Spectacular new city district with stunning views
So let's walk to the tram now for the 20 kilometre ride from the airport to the Quays.
Salford Quays, once the Manchester Docks now transformed into a spectacular new city district with stunning views and vistas. It's a major tourist attraction but also a place in which to live and work, a city district in its own right
But how has it been developed? Is the architecture world-beating? And has. Salford Quays preserved its maritime and industrial heritage? I think Salford Quays should emulate two places I've been to: Japan and Dubai, but do they? We start our visit by approaching from Old Trafford. And on the wall of that warehouse, there used to be a magnificent gigantic mural with scenes of Trafford Park and the Docks. But it had to make way for a gigantic electronic advertising screen.
Sad, until you discover a mural by artist Walter Kershaw is now displayed on the screen in sequence with the adverts. We pass the Trafford Park chain artwork that's been defying gravity since the 80s and enter via Trafford Road Bridge. Built as a swing bridge, one of four along the canal, it hasn't opened for decades. I took this night photo on black and white film in the 80s. Since then a second bridge was added and the pavement was removed. This photo, I think from 1997, is looking west from Trafford Road Bridge. That's the. Detroit bridge that once carried railway lines across the Manchester Ship Canal.
This later shot is from around 2000. The Detroit Bridge was moved to a new location, we'll see that later and take note of the pub on the left and the two cranes on the right. This is the view today. The Sam Platt pub was demolished to make way for the new Metrolink line. Pleasure boats operate along the canal, this one is carrying a private party. We're going to go in a triangle along Trafford Road, through the Quays and back along Trafford. Wharf, checking out some of the new construction and architectural landmarks along the way. Many apartments have appeared in recent years.
This one is on the site of the multiplex cinema, built 1986, demolished 2015. There is a trend whereby the first wave of buildings is replaced by newer, taller ones. Overlooking the canal, we can see lots of new homes and also lots of new gnomes. These gnomes reside on their own island. We'll take a closer look at them from the other side later. This is the Abito apartment building with its distinctive canvas roof, built in 2010 designed by BDP. The stone marks the entrance to Salford Quays with the ingenious map logo above the name. The Ibis budget hotel is next to the Metrolink line and this corner makes me think we're in France or Belgium.
Along Trafford Road, there are new pavements and new cycle lanes. Later a tour bus passes. The Matchstick Man pub looks like an old building, though I can find no information about its history.
It stands next to Salford Quays Metrolink stop.
Metrolink arrived on the Quays around the millennium and the line was extended to Eccles. This is the AC Hotel by Marriott, Manchester Salford Quays. Its facade is undergoing renovation. Next to it a group of new taller apartment buildings with stepped heights and contrasting colours.
This is X1 the Gateway, offering one, two and three-bedroomed rental apartments with many extras. On the website I saw them offered at 800, 1000 and 1500 pounds per calendar month respectively. The magnificent Dock Office facade is one of the few surviving older structures from the Docks. It still has a wow factor, in contrast to these across Trafford Road. The old dock gates are still in need of renovation. They are a relic of the docks in their heyday, now a fading memory, or so it seems. Furness House was built in the late 60s for the Manchester Liners shipping company to a state-of-the-art design by Leach Rhodes Walker Architects, still a leading practice in Manchester today. It has a curved facade, like the front of a ship.
It was a bold statement of confidence in the future of the docks, but a few years later, they closed because the container ships were too big to fit in the canal. This building is a symbol of the docks and a warning message: Beware of grand predictions of future success. They can lead to ruin. How does it look today? Keep watching. And what exactly was this building? It was Salford Central United Reformed. Church. It once played a key role in the lives of countless visiting seafarers. It was demolished to make way for the new Oasis school.
Daisy Mill in Longsight met a similar fate. Could it or should it have been saved? That's a difficult question. We have entered Salford Quays via Broadway and the road named 'The Quays'. This is the route used by the 50 from East Didsbury via the city centre. And this is True Salford a recently completed student accommodation building. Next door there is new construction in progress, but there are no information boards. A quick look online confirms that this is an extension to True Salford. I wish there were visualisations on every construction site.
The new building is being constructed where Barclays Bank used to be, another example of the 'first wave' of from the eighties being replaced by a newer, taller wave. A little further along Anchorage Quay, next to the Metrolink line, are the concrete skeletons of two buildings, both curved like the bridge of a ship. One was the Custom House, the other was Furness House. Unfortunately, I never photographed the Custom House. They were to have been rebuilt to modern standards, but developers found quote 'structural issues' and so they will be demolished and replaced by new apartment buildings.
This information from the MEN, 2nd of April 2021.
Rising up next to them is Northill
Apartments, 90 metres, 27 floors, another new tall apartment building.
Impressive ut groundbreaking? Now we are looking along the north side of Erie Basin at some of the newer apartment blocks.
This was Dock number 9. Half way along, we can see the relocated Detroit Bridge. In the next basin, former Number 8 Dock, now called Ontario Basin, people were taking part in sports on the water watched by others sitting and lying in the sun at the edge of the basin. They were mostly in their twenties. Salford Quays strikes me as a place for young people. Here next to the basin are those two cranes, or 'were'. They were kept on after the docks closed, but despite being described as, quote, 'symbols of the city's industrial heritage' they were, quote, 'too rusty to repair' and had to be scrapped. That information from the BBC website 14 Feb 2012.
This is the view along Mariner's Canal towards The Victoria, an impressive 80s-style building, which has been renovated, not demolished. The sign says 'The Quays', a change in branding from the original 'Salford Quays'. I'll say more about that in a while. Along the former number 9 dock side of the Detroit Bridge is called Huron Basin. The. NV buildings were the first taller apartment buildings to appear here in the mid-2000s. The Alchemist bar is housed in this gold-skinned building from 2017, designed by Reid Architects. Japanese? Definitely, it reminds me of a piece of origami.
And this is the classic view of Media City, home of the BBC, ITV and many other media organisations. Salford University have a campus here. I've heard people criticise the architecture of Media City UK but is that really justified? We are now at the heart of Salford Quays, with the Lowry shopping centre, the Lowry arts centre and just across the lift bridge, the Imperial War Museum north. I've come to Salford Quays many times - to eat and shop at the Lowry Outlet, to see shows at the Lowry, to visit the war museum, do interviews at the BBC and to fly in an Airbus A320 at Simulator Adventures, definitely recommended. The BBC has successfully moved here from London and put the name Salford on the media map. It's the home to many programmes including Blue Peter, one of my favourites from my childhood. And so for the next set of images, in the spirit of Blue Peter, I'm going to use their famous catchphrase: "Here are some I did earlier.". I'd like to highlight this panoramic composite photo I took on the evening of the official opening of the Lowry, the 28th of April 2000.
I took it from the multi-storey car park before the arrival of MediaCityUK and before the Digital World Centre was built in front of the car park. So what about the change in branding from Salford Quays to 'The Quays'? The fact is, in today's world, you need a geographical locator in your name. If you search on the internet for 'The Quays' you'll also find a shopping centre in Newry, Co Down, not to mention similarly named locations in Dublin and Galway. And if you ask your digital assistant "Hey where are the Quays?" you might get the response "I don't know, did you leave them in the car?". That's why I prefer to stick to the original name: Salford Quays. We are looking from the Trafford side now, just next to Granada studios where Coronation. Street is made. It moved here from the old studios on Quay Street in the city centre.
I remember the construction of the Lowry in 2000.
It's been here over two decades but
Still looks new.
I've always thought that this part of Salford Quays looks a bit like Dubai, but of course, in Dubai today, the buildings are mostly high-rise, whereas here, they're mostly low-rise, though that's gradually changing. The theatre boat Fitzcarraldo was once moored close to where the Imperial War Museum is now. It had to depart for a new home. HMS Bronington was here for a while too. I wish there were more ships on the ship canal. The Millennium footbridge was installed in 2000, but it rarely lifts due to the lack of traffic on the water, unlike in London or Tokyo.
Sadly, the Manchester Ship Canal Cruise no longer travels up the canal to Salford Quays, it goes as far as Latchford Locks in Warrington and then returns back to Liverpool. Now we are on Trafford Wharf where I visited a Royal Navy submarine named Grampus on a visit to the Manchester Docks. And just across from Wharfside Metrolink stop, we can see those gnomes that have taken up residence on Gnome Island. No one knows why they came here, maybe because of the favourable buy-to-let opportunities in the local property market. Who knows? At least they look happy to be in Salford Quays, so that's the important thing. And now we are back where we started, Trafford Road Bridge. Salford Quays or The Quays, are one of Manchester's, I mean, Greater Manchester's top tourist attractions, a unique place in which to live or to go to work, maybe in an exciting media-related job. It's a prime example of urban regeneration on a grand scale.
But is the architecture as impressive, exciting and groundbreaking as it could be? This tall building was proposed in 2018 for a site next to Gnome Island but it hasn't materialised. And has the area lost too much of its heritage? Answers in the comments, please. I hope you found this article interesting, maybe even inspiring.