Development should fit in with history
I’M just wondering if the architects of the invasion of the anonymous glass and steel ‘square orange tinted boxes’ which the town planners seem intent on foisting on the long suffering residents of Rochdale couldn’t at least have made a cosmetic attempt to fit in with what remains of the existing town centre architecture?
Maybe an outer cladding of Portland stone and Westmorland slate as used on the old Post Office, millstone grit or red glazed Manchester brick could tone down this modernist monstrosity just a little.
Our (currently padlocked and mostly empty) Grade II listed Post Office goes back to 1927, Rochdale Town Hall, regarded as one of the finest Victorian Gothic Town Halls in the country, to 1871.
There has been Christian worship taking place on the site of St Chad’s Parish Church of Rochdale for more than a 1,000 years.
We have a well established history.
To many the Riverside development fails totally to blend in with the 1930s art deco of buildings like the former Regal Cinema (now The Regal Moon) on The Butts.
The Riverside lacks soul and style and it must be said has some echoes of the worst of brutal minimalist eastern European Stalinist architecture.
It lacks anything that says even remotely ‘welcome to Rochdale‘ or acknowledges or recognises our proud history as a once thriving Lancashire mill town.
Maybe at least a mural on the side to commemorate the Rochdale Pioneers, Samuel Bamford, The Chartists or cotton mill workers in shawls and clogs could be added to humanise it at least just a little.
I’m no Luddite but maybe progress isn’t all it’s made out to be.
You can’t help thinking very expensive, very late and very out of place with it’s surroundings. Still better late than never, Rochdale council.
At this rate of urban re-development we can expect an extension to this new Riverside development sometime around 2055, by which time the two previous shopping malls will be car parks whilst anyone left in town even remotely rich enough to shop in Next or M&S will then be ordering products online and having them home delivered by remote controlled drone delivery systems.
Can we assume the old Marks & Spencers will soon relocate to the new site, leaving room for another pound shop or charity shop in their much more aesthetically pleasing slightly ‘art deco’ original Yorkshire Street site?
Finally, what are the council’s plan for the rest of the town centre?
Can we expect what’s left to disappear under similar anonymous steel and glass constructs which will make our town look just like any other town centre in a hundred other equally indistinguishable ‘clone‘ towns across the county?
Rochdale has a unique place in the timeline of the first industrial revolution.
We should proudly and loudly celebrate this past and, by doing so, reinvent our future - not just watch our heritage disappear year by year under car parks and shopping malls. Andrew Wastling Drake Street
SHINING LIGHT ON BOARD
JUST a line to shed a little more light on the Remembrance Board from the Two Ships pub Mr Kelly was enquiring about (Rochdale Observer, March 29, 2017).
Mrs Wraighton, who responded the week after, was, I think, a little confused as to the intention of the memorial.
It was put up in The Two Ships in recognition of the patrons of the pub who went to fight in the First World War, irrespective of their regiment.
It was never intended to be for the Lancashire Fusiliers alone.
It can also be seen on the board the personnel who were killed, signified by a small cross beside their name.
As I recall there was another such board rescued from somewhere locally that found its way on the wall of a pub going over to Shaw.
I don’t think it was the Two Ships one – perhaps someone can shed a light on this one.
I hope Mr Kelly, the original scribe, managed to go and see the board from The Two Ships, if he didn’t I will gladly send him some photos of the same. Derek Holden Holmes Street
HOPE FOR HOSPITAL
IT was very pleasing to read in the BMA News of April 8 that the Intermediate Care facility at Rochdale Infirmary was mooted as a prime example of integrated hospital and community service.
Apparently it has caught the attention of the Devo Manc planners and could be taken as a model.
Dr Alam, working there, thinks of it as a pioneer in terms of such an approach.
Is Rochdale back in the forefront of pioneering its Health Service yet again?
Let’s have a little hope that we can again build one of the most comprehensive local services in the region.
The new hospital is still there! John Elliott (Retired Consultant) Ivy Bank Facit