Home to ‘beat clubs’ and unlicensed coffee houses, the area was said to rival Hamburg as the ‘fun city of Europe’
Cromford court flats on top of the Manchester Arndale were named after the original street the shopping centre replaced
It’s been half a century since Manchester’s Arndale shopping centre opened its doors to the city’s shoppers. Although officially opened by HRH Princess Royal in 1979, the first phase of Manchester Arndale opened in 1975.
Still one of the largest in the UK, Manchester Arndale was built in phases between 1972 and 1979. Over the years, the mammoth indoor shopping centre has seen many changes, not least the major reconstruction that followed the IRA bomb in 1996, which devastated the city centre.
However, the original plans to completely transform this part of the city began before the end of the Second World War. The city council decided that the area around Market Street needed major redevelopment, but no progress was made until the city surveyor said redevelopment was “long overdue” in 1962.
In the mid-20th century, the area where the Arndale Centre now stands was a maze of Victorian buildings, warehouses, winding streets and alleyways. During the ’50s and ’60s a number of ‘beat clubs’, unlicensed coffee houses and at least one pornographic cinema sprung up in the area, which was later dubbed ‘Manchester’s Soho’.
The clubs included Manchester Cavern on Cromford Court, where American blues stars like Little Walter and Sister Rosetta Tharpe played alongside The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Wayne Fontana, and the Mindbenders.
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The Sovereign club, a beat coffee bar club in Manchester. November 1964
In 2002, writer, broadcaster, lecturer, and musician CP Lee said the venues’ existence in the now-lost district made Manchester a rival to Hamburg as the “fun city of Europe.”
But not everyone welcomed this new dark and dangerous aspect of Manchester nightlife.
“Dirty, poorly illuminated and being patronised by individuals of exaggerated dress and deportment, commonly known as mods, rockers and beatniks,” was how police described Manchester’s underground club scene in 1965.
The unlicensed venues were seen as places where immorality and drug taking thrived
Much of the city’s thriving music scene was in the dingy, unlicensed clubs between Market Street and Withy Grove.
The clubs became the focus of a moral panic, with some believing they were little more than venues where immorality and drug taking thrived in the shadows of their dimly lit rooms.
From the 1950s onwards, the council used compulsory purchase powers to buy up buildings around Market Street and Shudehill for demolition. The Rovers Return pub was among the first to go when it was unceremoniously flattened in 1958.
The junction of Market Street, Cross Street and Corporation Street during the construction of the Manchester Arndale Centre in 1975
It would be almost another two decades before the Arndale was built. When it opened at a cost of £100 million, it transformed the city centre, becoming Europe’s largest shopping centre. Although this district of the city has now gone, thankfully, the fantastic record archives at Manchester Libraries have images of the lost streets, shops, and venues.
Friday Street
Friday Street looking from New Brown Street in 1957(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Friday Street, pictured here at its junction with New Brown Street, ran up Market Street to Withy Grove. Interestingly, while no Friday Street now exists in Manchester, it did appear in the Channel 4 police drama, No Offence, set in Manchester.
The show followed a team of detectives from Friday Street police station, a division of the Manchester Metropolitan Police (a fictional version of Greater Manchester Police).
Cannon Street
The original Cannon Street in 1965(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
The original Cannon Street began life more than 200 years ago in Manchester’s first great boom. But after being badly damaged during the Second World War blitz, the street was flattened in the 1970s to make way for the Arndale, before being replaced by a different thoroughfare of the same name, which split the two halves of the shopping centre.
The walls along the street were lined with the much-derided ‘bile yellow’ ceramic tiles that covered the rest of the mall. The road also housed the main entrance to Arndale’s underground bus station.
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The street’s fate was sealed by the 1996 bomb, which exploded just a few yards away on Corporation Street. The station never reopened, and Cannon Street was wiped from the map in the massive reconstruction of the city centre that followed.
New Cannon Street
New Cannon Street, Manchester, November 15, 1960(Image: Mirrorpix)
New Cannon Street has been described as the heart of Manchester’s clubland. The Wilton Club, near the centre of the image above, opened in 1959 and was once owned by controversial comedian Bernard Manning.
Cromford Court
Original Cromford Court in 1959(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Just off Market Street at the north end, the original Cromford Court was home to legendary nightclubs and seminal venues that brought some of the greatest artists of the 20th century to the city. Bowie, Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac played at one of these places, a psychedelic enclave called The Magic Village.
Apart from the beat clubs and coffee clubs, many of which were swept away by the new law, there were more traditional venues at Cromford Court. Like the Fatted Calf, where it is reputed that Manchester Evening News and Manchester Guardian journalists founded the National Union of Journalists – a ginnel alongside it called ‘Pie Entry’.
The Fatted Calf featured in the 1960 Hammer film noir Hell Is A City, which was filmed entirely in Manchester. The pub was renamed the Lacey Arms in the movie, and Stanley Baker’s fictional cop, Inspector Martineau, drank there.
Cromford Court was also home to celebrity haunts like the Cromford Club, where Manchester City celebrated winning the league in 1968, alongside the Man United players they had beaten to the trophy.
Cromford court flats on top of the Manchester Arndale
When the Arndale Centre was built on the site, it opened with a number of three-storey apartment blocks on the roof named Cromford Court in honour of the old street. The new Cromford Court was built with affordable housing, complete with a communal garden, on top of the Arndale Centre at a time when virtually no one lived in town.
The IRA bomb in 1996 would eventually see off the new incarnation of Cromford Court – but it would take seven years. It was demolished in 2003 as the city centre was regenerated, with the designs of the seventies looking jaded.
Sugar Lane
Sugar Lane in 1965(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Records of Sugar Lane appear as early as the late 18th century. It was home to a hotchpotch of small businesses just off Withy Grove. According to the excellent Pubs Of Manchester blog, the street was also home to several pubs, including The Sugar Loaf, Weavers Arms, the White Hart, and the Black Dog, as well as The Master’s Music shop.
Swan Court
Swan Court in 1971(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Swan Court was also home to a few eclectic drinking establishments, namely Liston’s Music Hall and the brilliantly named Witch’s Broom. Named after Stockport comic Harry Liston, Liston’s was a lively place with recollections of the tables and chairs being bolted to the floors so they couldn’t be used if a fight broke out.
Peel Street
Peel Street in 1971(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Peel Street ran from New Brown Street to Johnson Street and was home to several warehouses. Images of the street that still exist are a great resource for lovers of typography, as the buildings were often photographed plastered with classic signage and advertising.
New Brown Street
New Brown Street in 1971(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Neighbouring Cromford Court, the street was home to numerous clothes shops. It was something of a Carnaby Street-style fashion district. Among the boutiques there were The Eighth Day, which thrives today as a health food shop and café, and Stolen from Ivor, in its earliest guise.
These boutiques flourished in an era of full employment, benefiting from Manchester’s thriving garment industry. They fed appetites for velvet loons, Afghan coats, kaftans, and Victorian army jackets before moving to other locations when the area was demolished to make way for the Arndale.
Hodson’s Square
Hodson’s Square corner with Cromford Court in 1959(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Originally said to be covered by cottages, barns, gardens, and pigsties, Hodson’s Square’s dwellings and agricultural buildings were later replaced by warehouses as the area became a prime centre for cotton warehousing.
Watling Street
Watling Street from Shudehill(Image: @Manchester Libraries)
Watling Street shared its name with the ancient Roman thoroughfare which stretched from Mancunium to Ribchester, Cumbria. At one time, the squawk and smell of fowl filled the air at Watling Street, which led to Shudehill, home to a hen and poultry market supplying Victorian Mancs.
One of the oldest pubs in the country – the real Rovers Return – was in this area, open between 1306 and 1956. The streets listed here are only a sample of the warren of streets, courtyards, alleyways and squares that once stood before being swept away for the Arndale Centre.
A long list of demolished streets not already mentioned includes Greenwood Street, Pool Street, Callender Street, Falcon Street, and Marsden Square, to name but a few.