Salford

Hello :)

So, despite recently moving out of Salford, I felt it was an interesting enough place to do a podcast about. Partly because 'Everywhere is Interesting' and my VA wanted me to prove it. And what could be more interesting than the location of the world's first municipal public park, the world's first bus route, the world's first street lighting, and the world's only canal swing bridge. And the UK's most polluted river, but let's not talk about that, and anyway the other half of it is in Manchester.

Topics discussed in this episode are:
* Running along country lanes
* A potted history of the Salford area
* Salford Central ... isn't
* Salford Quays - the posh bit
* Canals and Rivers and Bridges and Hotels
* Old and Listed Buildings
* Peel Park
* Vimto
* A short overview of Salford Pop-Culture from The Smiths to Coronation Street
* Salford Firsts

A PDF transcript of this podcast is available.

As always, if you have anything to say about the topic, or indeed about my podcasting in general, leave a comment or let me know. I have a newsletter with extra content, and where I'll be mentioning future podcast episodes if you want to make your own contribution.

I also have a Patreon - if you like what you hear, and want to access exclusive content (or just to show your appreciation), then head on over. For this pod I've uploaded about 9 mins of extra content all about Salford's pubs, which I thought would make the episode too long for no real advantage, but which I might use in a future episode. Who knows!

There are no contributions in this episode, although my VA does purposely misrhythm a song lyric at the beginning.

Here, by the way, is my YouTube Short about Salford Lad's Club.

Until next time, bye for now. :)

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
They said, tell us about all your ways and all themselves for days.

(00:04):
Is it true you're just an ordinary enby?

(00:25):
Hello and thank you for tuning in.
You're listening to travel tales from beyond the brochure,
a podcast looking at unfamiliar places across the world,
an aspect of travelling you may never have thought of.
I'm your host, The Barefoot Backpacker,
a middle-aged enby with a passion for offbeat travel,
history, culture and the wise behind travel itself.
So join with me as we venture beyond the brochure.

(00:53):
Hello.
I've been a month in the Calder Valley now,
so it seems a bit weird to be doing a podcast
about Salford,
but that's often the way content creation is sometimes.
I couldn't have done this any sooner
because I wouldn't have had explored everything.
Even as it is, I didn't get to explore everything I'd planned on doing,
but I need to keep remembering, as we content creators
need to keep remembering as a whole,

(01:14):
that nothing has to be 100% perfect and cover 100% of the options.
You're always going to miss something, and that's fine.
I mean, not that it matters too much
because it's not as if Salford is a place on many people's bucket lists,
although as you'll hear later,
it's definitely interesting to people with specific interests.
But before I talk about Salford,
as always on my pods, I start with a touch of housekeeping.

(01:37):
And by housekeeping, I mean things I've been up to recently,
which is, let's face it, never actually that much,
especially now that I have moved out of Salford into the Calder Valley,
which makes things more awkward to get to.
And, you know, very soon,
the rail line between Rochdale and Manchester is closing for two weeks
to refurbish or replace a bridge over the motorway,
making the journey in even more awkward.

(01:59):
What I have restarted is my running.
Now I'm in a place that's a bit more pleasurable to run in,
and where I don't have to start
by going down 12 flights of steps or a dodgy lift,
I have a bit more of an incentive.
The hills maybe don't give me quite as much of an incentive
as if it were flat, of course,
but I'm sure it's good for me in the long run.
Run, see what I did there.

(02:20):
And anyway, ultramarathoners do this little sort of landscape,
and they walk up the hills,
so that's my excuse when I feel a bit weary.
There's a nice loop of just over a park run length
on the country lanes I've now done once in each direction.
One of the directions has a much longer uphill stretch,
but the other one is, well,
the uphill stretch is much steeper,
so it's very much, I mean, I would say swings and roundabouts,
but I'm sure there's a more accurate alternative cliche.

(02:41):
For the record, I've not yet done it barefoot,
but it looks like there's only a couple of short sections
where I'd be irked by it, so it's definitely a possibility.
Though I'm sure seeing a barefoot purple-haired skort
wearing enby go careering down a sidewalk-less country lane
will cause confusion amongst the passing dog-walkers.
My only concern, regardless of footwear,
will be in the winter when it'll be tad icy.

(03:02):
I'm wary of downhill slopes at the best of times,
and some of the hills around here are, I mean, forget one in 10,
some of them have sections of one in five,
and that's a bit excessive,
but we'll see what happens when we get there.
I also need to remember to buy some kind of high-vis jacket thing,
because some of those country lanes do not have streetlights,
and this far north, it's dark at lesser extreme parts of the day.

(03:24):
Now, of course, you might query the sensibility
of going running along country lanes in the dark,
along steep hills, especially with less than thick footwear.
I am not a role model.
I still haven't made a will.
I've not done much else.
I was going to, but I didn't.
I do have tentative plans to disappear
for a couple of weeks to South America in October,
sadly, not Bolivia, but rather Paraguay,

(03:45):
because, of course, everyone has Paraguay on their bucket list,
just as everyone has Salford on their bucket list.
But it does depend on some external factors,
which I am not going to talk about yet,
as they may not end up being relevant anyway.
I am headed to London in the middle of this month,
but just for one day and one night.
It's a meet-up and panel session
celebrating the 50th anniversary of Bradt Guides,

(04:07):
the independent travel guidebook publisher,
who concentrate on places slightly off the usual tourist trail,
including much of the UK, and Paraguay.
They're also the organisation I was published by
in an anthology with a short story about Laos,
a few years back, which I need to make more of.
But aside from that,
I don't have much housekeeping, so on with the pod.
And I'll do a pod later in the year

(04:28):
on the belief that everywhere is interesting.
But my VA sent me a task.
If that is true, and that everywhere has something about it
that makes it worthy of a visit,
then could I do an entire podcast on somewhere as...
Somewhere that's not going to have made it
onto people's bucket lists, like Salford.
Let's face it, it has a reputation.
People have written about it, but they're never love letters.

(04:51):
The Sabre Roads website,
dedicated to every single numbered road in the UK,
and some that are not,
described Salford as, quote,
possibly the only place that destroyed itself
in order to build a road to the neighbouring city, unquote.
It's not a place that's easily loved.
And yet, and yet, 278,000 people can't be wrong.

(05:11):
Well, I mean, they can, clearly,
But. Brexit happened, for instance.
There has to be reasons why Salford is, in UK terms,
a sizeable place.
There has to be reasons why people live here, work there.
And of course, for a city of its size and age,
there has to be a decent amount of history
and cultural heritage.
So let's delve.
Delve, that's a great word.
So let's delve into Salford

(05:32):
and find out what makes the place I lived in
for the last year tick.
Tick.
Salford is a city in northwest England,
standing on one side of the river Irwell
Indeed, its name comes from an old English word
meaning Ford by the Willow Trees.
The Fording question no longer exists.
And honestly, I wouldn't dream of trying to Ford the Irwell

(05:53):
now, for reasons we'll come to in a minute.
It's one of the more overlooked cities in the country,
I think, partly because it's right next to
and dominated by Manchester.
And partly because probably a few people realised
that it's a city in the first place,
given that other Manchester satellite towns
like Rochdale and Stockport aren't.
In a way, it's a bit like Bradford.
Everyone thinks that Bradford is just a small town,

(06:14):
near Leeds.
It's the sixth biggest city in the UK.
I must go to Bradford at some point,
it's only 10 miles away.
Anyway, Salford.
Salford was granted city status in 1926,
in the days when city status actually meant something,
rather than just something for a local councillor
to fornicate over.
Note that the whole thing shows that
the transient and nebulous nature of borders.

(06:35):
We'll come onto that shortly.
The relationship and rivalry between Salford and Manchester
has been around pretty much since the towns
were first founded.
Manchester appears to have come first,
though there's evidence of people up the length
of the Irwell Valley,
all the way back to the just post Ice Age.
Wikipedia tells me that their trinkets and weapons
were of poor quality.
But up the Irwell, there is certainly information boards

(06:58):
telling you all about this very early history
and civilisation of the area.
The first confirmed town,
or at least the first confirmed fortification,
was on the Manchester side of the river,
close to the current cathedral,
in the immediate pre-Roman period.
This is where the Romans came to build their own fort,
again, just on the Manchester side.
Mamucium, a name which may or may not refer

(07:20):
to either mothers or breasts.
Remnants of which still exist today
in the Castlefield area.
But it seems that this is about when people
started building on the western side of the river, too.
Interestingly, in the post-Roman era,
the Salford developments tended to fare better
than the Manchester ones,
to the extent that once the Kingdom of England
had been established,
the large area in the southeast of Lancashire

(07:40):
was designated as the Salford Hundred,
later known as Salfordshire,
rather than the Manchester Hundred.
It covered around 350 square miles,
or 900 square kilometres,
just over 900 square kilometres,
and had an estimated population of 35,000,
which still makes it bigger than Kirkby and Ashfield is now.
It became a royal manor around 1115

(08:01):
and was granted a market charter around 1230.
Manchester's market came much later.
Well, around 1280.
But still, later.
The two cities tended to take opposing sides
in civil and regional conflict, too.
Salford supported Charles I
and the later Catholic Stuart pretenders.
Manchester was very much parliamentarian,

(08:21):
Protestant, and later royal Georgian.
Most people associate Salford, though,
with the Industrial Revolution.
Specifically, it concentrated on two things,
spinning and weaving of cotton and silk and imports.
The docks that served Manchester
were built on the Salford side of the Irwell,
which itself was canalised,
widened, dredged, and straightened,

(08:42):
from the centre of Salford
all the way to where it joined to the Mersey,
which itself had the same process
pretty much as far as Runcorn.
Building a large trading port complex
when you're not by the sea
is quite a laborious process.
And large it was in pre-World War I days,
the port was handling around 5%
of the UK's entire import and export trade.
It wasn't just canals either, though.
Salford was the second-to-last stop
on the Liverpool and Manchester railway,

(09:03):
the first entirely end-of-the-year trade.
The first entirely ancient-driven passenger
and freight railway in the world.
The town also saw a development of engineering,
printing, dyeing, and bleaching factories
and industrial companies,
many of them quite small-scale.
For reasons unclear, though,
the majority of companies
tended to build their head offices
on the opposite side of the river.

(09:24):
And as such, Manchester then began
to develop faster than Salford economically.
Salford became more or less where the workers lived.
And this led to the town gaining reputation
for being, well, unpleasant.
It is still has.
Frederick Engels,
whose statue stands a short walk across the river,
described Salford as, quote,
really one large working-class quarter,

(09:46):
very unhealthy, dirty, and dilapidated district,
unquote, in 1844.
Fast forward to the future,
nothing much has changed realistically.
Channel 4 conducted a nationwide survey in 2005,
and Salford came out as the ninth-worst place
to live in the whole of the UK.
This wasn't limited to housing and employment,
but also included thoughts on crime,
education, and lifestyle.

(10:08):
In addition, an article in the Guardian newspaper
as recently as March 2024
cites evidence that the Irwell
is the most polluted river in England,
at least for sewage dumping and storm discharge.
The industrial decline in the 20th century
hit Salford quite hard.
And what were once slum terraces of workers
became slum terraces of the unemployed?

(10:28):
In the interwar period,
official surveys suggested
they were amongst the worst,
if not the worst, in the entire country,
many having leaking roofs,
broken floors, rotting timber frames,
and being rat-infested.
These were the houses made famous
by local painter L.S. Lowry,
one of the few artists about whom
a song was written following his death,
although much closer to his death
than Vincent van Gogh.

(10:50):
They were also the direct inspiration
for an early TV drama series,
but more of that later.
Many of the terraces were pulled down
and replaced with high-rise tower blocks,
the kind so beloved by 1960s architects.
Many of these have themselves since been pulled down,
because I don't know if we've ever spent
much time in an around the 1960s tower block,
but the best place to be is neither in one nor around one.

(11:12):
Grenfell Tower in North Kensington in London
was a great example of one.
It still is, in a way.
The area directly along the river,
from opposite Manchester Cathedral,
all the way to the old Salford Dock complex,
has been, or is being, redeveloped in recent years,
and new office and residential buildings
have taken the place of many of the old tower blocks.

(11:32):
Some of them are flashy and vibrant,
unoccupied by organisations like BBC
and civil service functions like HMRC and the Home Office.
Some of them are not,
including a 13-floor concrete carbuncle
that looks like someone took all of the energy
and retro vibe of a 1960s tower block
and built a 2005 cover version,
complete with 1960s style cladding

(11:52):
and a 1960s style elevator and lift.
One, which breaks down a lot.
This may be a subtweet.
And away from the river,
the old slightly worn terraces
and concrete towers still persist.
Salford Shopping Centre,
confusingly in Pendleton,
but I'll talk about Salford Centre very shortly,
was built on the site of around 6,000
slum terraced houses,

(12:13):
opened in 1972,
and looks like it.
Yet don't come to Salford for the aesthetic.
Sadly, this may be the same subtweet.
Before I talk about contemporary Salford
and what's there that people might find interesting,
I want to just deviate a wee bit
and go on to two small rants,

(12:35):
neither of which are terribly important,
though one is at least significant on a day-to-day basis.
Regarding the latter,
I just spoke about how Salford and Manchester
are separated by the River Irwell.
I can't impress on you enough
how weird and arbitrary this border is.
Obviously, everywhere has a border,
everywhere has a limit of authority
beyond which everything becomes somebody else's problem,

(12:55):
and geopolitics shows that often these borders are at rivers.
However, the River Irwell is not very wide.
I mean, you can't jump across it,
but honestly, you probably could pole vault across it,
if you're athletic enough and not dyspraxic.
I mean, I wouldn't do it.
It's definitely one of those rivers that,
while you know you're on a bridge when you cross it,
wouldn't be considered in any way major or defining.

(13:17):
One of the bridges that crosses the river between the two
is 38 metres long,
and that includes part of the span of a land.
What makes the border weird is its location.
Nikolaus Pevsner, a 20th-century historian
who concentrated on hyper-local concepts,
made the following observation in 1969.
Quote,
that neighbouring, Stratford and Salford

(13:37):
are not administratively one with Manchester
is one of the most curious anomalies of England, unquote.
I'm not going to lie, he's got a bloody point.
I've always had those vibes.
Salford is closer to one end
of the grounds of Manchester Cathedral
than that end is to the opposite side of Manchester Cathedral.
Manchester Victoria Railway Station,
the second most important railway station in Manchester,

(13:59):
sits at the end of a viaduct over the river,
meaning at one end of the train,
you are closer to Salford than the footbridge to the station exit.
Indeed, the former Manchester Exchange station
that lay next to Victoria was itself in Salford.
The residential parts of so-called Central Salford,
or come onto that concept imminently,
are closer to Manchester's main shopping centre,
the Arndale Centre,

(14:19):
than Manchester's main railway and coach stations are.
In essence, Salford, and indeed the centre of Salford,
is literally closer to Manchester City Centre
than maybe two-thirds of Manchester City Centre itself is.
And Manchester City Centre is roughly a rhombus
with sides of about a mile long.
As an aside, me and Laura calculated that,
based on the area defined as Central London,

(14:39):
for an urban area with the population it has,
Manchester City Centre is about half the size it should be.
And it's significant if, and only if,
you pay taxes to your local council area,
serve under laws officiated by your local council area,
have your bins collected by the local council area.
If I were on the other side of my tower block,
I'd be able to see Manchester Crown Court.

(15:00):
It would be literally, you know, just there.
I used to walk past it every day.
Yet I was in Salford,
so any admin I would have needed to have done
would have had to have been done several miles to the west.
But this leads to my other rant.
Salford is both a town and a borough.
And the centre of Salford isn't anywhere near Central Salford.
Or rather, the difference between the city of Salford

(15:23):
and the borough of Salford is surprisingly disparate
in a similar way.
The borough of Salford is a weird shape.
Well, no, it's not a weird shape.
It's vaguely triangular or rather arrowhead shaped.
And two of the vertices extend out well
into the rural mossy wilderness
that exists between Manchester and Liverpool.
The problem is, the third vertex, the easternmost one,

(15:43):
is where the traditional centre of Salford is.
Similar to a megaphone,
most of the intensity of Salford is at one corner.
For a year, I lived in a dubious tower block
very close to Salford's central railway station.
Close enough that if I wasn't a dyspraxic loon
with as much arm strength as a flowerpot of soggy basil,
I could probably have thrown something from my apartment's balcony
and have it land on the station platform.

(16:05):
Station itself has only been known as Salford Central since 1989.
It was previously called simply Salford
and renamed to avoid confusion
with the new station at Salford Crescent,
which serves Salford University,
and replaced stations at Pendleton
that were closed partly for reasons of vandalism.
It is the second time the station was renamed.
For a period of the mid-50s, 1850s,

(16:26):
it was called Salford New Bailey after the road it stands on,
which, to be honest, much more logical name.
Indeed with hindsight, there's names of the opposite way round.
See, in the old days, the centre of Salford
was indeed by where Salford's central station now stands.
It's very close to what used to be Salford Town Hall,
Salford Cathedral,
and the main population centre of the borough.
It very much was Salford.

(16:47):
Thing is, these days Salford is much more decentralized
and plural centric.
Salford Council now sits in a building three or so miles west in Swinton.
Salford's central shopping area is, as noted area,
in the area known as Pendleton,
which is, I guess, vaguely near Salford Crescent Station,
but also near enough to Salford Quays and halfway to Eccles.
These are much further distances than anything

(17:07):
defined within Manchester City Centre.
In effect, Salford, like the metropolitan boroughs like
Sandwell, Sefton and Kirklees,
doesn't have a town or city centre,
and exists more to fill a map than to define a specific town.
Therefore, if I were to say you should go to Salford,
it would be tricky to define what Salford actually is,
out with the generic borough boundary.

(17:28):
If that seems pedantic,
note that Emily Bronte wrote the novel Wuthering Heights,
and it's believed her inspiration was a farmhouse
at what is now known as Top Withens.
It's a ruin, but even today stands in remote rural countryside,
two miles from the nearest significant village of Howarth,
and yet it's counted as being inside Bradford,
the UK's fifth or sixth largest city,

(17:49):
a fact that vaguely mues my flatmate when she visited in mid-June.
There's very little countryside in Salford borough,
and what there is was mossy farmland.
Again, you're not going to come here for the aesthetic.
TLDR, Salford Central, isn't.
In saying all that, the purpose of this podcast
is to explain why I believe everywhere is interesting.

(18:11):
So what's interesting about Salford and why should you go there?
Or at least why should you be aware of it for more than just
it's near Manchester?

So let's start with the most obvious (18:18):
industrial heritage,
a place with a long-standing and industrial background of the kind
Salford has must lead to some interesting legacy, right?
Salford Docks, also known as Manchester Docks,
despite the fact that only one of them was in Manchester,
because borders are weird, are no more.
They closed for good in 1982.
Some of them have been infilled and either built on or left to rot.

(18:40):
Four of them, though, in the southwest of Salford,
were redeveloped into an area known as Salford Quays.
The best way of describing Salford Quays is in comparison.
They are, quite literally, a northern version of Canary Wharf in London.
Obviously, everything's on a much smaller scale,
but it's effectively the same thing,
a series of modern buildings and towers, many of which gleam.

(19:02):
Gleam, and which are used for commercial and residential purposes,
based around a series of renovated docks that have been cleaned and made pretty.
There's a local rowing group that uses them as a base.
And just like Canary Wharf, the area is served by a light rail system
that links it seamlessly with the centre of a nearby city, in this case, Manchester,
not Salford, because as we noted, Salford doesn't have a centre.

(19:23):
In addition, there's a series of art installations and ground plaques
commemorating the people that worked here,
specifically an ongoing mention of the Merchant Navy,
which I've spoken about in depth before.
Businesses in the area, including the BBC,
whose sports department moved here in 2011.
I remember it happening.
The reason I first registered with a Twitter account
was because the BBC Sports website offered sassy text commentary

(19:44):
on sporting events as they happened,
and back in 2010, the best way of contacting them was through Twitter.
However, they were based somewhere in London.
When they moved to Salford, almost the entire staff quit
and they had to recruit entirely new text commentators.
They still did keep the sass, though, so it was not lost.
Another part of the BBC that's moved up here is BBC Six Music,

(20:04):
which suits a lot of the presenters because they're very northern.
The BBC were not the only media company to relocate here,
amongst others, ITV have a large building also on the waterfront.
Indeed, so many media companies were encouraged to move here.
A small part of Salford Quays is officially known as Media City UK.
It's also close to the relocated Granada Studios complex
on the south side of the Canal and River,

(20:25):
at this point the Irwell and the Manchester Ship Canal,
the same thing. This is where you'll find the set of Coronation Street,
or did before Covid, I've no idea if they've reopened it for tours
because it's never been something that interested me.
Also on the opposite side of the river,
in the borough of Trafford and not Manchester,
because borders are arbitrary, is the Old Trafford complex.
The football stadium, Manchester United, lest you not be aware,

(20:45):
is very prominent from Salford Quays.
The cricket stadium is a couple of blocks further south.
Also on the opposite bank in Trafford is the Northern Imperial War Museum,
as in the northern branch of the Imperial War Museum,
the original also being on the opposite side of the river from Canary Wharf,
maintaining the copycat nature of this place.
I'm not going to do a podcast on the borough of Trafford,
just to set expectations.

(21:05):
Everywhere is indeed interesting,
but even I'd be hard pushed to talk for 45 minutes on Trafford.
Good for beer though.
Speaking of which, also in the Salford Quays area,
several brew pubs.
There's a couple of breweries just to the west,
including Pomona and the offices of Seven Brothers,
who have a couple of brew taps in Salford and Manchester.
You've also got a standard of cafes and pop-ups,
including a Pret,

(21:26):
and referencing both the BBC and the Nostalgia,
subject to a recent podcast,
is a mini Blue Peter Garden.
Ask your parents.
Salford Quays would be quite a plush and convenient place to live,
if it weren't about two miles from, well, anywhere.
Now, although canals were very important for Salford's industrial development,
they tended to form the edge of the borough rather than be a fundamental part of it.

(21:48):
That said, there's two canals that still exist
and provide a reason to visit for different reasons.
The Manchester Ship Canal,
the huge feature that made the Greater Manchester area the powerhouse it was,
and which effectively terminated at Salford Docks,
is still used for some freight traffic now,
but from a tourism point of view,
there are trips and tours that traverse its length.
The canal is about 35 miles long and ends on the Mersey between Ellesmere Port and Birkenhead,

(22:11):
and both of which are also places that tourists generally don't need to go.
And the scenery you see on the way...
Look, the Norfolk Boards over in East Anglia are a really popular place to go boating and sailing.
I've done it myself, but you don't go there for the ambience,
you go there for the experience.
And maybe that's the same here.
Eight hours of looking from the deck of a boat going,
I think I can see something in the distance that isn't a field or an expanse of moss,

(22:35):
doesn't excite me.
Maybe it excites you.
One thing that trip would take you past there is Barton Swing Aqueduct.
It's not a huge towering Roman era aqueduct with vast arches,
nor is it like some of the aqueducts on the British Canal Network
that were built to span a deep valley
and consequently give great views of mountain scenery.
This aqueduct, about 100 meters long, weighs 1450 tons.

(22:56):
Strangely, no one wanted to tell me its height.
It carries the Bridgewater Canal that runs from Manchester to
Wigan-ish, where it connects with the Leeds Liverpool Canal.
It replaced a late 18th century stone aqueduct that was 12 meters high,
so given the nature of canals, it's likely to be the same height.
The original needed to be replaced because traffic on the ship canals
was becoming too tall for it.

(23:18):
And therein lies a clue as to why this aqueduct is so notable.
You can't change the height, so what do you do?
Clue's in the name, it is a Grade two-star listed building
and is the first and only Swing Aqueduct in the world.
The world, it's only a small thing, but it is completely unique.

(23:39):
When large vessels pass underneath,
the entire bridge that carries the Bridgewater Canal
can swing to the side a full 90 degrees,
like swing road bridges, to allow them to pass.
Obviously, logistically, this is much harder for a canal than a road to do,
if for no other reason than water is more liquid than tarmac
and tends to go to places you might not want it to go
if you don't keep it completely under control.

(24:00):
To that end, there's a series of gates and troughs
that keep up to 800 tons of water in place.
You can't walk along the Manchester Ship Canal,
tho you can walk on roads that run alongside it,
because it doesn't have a towpath,
because it was built after canal boats needed to be guided by horses,
so it didn't need one.
You can walk along the Bridgewater Canal though,
and its Salford section is more aesthetic than its Trafford section.

(24:22):
The border is at the Barton Swing Aqueduct,
and you can't cross it,
because they've removed the towpath for safety reasons.
It was suspended nearly three meters above the canal.
They're working on a means to replace it,
just means you have to walk on the pavement
next to the road for a wee bit.
Salford, especially the far east,
close to the Irwell,
has several other old bridges scheduled
as listed buildings and structures,
but they're all generally less fun than the Barton Swing Aqueduct.

(24:45):
Most of them are either Victorian brick railway viaducts,
especially the section between Salford Central and Manchester Victoria,
where there are all manner of shops and businesses built into them,
or there are bridges over the Irwell linking the two cities by road and foot.
Indeed, three successive road bridges,
Albert, Victoria and Blackfriars,
all date from the first half of the 19th century,

(25:05):
and all are grade two listed.
Between Albert and Blackfriars bridges though,
is a very different bridge, almost jarring in its difference.
It's one I walked across a lot,
because it provided a shortcut to the northern bit of Deansgate
and my nearest Weatherspoons.
And on the Salford side,
it starts in an open, slightly landscaped pedestrian square,
Clermont-Ferrand Square,
because Salford is twinned with it.

(25:26):
On the Manchester side,
it goes along the wide alleyway in the back streets,
but you don't need to myther about that.
This is the Trinity Bridge,
and is a very modern footbridge built in the mid-1990s.
It's very white,
with straight beams connecting the bridge itself
to a leaning 40 metre high column.
When viewing it from the Albert Bridge,
it looks a little like a boat's sail.
It's actually the only structure in the UK

(25:47):
built by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,
who is famous for many structures across the world,
including Liege-Guillemans railway station,
which I've likened to looking like a cross
between a spaceship and a butterfly cupcake,
Bilbao Airport, which looks like a dove,
and the World Trade Centre Transportation Hub in New York,
which looks like, I mean, I don't know,

(26:08):
it looks frankly odd, that's how it looks.
Also in Clermont-Ferrand Square is the Lowry Hotel.
I'll be honest, doesn't look like much from the outside.
I could see it from my apartment's balcony,
and it was really hard to distinguish
from the buildings surrounding it,
which looked very much like they were built
in the 1960s engineering university mould,
but it's notable as being the whole of Greater Manchester
area's only five-star hotel.

(26:29):
Yeah, I was perplexed by that as well.
It was built in 2001,
it's got eight floors, seven suites,
apparently the world's first meditation pod,
called the Somadrome,
surprisingly, only one restaurant,
the River Restaurant, because it's right next to the river,
which would be a selling point
if the river in question wasn't the Irwell,
and I've obviously never set foot in it.
For a random weeknight in a couple of months,

(26:50):
prices ranged from £168 a night for the Deluxe King
to £620 a night for one of the suites.
There are two Premier Inns about the same distance,
maybe a couple of hundred metres,
either side of the Lowry.
I know which one I'd rather go in.
But this is just one example of the regeneration
and reconstruction of the Salford waterfront area,
as mentioned earlier.

(27:11):
A couple of blocks away though,
and the Old City re-emerges, at least in patches.
The main road going through Salford is Chapel Street,
a run from the Irwell opposite Manchester Cathedral,
all the way to past Peel Park and Salford Crescent Station.
Around half way along is Bexley Square,
home to the largest of the real ale pubs in Salford,
but also the Old Town Hall and a couple of public art sculptures.
The Town Hall and Courthouse were built in the 1820s,

(27:33):
in what is described as a neoclassical style,
out of brick and stone, with long rectangular windows,
and fronted with two large rounded columns.
It served as the council offices until 1974,
when proceedings moved to the less aesthetic building in Pendlebury.
It remained the Courthouse until 2011.
It's now being inverted into apartments,
you can live in it,

(27:53):
though I've never come across the opportunity to do so.
It's another Grade Two listed building in case you're keeping track.
Also on the square is a bronze sculpture of a horse,
a little over two metres tall.
Next to it is also in bronze,
sculpted lamppost with a series of little trinkets at the bottom.
These combined are called Salford firsts,
and they're by the northern sculptor Emma Rogers,
and they represent everything Salfordian.

(28:16):
The horse is representing the industrial heritage in the canals,
the lamppost because Salford was a very early instigator of street lights,
which I'll mention later,
and the trinkets all represent bits of Salford's history and culture,
including politics, music, industrial heritage, science and transport.
A little further along the main road away from the centre is Salford Cathedral.
Now you may be unsurprised to know that this is a Catholic cathedral,

(28:38):
given Salford's potted liturgical history.
It was built in the 1840s in the neo-Gothic style,
and seems to have been designed by taking inspiration
from several other churches around the country, and Belgium.
Wikipedia tells me that it was the first Catholic Church
since the Reformation to be built that was shaped like a cross.
That said, I'm guessing not many Catholic churches were built in that period,

(29:00):
to be honest, for reasons.
At the time of podding, it was being renovated and restored,
and the roof replaced,
so I've never had the opportunity to go in it,
or even see it in its full glory,
as it's had scaffolding on it for so long as I've been there.
A bit like Manchester Town Hall over the river,
which is annoying,
because that's supposed to be one of the nicest buildings in the whole region.
What I can tell you about Salford Cathedral,

(29:21):
though, is its spire's 73 metres tall,
and the whole structure is,
you may be unsurprised to know,
a Grade II-style listed building.
I think it's one for the future,
and next time I go back there.
For the record, the nearest Salford gets to an Anglican Cathedral
is the Chapel of Sacred Trinity,
a very village church-looking building close to the eastern end of the city,
and flanked by a huge railway via looked.
The church came first,

(29:42):
the original building being built in 1635,
the first parish church in Salford,
according to their own website.
The bell tower of that church still survives,
despite the rest of the building being rebuilt just over 100 years later.
Again, obviously Grade II-style listed building.
I could hear the ringing of the bells from my apartment,
and I have been inside it twice.
Because when I lived in Salford,

(30:03):
that was my local polling station.
One of the least likely things to find in such an industrial
and densely populated place as Salford is an old manor house.
Ordsall Hall in the District of Ordsall,
very close to the Salford Quays,
feels weirdly located between Council Estate Housing
and the regeneration that's occurring on the waterfront.
And yet it's one of the oldest buildings in the city,

(30:23):
as has itself seen the whole area completely change.
It was originally constructed in the mid-13th century,
though the oldest surviving parts are from about 200 years later,
and to be fair, it does look quite stereotypically
Tudor in its panelling and woodwork frame.
It stands in its own lawned grounds,
which, no longer huge by medieval manor house standards,
are still noticeable in the surrounds of Salford.

(30:45):
Apparently, it even used to have a moat.
Over the centuries, it's been a family home,
though clearly not one that would have been lived in by any of us mere mortals,
a working men's club for a local mill,
a school for would-be church people,
and during World War II, a radio station.
It's now a museum, it's free to enter and wander around.
It's on a couple of levels.

(31:06):
On the ground floor, there's a recreation of the kitchen,
complete with models on the sort of banqueting food
that would have been prepared therein,
and the Great Hall, which has huge ceilings and a replica pillory.
I didn't ask if it was usable.
Upstairs are the bedrooms, including the famous star chamber,
because of the stars on the ceiling,
which are not made of dubiously luminous plastic,
rather of dubiously reflective lead.

(31:28):
At the very top of the manhouse,
you can wander along to the ceiling rafts and beams.
It's a little cramped,
but you can get a glimpse of the original roof.
There is an unsubstantiated rumour, since Stuart Times,
that the hall has a connection with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.
The story goes that Robert Catesby and Guido Fawkes
planned some of the details in the star chamber.

(31:49):
While it feels a bit of a stretch,
especially as none of the leading conspirators
had any connection with the area,
most of them, in fact, hailed from Yorkshire,
recall that Salford seems to have been a traditionally
Catholic stronghold throughout the centuries,
and the owners of the hall were familiar with Robert Catesby,
so it's not implausible.
Another old building is Kersal Cell,
a very clearly Tudor building that was constructed in the mid-1500s,

(32:11):
on the site of a very small pre-reformation monastery or priory.
It's in the north of Salford,
down a small residential cul-de-sac close to the Irwell,
and it's still used as private housing today,
which means all you can do is wander down the road
and peer at it through the trees,
hoping the local neighbourhood watch don't notice you.
It is also a grade two listed building,
which presumably makes it awkward to live in,

(32:31):
as there'd be a whole plethora of regulations
and things you can't do to it,
like solar panels, or presumably double glazing.
It also looks quite weird, nestled quaintly,
surrounded by much more modern housing.
One of the problems that Salford has had historically and presently
is that at least at its eastern central end,

(32:51):
it's very nature meant open space is at a premium.
A densely populated city confined in a small area
and a bend in a river has meant it's not a very green city.
One of the few green areas is Peel Park,
a little to the west of the centre,
on the way to Salford Crescent Railway Station.
It was opened in August 1846,
after much planning and agitation by the local MP, Mark Phillips,

(33:14):
and the then Prime Minister, Robert Peel,
and is often touted as being the first urban public park in the UK.
This may well depend on semantics and definitions,
but it's certainly one of the earliest
dedicated public spaces of its type.
Although parks certainly existed in the country previously,
they were exclusive, rather than inclusive.
You had to be the right sort of person to get in.

(33:36):
It's not a huge park, though it is large enough to have a two-lap parkrun,
as opposed to a three-lap parkrun.
It's banded on the east by the Irwell, which sometimes floods.
Indeed, in 1866, the whole park was covered in two and a half metres of water,
an event now commemorated with an obelisk near the park run starting line.
Although the dodgy concrete slabs that demarcate a wide path
along the river do get overrun from time to time,

(33:57):
it's mainly with geese rather than water these days.
The embankment built alongside ought to prevent major issues.
Which is just as well, would you remember how clean that water isn't?
I saw a couple of teenagers paddling in it the other month.
I hope they were wearing diving boots.
The park contains the campus for the University of Salford,
and as part of the university also has an art gallery,

(34:17):
museum and public library,
which is notable as being possibly the first free public library in the UK.
It's also the most aesthetic building on campus,
given that it's clearly Victorian and much of the rest of it is clearly not.
Moving away from history for a bit,
Salford is also notable for other cultural concepts.
One of Salford's biggest exports, historically, has been a drink,

(34:39):
but not beer. No, no, this is a fruit-flavoured soft drink called Vimto.
It's mainly berries with a scattering of other flavours, herbs and spices,
rather than whatever the feck is in irn-bru.
The name is short for Vim Tonic, and it was originally created as a kind of health tonic.
Though originally founded on the other side of the river in 1908,

(35:01):
production was moved to Salford two years later to a spot near the cathedral
and on the way to Peel Park.
No idea where it's made now,
but the HQ of Nichols, who make the stuff,
in Newton Le Willows, halfway between Manchester and Liverpool.
Whilst in the UK is a bit quirky and regional,
Vimto has a huge overseas following, particularly in the Middle East.
It's the most common drink consumed during Ramadan,

(35:21):
especially in Saudi Arabia,
and upwards of 20 million bottles a year are sold there.
I have no idea why.
It's also popular in parts of West Africa,
notably Senegal and the Gambia.
The site of the old factory in Salford is now a development called Vimto Gardens,
and has a branch of co-op supermarket on it.
Where, obviously, you can buy bottles of Vimto.

(35:43):
Just on the south side of the main road west out of Salford centre,
the A57, which makes a beeline for Liverpool,
is a red brick building built in 1903.
This is Salford Lads Club,
the name coming from the Victorian and Edwardian vibe of centres
serving the needs of the local community,
which in this case was to provide youth provision
and entertainment for the boys of the area
when they weren't at school or work, or fighting a colonial war.

(36:07):
A youth club, in a sense, but this was 1903,
so it was a lot more regimented.
So for the record though, that's still its name.
It has since opened its remit,
so it's now a non-denominational cultural centre
that is open to people of all ages and sexes,
presumably including us non-binary peeps,
but to be honest, I've never asked.
In itself, it's a fine sample of the style,
many of which across the country have since been demolished,

(36:29):
and it provides a good link to Salford's history and culture.
Indeed, it is obviously a Grade II listed building.
However, this particular building is notable for more recent pop culture.
I walked past it a few months ago and made a YouTube short video,
and all I said was something like,
if you recognise this building, how's your back?
It was quite a popular video.

(36:50):
The building was used as the backdrop
for what is now considered an iconic photo of a local pop band The Smiths.
Specifically, it was the inside cover of arguably their best known album,
The Queen Is Dead.
Apparently at the time, the people who ran the club
went too impressed with being associated
with such anti-establishment lyrics as,
"I say Charles, don't you ever crave to appear
on the front of the Daily Mail dressed in your mother's bridal veil?"

(37:12):
They seem to be okay with the fame of it now though,
and in any case, its vibe, location and fame
have led to it appearing in a multitude of other media since.
The Smiths aren't the only musicians with a Salford connection.
Most of the members of the band Joy Division came from Ordsall,
and thus within spitting distance of Salford Lads Club themselves.
Joy Division, if you know your pop history,
were one of the less cheerful sounding groups of the late 70s,

(37:33):
the most famous song being Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Name an opinion that will have knifed your throat as per the Tangled meme.
I prefer the Paul Young version.
And yet, people were surprised when their lead singer killed himself.
Anyway, they reformed afterwards and changed their name,
and you'd have thought a name like Joy Division would have
certain connotations that they might want to avoid with the new name.
So naturally, they renamed themselves New Order,

(37:55):
which of course doesn't have any baggage whatsoever.
Another notable musician from Salford is Mark E. Smith,
one of the strangest people to ever have a hit record,
never mind an entire pop career,
which he did under the name of The Fall,
a band with so many ex-members largely because Mark E. Smith
was one of the strangest people to ever have a pop career,
then it became a byword for rapid staff turnover.

(38:15):
A bit like the SugarBabes.
He once said,
if it's me and your granny on bongos, it's The Fall.
And honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if several people's
grannies probably have been at some point.
The Fall's most influential song is Probably Hit the North,
which was used as a major pop culture reference
for Northern music scene in the late 80s and early 90s.

(38:36):
Obviously, there's an overlap between industrial history and music,
and there's two examples of this from Salford.
John Cooper Clarke is a punk poet who started a career in the 70s
and is still going, including hosting the occasional show on BBC Six Music.
Like punk poet, I mean, I guess a modern day version would be Kae Tempest.
Someone is primarily a poet, but occasionally makes music
and who does tours like musicians would,

(38:58):
and his poetry is very direct, political and observational.
I've been known to write poetry myself,
and I do consider John Cooper Clarke to be a direct inspiration.
I'm not that good.
One of his poems and songs is a six-minute picture of life
on an urban residential street, Beasley Street,
which he based on a street in Lower Broughton,
not very far from where my flat was.
Before him, however, was someone who's world famous as a poet and musician,

(39:21):
the singer-songwriter Ewan McColl.
He was a socialist, nay, a communist,
and this is reflected in much of his writing,
but he was also a collector and archiver of traditional folk songs across the UK,
including being the conduit by which the County Durham folk song Scarborough Fair became notable.
A retired miner performed it for him.
He recorded his own version,

(39:42):
folk legend Martin Carthy heard it from him,
and taught it to Paul Simon.
He's also noted for being the writer of Dirty Old Town,
a song originally about Salford specifically,
but whose more famous cover versions,
notablly by the Pogues,
removed those references and made it generic.
It's the one that begins,
"I met my love by the gasworks wall,
dreamed a dream by the old canal",

(40:03):
because what gives a place a sense of romance
than industrial heritage.
Not that I'd know about romance.
As an aside, he also wrote 'The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face',
which is a somewhat off-brand song compared to the rest of his output.
His children followed him into the music business,
Kirsty had her own folk rock career,
while Neill hangs around with David Gray,
who comes from the other side of the Irwell.

(40:23):
Quite away the other side actually,
Sale is in Trafford borough, he's posh.
But this is not the podcast about the history of music from the Greater Manchester area,
which is a shame,
because I could probably rattle on about that for a couple of hours.
If you come out of Salford Lad's Club,
turn right,
you're on a street that's lined with old style Victorian terraced housing
and cherry blossom.
They're a well preserved and let's be honest,

(40:44):
quite elegant looking row of housing
that extends past a small garden square.
Despite being one block away from the main dual carriageway road out the city,
it feels very quiet and very serene.
This road is called Coronation Street.
No, not that one.
Well, not quite.
So for those of you unfamiliar,

(41:05):
slash me waves at my American audience especially here,
Coronation Street is a TV drama, a soap opera of the old school.
It's been running since December 1960 and shows no sign of stopping yet.
It seems to be both the longest running TV drama series in the world
and the one with the most number of shows,
which at the time of this podcast was over 11,300.

(41:26):
God forbid if you want to binge on that.
It's set on an urban residential street lined with terraced housing
and tells the lives of the people who live on it.
Thing is, the original creator of the series, Tony Warren,
was raised in the Salford Borough, in Pendlebury and Eccles.
And after an early career in TV and radio as an actor,
he had an idea of creating a series set on a Salford street

(41:47):
with a pub, a shop and a load of houses
and literally just telling the story of the people who lived there.
While Coronation Street in Ordsall is almost certainly not the direct inspiration for the TV
series and its name is almost certainly coincidental,
it is canon to state that Weatherfield,
the suburb of Manchester the series is set in,
is directly based on and therefore directly represents Salford.

(42:10):
I would say that this is also an example of the kind of urban landscapes
made famous by L.S. Lyre in his paintings
and while he certainly did a lot of work in Salford,
I'd like to point out he was born in Stretford,
on the other side of the Irwell, in what is now the Borough of Trafford.
So while he actively arted about Salford
and while there's both a hotel and a bridge named after him in the Borough,
that's why I've not mentioned him much.
He died in Glossop, which isn't even in Greater Manchester,

(42:33):
though it probably should be,
and he's buried in Manchester's southern cemetery.
I've been to his grave, people leave paintbrushes at it.
Before I sign off, here's a few other notable points about Salford.
Salford was the location of the first passenger bus service in the world,
of the kind we know them today.

(42:53):
In 1824 a chap called John Greenwood set up the first regular fare paying stop in the street
bus route in the world.
It ran from Pendleton, in the area that's now dominated by Salford's shopping centre,
went through the centre of Salford and terminated at Market Street in Manchester,
close to Piccadilly Gardens.
Almost exactly where you'd want from a bus service, even today.
And while I don't know the exact route the bus took,

(43:14):
there's certainly several bus routes even today that run something similar.
The bus would almost certainly have run along Chapel Street.
I mentioned this earlier as being the main route out of Salford heading up towards Wigan,
the one the Cathedral and Town Hall and Peel Park lie on.
It seems that this was the first street in the world to be lit by gas lamps,
the forerunners of modern electric street lighting.
They were installed in 1806.

(43:36):
So next time you're walking down a road in the dark,
bring to mind this is where it all started.
Similarly, and probably part of the same project,
the nearby Salford Engine Twist Company,
who operated a mill between Chapel Street and the Irwell,
became the first cotton mill, and thus probably one of the first buildings of
any kind of its size in the world, to be lit with gas lighting.

(43:57):
Salford was also the location of the invention of the Bush Roller Chain.
Now, you might not know what the Bush Roller Chain is,
but I can guarantee pretty much that most of you will have not exactly used,
but certainly appreciated one.
It was patented in 1880 by a Swiss British engineer called Hans Reinhold,
who had a factory in Salford.
Company still exists,
their website proclaims themselves as the oldest established transmission chain company

(44:20):
that's still going,
although sadly they do not specify the location of said factory where the invention happened.
And what is a Bush Roller transmission chain?
Well, it's a small chain that's driven by a toothed wheel.
It's used in a myriad of applications for transmitting power from one part of a device
to the other,
but in everyday use you'll see and mow it mostly as a bicycle chain,

(44:42):
the small chain that drives the wheels when you pedal.
Although Salford has had a history of Catholicism,
the north of the borough on the borders with Bury
are notable for two other religions.
The area of Broughton has one of the largest Jewish communities in the country.
The local political world has a population that's nearly 15% Jewish,
the average across the England is 0.5.

(45:03):
But it's also notable for being the home to a Greek Orthodox community
that immigrated in the 1820s for reasons,
and eventually settled again in the Broughton area.
In 1861 they established a permanent church,
the Church of the Annunciation,
which is now the oldest purpose-built Orthodox Church in the UK.
Speaking of the Church, it is perhaps notable,

(45:23):
especially given the dual themes of Catholicism and working-class social agitation in Salford,
that the second family planning clinic outside of London opened here in 1926.
It was designed to ensure working-class women,
of which there were many, because this is Salford,
had access to birth control information for affordable rates.
The Catholic Church were unimpressed, but frankly, fuck them, so to speak.

(45:45):
Indeed, use a condom for added symbolism.
Well, that's about all for this pod.
Join me next time for another adventure, beyond the brochure.
Until then, a few final words.
Hot beneath the collar an inspector calls,
where the perishing stink of squalor impregnates the walls.

(46:06):
The rats have all got rickets, they spit through broken teeth.
The name of the game is not cricket, caught out on Beasley Street.
And if you're feeling off-colour, as you would be if you'd been living on the likes of Beasley
Street in the 1970s, keep on getting better.
Thank you for listening to this episode of Travel Tales from Beyond the Brochure.

(46:27):
I hope you enjoyed it.
If you did, don't forget to leave a review on your podcast site of choice.
Travel Tales from Beyond the Brochure was written,
presented, edited and produced in the Glasgow studio by the Barefoot Backpacker.
The theme music is Walking Barefoot on Grass,
(bonus) by Kai Engel, which is available via the free music archive
and used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

(46:48):
Previous episodes are available on your podcast service of choice,
and show notes are available on my website, Barefoot-Backpacker.com.
If you want to contact me, tweet me @rtwbarefoot,
email me at [e-mail],
or look for me on Instagram, Discord, YouTube or Facebook.
And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter,
and if you really like what I do,
you can slip me the cost of a beer through my Patreon

(47:10):
in return for access to rare extra content.
Until next time, have safe journeys.
Bye for now.