Manchester, London Road

 

When size matters

I have marked my recent visit to Manchester with a series of posts on three of the city’s small architectural gems – a cinema, a chop house and a library – structures that many people might miss in a city full of buildings that are on such a large scale that they command the view. For my next couple of posts, then, I turn to some seriously big Mancunian buildings.

Hardly has the visitor emerged from Manchester Piccadilly station than the parade of architectural juggernauts begins. In London Road, straight opposite the railway hub, is this Edwardian baroque monster, which housed police, ambulance, and fire stations, together with a coroner’s court, for much of the 20th century. It’s an enormous structure, and the part visible in my first photograph is just one facade of a building with four unequal sides surrounding a large courtyard. In 1906, when it was completed, Manchester was a prosperous city that wanted to give the emergency services a home that was architecturally magnificent and the design, by Woodhouse, Willoughby and Langham,* fits the bill. There’s the full Edwardian panoply of towers, turrets, domes, classical columns and grand entrances, all in a combination of red brick and glazed terracotta. Rows of windows are testimony not only to the various offices occupied by the emergency services and the coroner’s staff, but also to the many apartments provided. Workers such as firemen, on call night and day, often lived on site, in this case in homes that were better than most of those in the surrounding, rather poor, area. Whatever one feels about the design as a whole, the architects made a noble effort to compose the diverse elements – the large entrance arch, the rows of windows, the recessed section with its pairs of columns, the various towers – to create a convincing composition.

The decorative details, for those with the time to give them the attention they deserve, are likewise impressive. Among the best are above the largest entrance on London Road. Above the great central arch are two groups of allegorical figures. On the left are three figures representing fire: they bear torches and thunderbolts, and their hair is aflame. Opposite are three water-carriers, who offer the solution: at their feet are fishes and foliage grows prolifically above their heads, representing the life that can thrive when the danger of fire has been averted. Figures with similar iconography are set above the central window and within the arch, near the ‘FIRE STATION’ plaque.

This extraordinary building served the emergency services through much of the 20th century, most of it closing when the fire-fighters moved out in 1986. With the closure of the coroner’s court in 1998, the place was finally empty. In spite of a plan to convert it to a hotel, it was left abandoned and deteriorating until recent years and now a new scheme is underway for a mixed-use conversion. I believe work on this is still ongoing.

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* A short-lived local partnership of three architects who practised with various partners and in different groupings. Manchester, a large and growing metropolis, was able to sustain numerous architects – most of the Manchester buildings that I’m posting were designed by firms based in the city.

Trafalgar Square, London

On the look-out

How many people miss this as they walk across London’s most famous square? It has been called ‘London’s smallest police station,’ although even this is perhaps too grand a name for such a small building. It’s really a cousin of the blue police boxes that used to be a familiar sight and that acquired a new fame through the TV series Dr Who.

Trafalgar Square became a scene of large gatherings and popular protests in the 19th century. There was a at least a perceived need to have a police presence here in response to such assemblies and the police had a temporary wooden box erected in the square in the early-20th century, but no one was happy with either the appearance or durability of this. By 1926, with the General Strike alarming the authorities, it was suggested that a more permanent police observation post should be set up in here so that protests and demonstrations could be monitored. To begin with, the idea met with such public opprobrium that it wasn’t acted on, but then someone* had the idea of hiding such a structure in plain sight – in a grandiose stone lamp sited at one corner of the square. It was large enough for one officer and a telephone so that he could summon help from the nearest fully staffed police station. After it was converted from gas to electricity, the rather beautiful lamp at the top would flash to summon the officer if he had left his post to patrol the square.

I’m not sure when the box was decommissioned, but it’s now apparently used as a store for street cleaners’ equipment, although there didn’t seem to be much inside on the occasion recently when I passed. From a tiny ‘police station’ to a monumental tool cupboard: that’s progress.

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* The idea seems to have emerged in an exchange of letters between Sir Lionel Earle, permanent secretary to the Office of Works, and a Mr G. Edwards of the Metropolitan Police. Some sources attribute the idea to ’Sir Lionel Edwards’ but as Ian Visits points out in a generally excellent article, Sir Lionel Edwards seems not to have existed.

East Norton, Leicestershire

Ello, ello

‘I know you’ll like this,’ said Mr Ashley, pointing to the word ‘POLICE’ above the door. And, in spite of the rain, before you could say ‘Ello, ello,’ I was out of the car and taking photographs. I was attracted immediately by the beautifully arranged glazing bars that make a pattern of elongated hexagons, diamonds and triangles across each of the five front windows. And to the simple lettering of the sign, cut in stone. And to the peculiar stepped pediment above the door that frames the sign. Not to mention the careful detailing of the brickwork.

As I was taking all this in, the owner of this former police station, now house, emerged. She explained that she and her husband were restoring the house, and that he was busy removing generations of paint from the glazing bars. If you click on the picture and look very closely, you might be able to see that those on the bottom left window, and the left-hand casement of the top right window, have already been done. The difference is remarkable. I’ve written before about the way in which layers of paint, added over decades or even centuries, can blur the detail of friezes and other ornate details. It was the same with these glazing bars, but now it’s being put right. It’s a long job, but it must be rewarding to see the windows emerging crisp and clean.

The owner also told me that the house dates to around 1850, and that the neighbouring building was put up in the later 19th century as a court house. So it has the plainer brickwork and sash windows of the Victorian era, whereas the old police station has the ornate glazing* and fancy detailing that are much more typical of the pre-Victorian period – but with the addition of the rather heavy stepped pediment which looks to me more like a nod to the heavier style then coming in. Altogether a winning combination to come across on a rainy morning. Thank you, Mr A.

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* I associate this sort of filigree glazing with the Picturesque movement of the late-18th and early-19th centuries, when it adorned many a charming cottage. But it’s also sometimes used to give a uniform and decorative feel to more workaday cottages built by aristocrats to house their staff, and an online source attributes this police station to a 19th-century Lord Berners. A uniform glazing pattern can give a group of hoses, or a whole village, a distinctive appearance – a phenomenon I’ve noticed, for example, here.