This has been a bit of a niche week. I have a huge number of interests and enthusiasms, some very mainstream, others more recondite. I’m pretty used to eye-rolling by friends and family when I talk about some of my more obscure passions, but there’s a limit to what I think is suitable for a newsletter. I’d hate to imagine widespread, painful eye-rolling on a Sunday morning. We don’t need that. But, at the risk of a little mild 🙄, here are some of the week’s niches.
The discovery of the amazing value breakfasts at IKEA is pretty mainstream, but the desire to see a pear on top of a Stockport mill, less so. Both were accomplished this week.
Pear Mill, Bredbury, Stockport (1913)
The pear in question is huge and sits on top of the Pear Mill water tower, like something Cornelia Parker would install. In fact, it’s been there since the mill was built in 1913.
There are more pears around the spectacularly huge mill, and there’s a great cafe inside where you can get a muffin (more a bap or barm cake) filled with local Titterton’s sausages. ‘You can’t get better,’ we were told, and if that’s not niche knowledge, I don’t know what is.
Pear Mill is built of deep red Accrington brick, and there are millions more bricks in various shades of red in the now-beautiful mills of Ancoats which have been rescued, renovated, and repurposed to great effect.
Mill Scene (1959) LS Lowry
LS Lowry may have painted and drawn some brilliant scenes there (and there’s the famously mawkish song about him which mentions Ancoats) but it wasn’t a part of Manchester I’d ever visited before. (I grew up with and love Lowry’s art btw, and can’t be doing with any lingering snobbery about his work.)
Murrays Mills (built 1797-1804)
Now, though, you can do a marvellous walk round the area through canyons of mills and along canal paths - we used this as our guide - and see early C19 industrial architecture,
Rochdale canal, late C19 cast-iron footbridge
canal basins, terraced houses, churches and modern infills, like this on Great Ancoats Street:
under construction
I’m very aware that Ancoats is niche in many ways: it’s attracting a certain type of new resident plus many creative and design agencies.
Anita Street (1897). Originally Sanitary Street, but in the 1960s the occupants objected to the name, so they dropped the S and ry
It’s a long way from the sounds of thousands of looms and clogs, the pollution and overcrowding, the immense power of the textile magnates, and the poverty of the workers which so shocked Engels. But Manchester is famous for its energy and ability to reinvent itself, and this new accommodation is meeting a huge need. It’s attracting money and talent and is all part of the Northern Powerhouse plan, something that can’t come about too soon. This is a part of the country which is in desperate need of proper, true levelling-up - not just hot air and empty promises - and the Ancoats project will have huge knock-on effects.
This type of environment is now host to many new independent, formerly niche, businesses which are increasing like yeast cells in a sourdough starter. We counted at least four artisan bakeries - these and coffee shops must be the modern markers of prosperity - and Pollen is the best-known (it’s excellent). I wrote about Molly in Dorothy Whipple’s Because of the Lockwoods who causes consternation by running a bakery (more a cake shop), something which is seen as below her social standing. It amused me to think that now this would be considered a fine career move for a nice girl.
And there has been plenty of Stockport humour which can be pretty niche. Not everyone I know would enjoy Early Doors, set in a Stockport pub. It was inspired by much of the conversation and scenarios of the local pub where my brother used to drink with the series’ creators. It’s a dry, daft, deadpan sort of humour, and for full effect requires the niche Stockport accent which is quite distinctive and different to other North West accents.
Stockport Market (1862) in the evening
Stockport Market (1978) by Peter Shaw
Even Stockport itself is showing signs of new growth. This fact, and a chip butty in my favourite Warburton’s white sliced bread at my sister’s house, rounded off a short, niche visit nicely.
niche
Lovely reading about Stockport here. I grew up near Pear Mill, it was always in view as us kids played in the meadow down by the River Goyt. Oh and Tittertons sausages featured regularly in our family meals (still do with my family who still live in Stockport) There was always a queue at the shop but well worth waiting for.
If your niche interested are all this interesting, write on!