Bury lies eight miles north of Manchester, squished along the Irwell valley between Bolton and Rochdale. Another former mill town, it's also indirectly responsible for the Metropolitan Police, the Conservative Party and the repeal of the Corn Laws. I was in town on Saturday afternoon, and explored three Bury icons...[11 photos]
Bury Market
Bury boasts the north of England's largest market, indeed it's often been voted Britain's best. Bury Market's so good that 1500 coachloads of shoppers turn up every year (perhaps lured in by the offer of £5 Coach Driver Meal Vouchers and a dedicated Coach Driver's Rest Room). In common with many northern towns there's a large market hall, this one 60-stalls strong beneath a 'bird-wing' roof, ideal for giftware, fresh vegetables and getting your nails done. Another 300 stalls fill the sinuous blocks of the Open Market, technically not open but very-much shielded from the weather, where Julie's Hats sells dowdy headgear opposite the plastic tablecloths of the Fresh Bites Cafe. You could easily wander for much longer round here.
But I judged Bury Market's pride and joy to be the Fish and Meat Hall. This ovalcentrepiece is topped by two layers of curving webbed canopy, but the full airy design only hits you when you walk inside... and the whiff of fish and meat too. Each of the stalls has a large sloping display in front, ideal for laying out lush seafood or blood red mince. This is the place to come for Bury's most famous delicacy, black pudding, available here in more sizes and flavours than carnivores generally require. I ummed and ahhed over buying Best Mate a Chilli Black Pudding, unconvinced I could get it home in heatwave conditions without spoiling, finally deciding at the end of my visit hell why not, only to discover that at half past four all the produce is packed away and the slabs get sluiced down, so all I ended up with was wet feet.
Bury Cultural Quarter
According to the town council's official tourist website, "the Bury Cultural Quarter boasts many of the most fascinating museums in the UK." I'd beg to differ. That said I didn't make it past the lobby of the Fusilier Museum, "the one stop shop for all things Fusilier in the North West", so maybe that's where I slipped up. I did explore Bury Art Museum & Sculpture Centre opposite, inside what Pevsner described as "probably the best building in Bury." I liked the art, a thoughtful collection spanning mixed ages and genres, sparsely hung. The museum chunk in the basement was very brief, unwisely implying Bury doesn't have much history. Alas I didn't find any of the sculpture section, even though I walked round twice, so I guess I must've missed a badly labelled door somewhere.
What I did find easily, because it's housed in an enormous shed, is Bury Transport Museum. Stored inside this former goods depot is a horseshoe of old vehicles, notably local buses and a horse tram, but also delivery vans and motorbikes. Step inside the Yelloway Mobile Museum (I couldn't, it was locked) to discover more about a century of coach travel. Look in on the model railway layout (it wasn't running), or admire the wall liberally smothered in old railway station signs. I particularly liked the niche history of Metrolink, and a splendid wooden departures board which once graced the ticket hall at (oddly enough) Harpenden station.
The Cultural Quarter also contains the original market square, where the place of honour is reserved for a statue of Sir Robert Peel. This 19th century Tory Prime Minister was born and educated in the town, although never represented it, gaining his first parliamentary seat courtesy of a rotten borough in Galway. A quote from his resignation speech graces the back of the plinth, and his waistcoat is done up the wrong way round at the front. Close by is Bury Castle (Bury originally means castle), although all that can be seen today are a few buttresses in a bit of moat, the remainder having been razed after the Wars of the Roses. To summarise, some interesting museums, but by no means the most fascinating in the UK.
East Lancashire Railway
If Bury Transport Museum piqued your interest, the ELR will seal the deal. British Rail pulled out of Bury in 1991, and today it's linked to Manchester only by tram. The former station at Bury (Bolton Street) is now the hub of the East Lancashire Railway, a proper 12 mile heritage line you could spend a day on. I turned up just in time to see the last train steam off to the last station, which wasn't worth a £15 day ticket, but pootling around the period platforms was free, and the Tracksidebar was very much open. I psyched myself up to order the craft beer with a French name in an acceptable Lancastrian accent, but unexpectedly it was off, so I pointed at a stout instead.
If you have the time, what's great about the ELR is that it actually goes somewhere worth going to, so I'm told, specifically Ramsbottom and Rawtenstall. Ramsbottom is overshadowed by the Peel Monument on Holcombe Hill, and every September hosts the annual Black Pudding Throwing World Championships, because of course they exist. Rawtenstall has The Whittaker museum and a dry ski slope, plus a Lidl beside the bus station, and no doubt lots of other interesting things if only I'd gone there. It pays to explore and travel when the opportunity arises, even across Wigan, Bolton and Bury.
Bolton lies ten miles northwest from Manchester, east of Wigan, on the edge of the West Pennine Moors. Once one of the wealthiest cotton mill towns in the world, today it's very much no longer that, more a service-led suburb with a proud heritage. I was in town on Saturday lunchtime, and explored three Bolton icons...[10 photos]
Victoria Square
The very centre of Bolton is atypically grand, and one of the very first public spaces in England to be pedestrianised. Victoria Square started out as the town's market place, then in the 1860s proved the ideal gap to plonk a neoclassical town hall. Its baroque clocktower is visible across town, and will reappear in today's post in two paragraphs' time. Round the back is Le Mans Crescent, a top-class 1930s civic addition, named after the most famous of Bolton's twin towns. Its sweeping curves house the courts, police station and library, plus the town's museum, which obviously is where I headed.
The town's museum is alas currently closed while an Egyptian gallery is magicked on the upper floors, so all I got to see were some temporary lesser collections in the basement. Those and the famous aquarium, one of a handful in Britain to contain only freshwater fish. It's neither huge nor in any way modern, but it's always great to be able to pop in and see catfish and piranhas while you're out doing your shopping. The remainder of the town centre doesn't really compare, but that said, nowhere else have I been accosted by Muslims Against Terrorism, two Mormon elders and a free bottle of Ribena in the space of a minute. I also stumbled into a statue of this chap...
Fred Dibnah
If you're of an age, you'll remember Fred Dibnah as TV's go-to steeplejack. He got lucky while repairing the clock at the top of Bolton Town Hall when a BBC North West film crew turned up seeking an interview. His enthusiastic delivery led to the commissioning of a full documentary, which won a BAFTA in 1979, then a series of other shows of an industrial heritage bent. This cheery Lancastrian could often be seen riding steamrollers, dodging collapsing chimneys or waxing lyrical about boilers, there being considerably fewer TV channels in those days. Fred lost his battle with cancer in 2004 at the age of 66, but his memory lingered on after a fan bought up his house in Bolton and opened it up as the Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre.
Alas the Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre has recently closed. The owner is seeking to retire, and couldn't find any buyer to pass the collection on to, so last month put the entire contents of the site up for auction. Most of the big stuff went, mostly to fans or museums, but plenty of smaller bits remained and these were returned to sale in a one-off open day the other weekend. And when that failed to shift everything he opened up again last weekend, before the entireproperty is auctioned off next month, and that's how fortunately I got to go inside.
Fred's home was a converted Victorian gatehouse on Radcliffe Road, unusually quirky from the front, and considerably larger from the rear. Out back are an extensive hotchpotch of sheds and workshops, perched on a bluff above a wooded river, creating quite the most adorable place for tinkering. I can't imagine what it was like with all the engines, ladders and heritage machinery lying everywhere, but at least the pithead gear Fred planned to drill his garden with hadn't yet been packed up and trucked away. Instead the workshop was open with the final leftovers, and boy did it feel strange rifling through a dead celebrity's yard sale.
Fred's spade heads, Fred's whiteboard, Fred's surplus masking tape, Fred's chairs, Fred's chock for steamroller, Fred's vacuum cleaner, several of Fred's grimy clamps, all these (and more) lay strewn about. Many were labelled "Make an offer", with the owner sat outside while a handful of us shuffled round mulling over the possessions. A lot of the Heritage Centre's souvenirs were now surplus to requirements, including DVDs and coasters, even branded bodywarmers, but I carried on scouring the worktops for something properly Dibnah. It took a couple of circuits, but finally in amongst the used tools and innumerable spare parts I found what I wanted, a bit grimy and only 99% functional, but perfect all the same. Which is why I am now the proud owner of Fred Dibnah's pocket calculator, and that was my Saturday made.
Hall i' th' Wood
One stop north of Bolton, astride the A58 bypass, is a railway station with the most evocatively Lancastrian name - Hall i' th' Wood. What's more this twin-apostrophe'd curio is a relatively recent addition to the network, knocked up on the cheap in 1986, and earned its name from an astonishing historical building hidden just up the road. Cross the housing estate, pass through a patch of lowly bungalows and there at the top of the park is a Tudor woollen merchant's house, intricately bedecked with black and white timbering. It shouldn't have survived, but a famous invention and a wealthy soap magnate saved it, and the council now maintain Hall i' th' Wood as a museum.
You don't often get to wander around a 500-year-old middle class home, with all its beams and precipitous staircases, so that's already interesting enough. But the set of rooms above the porch was home in 1779 to a certain SamuelCrompton, whose invention of the spinning mule revolutionised Britain's burgeoning textile industry. It built on the earlier invention of the spinning jenny, a first step towards industrialisation, but which could only produce weaker types of yarn. Samuel's hybrid frame generated finer thread, but he never managed to make a profit from it after manufacturers spied on his design, then ripped it off, and he sadly died a pauper.
Step up Lord Leverhulme, founder of Lever Brothers, who was born in the town a century after Crompton and used his influence to buy the house. Hall i' th' Wood became a museum as early as 1902, which saved it from demolition, and both men are now remembered within. The original spinning mule is long gone, neither can you peer into the attic to see where Samuel hid it when anti-industrialisation riots spread across Lancashire. But even if that is only a replica in the corner, to be able to walk into a room that changed the world is always an evocative opportunity.
Wigan is located between Liverpool and Manchester, and is in the administrative thrall of the latter. It's perhaps most famous for a tourist attraction that doesn't exist, but music, food and sport also resonate. I was in town on Saturday morning, and explored three Wigan icons... [7 photos]
Wigan Pier
In 1936 George Orwell made a famous literary quest to seek out the soul of the industrial north, including three weeks amongst the slag heaps and muddy canals of Wigan. The poverty he found shocked him, but no semblance of Wigan Pier was forthcoming, the structure having been originally conjured up as a music hall joke. This of course hasn't stopped numerous tourists following in his wake, attempting to follow The Road To Wigan Pier, and I can now be included in their number.
In the 1980s the local council tidied up the post-industrial area around the canal basin to try to make something of the place. The largest warehouse became a museum called The Way We Were, focusing on the theme of "life in Wigan in Victorian times". Gibson's Warehouse, inside which narrowboats once moored up to unload, became a waterside pub called The Orwell. A demolished coal staithe was reinstated to ensure that there was a pier of sorts on site. Towpaths and boardwalks were spruced up, several heritage statues were scattered around for good measure, and even the Queen was drafted in for the official opening. Initially, at least, the place was a hit.
I turned up on a crackingspringmorning to discover that time has not been kind. The museum closed in 2007 due to low visitor numbers. The recession killed off the pub in 2009. Both are still boarded up and nudging dereliction, one propped up by scaffolding with a legal notice on the door debarring squatters. The waterbus service no longer operates. One of the dockers portrayed as a statue has had the top part of his head sliced off and looks like a 'B' movie monster. If you're a local businessperson with a financial deathwish, 1.43 acres of land are currently up for sale as an "iconic development opportunity".
Across the canal the Wigan Pier nightclub was demolished in 2015 to make way for a new leisure nucleus called Wigan Pier Quarter, although none of the promised mixed-use leisure redevelopment has yet taken place. The only immediate success is Trencherfield Mill, now flats and offices, but housing a 2500HP steam engine which fires up for visitors on occasional Sundays. This short stretch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal may still look impressive, but rings increasingly hollow. Wigan Pier is once again a victim of economic decline, perversely echoing what George Orwell found here eighty years ago.
Wigan pies
'The Road To Wigan Pies' would more likely be a best seller today. The populace of Wigan adore their pies, which are very much the lunchtime snack of choice, in the same way that Cornwall loves pasties and Stoke-on-Trent lusts after oatcakes. I did my research beforehand and observed that family firm Galloways appear to be the purveyor of choice, so popped into one of their many turquoise fronted bakeries (immediately opposite the station) before the main rush started. You're never far from a pie shop in Wigan. I plumped for the classic meat and potato, resisting the temptation to coat it in a bread roll - the legendary pie barm. "That'll be £1.80," said the aproned lady, "and I've put a fork in there for you."
To enact a total Wigan cliche, I took my paper bag down to Wigan Pier and unwrapped it on the site of the former canalside nightclub. I'm not sure what size I was expecting, perhaps something narrower and thicker, but I was pleased enough with a scaled-down version of a full-size family savoury. The pastry was lush, and irregular enough to confirm a hand-finished means of production. As for the filling, well, let's just say there was a lot more potato than meat, but mixed together into a smooth peppery gloop which tasted a lot better than it looked. It was simply delicious, and deliciously simple, and I'm gutted to discover that Galloways have no outlets further south than St Helens. Next time, with gravy.
Wigan Casino
Northern Soul brought Wigan to life, specifically overnight at the WiganCasino. Crowds came from across the region to this former ballroom to enjoy a wild night dancing to classic tunes rarely spun down south, always ending up with the same three songs by Tobi Legend, Jimmy Radcliffe and Dean Parrish. In the Museum of Wigan Life* I watched a short documentary showed excitable youths queuing to enter the building, insistent in vox pops that none of the rest of the week mattered, while management stashed vast piles of pound notes behind the paydesk. Once inside they packed the dancefloor with their exuberant gyrations, flares flapping, on this occasion to the insistent soundtrack of What by Judy Street. Between 1973 and 1981 there was nowhere like it.
And then the club closed, and the next year it burnt down, and today the town's main shopping centre covers the site. Stepping inside the GrandArcade is no cathartic experience, the muzak choice is far poorer, and as tributes go the Casino Cafe food court in the upper mall lacks emotional nourishment. What there is downstairs is a statue of George Formby, Wigan's famous cheeky ukulelist, and my guess is that the Queen would far rather have attended its unveiling that that dull pier thing down the road. All the town's current nightclub options are crammed down King Street, from 80's-themed parties to bierkellers, in great enough numbers to suggest that escapism is still an essential part of life in Wigan.
* The Museum of Wigan Life is a one-gallery whistlestop tour of the town's heritage, from Roman encampments to rugby league success, housed in the town's former main library. If I'd been asked to guess I'd have assumed the displays were at least 20 years old, but apparently they only date back to 2010, so goodness knows what they spent the £1.9m restoration grant on.
Gadabout: BURY
