Historic ‘Soho’ street is in line for a facelift
THE historic street that has been dubbed ‘Stockport’s Soho’ is getting a facelift.
Work has started to restore the dilapidated road surface on Little Underbank in the Old Town.
It is being carried out in two phases, the first of which will see part of the street temporarily covered with a coloured surface over the next two months, before heritage paving setts are laid.
The street, which is home to a growing number of independent businesses, is dotted with broken cobbles that have been patched with asphalt, and there have long been calls for it to be restored.
Stockport council says the area, which recently featured in the Netflix thriller ‘The Stranger’ and, will be ‘transformed’ by the work.
The first stage, which began this week, will be to reconstruct the road between the automatic bollards on Lower Hillgate, close to Robinsons Brewery and Royal Oak Yard.
The coloured surface will be temporarily put in place, while the council says the existing cobbles will be stored and reused at a later date.
The council says it is being done this way to avoid the new setts being damaged while other regeneration work is taking place.
The footpath will be repaired and ‘street furniture’ such as benches, will also be redecorated.
Works will then take place to reconstruct the rest of Little Underbank with heritage-paving setts between Royal Oak Yard and the roundabout at the bottom of Little Underbank, opposite the White Lion.
At a later stage, once redevelopment works on the buildings on Little Underbank and Lower Hillgate have been completed, contractors will return to the section between the automatic bollards and Royal Oak Yard and replace the coloured surfacing with heritage paving setts.
Councillor David Meller, cabinet member for economy and regeneration, said: “Regenerating the Underbanks area is just one of our aims for our town centre, which also includes transforming Merseyway and the Interchange.
“Carrying out the road reconstruction works in two phases is the common sense approach while we redevelop Stockport’s fantastic ‘Old Town.’
“The current carriageway has failed and we need to replace it before the building works along the Underbanks take place.
“It would not make sense for us to lay new paving setts between Robinsons and Royal Oak Yard as there is a high risk of them being damaged as the regeneration works take place - that is why we will replace the current, failed setts with the coloured surfacing.
“We will then return at a later date to lay the new heritage setts on this section. It very much ‘business as usual’ though and our highly-skilled team will ensure disruption is kept to a minimum.
“These improvements will reinforce our belief that the Underbanks and Lower Hillgate are fantastic places to work, live and shop.”