Ginger Princess

The secrets above your eyeline

John Street Birds

On John Street in the Northern Quarter, and around the corner on Tib Street, you may have spotted these ornamental birds and their neighbouring ceramic parrots. There’s no shortage of street art to be found in this area yet it’s surprising how few people know the motivation behind each installment.

As Manchester moved into the Victorian Era this particular area transformed from a poorly maintained, muddy lane that was characterised by poverty to a much more amiable community. The cotton trade had brought some riches to the area and the radical, publisher and eventual major of Manchester, Abel Heywood, had brought education and free speech. The residents of Tib Street began to shape the trading community and, once where pigs roamed the lanes raiding side streets for discarded offal, there stood a thriving hub of enterprise. In true Victorian fashion, the shops pulled a crowd because they provided entertainment for the consumer and the speciality of Tib Street became a form of natural history. 

Almost every shop featured live animals on display inside the window or tethered outside in the street and often the shops would remain open well into the night pulling a larger crowd still as food prices dropped as the clocks approached midnight. At one point it’s believed that almost 20,000 people descended on the area in a single evening to take in the sights and pick up a bargain. 

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The secrets above your eyeline

The Thomas Street Pineapple

Thanks to Sam Newiss for the image.

This old building on Thomas Street, sometimes known as the Binks Building, is on one of the busiest corners of Manchester when it comes to nightlife. The current tenant is Odd Bar and the neighbours are a collection of bars, restaurants, secret cocktail lounges and traditional boozers. But as well as all this the area is steeped in history, art and culture and the view from Binks Building is one of the loveliest in all of Manchester; the walls and gates of Speakman, Son & Hickson’s Wholesale Fish Market. 

The market entrance is, for want of a better word, entrancing but look up just a little and you might be surprised to find this pottery pineapple settled on the highest ledge of the Binks Building. The exotic finial perches on the crow-stepped gables and it isn’t as rare as you might imagine to find this particular fruit incorporated into the design of a building. In terms of carvings and architectural adornment, the pineapple, was most prevalent from around the mid 1700s to the back end of the 1800s (until the influence of Egypt and Greece set in). 

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The secrets above your eyeline

Piccadilly Mirror Ball

Thanks to Ian Pattinson for the image

If you look up to the roof of what was Piccadilly 21 nightclub you might find yourself dazzled by the light. Up there is a giant disco ball. It’s mounted on a strange metal plinth that holds the surrounding spotlights steady and looks like a space age egg about to hatch.

You might also notice that of the six floors, only one storey is currently in use. The site is solely occupied by Nobels Arcade and the upper floors are as good as obsolete.

But this is an important site on the Manchester skyline with historical significance that shouldn’t be forgotten. It was here, that in 1979, a fire broke out which changed the entire UK fire regulations. The Woolworth’s store that occupied the site, at the time the largest Woolworths in Europe,

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