Chest expander made by Brownsfield Mills, Ancoats. Image courtesy J. Shaw.
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Britain’s First Gangs – The Manchester Scuttlers
by Evelyn Little
Scuttler gangsters (from left) , James Brown, William Henry Brooks
It’s a dubious distinction, but Manchester claims it nonetheless. The earliest teenage gangs in Britain formed in the sooty back alleys of Victorian Manchester. In a movement which appalled the niceties of refined society and terrified the middle classes, teenagers of the Industrial Revolution began forming ‘Scuttler’ gangs, and heading out to wreak havoc upon the streets of Manchester.
An Inevitable Development
Ancoats c. 1870 (c) Manchester Libraries
Industrial Revolution Manchester was, in all fairness, ripe for just such an occurrence. An enormous influx of people seeking work had led to the development of unsanitary but close-knit slum districts in which existed a simmering street culture. These slums were often volatile, their populations fuelled by a booming pub trade and hyper-masculine attitudes which valued violence and viewed ‘otherness’ with suspicion. Fair fights were at that time a perfectly legal way of resolving disputes, and were often undertaken in public to the delight of spectators. The police may become involved should a fight turn foul, but usually the people of the slums were left to their own devices. Furthermore, slum life was often depressingly monotonous, and contained little opportunity for personal betterment. Brought up on violence, hemmed into close quarters with one another, and filled with pent up frustration, it is perhaps little wonder that ‘scuttling’ caught on in the way it did.
From Play-Battles to True Violence
The Battle of Reichshoffeen 1870, by Aimé Nicolas Morot (1850-1913) watercolour of the Franco-Prussian War.
Gang culture broke out with a vengeance in the 1870s, and spread with startling speed through Manchester and the surrounding areas. There are those who believe that the movement had its origin in street recreations of battles in the Franco-Prussian War. These recreational battles gave an outlet in which inherent frustrations and indigenous prejudices (Catholic vs Protestant, My Street vs Your Street and so forth) could be taken out. Although initially ostensibly carried out in play, it did not take long for ‘sides’ to band together along lines based upon personal, geographical, and cultural identity and begin to battle their rivals in earnest. Thus formed the Scuttler gangs – Britain’s original hoodies.
Forming Identities
What Bengal Street looks like today, with the Shamrock Pub an mills amongst modern developments 2013. Image courtesy D. Boothman.
Scuttler gangs largely identified themselves along territorial lines. Although complex cultural identities were developed within the gangs, their basic allegiances were geographical. This is reflected in the gang’s names. The ‘Bengal Tigers’, for example, came from the area around Bengal Street in Ancoats, and despised the ironically named ‘Angels’ of Angel Meadows. Much of the scuttle culture may have stemmed from a need for a sense of belonging and peer respect lacking in young people from families struggling with the demands of Victorian slum life. This need for belonging is exemplified by how quickly scuttlers both male and female took on an easily identifiable ‘uniform’ consisting of pointed, brass-tipped clogs, caps turned backwards, a donkey-fringe, bell-bottomed trousers, and neckerchiefs.
The modern day scuttler replacing the belt buckle and smashed for loaded gun.
Scuttler gangs also showed curious but significant differences to their modern counterparts. Modern gangs tend to be heavily involved with criminal enterprise, often related to drugs, and are often more interested in money and power than in gaining a sense of intrinsic belonging. Modern gangs not only cause harm to themselves and the members of rival gangs, they cut deep gashes into the very fabric of society through their efforts to push their products by fostering drug addictions, leading addicts to turn to crime in order to fund their habits and places enormous pressure on health and welfare services. Scuttler gangs had far, far less of an impact upon those around them, displaying extremely little criminal enterprise and having nothing more than a cursory interest in robbery, extortion and so forth. Their primary occupation was defending their identities by battling other Scuttler gangs in vast brawls which could encompass as many as 500 people. When not buried within a mass of violently punching and kicking youths, scuttlers spent their time policing their territories and meting out swift, blunt justice to anyone whos face did not fit. Intimidation, beatings, and inter-gang brawling were the order of the day. Drug-pushing to civilians, gun crime, extortion, and the myriad other criminal practices carried out by modern gangs were never on the cards.
The Football Cure
St Marks (West Gorton Football Club) in 1884
The scuttlers therefore seem remarkably tame to modern eyes. Although (much like modern hoodies) they were regularly condemned in the press, and although they undoubtedly terrorised the streets and caused a great many injuries – the scuttlers seem never to have set out with the intention of actual murder. Their weapons of choice were large-buckled belts and small knives with which they would beat and disfigure but not actually kill their rivals. Although they horrified the Victorians, modern readers used to reports of gangland murders, gang-related drug crime and so on will probably be inclined to view the actions of the scuttlers as scaled-up playground fights rather than serious criminal acts. The scuttlers held sway for thirty years, but by the end of that time, people had begun to realise their essential motivations. Scuttler frustrations and energies were fairly easily channelled into less destructive means by those with the foresight to set up such
Manchester Times (Manchester, England), Saturday, August 3, 1889; Issue 1671.
initiatives. The Salford Lads Club, for example, offered disaffected teenagers a stimulating alternative to gang culture – the primary attraction being football. Aiming its enterprise at young men of scuttler recruitment age, it was overwhelmed by the response – 700 young men turned up to join on its opening night. Several similar clubs opened with remarkable success. One such club from West Gorton is now known as Manchester City FC (although doubtless some fans would prefer that their club’s hooligan gang origins were kept quiet…). The scuttling days were over – but the seeds had been sown, and the way paved for other gangs and gang trends to rise and fall through the streets of Britain.
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Front of Ardwick Lads Club (1897) on Palmerston Street, Ancoats, showing scaffolding as the process of demolition begins in late November 2012 . © 2012 HistoryME.
On the 10th September 2012 an application for prior notification of proposed demolition was submitted on behalf of Manchester City Council to Manchester Planning, for the demolition of Ardwick Lads’ Club (Ardwick Youth Centre) of 100 Palmerston Street (M12 6PE), citing that there was “no use” for the building in respect to its historic place within the community as providing a refuge and sporting provision to the young of Ancoats.
The River public house (58-60 Palmerston Street), with Ancoats Nursery School (demolished) in the background in 2010. © Gene Hunt 2010.
All historical, architectural and any potential future use within existing and wider regeneration processes were quickly dismissed. More details on the planning application can be read here: 100472/DEM/2012/N2
Whilst permission to demolish was “not required” (Decision Letter, 8th October 2012), it begs the question, was it in the communities best interest to strip yet another community, sporting, cultural and historical asset from an area already critically lacking.
A last ditch attempt to save and spot list Ardwick Lads Club on historical and architectural grounds was dismissed by English Heritage and backed by the Secretary for Culture Media and Sport, with no attention paid to local significance or importance.
After the closure of Ancoats Nursery School (March 31, 2007) and its subsequent languishing neglect until it was demolished in 2011, the Ardwick Lads Club along with the River Inn also on Palmerston Street were the last fragments of an almost forgotten history of how Ancoats continued to rapidly develop in the 19th century.
Ancoats Nursery School (demolished) on Palmerston Street, 1965. Image courtesy J. Shaw.
With the demolition of Ardwick Lads Club, it seems certain the slowly decaying River Inn public house will follow shortly afterwards and the adjoining mid-19th century house which later became part of the pub, completing the decimation and total destruction of a once vibrant, culturally and historically architecturally rich area, which started in the 1960s. Finally cementing the final chapter of the history of this part of Ancoats. Make up your own minds if Ardwick Lads Club should have been saved or not, hope you enjoy reading.
Extracts from the application for spot listing are detailed below:
‘Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings’, DCMS (2010), notes that the Secretary for Culture Media and Sport considers a building’s architectural and historic interest when deciding whether to list it. Under the principles of historic interest an application for spot listing was submitted for Ardwick Lads’ Club (1898, architect: W&G Higgingbottom).
Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour (25 July 1848 – 19 March 1930) © UofG.
As demonstrated below, this building illustrates important aspects of the nation’s social, economic and cultural history and has close associations with figures of national importance, including AJ Balfour, who was concurrently the UK’s Prime Minister and the President of Ardwick Lads’ Club, whilst later becoming a controversial Foreign Secretary under David Lloyd George (1916–19) and where his legacy was shaped, notably in his letter to Baron Rothschild now known as the Balfour Declaration in which he favoured the establishment of Palestine and a national home for the Jewish people. The declaration however, did state that the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities should be protected.
There is also sufficient quality of interest in the physical fabric of the building itself to justify the statutory protection afforded by listing.
Age and rarity
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser – Wednesday 29 November 1905. © 2012 HistoryME.
English Heritage’s Pastscape website notes that ” The Ardwick Lads’ and Mens’ Club, now the Ardwick Youth Centre, opened in 1897 and is believed to be Britain’s oldest purpose-built youth club still in use [and was until earlier in 2012]. Designed by architects W & G Higginbottom, the club, when opened, featured a large gymnasium with viewing gallery – where the 1933 All England Amateur Gymnastics Championships were held – three fives courts, a billiard room and two skittle alleys (later converted to shooting galleries). Boxing, cycling, cricket, swimming and badminton were also organised. At its peak between the two world wars, Ardwick was thee Manchester area’s largest club, with 2,000 members.”
In particular, to this day, Ardwick Lads’ Club retains immense value as a central, integral and critically important focus for the development of the Youth Movement in England continuing a tradition that started in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It is one of the earliest remaining examples of a lads’ club, and importantly, it retains its original exterior and much of its original interior – both in a predominantly sound condition. Its national significance as a facility was captured in the English Heritage published and Manchester City Council sponsored publication, “Played in Manchester” (2004) by Simon Inglis.
Aesthetic merits
Canada House (1909) on Chepstow Street . Image courtesy J. Shaw.
In 1887, the Manchester Evening News described the new building as “handsome” and “surpassed by no other [such facility] in Manchester” and containing “lofty and well lighted rooms”. The building merited inclusion in Pevsner’s update to Pevsner’s Lancashire: Manchester and the South East (Hartwell et al, 2005, p. 384). This notes the “red brick with a little ornamental faience” as being worthy of the reader’s note.
The architects, W & G Higginbottom, are notable in Manchester for designing a number of Manchester buildings such as the Bridge Street Children’s Mission, Nos 51-53 Piccadilly, and Nos 59-61 Piccadilly (Clayton House), St Clements Church in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and the Grade II listed Canada House (home to English Heritage’s North West office). Like Canada House, the terracotta dressings of Ardwick Lads’ Club reflect the noted house style of this renowned firm of Manchester architects.
Manchester Central Station (1880) in 1917. © 2012 HistoryME.
The contractors were successful and significant Robert Neill & Sons, who amongst many nationally important buildings, their work can be seen today in Manchester in a number of their constructions, including Manchester Central Convention Complex (formally Manchester Central Station and later GMEX) and the former railway goods Great Northern Railways warehouse on the corner of Deansgate and Peter Street. Two of Manchester’s largest and most prominent buildings. The lack of evidence also suggests that Ardwick Lads Club was a unique development in the history of Robert Neill & Sons, with no other building of this type built by the contractors.
Photographs evidencing the building’s architectural merit with associated commentary are included here:
Fig 1: Fine terracotta detail on front elevation. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 2: Detail of terracotta mosaic on front elevation. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 3: Detail of terracotta patterning on front elevation. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 4: Detail of decorative patterning on front elevation. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 5: Detail of decorative patterning on front elevation. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 6: Original guttering intact and in-situ. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 7: Original drain pipes intact and in-situ. © 2012 HistoryME.
Fig 8: Original chimney pots in-situ. © 2012 HistoryME.
Selectivity
Murrays Mill on Murray Street, built in 1798 and at the heart of Industrial Revolution.
Ardwick Lads’ Club is placed at the vanguard of the youth-club movement, as noted above, and is especially important because its building contributes towards the value within the historic townscape and landscape as a whole in Ancoats, the world’s first industrial suburb, within Manchester, the world’s first industrial city.
Too much of heritage value has already been lost in the neighbourhood, however Ancoats retains a suite of nationally and internationally important buildings, including Ardwick Lads’ Club. Buildings like Ancoats Hospital (1873), St Peter’s Church (1859) and Ardwick Lads’ Club contextualise the listed 18th and 19th century mills and warehouses that are being considered for a World Heritage Site bid by demonstrating the wider philanthropic values and social conditions of industrial Victorian England. A period and place of which that directly inspired the social commentary of Charles Dickens’ tenth novel and John Ruskin’s favourite, Hard Times (1854), which uniquely stands as the only novel Charles Dickens ever wrote that didn’t portray Victorian London.
“Untitled [notorious headmaster Mr Thomas Gradgrind apprehends Louisa and Tom, his two eldest children, at the circus]” by Harry French, 1870s. This image is in the public domain.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.
Dickens’ Hard Times, like Elizabeth Gaskell’s industrial novels Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), highlighted some of the major
Ancoats Dispensary
social issues that affected many of poorest people, embodied in industrialised cities like Manchester.It is greatly important that the coherence of Ancoats’ built environment and socio-economic narrative and history is not undermined by the demolition of Ardwick Lads’ Club.
Retaining lads’ clubs elsewhere is not and cannot be a substitute for retaining one in Ancoats, given the major contribution it makes in situ there to the national historic stock and in the context of world history, for which Ardwick Lads’ Club as part of the Ancoats story has played a significant role. English Heritage’s website references the work it has conducted on the economic benefits of the historic environment, specifically through tourism and regeneration schemes.
Ancoats is a major regeneration area, whose long-term sustainability and desirability would benefit from the retention of key historic buildings such as Ardwick Lads’ Club and as stated by English Hertitage: Understanding how places change, what makes them distinctive and the significance of their history is the key to regeneration. Ardwick Lads’ Club is not a derelict monument to times gone by, it is intact and as part of the Ancoats story and similarly like Castlefield, as the potential to reinforce the research done by English
St Peters Church before restoration in 1996. Courtesy J. Shaw.
Heritage. Specifically that historic places attract investment; create a sense of place with often a greater community cohesion; sustainability by re-using historic buildings to minimise the exploitation of resources; historic environment contributes to quality of life and enriches people’s understanding of the diversity and changing nature of their community.
National interest
Ardwick Lads’ Club was founded in 1889, but the current building was opened in 1897 following a philanthropic donation by Mr Paul H. Schill of Schill, Seebohm & Co, merchants established in Manchester City Centre on Whitworth Street. This type of Victorian philanthropy is currently receiving significant attention in light of the Government’s ambitions for the ‘Big Society‘. Further, that the philanthropist in question was German-Jewish evidences a historical narrative of the long-standing success of multiculturalism in Manchester, and the Ardwick Lads’ Club building, whilst still extant, provides important evidence of the benefits of community cohesion.
Portrait of Lord Balfour, along with his famous declaration. This image is public domain material .
Nationally, significant figures were associated with the Club in the early 20th Century. The most significant of these was The Right Hon. A.J. Balfour who was re-elected as Club President in November 1905 (as recorded by the Manchester Chronicle, 29/11/1905) when he was MP for Manchester East and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, a post he held from July 1902 to December 1905.
Later, as Foreign Secretary, Balfour is also remembered for authoring the Balfour Declaration of 1917, supporting the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Thomas Coglan Horsfall by Samuel Frederick Beaumont (1861-1954). Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester.
Philanthropist Mr. Thomas Coglan Horsfall, founder of the pioneering Horsfall Art Museum (1877) in Ancoats now demolished, referred to later by the Warden of Toynbee Hall, J. J. Mallon as ‘a civic saint’, chaired the club and is remembered for his pioneering role as a proponent of arts in education creating one of the earliest loan schemes for schools.
Horsfall in his letters to Arts and Crafts Movement leader William Morris argued that Art should become “a teacher, an agent in the social reform and elevation of the people” and that art should not remain to be a mere luxury, solely for the rich and well educated few, but rather it should be “an instrument of the greatest possible culture among the community at large”.
Ancoats Hall, home to Coglan’s cultural beacon and seminal Manchester Art Museum. Demolished in the 1960s.
Horsfall was also a pioneer of town planning and a prominent figure in the official parliamentary lobby group, National Housing Reform Council founded in 1907 (later National Housing and Town Planning Council) and campaigned for introduction of town planning in the early 20th century, eventually included in the first Housing Act 1909, which was the birth of town planning and sought to essentially regulate house building and in the process improve public health, the influence of which changed the cities and towns within the United Kingdom forever.
Horsfall saw his community work as ‘giving effect to Ruskin’s teaching’ and indeed, Thomas Horsfall and leading English art critic of the time, John Ruskin corresponded extensively and publicly, and Ruskin gave Horsfall’s projects his approval. Indeed, Ruskin wrote the introduction to Thomas Horsfall’s The Study Of Beauty, And Art In Large Towns: Two Papers (1883).
In a footnote, Norman Kelvin described Horsfall as, a “a Manchester philanthropist who believed that the wealthy middle class had an obligation to supervise the leisure activities of the working class”. (See Kelvin, editor, The Collected Letters of William Morris, Vol. 11., Princeton V.P., 1987, p.12).
Ardwick Lads Club embodied the very principles that Horsfall lived his life by, that those who have profited from society, are obliged to give something back to society. Principles that endured within the very fabric of Ardwick Lads Club through over a century of continued service to the young and needy of Manchester and carved out of its beautiful and elegantly understated Manchester-Victorian architecture. This was particularly seen in over 80 years that Ardwick Boxing Club had its home at Ardwick Lads Club, where many thousands of young men became better citizens and people for having been apart of the community that was Ardwick Lads Club.
Horsfall’s legacy is such, that today his work still attracts sufficient interest for him to have a inclusion in the current Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Sir Alfred Hopkinson by Bassano
Similar to Horsfall, Sir Alfred Hopkinson (28 June 1851 – 11 Nov 1939) appears in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and also has eight of his portraits in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Sir Alfred Hopkinson was a noted and prominent English lawyer, academic and MP who came from a notable Manchester family and served as a trustee of Ardwick Lads’ Club.
Hopkinson was Vice-Chancellor of the Victoria University of Manchester (later University of Manchester) from 1901 until 1913.
During the First World War Hopkinson served on the Committee on Alleged German Outrages along with Viscount James Bryce , SirFrederick Pollock, Sir Edward Clarke, Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Sir Kenelm E. Digby, Mr. H. A. L. Fisher, and Mr. Harold Cox.
Noted historians like Gary James and Andrew Davies have both captured the key role that Lads’ clubs, including Ardwick itself, played in the downfall of Victorian scuttling gangs (violent inner-city youth gangs) in Edwardian England. This slice of history, though particularly pertinent in Manchester, is of national interest, particularly as the Government continues to seek policy responses to the widespread rioting experienced in many English cities in 2011.
State of repair
Councillor Rosa Battle, stating that Manchester City Council had “no use” of Ardwick Lads Club. © 2012 Manchester City Council.
Manchester City Council’s claims that the building is “dilapidated” and “of no practical purpose” (Councillor Rosa Battle, Letters, Manchester Evening News, 09/11/12) runs contrary to Simon Inglis noting in Played in Manchester: The Architectural Heritage of a City at Play (English Heritage 2004), that “even today, under the ownership of Manchester City Council, it is regular used by up to 600 people per week and, although in need of minor refurbishment, remains structurally sound and much loved by the local community.” In addition, following contact with AWOL Studios, highly successfully providers of flexible, cost effective space for creatives, would have been very interested in looking at Ardwick Lads Club, with the intention of taking the building on. Regrettably, they didn’t even know the building existed or was available.
Refurbishment of some facilities at the Club occurred subsequent to the publishing of Played in Manchester. Indeed, demand for the facilities would likely have grown further still when sizeable adjacent housing developments are completed in forthcoming years. Indeed it is my perception, and that of many other local residents, that the little publicised consultation period (an A4 poster on the lamp post outside Ardwick Lads Club, and the swiftness with which the Council have since acted in moving toward demolition evidence that the Council are acutely aware both of a) how unpopular the decision to demolish will be locally, and b) the substantial chance that the Secretary of State will spot list the building given its clear historical importance.
The photographs in this post demonstrate the generally good condition of the building, including the exterior walls and interior facilities. It is worth noting that the contractors, the Beech Group prior to the start of demolition, confirmed that the building was watertight and following work to repair a portion of roofing in 2010. With one of the onsite workers evening going as far to say, “there’s not a brick out of place”. Whilst reflecting on the regeneration schemes in his own area (Liverpool), “the same happened; they demolished everything”.
Florence Institute, Liverpool prior to restoration showing extent of severe dereliction. © Copyright Sue Adair
The state of Ardwick Lads Club prior to the beginning of demolition, contrasted greatly with another lads club, the Florence Institute in Dingle, Liverpool, which was in a state of severe dilapidation and a burnt-out shell when English Heritage listed it. Recently officially re-opened by Prince Charles following the completition of £6.4m restoration work. Without doubt the Florence Institute is like Ardwick Lads Club, a building very much worth preserving. However, beyond its age, there is little or no significant history on a national level attached to the Florence Institute. One of the main reasons English Heritage rejected listing Ardwick Lads Club. This in many of the local residents eyes confirms that like much of their own community, Ardwick Lads Club had been forgotten by English Heritage, whilst ignored by Manchester City Council.
Selectivity Value
The case for spot-listing Ardwick Lads’ Club was strong, particularly given its unique location in Ancoats – the world’s first industrial suburb and its nationally and international significant associations with Balfour and Horsfall in particularly. Legacies that have endured and echoed down the generations and helped shaped the societies and communities we live in.
However, the true importance of Ardwick Lads Club may come as the last brick is reduced to rubble, as it will be testament to how over four decades Manchester City Council has watched a rich tapestry of a unique community unravel as it failed to commit and indeed fulfil its social duties for building better, stronger, more prosperous communities. The demise and eventual demolition of this rare building, should also burden the community of Ancoats themselves, who like many of the buildings in the area have been forgotten and allowed to fall into a state of disrepair with seemingly just not enough voices evident to dent the iron curtain that increasingly surrounds the Manchester City Council.
Ardwick Lads Club seen here in a 1980 slide. Image courtesy J. Crumpton.
Please see more detailed images of Ardwick Lads Club below.
References
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (March 2010), Principles of Selection for Listing Buildings: General principles applied by the Secretary of State when deciding whether a building is of special architectural or historic interest and should be added to the list of buildings compiled under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, London.James, Gary (2002)
Manchester: The Greatest City: The Complete History of Manchester City Football Club (2 ed.), Leicester: Polar Publishing.Thomas, Trefor, (1999)
Ancoats and the Manchester Slums in Two Late Victorian Novels. Manchesster: Manchester Region History Review.Wilkinson, Paul (1969) English Youth Movements, 1908-30, Jornal of Contemporary History, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Apr., 1969), pp. 3-23. London: Sage Publications Ltd.
If you have information, stories, memories regarding this building, we would like to hear from you.Please contact us by using the form below:
1000 and Counting! We have reached our online petition target of 1000, with almost 800 signatures coming in the last 4 weeks.
On behalf of those involved in the campaign and would like to thank you all for your support and offers of help, money, time and utmost support.
I think both Urban Splash who still hope to demolish this building in 2 weeks time and Manchester City Council who are supporting this, will know if they precede they are going against the wishes of a community of many.
There will also be a paper petition going around Ancoats and nearby towns this weekend, so I’m positive we’ll gain even more support.
This is our city and we’re sick of greedy developers destroying it then leaving it in a worse state than they found it.
Please everyone continue to send letters and emails and direct telephone calls to your local Councillors and please ensure Urban Splash also hear your objections to this.
Urban Splash are on Facebook
and Twitter – Urban Splash (0161 839 2999)
Email – headoffice@urbansplash.co.uk
THANK YOU ONCE AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR FANTASTIC SUPPORT!
900+ and counting. Lets keep it up.
Please could everyone SIGN and FORWARD this petition to 10+ of their friends to sign. All support is very much appreciated.
http://www.petitiononline.co.uk/petition/save-ancoats-dispensary/3320
Dr Simon Thurley CBE. © 2012 www.rhul.ac.uk
To Simon Thurley
I was shocked and outraged at the decision by the Secretary of State (Eric Pickles), English Heritage and indeed Manchester City Council to allow the last remaining building out of 21 – the Ancoats Dispensary – to be allowed to be demolished.
In 11 years property speculators Urban Splash have taken a solid building and have been granted demolition on 2 other listed buildings on the site with I presume the backing of both English Heritage and Manchester City Council.
In that 11 years the building has under your watch been subjected to what amounts to wanton cultural vandalism.
Having spoke to Communities and Local Government representative today and heard that English Heritage was ‘disappointed’ it did not object to the demolition. This is quite astounding to say the least.
What it is apparent is that this building lies in an area outside London, where protection of London’s history, now marketed to all terms and purposes as national heritage, is simply not of equal importance. If this is not the case, how can an historic building, within an area that is widely regarded as being the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, not be of national or even regional importance! This is of world importance. It is clear to Fight2SaveAncoatsDispensary that protection of our built heritage is two-tiered in that whilst stately houses get prime protection, working-class or indeed under-class of the period in question is not worthy of protection as it doesn’t meet the ideology and mythic Americanised image of Englishness, where we all live in castles and stately homes.
Further reading
800 and counting. Lets keep it up.
Please could everyone SIGN and FORWARD this petition to 10+ of their friends to sign. All support is very much appreciated.
http://www.petitiononline.co.uk/petition/save-ancoats-dispensary/3320
St. Pauls demolition in London. © 2008 Nick Purser/ActionAid
Your immediate response is that their is something wrong with this picture and for good reason…
The natural instinct to value what has gone before grows inside you as you witness something of majesty as it is removed from this earth forever. The feeling of respect in loss. The natural inquisitiveness to understand how it was achieved on parting. The admiration of the skill of the architect and craftsmen that built it and the frustration and sense of helplessness that their legacy is not honoured or protected for future generations to share, enjoy and learn from. The aesthetic beauty and pride in the fact that our ancestors gave and achieved so much, only for it to be reduced to rubble in a matter of moments.
Whilst St. Pauls in London is very secure in the nations hearts as well protected by law, many buildings are not so fortunate and yet equally or more important to the story of the nation and the people that have helped shape it through the ages. Ancoats Hospital in Manchester is one such building and the very last building, the Dispensary is one such building which is about to be lost forever. WE must not let this happen.
Is nothing sacred in our communities! Is our culture, our history and heritage worth nothing over than the amount of land it sits upon!
Should we have a nomadic existence where all our worldly possession are packed into a bag and transported with us where ever we go. No mark upon the earth for which we have tread! No testament to our achievements within the community we were born. No legacy good or bad to give to our children to make them better than we were. No lessons to be learnt from the buildings that have helped shape lives and which whole communities grew from.
If you believe history, culture and heritage is worth more than just the land it sits upon, then please sign this petition to save one of the last buildings from the Ancoats community of New Islington.
700 and counting. Lets keep it up. Your support is very much appreciated. Historic Grade II listed Ancoats Hospital is at risk of being lost forever. Lets make sure this integral building of the Industrial Revolution and to the story of Manchester is saved, restored and reused by the community of Ancoats, Manchester and the world.
Please could everyone SIGN and FORWARD this petition to 10+ of their friends to sign. All support is very much appreciated.
http://www.petitiononline.co.uk/petition/save-ancoats-dispensary/3320
Beamish, The Living Museum of the North
Hello HistoryME
Colliery Inn, The
Thank you very much for this and for considering the museum in this matter. I am afraid that the North West is really outside our collecting area as a regional museum of the North East. We are actually considering rebuilding another pub, but already have the remains of the sadly demolished Colliery Inn from about three miles away in store here.
As you obviously appreciate, moving a building is very much a last option. I read recently that an open air museum in the Chilterns had apparently collected a mill from Cumbria, and the Welsh National Folk Museum at St Fagans obviously collect from all over Wales, but to move buildings this sort of distance is pretty exceptional, not only because it naturally massively increases the costs of staff and travelling time and accomodation, but because one is moving a structure completely out of any cultural setting. For me this pub is magnificent, but even for its date, it is subtly unlike similar buildings on Tyneside for example.
The costs of such a project are rather a ‘how long is a piece of string’ matter I am afraid the short answer being that this entirely depends on the quality of the job. It also depends hugely on whether it is being done by your own, experienced staff, or by contractors who may have been appointed on grounds of cost only. We have moved whole buildings or, at times, just the facades. We are currently in the last stages of rebuilding the medieval and later St Helens Church from Eston, Middlesborough, and I am confident that we will have well over 90% of all the external blocks in their original position and relationships. The internals however we could not afford to manage so closely, it was random rubble, so only the right stones have gone back into the right walls, as it were. This was due to time and money constraints at the time we rescued it 15 years ago.
The last building we collected was by contract, a bit of a risk for us but actually the firm proved to be careful and thoughtful beyond our expectations. Some museums, such as the Black Country at Dudley have always made a great effort to number every brick and replace them exactly. If I was doing a Roman building, I would do that too, but my own belief is that the more one knows and understands about the time and culture that produced the building, the more one can relax about this. For your pub, then obviously every shaped brick and all the ornamental brickwork, stone work and mullions should be recorded as a minimum. Beyond that it is a matter of ethics and preference as to how far the frontage is treated and recorded, following architectural drawings and regularised photography. Would you intend to move the whole building (I do not know to what level the interiors survive), including side and rear walls? The cellars? Another issue is whether you would reconstruct the building to ‘end of working life’, as William Morris might have preferred (as do I), or to ‘as built’?
The first question to ask is actually ‘will it come apart?’ As you will appreciate, modern cements were only coming in towards the end of the Victorian period, but lime mortars can vary wildly – they are by no means always the loose white lime of the 18th and early 19th centuries used in so many rural buildings. Our Church had some C 15th mud mortar which was surprisingly hard, 1822 white lime which was very poor indeed and a pinky coal fired lime from the C 17th which was some of the hardest stuff I have dealt with: if the stones had been smaller and softer, we could have had a real problem there. Across the North East we had, in the C 19th, a lot of black ‘pug lime’ mortar. Frighteningly hard if kept dry, but in a wet derelict building it soon de-natures. The best thing to do is to make several careful holes in the building before committing to practicality, timescale or cost.
Hetton Silver Band Hall shortly before being carefully taken down - 2012
There is no doubt that it is absolutely always cheaper to restore and repair in situ; moving is always the most expensive. The small brick Hetton Silver Band Hall building which we recently collected costed £47,000 before asbestos stripping to dismantle and transport to store. I would imagine your pub might cost four times that as an absolute minimum? For more pictures on the Hetton Silver Band Hall deconstruction please click LINK.
I hope these thoughts are of some help and I wish you the best for your project.
Jim Rees
Curator
Beamish Living Museum of the North
Pictures and further details regarding the Smiths Arms can be found at this LINK
Brick by Brick
To HistoryME
Have you got some contact details I can have?
I have spoke with Mr Holland and Mr Walden regarding this matter. We would like to discuss your requirements and possibly make a site visit to view the Smiths Arm Pub.
Mr Walden has spent many years in the museum industry and is considered by many to be the best consultant with regards to historical building relocation in Europe.
Regards
Mr S Holland
Holland Contracting
historyme 