Manchester The Northern Quarter Warehouse's...whats left anyway. Some of you maybe aware that i love the Textile mills and have no worries in doing permission visits, with so many mills in Manchester you need some where to store all your goods. with this in mind i set out to discover what was left of the of the once massive scale of warehouses. now it's a pity i didn't do this in the 1990's before the big property boom and most of manchester has been converted into swanky apartments. luckily the northern quarter of manchester still has a lot of textile business plus quite a few empty buildings. my first intention was to attempt to explore these the proper way however i soon realised that this was not going to be the case, secret cameras alarms and general bizzy bods soon put me off. for many weeks i would go down and try and find someone to get hold with little success, then when i was about to give up my luck changed, after some long chats i was given full permission and granted full access to all areas. to some this may seem ilke empty buildings and they would be right, however look a little deeper and these are some beautiful buildings and helped put manchester on the industrial map, when i got into looking at warehouses i was amazed just how many there are in manchester that are now hotels and such like. The explore itself was done over several visits mainly in 2012 and a little in 2013, i was hoping for more features as you do thinking it will be as it was in the 1930's...i wish. there were some great little bits to be found. but this was more of a personal quest which i now wish to share. These warehouses were built around 1874 to designs by E J Sherwood and R Thomas and would be used for boot and shoemakers and general textiles. for a real in depth read get the book Manchester the warehouse legacy.
NORTHERN QUARTER AND STEPHENSON SQUARE
Metal rails to help stop the wheels getting damaged on the horse and carts, quite possibly the last in Manchester
Over the years the other thing this area has been used for is filming, some of these warehouses were in films and TV shows such as Captain America,Sherlock Holmes,Life on Mars to name a few. this is a set of life on mars there was also a bedroom, no bed just walls
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Notice the stairs lean slightly to the right, this i was informed was due to the building getting bombed in the war, i was also told that on the roof there was once an oil tank that was lit when the raids came. this was done to discourage the germans from dropping more bombs on the same target.a very risky tactic.
