Report - 'Roofless' - Manchester - November 2011

[m9]

Hit with Gone, Tweek and Oldskool (all present at some point)​

Quite a productive night all in all... Made a few shout outs and hit town with no real plans other than to get high and check out a few bits and bobs round the city. Started off with a couple of old favourites…..

MSS Building

from Tweek's last report:

The Maths and Social Sciences Building was built in 1968, as part of the UMIST campus. Constructed from reinforced concrete and designed by architects Cruikshank and Seward it is the tallest building on the former UMIST campus.

After we were done here we met up with Gone and had a quick charge up the palace.

Palace Hotel
The Palace Hotel is a large hotel and prominent land mark in Manchester. It starte life as the Refuge Assurance building, being built in 1891-1895. The 217 foot tower was added later in 1910-1912 and was further extended along Whitworth street in1932. The Refuge Assurence Company left the building in 1987, where it remained unused for a period of time, until 1996 when it was converted into a hotel.

Down from here, we met tweek and made our way up to the north of the city, to Sarah Point.


Sarah Point

Another one of Bashir Issa's epic building failures, Sarah Point has been half built for ages now and stands at the border of Ancoats and Manchester's Northern quarter. Very recently, there have been signs of activity on the site. All the old crap that used to be lying around has been cleared and they've even got a man watching the place. He's not trying hard enough.

We then made our way north to check out that tasty red crane and ended up stumbling upon one of the many poshed up-soon-to-be-developed warehouses in ancoats.


Murray's Mill

The place was empty with the exception of a few interesting artefacts, and the roof was quite nice. I'm sure it'll make many a lovely expensive house.

A mill complex of international importance, associated with the development of the steam-driven mule. Subject of a successful £7m Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) application by Ancoats Buildings Preservation Trust. Two parallel 6-7 storey mills with side wings built around a courtyard which contained a canal basin (formerly infilled and now reinstated) linked to the adjacent Rochdale Canal. The early steam power was supplied by Boulton and Watt engines. The mill buildings were restructured early in the 19th century by replacing the double line of cast iron columns with a single row (with various bracketry methods to carry timber floor beams) to accommodate larger machinery. In extremely poor condition, the mills scored highly on English Heritage's Buildings at Risk Register. The HLF project began in September 2004, and was completed in August 2006. The project comprised the shell repair of building fabric and structure and reinstatement of canal basin by ABPT. The complex will be converted to residential, commercial and leisure uses by Burrellinpartnership.

Down from here, we made our way back, checking out a few more leads after finishing up with a top-down view of Manchester's Northern Quarter.

Quality night lads!

​

 

[Gone]

Nice!

 

[tweek]

A couple from the Old & Decker Mills, Murray's Mills.

Since the arse fell out of the housing market it looks like this will become office space now, rather than flats as would be assumed. Basically, it's a decent mill conversion that's only half-completed and stagnating like many others.