninth year and each time we go from strength to strength.”

This event at the cemetery is relatively recent. Only since 2001 have local people gathered each November, all due to the efforts of Les Worthington, chair of the Belle Vue branch of the Royal British Legion. “There were only eight of us at that first remembrance service,” he recalls, “and only two of them were servicemen.” Since then, Les has built up the event to include local schools, and, judging by the turnout today, he has been extremely successful.

He allocates each school a section of the cemetery and after the service the children and their teachers investigate their portion on a map supplied by Les.

“We’ve been coming down for four years now,” Neil Flint, headteacher of Aspinall Primary School in Gorton tells me. “It’s incredibly useful in getting the children talking about the various conflicts and the sacrifices made. There are eight war graves in this section of the cemetery and for each one we find the age, rank and regiment of the fallen soldier.”

Each school marks the war graves in their section of the cemetery

As the standard bearers roll up their ceremonial flags, the schoolchildren scatter to all parts of the cemetery and place poppy crosses in front of the 157 war graves. They ask their teachers questions about each headstone, adding their own family’s experiences of great-grandfathers and grandfathers. Today is a day they will not forget.

“Every Sunday was disturbed by the whine of trail bikes tearing around,” recalls local resident, Alan G. “It was becoming a playground for bikers and a favourite spot for illegal tipping.”

Nutsford Vale

Fed up with their piece of countryside sinking into abandonment, Alan and some of his neighbours set up the Nutsford Vale Park Project more than 10 years ago to lobby for change. Now, after a decade of small grants and piecemeal improvements, the Vale has hit the jackpot: more than £300,000 will be spent in the next two years to create a valuable community resource.

The money comes from a £4.7 million initiative by the North West Development Agency to fund the remediation of 400 acres (equivalent to about 200 football pitches) of brownfield land in Merseyside and Greater Manchester. The ‘Setting the Scene for Growth’ programme aims to transform what were once municipal tips.

Jackson's Clay Pit, 1964

A generation ago the 40-acre Nutsford Vale was a known as Jackson’s Clay Pit, with lorries and heavy machinery working the relatively small patch between the densely populated housing. Once closed the pit was filled with council waste until 1978 when, presumably, it could hold no more.

Red Rose Forest, the partnership organisation charged with ‘greening’ Greater Manchester, submitted the successful bid after consultation with the residents’ group. “We’ve been working together for some years now,” says Hilary Wood from Red Rose. “We originally raised some funding through the Green Tips Project which meant we could fence off part of the site, and do a little planting.”

Matthew's Lane Corporation Tip, 1974

There’s a tarmac path that cuts across the thinnest part of the site, a convenient and popular shortcut with staggered barriers to deter the motorbikes. The entrances will be a priority once the work gets underway later this year and this path will have a hedgerow running alongside it.

“First, we’ll get rid of all the rubbish,” says Hilary, “then we’ll enhance the entry points and secure the boundaries by finishing off the fencing. We’ll consult with local people about what they’d like to see in the Vale. Maybe there could be a play facility, or a feature, some sort of attraction that would give people a reason to come.”

“Although we want to make it more accessible,” she continues, “we don’t want to lose the wilderness element. A wildflower area is a possibility and it certainly should still be a place where people can escape to.”

The first job will be to get rid of all the rubbish

Tony Hall, another resident and member of the friends’ group, agrees: “In the summer, with all the foliage out, you can hardly see any of the surrounding houses. You feel as if you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“It has the potential to follow in the successful footsteps of Clayton Vale,” says Julie Lawrence, New East Manchester’s Environment Programme Manager. “There’s a strong ‘friends’ group which is essential to the long term success of the Vale and with the right sort of maintenance programme and support after the initial investment, there’s no reason why Nutsford Vale shouldn’t continue to prosper.”

Consultations will take place locally with interested groups to discuss plans for the Vale.

redroseforest.co.uk
nutsfordvale.wordpress.com

Archive images courtesy of Manchester Local Image Collection.

Gary uses aerial photographs from 1958, 1998 and 2007 to illustrate just how radically the area has changed.

Don’t forget to turn the volume up on your computer.

Some archive images courtesy of Manchester Local Image Collection.

Do you have memories or memorabilia from living or working in east Manchester? Gary would like to hear from you. Contact him at gary.crate@manchester.gov.uk , 0161 227 3151 or call in at The Visitors Centre, corner of Ashton New Road and Alan Turing Way.