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Underground overground: London’s Victorian viaducts
Subterranean Oddbins inside the Holborn viaduct During the 1860s, London was physically transformed: gigantic new sewers were built, underground railways constructed, new streets and overground...
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The industrial sublime: Castlefield, Manchester
1. The Castlefield basin and the Great Northern railway viaduct (1894). In a rather secluded quarter of Manchester’s city centre lies Castlefield, a dramatic urban landscape that has become synonymous...
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Paddington station: function & fantasy
William Powell Frith, ‘The Railway Station’, 1862 (Royal Holloway, University of London) Paddington station (1852-54) became an iconic symbol of the Victorian railway largely on account of its...
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Meta-ornament: railway tracks
Tracks on the southern approach to Manchester from Stockport According to Walter Benjamin, railway tracks had a ‘peculiar and unmistakeable dream world’ attached to them, one that, for early railway...
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Walking the girdle (part 2)
Second part of the nine-mile walk around inner Manchester and Salford (shown in blue) 1. Strangeways prison from the east side 2. Broken picture found at the base of Strangeways prison wall Part 2 of...
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108 arches to Ardwick: the view from below
Arches under the viaduct near Piccadilly station. Trundling into Manchester Piccadilly on the train from Stockport is my normal way into the city: a mundane ride along the top of one of Manchester’s...
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Love at last sight: Mayfield railway station, Manchester
Barely a stone’s throw from Manchester’s bustling transport hub that is Piccadilly station lies the latter’s ghostly doppleganger: the disused Mayfield railway station. Opened in 1910 by the London...
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