Phill Rawlins Online - Manchester aviation and transport photography

Changing Manchester

The same city, photographed at different times: what was there, what replaced it, and what was still a cleared site.

Photographs that document change rather than places: the same ground at different points in its life. Click any image for a larger view.

Ancoats

The Express Buildings, photographed during construction in 1979 and again after redevelopment in 2002.

Derelict mill buildings in Ancoats with the city skyline behind
Ancoats. The arched frontage of the Express Buildings on the right, derelict neighbours still awaiting redevelopment on the left, and the city’s towers behind. The original page recorded the same view during construction in 1979 and again after redevelopment in 2002.

One half of the pair is gone. The 1979 photograph of these buildings during construction was not captured by the Internet Archive. The comparison the original page offered cannot now be made, and rather than replace the frame with an unrelated image the page says so.

What replaced what

The cleared site of Barton Power Station being redeveloped
The site of Barton Power Station. The power station, built in 1923 and demolished in the 1970s, left a large cleared site in Trafford Park that was still being developed in 2003.
The Venus office block under construction at Trafford Quays
Venus, Trafford Quays. An office block under construction beside the Ship Canal, on ground that had been industrial for a century.
Aerial view over the terraced streets of Stretford and Whalley Range
Stretford and Whalley Range. Rows of terraces essentially unchanged, photographed from the air. What changed in this part of Manchester during these years happened elsewhere — in Ancoats, in the city centre and along the canal.
A mirrored, altered photograph of the Arndale Tower in Manchester
The Arndale Tower, mirrored. An altered image from the original site. The 1996 bomb destroyed a large part of the surrounding retail area, including much of the Arndale itself, which was subsequently rebuilt and reclad.

Why photograph change?

Anyone photographing a city should photograph the same view repeatedly. Two frames of the same street taken eight months apart document more history than a hundred frames taken on a single afternoon, because they record not what a place looked like but what happened to it.

The pages that have aged best in this archive are the ones built that way. The Manchester Developments page follows the same sites as they were built up, and the aerial photographs include the city centre from two flights a year apart.

This page and its history

Changing Manchester was linked from the gallery index but was never finished: it served a 404 message for its entire life. It has now been written with the material that survives, and the missing pairs are described rather than faked.

What is still recognisable

The terraced streets in the aerial photographs are the most durable thing here: Stretford and Whalley Range look much as they did, and the same is true of the parts of Salford covered on the Eccles and Barton page. The industrial land along the canal is what has changed most, and it is still changing.