Produced in 2019 by The Mayfield Partnership The Gatehouse 11 Baring Street Manchester M1 2PY mayfieldmanchester.co.uk 0161 509 9505
Mayfield is being delivered by The Mayfield Partnership, a public private joint venture partnership between LCR, Manchester City Council, Transport for Greater Manchester and regeneration specialist U+I.
The passion of our goal Overseeing the development of Mayfield is an extraordinary privilege. Its heart is a forgotten river and its soul is a derelict railway station. The people of Mayfield and their stories of the past and the present inspire everything that we are creating for the future. At Mayfield in the 1700s Thomas Hoyle Snr harnessed the River Medlock to power his mill while revolutionising the textile industry. He pushed scientific boundaries to bring colourful cloth at affordable prices to ordinary people. Our job is to breathe life back into this special place, again maximising the river’s qualities, but this time for well-being and nature. To again push technological boundaries and create, safe, productive, sustainable and vibrant places. To again change the lives of millions.
Everyone involved feels the passion of our goal and so I asked our friend Len Grant to document our progress by sketching the stories of the people. This is the first in a series of biannual books which tell of our small chapter in Mayfield’s great history as we, together with its community, build its phenomenal future. James Heather, U+I on behalf of the Mayfield Partnership October 2019
The first phase of the development of Mayfield includes a new park, the first city centre park in over a century. It’ll be a park for everyone... and everyone has a say in its creation.
I’m not sure if the parents arriving to pick up their kids are more bemused to see me sitting on a little stool sketching or to see a canvas canopy set up inside their school entrance. “It’s all about a new park being built on the other side of the road,” I say to one quizzical mum as she looks from me to the consultation tent and back again. “Part of the Mayfield Manchester regeneration project,” I explain. She tentatively steps forward to be greeted by Max Aughton, a landscape architect from the design team, Studio Egret West. “We’re opening up the River Medlock,” I hear him say as he explains the masterplan to this local mum. “This is all part of the conversation to hear your views on what we’re proposing for the new park.” It’s a Friday afternoon at the end of May and Medlock Primary School in Ardwick has, over the last few months, become something of a consultation partner with dozens of its schoolchildren taking part in design workshops laid on by the Mayfield Partnership. Today is the latest stop in a two-week consultation roadshow that will see this canvas canopy transferred to the city centre tomorrow as the word is spread and more views gathered. It’s not the first time the developer and its team has asked for opinions. On a cold and rainy evening back
in November a host of different professionals and community groups were invited to Fairfield Social Club on Temperance Street for an evening of ‘co-creation’. “We’re going to deliver the first park of any scale in Manchester for over 100 years,” U+I director James Heather had declared, microphone in hand. “Yes, we have lots of gardens and squares but this will be the only park inside the boundary of the Mancunian Way. It’s a rare opportunity.” Before introducing the design team he’d offered some encouragement: “We want our park to be cared for, embraced and loved by the community. So think broadly, have freedom of thought and of expression... we’re not expecting everyone to agree.”
Around the room experts on horticulture, children’s play, and mental health joined with the design teams from U+I and from Studio Egret West. But, as Max’s colleague, Duncan Paybody had explained, “We’re embracing the River Medlock and see it as a real asset. We’ll respond to the way it meanders and we’ll create a sequence of interlocking spaces that satisfy the many potential park uses. We’re mindful that the park is nothing without its community,” he’d said.
Suggestions flowed quickly that evening as the invited participants considered the designers’ initial ideas around the subject areas of health and wellbeing; natural habitat and wildlife; and children and play. “How useful was that co-creation event?” I ask Max when I’ve finished my sketch and we wait for the kids to spill out of school. “Did it affect your design?” “It was really useful. It was good for us to check our ideas and yes, we’ve made some changes. Originally
we had a designated play area and a designated ecological area. We heard how people wanted the park to work extra hard – 6.5 acres sounds big but isn’t huge – so we’ve decided to merge these two and now have ecological enhancement areas and opportunities to play throughout the park.” As the children are reunited with their parents and carers many of them drag their grown-ups under the canopy to show them the park plans that they’re already familiar with. It’s good to see the consultation tent getting marginally more attention than the nearby ice cream van. The next afternoon the consultation tent has been erected in the busy Piccadilly Gardens under the stoney gaze of Queen Victoria’s statue. Already the park proposals are attracting attention and people are tapping comments onto iPads. Max is in full flow, explaining to a couple who live in the city centre what has to happen before building work can start. “To open up the river we have to take out the river
walls which create a larger area for flood waters to gather,” he says. “So there are enabling works to do first that will get the levels right before we can start constructing anything.” Sitting on the statue steps I chat with Jess Higham, one of a trio of designer-makers known as Standard Practice. Tenants at Mayfield, they and their collaborators organise a plethora of creative activities for the Partnership and have taken a key role in community consultation for the park. “We use design to work with different communities to tell stories,” explains Jess, “and we were invited to start telling those stories about the new park. As play will be such an integral part of the park, we thought it’d be a good idea to come up with a prototype playground.” “And that’s what you’ve been working with the school children on?” “We always like to work with those who’ll be using the final product, kids in this case. So we organised a series of drop-ins for the public as well as a workshop programme for Year 3 at Medlock Primary School.”
“And why Medlock in particular?” “It’s the closest school to the site and was by far the most enthusiastic when we approached them. They’re already doing amazing programmes like teaching the kids how to make fires and having their own woodland wilderness area in their playground. They had the right attitude to really get stuck in which is what we needed.” Jess tells me they did eight workshops overall, six in the school and a couple at Underway, their project space in one of the railway arches at Mayfield. I’d taken my sketchbook to one of each. “It was important the schoolchildren have an expansive view of what an urban playground could be. We wanted them to think more broadly about design and so, with these 7 to 8-year-olds, we covered everything from mapping and masterplanning, to planting and landscaping, to surface design. We started by using surrealist art to make characters.” “Surrealist art?” “Rather than thinking about using the park themselves, we encouraged the kids to create a series of wacky characters that they could imagine using the park. One group would draw a head, another group a left arm.
Then a right arm, and so on. Then we put them all together. Those characters were in their imaginations for every subsequent week, and would re-appear in their designs and drawings. “Some of the workshops were quite intense...” “Yes, I remember. Classrooms full of excited kids on a Friday afternoon.” “... but they really grasped it. All of their designs influenced our final piece.”
The following week I take my sketchbook and paint box to a workshop unit in Trafford Park, an expansive industrial park alongside the historic Manchester Ship Canal. Beside a percussion emporium and a company operating mobile billboard vans, maker Tim Denton and his small team create bespoke wooden structures for clients as diverse as market traders and the Manchester International Festival. A couple of months ago Tim co-led one of Standard Practice’s workshops with the public, inviting participants to inspire the park’s design. “Let’s start with some mark-making,” he’d said, as the kids helped themselves to twigs, string, sponges, wallpaper rollers, elastic bands and even a toilet brush. Before long the floor at Underway was covered in paint, glue and a cacophony of craft materials. Two hours later the mark-making had given way to collage and 3D-modelling, and the children’s creations were taking shape. Four-year-old Ted had branches poking out of cardboard tubes he’d decorated himself: “It’s a treehouse and climbing frame,” he’d declared. Today, in Tim’s workshop bursting with near-complete commissions, the finishing touches are being made to a tall wooden structure with a Toblerone-shape
at its base. It’s the culmination of all the children’s workshops and in a week or two will be installed in the Mayfield courtyard. “The schoolkids have named it May Play,” says Tim as we squeeze ourselves next to the industrial circular saw. “Brilliant name. But where do you start to design something like that?” “We all sat down and discussed the main themes that came from the workshops. First there was safe spaces: the kids had drawn or made lots of shelter or huts. They’d also made drawing and models that were about establishing routes through things, so movement became our second theme and that’s why it’s an open structure you can run through.” “And the third?” “Role play was the final theme we drew out. I didn’t want to make a pirate ship or anything recognisable. It needed to be quite abstract so kids could bring their own imaginations to it.” Shelter; movement and role play. I can now see all of that in May Play. “And what about the shapes?” “In the workshops we noticed that whatever you gave the kids – twigs, Lego or Meccano-type pieces –
they wouldn’t put them together in a conventional way with straight edges. Instead they’d lash them together with string or stick them together with tape. Nothing was square, so we tried to give this piece the same feel. “For a lot of the shapes we could point out a child’s drawings and show you where the inspiration has come from. The ear forms on the top are from some pipe cleaners that were bent into that shape. The illustrations that Rob’s doing on the surfaces are literally lifted from the kids’ designs. So yes, there’s lots of reference to the workshops.” “What have you enjoyed about doing it?” Tim doesn’t have to think: “Not having to make any perpendicular joints. It’s been liberating to be free to interpret a kid’s drawing. It forces you to work outside your comfort zone, and that’s been good.”
“But, you know, being a local lad from Manchester, it’s been quite humbling to be involved in what is the most interesting development in the city right now. We’re a family business, my dad and I set it up in 2008, and this is by far the biggest job we’ve worked on. By the time we’re finished we’ll have knocked down about 15 buildings. “From a demolition point of view it’s been quite challenging: demolishing over a live water course... all the asbestos issues. But we’re on track to get it all finished in time for Pride Live next month. We couldn’t be working for nicer people.” Michael Finnigan, MJ Finnigan Demolition
“I enjoy everything about it. I love it. I can never imagine working in construction. It takes them years to build something, it takes me a couple of weeks to knock it down. It’s very satisfying. I can just look at a building and knock it down in my head before we even get close. “My granddad and great granddad were both in the demolition trade. My grandfather taught me the ropes, told me the old stories, the old lads’ jokes. They had it a lot harder than us. They didn’t have the machines we have, they just had a wrecking ball and it was a lot more dangerous back then.” Sam, demolition operative
Frank started his working life as an apprentice fitter at Bayer Peacock, the world-renowned railway works in Gorton. Over the years he’s worked in a bakery and for the local electricity company. His first job with the Post Office was as a postman in Denton before he worked the parcels... You could earn so much money from overtime at the Mayfield parcel depot they used to call it the Golden Nugget. The main parcel office was further up Travis Street and that’s where we’d do our regular shifts. It was the main parcel office for Manchester and hundreds of Post Office workers would sort the incoming parcels, many of them returns to the mail order firms like GUS and Ambrose Wilson. Once you’d done your eight hours at Travis Street you’d then walk down the road and do overtime at Mayfield Station unloading the trains.
Trains would come from all over the country and us postmen would be waiting for them. The parcels would be in bags with yellow or blue labels all stacked in blue-painted metal cages called BRUTES. We’d pull the BRUTES off the trains and towards the conveyor which was a slow-moving link chain. Each bag would be clicked onto the chain then across a link bridge high above Fairfield Street – it’s not there any more – and into the main depot.
I preferred the morning shift. I’d work 6am until 2pm in the main office and then four hours overtime – until 6pm – at the station. I regularly worked 12 hours a day.
If you were on a late shift, 1pm to 9pm, then you’d do your overtime in the morning from 9 until 12 say. On nights you might finish your regular shift at 6am and then do overtime after that. If it was really busy the bosses wouldn’t even regulate it. If you wanted to come in at 6 in the morning and work until 10 at night, you could do. The main thing was, it was good money. When we got really busy and the sorting office couldn’t cope, we’d take the bags down below in the undercroft and do a rough sorting there. We’d call it the rat hole. You can imagine thousands of those bags all stacked on top of each other and now and again you’d see something move and that would be a rat or a family of rats. It was such a depressing place, like a prison. And then they started modernising. Parcels started coming by road instead of rail and they decided to close Mayfield. There were no compulsory redundancies. I was turning 50 when it finished and was given a pension. So it worked for me. I’ve had a Post Office pension for the last 25 years. After that I’ve done lots of jobs.The last one was a handyman before I retired completely.
At 15, Ray would take a steam train from his local station at Heald Green into Manchester Mayfield for his first job as an office boy at Gorton Tank. I had a free third class rail pass for eight miles and 22 chains – the exact distance to Gorton Tank – and if I went any further I’d have to pay. At the station all the newspapers would be laid out: the Daily Herald and the Daily Dispatch, and you’d put your tuppence or thruppence in the honesty box, it was all done on trust. On the platform we’d all stand in the same place each morning, for me, it was where I knew the third class compartment would stop. The 5400 steam locomotives – the big black 5s we used to call them – ran on the Crewe to Manchester line and we’d stop at Longsight before terminating in Mayfield. At rush hour about 300 people would be coming out of that station. It got very busy. You’d dash across the footbridge to platform 14 of what was then London Road Station and on to platform 1, 2,
3 or 4, the Eastern Region, where I’d get the train up to Gorton. It took half an hour to get from Heald Green to British Rail Gorton Locomotive Works, or Gorton Tank as everyone used to call it because of the massive water tank on Cornwall Street. We’d build and repair locomotives. 450 blokes worked in the iron foundry; we had a wheelwrights; a smithy; boiler mounting, about 19 ‘shops’ in all. When I was there they were building the electric ‘Bo-bos’ and ‘Co-cos’ for the Manchester-Sheffield line, the first in the country to be electrified. My first job was as junior office boy in the accounts department. At the start of each day I would fill the ink wells, red, green and blue on every desk. And there were more than 150 people in that office. There were three sections: expenditure, payroll and accounting and two gaffers at each end. It was very quiet, you weren’t allowed to talk. If you had to go to the stationers for a new nib, she’d tell you off for pressing too hard on the old one. Everyone had their own towel and bar of soap for the washroom. My job, every Monday morning, was to collect last week’s towel and give them a new one.
At the end of each day I’d go on the post. We had about 30 girls in the typing pool. The day’s letters were signed by the bosses, put in the baskets, collected by the messengers and left on the letter desk. At four o’clock I had to write the envelopes for each letter, put the stamps on, and seal it with wax with the Gorton Tank stamp. I must have done hundreds before home time at five-thirty.
As a girl Mary lived on Philips Park Road in Beswick, near where the Etihad Stadium is now. Back then she was surrounded by a colliery, a gasworks and Richard Johnson’s Wire Works that supplied wire to the world. Every Monday morning her mother would push their pram to the Mayfield Washhouse. The washhouse was midway down Baring Street, I think. It was very popular. In the school holidays I’d walk down, stand outside and wait for my mum. All the other ladies would come out with her and they’d say, hello Mary. They were lovely. I loved going down there. From our house you’d pass the Don Cinema on Ashton New Road; then past a huge maternity place for displaced people on Mitchell Street, and on past the Bank of England pub where apparently there was a murder. On Pollard Street there was a huge factory called Stevenson’s Boxworks – Stevie’s we called it – where they made cardboard boxes, my sister worked there.
There was a Co-op near there and, across the road, was a bacon factory on Great Ancoats Street before you got to Travis Street. I loved Travis Street because all the archways would be open, all the lights were on, and it was so busy. Busy, busy, busy. There were always lots of men around, laughing and joking. One day my mother wasn’t well and if you missed your slot you’d lose your booking for the following Monday. So, Mary being Mary said, I’ll go Mum, because I knew all the ladies. My mother said, “Tell the ladies I’m not well, they will help you.” And they did, they were wonderful. I’d never been inside before and the humidity of the place just blew me away because of all the dampness. Everything was ready. There was a row of huge round tubs with lids on. You had one to yourself. The bedding and clothes would go into one tub – we’d change the bedding every week – and, once it had drained you’d pull out one of the huge drying cabinets on the opposite wall and put all your clothes on that. Unfortunately I didn’t know you had to wait your turn and I walked right up to a dryer, put my clothes on, and the ladies just looked at me. When my mother went the next week, they said, “You know that little bugger just walked right in front of everybody!”
Further down the room there was a kind of pressing machine. It was like an old mangle, but all automatic. You folded your dry clothes, sheets and towels and put them through the mangle and collected it all at the other end. You’d be in and out in an hour because, as you left, the next ladies were ready to come in. It all cost nine old pennies and I’d push the pram back to Philips Park Road. I’d be about 10 years old. My dad worked for the railways – North West Region, I think it was – and he used to collect parcels from Mayfield Station in his horse and cart. Sometimes, not often, he’d pick me up and take me with him. We’d ride into the station, onto the platforms, and the trains would be there waiting. I loved that. And you know why? Because of the smell of the steam engines. You’ve not lived if you’ve never smelt a steam engine. The smell, the whole atmosphere, and all the men running around. They were like flies. They worked hard, very hard. It was very big, or it seemed big to me. I didn’t dare move, or even speak. Then he’d drop me off at Ashton New Road and I’d walk home. I had a smashing childhood. I can never say they were the bad old days, they weren’t for me.
In a redundant railway arch near Manchester’s Piccadilly Station a potter is clearing up after a tilemaking workshop. Across the River Medlock a cycling enthusiast is unlocking the shutters to Manchester’s first indoor bike track and, in a nearby workshop, a trio of product designers is constructing an interactive sculpture for an exhibition at The Lowry art centre. This is Mayfield & Co: a handful of passionate entrepreneurs establishing their fledgling ventures in an historic corner of Manchester that’s no stranger to innovation. While the consultations, demolitions, site surveys and planning applications are all underway, the Mayfield Partnership has made some of the site’s redundant buildings and otherwise empty spaces available to this diverse community of emerging businesses. In the first of two stories I criss-cross the site to meet three businesses who became the first interim tenants. “Quite milky, no sugar,” I say to Bailey as he makes me a brew at the bar of Fairfield Social Club. It’s been over 30 years since the last trains would have trundled overhead on their way to deliver Post Office parcels to the nearby depot. We’re at Arch 6 on Temperance Street on the eastern edge of the 24acre Mayfield site.
Since 2016 these voluminous arches have been home to street food and event company Grub, the first to be invited to make use of Mayfield’s unused spaces. As well as gigs, weddings and private events, the Social Club is home to a weekend street food event which, come summertime, migrates across the site to the gatehouse courtyard. “Before Grub I had a ‘proper job’ running financial projects for a university,” says Bailey as we sit down. “But I was also obsessed by food and drink. My wife and I had recently moved to Levenshulme where a community market had just been launched and we were keen to get involved. “We launched a Columbian street food stall called Arepa Arepa Arepa – my wife is half Columbian – and people loved it. We were trading almost every weekend at the market and it became a part-time job.” “And then you took the leap,” I say, “and decided to do it full time?” “I liked my job. It was safe and secure but we were thinking of starting a family and looking for a change in lifestyle, an opportunity to do something different. But there was also a dissatisfaction with the street food scene and we wanted to change things.
“Levy Market opened our eyes to how magical and important markets can be. They’re fantastic community assets and an amazing experience when done right. And that’s the same for street food. There’s an incredible human connection when you are served by the person who owns the business and cooks the food. And all that is, of course, lost in a restaurant. “And what was wrong with the scene back then?” “A lack of authenticity,” says Bailey, “organisers were promoting their events as being ‘indie’ while using large brand restaurants to serve the street food alongside mass-produced beers pretending to be craft beer. We wanted to shake that up.”
Grub began by organising the food for other people’s events before launching their own monthly event at a Manchester brewery. This turned into a successful weekly event at another brewery which got them thinking about finding their own space.
“We were on the look out for a new home when U+I came for a chat and outlined their plans. We had no idea anything of this scale was about to happen. Of course we said we’d love to get involved and it went from there.” “Since I’ve got to know U+I I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” I say. “I’ve known lots of developers and they’re not always genuine in their aspirations for making positive change. Is U+I different or is it just smoke and mirrors?” “Nope. I totally agree that they’re different. We wouldn’t have said yes to just anyone. We’ve heard stories of working with developers and things haven’t gone well. Little people like us can sometimes get caught up in the corporate machinery. But that’s not the case with U+I. “They do have huge ambitions. From the top down they understand what Manchester needs and wants. They genuinely want real change and something great to happen here.” ***
On the opposite side of the Mayfield site, half a dozen cabins sit on what would have been the Mayfield Station concourse, the platforms stretching out in front of them. Between 1910 and 1960 this place was a commuter station receiving steam trains from the city’s southern suburbs. The huge buffers that still remain at the end of the lines would have been powered by a network of pump houses that sent very high pressured water around the city. Primarily used to compact cotton bales before transportation, this power source also lifted theatre curtains and moved the hands of the town hall clock.
Way before the railways arrived Thomas Hoyle had established the Mayfield Print Works on the banks of the River Medlock and was using the latest scientific advances to bring printed calico to a mass market. Most famously Hoyle had developed a technique that capitalised on the synthetic production of a purple dye. Previously mountains of Mediterranean Sea snails would be sacrificed to extract sufficient purple pigment to colour cloth. Which is why expensive purple robes were traditionally reserved for emperors, royalty and clergy. It was Hoyle, in his dye works next to the River Medlock in Cottonopolis, who made purple calico cotton affordable. “It’s why we are here,” says Amar from his office in one of the cabins, “and it’s why our textile business is called Tom & Dick’s. Being based at the
heart of where Thomas Hoyle made his calico prints is hugely important to us.” “And ‘Dick’?” “Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the steam driven textile mill, without which Manchester would not have been the international powerhouse it was.” I nod my agreement. Amar’s own family history is interwoven with textiles. He remembers going to warehouses around Mayfield as a kid to collect bedding for his dad’s shop. After university Amar worked in the industry before following a more corporate career. “I could feel myself being sucked in,” he says, “but wanted to get back to textiles. I’ve always been a bit of a nerd about textiles. “On work trips I’d hear colleagues discuss the things they did to aid sleep. There was talk of sleep apps, sprays, the right mattress, but no one really talked about the sheets you sleep on for eight hours each night.” After three years of research Tom & Dick’s is about to launch its online range of ‘affordable luxury’ bedding. Amar visited dozens of countries and cotton mills to find the right product and the right mill to craft the bedding. “We’re working with a mill in Guimaraes, near Porto –
Portugal’s equivalent to Manchester – where the cutting and the stitching is still done by hand.” “Ours will be an ethically-sourced product created without the use of harmful chemicals in the process. There’s no plastic packaging and even the buttons we use on the duvets are made from recycled plastic. Most people don’t go to that level of detail.” “As well as the bedding, Tom & Dick’s is producing a range of cushions with designs inspired by Hoyle’s original prints. We really wanted to do something with these amazing prints from The National Archive that are all dated and stamped, so our launch design,” – he shows me a mock-up – “takes its inspiration from the meandering course of the River Medlock. Everything we do is connected with this place.” *** In another of the cabins, near where the station’s WH Smith used to be, Tom is packing another shipment of handmade soy wax candles for one of his regular overseas clients. “I was helping clearing out the cellars at my mother’s school,” he explains after I ask him how the Bottle Candle Co started, “and we found a crate of old style milk bottles. They were doing a charity event and I suggested we put candles in the bottles. We did and they sold really well.
“A year later I was out of work and at a loss. I’d applied for lots of jobs and was getting nowhere. That’s when I went to the Princes’ Trust for advice. “They asked me if I’d ever sold anything and I told them about the candles in bottles. They encouraged me to start it as a business and brand it.” “That’s a big jump,” I suggest, “from school fete to making a living from selling candles in bottles.” “Yes, that’s what I thought. I didn’t see it as a business and was doubtful at first. But I was eager to give it a go.” Tom had studied consumer marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University and was comfortable creating his own brand, drawing the illustrations and designing a logo. He started small: makers’ markets and Christmas fayres. “I’d sell some, buy double, sell those on. I put £200 of my own money into getting started.” Melting wax in his parents’ kitchen, Tom’s venture began to snowball. He set up stall at agricultural shows and with the proceeds paid for a pitch at national trade show. “From there the orders started to flow,” he recalls. “I had one from Switzerland and another from a supermarket chain in the States. I started taking bespoke orders for candles as VIP gifts.”
By now Tom had expanded his business into a lockup garage and would have been oblivious to the opportunities at Mayfield had it not been for a chance meeting at a swanky black tie event. “I’d met the then Lord Mayor, Carl Austin-Behan, at the Manchester Youth Market,” he says, “and he’d commissioned some candles for a town hall formal dinner. I was invited along and sat at the Mayor’s table feeling completely out of my depth.” At the ‘do’ Tom was introduced to a U+I director who listened to his story and invited his Bottle Candle Co to be part of Mayfield & Co. “They gave me this cabin and I have a desk in the shared space with Amar,” he says. “Being here, you have a real sense of being part of something big. “I’m happy now. If I hadn’t had this opportunity I wouldn’t be where I am.”
For this first sketchbook Len Grant would like to thank: Max Aughton, Studio Egret West, egretwest.com Jess Higham, Standard Practice, standardpractice.studio Tim Denton, timdenton.info The children at Medlock Primary School Mike, Adam and all the lads at M J Finnigan Demolition, mjfdemolition.co.uk Everyone behind the scenes at Invisible Cities at Manchester International Festival, mif.co.uk Frank, Ray and Mary for their storytelling Bailey at Grub, grubmcr.com Amar at Tom & Dick’s, tomanddicks.co.uk Tom at Bottle Candle Co, bottlecandleco.uk and all the artists working in the WoW workshop for Manchester Day 2019 including Amy Hegarty, Rory Lynch, Jonny Quick and Emily Wood. Along with Walk the Plank’s producer Lauren Barton and production manager Byron Manning.
Next issue... I’m completely in love with the English countryside. Places like The Lakes and the North York Moors really inspire me. I’d love to put some of that feeling into an urban park.
Duncan Paybody, Studio Egret West
In our next issue Len will be visiting the team of landscape architects designing Mayfield’s new park... and popping into the Star and Garter pub to get the full story of this Manchester icon.
Len Grant is a sketcher, writer and photographer. As a photographer and writer he has documented much of the city’s regeneration over more than two decades. His many books and exhibitions cover the construction of architectural icons such as The Bridgewater Hall, The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, as well as neighbourhood renewal particularly in east Manchester. An advocate of urban sketching, he is now using drawing to tell stories of people and places. His first sketching book, The Rusholme Sketcher, was published in November 2018. lengrant.co.uk
All sketches and text Š Len Grant. Design and print coordination by Alan Ward at axisgraphicdesign.co.uk All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without written consent from the publisher. The rights of Len Grant to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Including a derelict former railway station, a neglected river and a dozen or more redundant industrial units, Mayfield is Manchester’s next big success story in the making. Fast forward 10 years and a new 6.5-acre public park will be the centrepiece of a £1bn mixed-use community including apartments, offices, retail and leisure opportunities. As the demolition workers move in and planning applications are submitted, sketcher and writer Len Grant grabs his pen and watercolours to tell the Mayfield story from the ground up.