Masbrough and Millmoor: nothing to see here ...

As our train slowly drags its weary way up the Don valley we pass through what was once the dark Satanic mills country of south Yorkshire; a place of coal mines, iron works and heavy engineering that once led the world but is now a land  struggling to find a use for itself. I doubt Sir Walter Scott ever ventured up here to find romantic inspiration for his twaddle tales of derring-do ... So here in Rotherham, a place that has know better times, is Masbrough or Masborough (depending on who is doing the spelling, I favour leaving out the 'o'; I don't pronounce it so it's not there ... it is said that Middlesbrough, a town near to where I was born, is so because the Town Clerk couldn't spell ... But I'm digressing again)  where was I? oh yes, Masbrough, a suburb of Rotherham just across the river, comes to us as a passing, fleeting view of an old unwanted station. This was once the main station for Rotherham, from the 1840s until the mid 1980s.  All we have now is an unused platform and some railway buildings which I read are now a restaurant but it was once a thriving, busy station, you can read more here. The station's last use was for 'football specials' which leads us neatly onto the next picture ...

This is a really bad picture of  Millmoor football stadium once home to various Rotherham football clubs over the years until Rotherham United were thrown out for not paying the rent a few years ago. The place, I read, is the home of Westfield United of The Bud Evans BD U18 Division 5 which is quite possibly the least exciting piece of information I've ever found out in my entire life... a paper ran a piece on the place should you need cheering up ...

Going to the inevitable

If you have a slightly better memory than me you may faintly recall a post about the old Blundell Street school and its predicament, (here it is). It's had its share of vandalism over the years. The Council is at loggerheads with the owner over a new development, there had been talk of compulsory purchase and well, it's all so sadly familiar. So it was really no great surprise to wake up on Sunday morning to news that this place had been ravaged by a huge fire, no surprise at all; what took them so long?. 

There's some neat drone footage from Octovision Media.:

Blundell School Fire 30/4/16 from Octovision Media on Vimeo.

True story

This little house has been empty for some time. Emptiness is taken as an invitation by low-life scum to enter and take out all the copper piping, to  mess the place up, break all the windows, squat for a while, use as a drug den and then finally set fire to it. Add to all that the failure of the foundations leading some real fancy cracks, it's a wonder it has fallen down. In the above picture the rear extension is on the point of tumbling over. The Council have scheme to bring properties like this back to life but the damage was too great even for that most generous of institutions, it gave the place a zero value; £0!!

Still the place was not doomed for a Prince Charming had fallen in love with this sleeping little money pit and set his heart on restoring it to its former glory. So just the other week after years of trying to trace the owner he finally bought the place and has set about clearing the overgrown garden (mainly elderberry and ivy not thorns! This is not a fairy tale!) and will shortly be demolishing those parts about to fall down with a view to rebuilding. This blog (and, I suppose, the nice guy who lives next door) wishes him well!

Going, going, almost gone

The recent fire at the New York Hotel uncovered weaknesses in the neighbouring Albert Hall on Midland Street. The Council, for once not taking its time, issued notices to fix it by the end of the month or it will be demolished. Well as you can see the facade, which was dropping bit and bobs on the pavement below, has gone and the rest will no doubt soon follow at the tax payers expense while the Council chase up the owners for the money ....

Arson about

...and that makes three. Following fires at the Cornmill Hotel and then Lambert Street chapel it seemed only a matter of time before yet another derelict building got the ordeal by fire. Investigators says they cannot rule out a link between these fires. So far no-one's been injured but give it time ....

I have posted several times  the sad tale of this place the latest is here.

I think I may have jinxed Joynsons, the shop with the scaffolding in the background. Shortly after mentioning they had been trading here since 1890 a large piece of masonry fell off the building, no-one was hurt. Ooops!

The weekend in black and white is here.

By schisms rent asunder

First of all I admit to coming here once again with half a story. I don't know what the intentions are regarding the recently burnt out Methodist chapel on Lambert Street. What I can say is that the triangular pediment that looked like it might tumble down at any moment has gone, also the top storey on one side. But most of the front, back and one side look, to my untrained eye, to be solid; so there might some hope of salvaging something out of all this. However the building is still in the hands of  "East Yorkshire's experts in demolition" so we'll just have to wait and see. As I said, half a story, if that.

See how great a flame aspires ...

...Kindled by a spark of grace!

I could not say that I was entirely surprised to learn yesterday morning that the George Lamb Memorial Chapel on Lambert Street had been destroyed by fire. As I mentioned in my post three years ago it had been in a fairly derelict state for years and last used for God bothering 21 years ago. Other long empty buildings have been subject to similar blazes in the recent past. 

I'd heard rumours the Council were going to buy it under the compulsory purchase system but I don't know if anything came of that. Anyhow that's all a bit moot at the moment. The innards are completely gone and engineers are testing the structural viability of the shell. Let's hope the facade is sound enough to be saved at least though it does look a bit iffy to be honest. There is, of course, plenty of scuttlebutt about how convenient this destruction might be for any potential developer, I couldn't possibly comment.

Footprint

"Our purpose is to promote quality in placemaking 

and the built environment in the Hull and Humber region" 

                                                                                          From Arc-online

And so the great wind powered wigwam that was the Arc has gone and in so doing left a large concrete legacy. The place was set up to develop a sense of 'Hullness' (I kid you not) and with this bankrupt mess they've certainly attained Hullness of the highest order. I wonder if environmentalists do irony or do they just look for next subsidy? 

On acquiring the status of an icon

Finally I arrive at the purpose of this long hike or not quite. I'd heard that demolition of the west wharf at Alexandra Dock was imminent so I thought I'd better go take a pic or two before it was too late. Looking at the map there's a public footpath right past this place however the powers that be, ABP, obviously worried that idiots (who you looking at?) might be tempted to go out and have a better view have fenced off access so this was as close as I could get. (However look you here for some views of the place)

The wharf was built in 1911 to export coal from the Yorkshire coal mines, conveyors took coal from trains to waiting ships so there was no mucking about waiting for the tide. It has been out of use for best part of sixty years or so. (Things move slowly in these parts) Though it's an interesting piece of the city's past it is perhaps, as someone once said of somewhere else, worth seeing but not worth going to see.

I suppose I must mention at this point a little local storm in a teacup that has arisen over the demolition. Many years ago, so the story goes, two  local men, somewhat the worse for wear after a night of boozing, took it upon themselves to paint some graffiti on the rusty ware house. The graffiti was no fine work of art merely a dead bird with the words "A Dead Bod" (sic) underneath. Anyhow leave something for fifty years and it'll turn into a 'well-known landmark', become 'cherished' and acquire the status of 'icon' and you try to remove it at your peril. So it has come to pass that a piece of rusting corrugated crap  is to be preserved for posterity. It's a cultural thing don'tcha know? (Read all about it here, yet more garbage here and buy the T-shirt here)

 Below is how it looked in working order in 1924( from Britain from above)

and finally the 'iconic' dead bod.

(Image Copyright Robert Mason. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, US)

Stasis

Well I came to see if was still here and indeed the former Alfred Percy's York Commercial and Temperance Hotel better known as the New York nightclub on Anlaby Road is indeed standing upright and showing all the signs of decay you might expect from a building that no-one wants but no-one can afford to knock down. Four years ago I posted about this and how it was due to make way for a brand new hotel and it's nearly a year since I posted that the Council were demanding it be made good or else. At the end of last month it was reported in the local rag that the Council "could be forced to intervene" after finding that the owners had been leading them a merry dance (who'd have thought it?) and might actually, you know, go ahead and demolish the place and send the owners the bill (well good luck with that!). The Council suffers from a lack of money and political will to take on the owners of places like this so a kind of septic stasis has set in.

This derelict building, which opened in 1880 and has been through two world wars with attendant air raids and numerous economic ups and downs, could still be here in a couple of years time to welcome visitors as they alight from Paragon Station for the delights of the year of the City of Culture. That or a pile of rubble and some homeless pigeons. 

The weekend in black and white is here.

Higgledy-piggledy

Humber Street

What adjective would you use to describe a collection of derelict old warehouses that no-one has any real use for? If 'higgledy-piggledy' springs to mind and you follow that with 'charm' and then you're well on your way to the grand folly of 'regeneration'. These buildings have been left unloved and unoccupied for ages; by rights they should have been demolished and replaced years ago. But now, as there's a fashion to use the area for 'arts' and other small ventures, it would be unwelcome to say the least to have them falling down on passers-by. Somehow the Council, which never fails to inform us that it's strapped for cash, found over £3 million to throw at the problem which was entirely of its own making. It is the nature of money pits to devour cash and so an extra million or so has been conjured up ... higgledy-piggledy charm, it seems, is expensive.

It being the start of a new month the theme for City Daily Photo is "If you had to leave forever the city from which you usually post, what would you miss most?". I have given the matter some thought and what follows is an exhaustive list ...