Stockport is a former textile town on the Lancashire/Cheshire border, since swallowed up by Greater Manchester. Of the ten metropolitan boroughs it's the southeasternmost. Previously I'd only ever seen it from the train while crossing the lofty viaduct over the River Mersey, noting the tall chimney with 'Hat Museum' written on it and thinking that might be a good place to visit. And indeed it was, not just the headgear repository but the unexpectedly split-level town, its heritage and its wider points of interest. Join me to discover what's underneath the shopping centre, where Joy Division recorded, what Lowry painted and how many rabbits it takes to make a hat.[Visit Stockport][30 photos]
Let's start with the Hat Museum, or Hat Works as it's been officially branded, perhaps because museums are old hat. It's based in a former cotton mill with a striking 200 foot chimney, which thankfully for reasons of authenticity was later used for hat making by local company Ward Bros. A lottery grant helped transform it into a flats and a heritage centre, the latter opening in 2000, and a further grant funded a major "refurbishment and reinterpretation" which reopened last year. It's only open three days a week so I chose the date of my visit carefully, but it is free to enter which is good going for something they could easily have charged for.
The first floor down is the Gallery of Hats, because obviously what you do in a hat museum is display as many different types of headgear as you can. Here they have several hundred, from pillboxes to pith helmets and kepis to kippahs, appealingly laid out in bright display cases. A subject like hats screams out for thematic curation so that's what they've gone for, with underlying issues like faith, pride and sustainability subtly woven in throughout. The red Mini they've squeezed into one corner seems a bit redundant, but it does at least signpost the way to some splendid Mary Quant numbers. Also full marks for filling the reading corner with appropriate children's books including I Want My Hat Back and The Quangle Wangle's Hat.
Downstairs is the factory floor which is awash with all kinds of machinery used to make all kinds of hats. I think sometimes they turn some of it on because there were a heck of a lot of ear defenders hanging on the wall outside. Separate gizmos helped with dyeing, shaping, lining, dimpling and even adding those little fiddly ribbons on the inside. Pick your time right and you can be led round on a proper tour, pick your time wrong and you end up mid-school-trip. One aspect of the latest reinterpretation is a sign warning that the room contains 'aspects of the hat trade which some people may find upsetting'. Skinning rabbits for their pelt fair enough, and maybe the manufacture of extra-cheap hats to send to slaves in the West Indies, but anyone upset by the concept of 'inequality' probably needs a better grip on the world. It was twelve rabbits per hat, by the way, so Stockport was once slaughtering 150,000 a week.
It feels odd that the Hat Works entrance is on the top floor but that's because Stockport is a split level town with an upper bit, a lower bit and several sloping connections. It takes some getting used to walking round and suddenly finding yourself on a high bridge crossing a low road, or realising that what looks like a neighbouring street on a map is in fact a steep climb away. High Street is well named. The quirkiest area is probably the Underbanks, a narrow meandering indent following the line of a former stream, the Tin Brook. Many of the trendier shops are down here, but also a proper chippie because Stockport is not yet up itself. The oldest building on Great Underbank is Underbank Hall, a three-gabled half-timbered Tudor townhouse which is now occupied, appropriately enough, by a branch of NatWest bank. I was so taken by Crowther Street's classic climbing cobbles that I paused for a photo, only to discover later that LS Lowry had done the same with his paintbrush in 1930. However the houses he saw were all demolished during later slum clearance and what's here now is a modern rebuild deliberately designed to echo Lowry's painting.
Stockport's main museum is in the historic heart of the town, up top on a red sandstone cliff where the castle no longer is. It too is free, although it does wrap around a paid-for attraction which is Staircase House, an original 15th century home with rare Jacobean newel staircase. I was all primed to make this the first attraction where I'd paid Senior rates but they didn't upsell it, I suspect because closing time was approaching, so I just went round the ordinary exhibits instead. These spread across five floors and are properly varied, from all the usual local Bronze Age and municipal stuff to a scale model exemplifying the restoration of the Iron Bridge in Marple. I particularly enjoyed the current temporary exhibition in the basement showcasing rediscovered camera shots of Stockport market in the mid 1970s, Heidi's black and white photos being emotionally evocative.
Another gallery focuses on StrawberryStudios, the first professional recording studio outside London, which was set up by early members of 10cc in 1968. The band recorded their first albums here and pumped some of the proceeds from their success into upgrading to a 36-track desk which attracted an eclectic selection of other artists. These included Hotlegs, Neil Sedaka, Sad Cafe, Cliff Richard, The Sisters of Mercy, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Barclay James Harvest, Echo & The Bunnymen and the St Winifred's School Choir. Several of these get a mention on the blue plaque outside the former studios on Wellington Street, plus the seminal Joy Division whose first album was recorded here at Strawberry (and can be played in full within the museum gallery). You may have the album's iconic cover art on a t-shirt but Stockport proudly slaps it up on buildings ("yeah, Unknown Pleasures, that's one of ours").
Opposite the museum is the Market Hall, a striking cast iron and glass confection that narrows as it climbs. It houses three dozen stalls in that appealing way only northern towns seem to manage, selling such delights as Polish plum donuts, mop and bucket sets and embroidered hedgehog cushions. Other buildings hereabouts include the Robinson Brewery, a towering redbrick presence which looks like it ought to be flats by now but is still the heart of a 250 year-old independent brewery chain. I wasn't prompt enough to see inside their small museum and shop. A memorial on Hopes Carr commemorates the 1967 Stockport plane disaster, still one of Britain's worst, in which fuel issues brought the plane down on a scrap of open ground perilously close to the town centre killing 72 of those aboard. The town is still very obviously on the flight path for Manchester Airport which is five miles away and whose runway annoyingly aligns.
Stockport's main shopping mall is highly unusual in that it's built on top of a river. With nowhere else to cram it, town planners in the 1960s added concrete arches above a 500m stretch of the River Mersey and so created Merseyway. What's more the river was once the official boundary between two counties, so if you go shopping in Primark you're in historic Cheshire and if you cross the mall to River Island you're in what used to be Lancashire. The Mersey is a ridiculously young river at this point because its source is less than five minutes walk away, born at the confluence of the River Goyt and the River Tame. One starts in the Peak District and the other on Pennine moorland, meeting here in the town centre alongside the roaring ribbon of the elevated M60 motorway before launching off towards Liverpool.
Mersey-side is also the location of the town's newest regeneration locus, Stockport Interchange. This replacement bus station opened a year ago on the site of the old, a futuristic split-level swoosh with an airy timbered waiting space and an elliptical bus stand. Up top is a new park with fine views over the rim, accessed via lifts, a long staircase or an unwieldy outdoor spiral called the Stockport Helix. Manchester's recently-launched Bee Network is gradually turning all the local buses a gorgeous shade of custard yellow, and yesterday saw the introduction of tap and go fares for the very first time. Displays within the bus station are very clear and a full rack of paper timetables is available, but alas there's not a map to be seen - I did ask at the information desk and got a smiley "no". Roger has a full report from opening day if you'd like to see more photos.
And this whole area is dominated by the massive Stockport viaduct which remains one of the world's largest brick-built structures. It was built to carry the fledgling Manchester and Birmingham Railway across the River Mersey, comprises over 11 million bricks and was completed in less than two years. It looks splendid in the sunlight, and can be newly admired from a sinuous footpath connection which now links the bus station in the valley to the railway station on the escarpment. The best view however is from up top on a train, looking down across the town with its jumble of rooftops and occasional mill chimneys. I never got to see that because the station comes just before the viaduct, ditto I never quite made it to the Art Gallery, the Air Raid Shelters or Fred Perry's childhood home. But I really liked Stockport, it had unexpected character, so don't rule out a return visit.
