IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Cheetham Hill Road, MANCHESTER, M8 5EJ

Parish Boundary Marker by the UC road, in parish of Salford (Salford District), Bourget Street, cobbled lane at North end of St Mark's Street, in pavement, behind ornamental gates. Inscription reads:- : B / G : (?) Surveyed Milestone Society National ID: LA_BROCHE01pb

An old area of Manchester, now home to a real mix of cultures.

Cheetham Hill Road is a very long shopping street with a large range of cosmopolitan shops. In the row opposite are Iranian and Polish shops.

A fine Edwardian Baroque affair by Henry Price, City Architect, in 1909-11. Grade II listed. It has now been disused for at least fifteen years. Satellite images show it to be roofless which is always a very bad sign.

On Cheetham Hill Road

This grand old building began as the local library, closed down when new one was built nearby. It then had one or two other uses, before closing completely and falling into decay. It is sad to see a Grade II listed building with buddleias growing out of its roof. Whilst searching for information, I not only discovered it was listed, but also that there was an i-petition to save it (with a miserable 25 signatures) and a campaign on Facebook. Here are a few extracts from the description on the English Heritage listing page: "Henry Price (the City Architect); altered. Red brick and white limestone...Edwardian Baroque style. High single storey over basement, 3 wide bays...projected wings embracing a central entrance lobby with projected porch...high stepped stone parapet...rectangular porch with channelled rustication, a round-headed doorway with voluted keystone and open-pedimented architrave with coupled columns, and semi-spherical roof...pilasters with cartouches lettered "SCOTT" and "MILTON" (left wing) "SHAKESPEARE" and "DICKENS" (right wing)...Basement area protected by wrought-iron railings with limestone piers, geometrical open-work standards, bar railings with attached swags and festoons, and flaming-urn finials."

The Grade II listed building https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1197785?section=official-list-entry on Cheetham Hill Road is in a sorry state of repair. It dates from 1909-11 and is by the City Architect Henry Price. The building itself is constructed of red brick and white limestone with dressings of the same in an Edwardian Baroque style. It also comprises three wide symmetrical bays embracing a central entrance lobby with projected porch. The roof is partly glazed with the main feature being a byzantine dome. The Library stock was moved in July 1974 to new accommodation in the Abraham Moss Centre. After serving as the Manchester Black Resource Centre, the building has been empty and unused since 2008. https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/crumpsall-district-library-cheetham-hill-road-cheetham-hill It was sold at auction in 2015 for more than half a million pounds https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/crumpsall-cheetham-hill-library-sold-8873858 but little seems to have happened to it since then.

St. Mark's was built in 1794 and demolished in 1998. When submitting these pictures I found the outline of the church still shows on the Geograph map, which was useful as I hadn't known for sure exactly where the church stood. An article pre-dating the building says: "Such was the spiritual destitution of the benighted folks of Cheetham Hill, Crumpsall, and Broughton that between the ancient parish churches of Prestwich and Manchester there was neither a place for the solemnisation of divine worship nor for the interment of the dead." All that is left now is a lot of litter, flattened gravestones and a few battered memorials. This view is taken approaching the area along Copthall Lane, off Cheetham Hill Road.