In 1844, the industrialist and pseudo philosopher Friedrich Engels said of Stalybridge “A hundred paces farther and Stalybridge shows itself in the valley, in sharp contrast with the beautiful country seats, in sharp contrast even with the modest cottages of Ashton! Stalybridge lies in a narrow, crooked ravine, much narrower even than the valley at Stockport, and both sides of this ravine are occupied by an irregular group of cottages, houses, and mills. On entering, the very first cottages are narrow, smoke-begrimed, old and ruinous; and as the first houses, so the whole town. A few streets lie in the narrow valley bottom, most of them run criss-cross, pell-mell, up hill and down, and in nearly all the houses, by reason of this sloping situation, the ground-floor is half-buried in the earth; and what multitudes of courts, back lanes, and remote nooks arise out of this confused way of building may be seen from the hills, whence one has the town, here and there, in a bird's-eye view almost at one's feet. Add to this the shocking filth, and the repulsive effect of Stalybridge, in spite of its pretty surroundings, may be readily imagined.”
If a time traveller from the mid nineteenth century who was familiar with Engels’s description of Stalybridge turned up in the said town yesterday afternoon, they would have found the lot of the working class had improved considerably. Also, they would have been pleased to note that the “shocking filth” was nowhere to be found. But what would they have made of the semi-derelict state of the town centre?
The decline of Stalybridge is sad to see. It is difficult to identify the exact reason but I would hazard a guess at Tesco being partly responsible because their enormous product line surely replicated what was being sold by the traditional town centre shops before they were squeezed out by the corporate giant.
The credit crunch will undoubtedly have had an impact on town centre businesses too. But what other reasons are behind the tragic decline of this once bustling town centre? Ashton, Hyde and Denton appear to be thriving despite the current economic conditions but poor old Stalybridge and to a lesser extent Droylsden seem to be sinking fast. It would be nice to think these small town centres had a bright future but sadly all I can see is doom and gloom and that is a real pity because some of the shops still open are first class establishments run by proud people who deserve better than to be left trading in something akin to a virtual ghost town.
The photographs of Stalybridge centre were taken at 2pm on a weekday afternoon - not at 7am or 7pm as they may appear to have been taken judging by the closed shops and lack of people.
31 comments:
High tax. difficult red tape to start up a business. expensive rents. lack of affordable carparking (i.e., not free). proliferation of shitty night clubs. All of these things have contributed to the demise of Stalybridge. Luckily those things potentially have political solutions.
Thanks for the reply Mr Hatton.
As I see it; when decline sets in it can become a terminal cycle. As the shops begin to disappear less shoppers come the area and that affects the remaining shops who then themselves go bust which leads to even less shoppers coming back and so on and so on.
As I was walking around the town centre I was thinking even a massive cash injection to completely revitalise the area could be an incredibly risky proposition as nothing short of the closure of Tesco, something which will not happen nor would be desirable should it ever occur.
Maybe if a good traditional market was opened in Stalybridge, that may just breath some life back into the town centre?
We don't need markets full of cheap shit. Put some propper shops selling luxury goods. Give something for the peasants to aspire to.
TC, I think markets are a good idea - particularly, farmers' markets and specialist markets.
I don't share Alan B'Stard's view above but I do see where he's coming from about the cheap sitty products you fnd in Ashton and Hyde marekts.
How often do you shop there Tom ?
Anonymous: never. I do all my shopping in Manchester City Centre. easier transport links, greater diversity of shops and better food outlets.
If I do need to shop locally it's Hyde but considering Hyde is my nearest shopping area that's hardly surprising!
People should stop bleating on about having "thriving town centres" as they are filled with low paid retail jobs. What people need is offices and to get in with a 21st century digital economy.
i suggest you take a look at stamford st in ashton as well every day is like a sunday morning ive traded here for 20 years and its un believable.i will say what is wrong,traffic wardens. there is not a single st in the town centre that ever gets congested except for george st when the market traders are waiting to get on the ground at 4 o clock. i can understand it in mcr city centre but ashton this side is often like a ghost town.they even walk round up to 7 oclock in the evening,what is the point MONEY MAKING CON. I have suggested they narrow stamford st at the top near 40 winks bed shop and issue everyone that drives in with a ticket the council will be happy then. i know so many people who have said they wont come here again and seen their faces when after 35 -40 mins they return to their cars to find its cost the price of a pensioners weekly shopping for the privalige of coming into our once great town im ashamed you only have to look at all the shops here that are empty now to see that stalybridge pro rata is not that bad but still bad enough.i hope kieran quinn takes the problem on and realises that a postman can still have a brain its not rocket science to see what the problem is`
free night out to the person who can guess who COSTCUTTING TORY IS. answers on a postcard to top end bar 134 stamford st ashton under lyne OL66AD
I walked down Market St and Melbourne St in Stalybridge on a Saturday morning three weeks before Tesco opened, it was heaving, a real bustling little town. Tesco killed Stalybridge town centre, full stop. The giant superstores are convenient and well run but they aren't the cheapest by any means. However they do seem to be what people want.
As for traffic wardens, they used to be a useful method of keeping the roads unobstructed and fining the pisstakers. Now they are part of Labour's revenue grab off Joe public to throw more cash into the public sector money furnace. Hopefully the Tories (although I didn't vote for them) will decimate the State job creation sector and privatise and restore sanity and real world (i.e. what the rest of us earn) wages to this gigantic national parasite.
TMBC and AUL: A real love affair. (All other local towns can f**k off).
Anonymous at 16:05 - What is wrong with highly skilled and well paid jobs in the digital sector? The high street is a thing of the past. It is expensive to run and those costs are passed on to the consumer. Why should I pay the full retail price when I can browse Google Shopping which will offer it to me at a fraction of the cost?
Where did you book your latest holiday? Not at the Co-Op did you?
The over-zealous traffic wardens cannot be to blame for the sad state of Stalybridge but in Hyde they are like locusts swarming and in Ashton I agree with what the previoius poster says in somuch as they are destroying the town centre business by keeping motorists away.
Get a new picture Tom, you must be at least 40 by now.
Good posting TC, raising relevant and important issues. Sad to say our glorious Deputy Executive Leader's blog has descended to nostalgia bores and utter trivia.
Man glassed in the face by violent Asians in Ashton.
erm digital shopping is to blame for young people being FAT FAT FAT when i was young my mum used to walk from one end of town for veg and another for bread etc thus giving much needed exercise. now kids sit on their x boxes and pc's shop on line . oh and i did book my holiday on line because each travel agent tends to sell their own company thats the only thing i buy online
Online shopping isn't to blame for people being fat at all. If they shove 10 sausage rolls a day from Gregg's then that makes them fat.
The reason why many local shops are failing is because they have yet to catch on to ecommerce. You have to look at the success stories of stores such as Asos, Amazon and Play.com and just look how much money they are making.
Tameside Council should stop giving grants to refurbish shops, but to establish grants for local businesses to get started online. They did this with e-tameside and Tameside Business Family do a good job of educating its members on the benefits of selling online.
TMBC are skint. Any scraps of money available should be spent on the basics and frontline services only. Efficiency experts should be brought in. Privatise whenever possible, putting wages in line with the private sector to save us all a packet. Mass layoffs as well, why should the public sector be exempt? It's a lot cheaper, nationally or locally, to keep the 30% or so who will fail to find a new job on the dole than to carry on paying bloated salaries for non-jobs that didn't exist until a few years ago anyway.
cost cutting tory ITS NOT NATUREL !!!!!!
Don't know if you know TC but someone's put a comment on a previous post about the dangerous hole, it's still there.
I KNOW A FAT BOY WHO EATS GREGGS SAUSAGE ROLLS YOU MIGHT BE RIGHT
The typical Tory solution to every thing: PRIVATISE, which is just another word for 'selling off the family silver'. If it was not for the Tory criminality of selling off our telecoms, gas, electric water, railways and anything else which could be exploited we may still actually have affordable utilities. Instead we have pensioners freezing to death because they cannot afford to heat their homes while billionaire Tory financiers squander the proceeds of our hard graft stolen from us by a rigged market of non-competing cartels.
Utilities, like the NHS are there for the people and should not be used to generate obscene profit for the few at the cost of the many being held hostage by a financiers criminal cartel. You wanted Tory rule - you got it!! This is what you get when you get a cabinet full of Etonian millionaires. They care not a single jot for the indigenous workers of this land.
Please cut and paste Roy Oldham’s letter from this weeks Advertiser so we can discuss this properly and smoke out the Tory capitalists to expose their cruel nature and contempt for the poor - of course with the exception of newly arrived immigrants who they give preferential treatment to.
So you're saying binmen should be paid 30% plus above the going rate and the ratepayer should subsidise it.
The Tories cocked up the privatitisation of the utilities and it is debatable whether essentials like this should be privatised at all, running them on a non-profit basis might be preferable. I know several people who worked for the old state run utilities companies and their wages and pension arrangements are ludicrously overgenerous.
If you read my comment you'll see I said privatise (or scrap) whenever possible, not ideologically, but on the bases of common sense and best value for the taxpayer. What's wrong with that? By the way, I'm not and never have been a Tory. I'd drop the class war stuff, it just makes your argument look weaker than it already is. But you are right about immigration - or as many old style Tories etc see it - cheap labour, because that's exactly what it is. And don't worry about Labour exposing the Tories giving preferential treatment to immigrants, the BNP will be all over it, it's manna from heaven to them.
The first round of highly paid dross removal should be diversity officers and their ilk, they are the ultimate PC warriors. What about a new post, British Culture Promotional Officer.
Hard Times, why should bin men not receive a decent wage when 'business leaders' who have destroyed British industry award themselves obscene salaries topped up with share options etc? What about the 'Banksters' who brought this country to its knees through excessive greed and reckless gambling with other peoples money?
Do not hammer the working man when the real villains are the politicians, financiers and speculators.
BRING ON THE REVOLUTION
Joseph Rayner Stephens, you haven't answered my question of why the ratepayer should subsidise the wages of council staff when private companies could do just as well if not better (proved by a huge number of councils nationwide), and a lot cheaper.
When the bins in Oldham were brought back 'in-house' some binmen got a 33% pay rise. They haven't got some God given right to preferential treatment.
The greed of financiers and speculators is not in dispute but neither is the chronic and endemic wastefulness of the public sector.
"but neither is the chronic and endemic wastefulness of the public sector"
I think we all know who Cost Cutting Tory is.
I think Mr. Hatton has you well and truly sussed, as do others who know you and your various sobriquets.
TC, Melbourne Street is dead - the top half. Look at the bottom half any day of the week, it is busy.
Digging up Grosvenor Street from the Tesco roundabout to Melbourne Street and the top half of Melbourne Street and reopening that section as a road, whilst reopening Trinity Street to traffic, would generate passing trade if half-hour parking was incorporated.
The pedestrain area of Melbourne Street is out-dated. It may have been needed in the late 1970s when Stalybridge had a proper town centre but people don't want to walk to the shops anymore, Tesco has proved that.
So lets get that section reopended to traffic, make Grosvenor Square (in front of the Findleys) a centrepiece square, and close down Nacro's druggie house.
Excellent point Mr Dazzler, but the private car has officially been declared as evil. If you drive one your sole ambition is to destroy the planet. The thing is there are many people in the corridors of Broadmoor...sorry power who actually think like this. The fact that the car and all its associated industries provides a huge amount of employment, the fantastic flexibility it provides to tens of millions of people, and that it is consequently one of the major engines (no pun intended) of the economy is irrelevant in the view of the eco and climate change fascists. Rationality is unknown to these people who look down from the 'moral' high ground and know what's best for us.
Post a Comment