Up North: Sunday Morning

One of Britain’s architectural gems is Victoria Station in Manchester, a rare survivor of pre-Blitz and post-60s architectural vandalism.

Its exterior could do with a scrub, its interior has been interfered with, yet it retains some beautiful craftwork. I particularly like the coloured glasswork in a long iron awning at the side. This displays destinations served from the terminus. Leading with London, it also shows Blackpool, Bolton and so on, before tacking on Ireland and Scotland. I suppose it depends where you start reading the signs, but to me it felt as if international travel was presented as an optional extra, rather the exciting prospect of pastures new.

The external stonework is pleasant enough, but it is the wooden and tile interior details that caught my eye. Like Sydney Central, Glasgow Central and the beautiful carpentry at Wemmes Bay station, Manchester Victoria is an antidote to concrete, glass and steel. Despite containing plenty of woodwork, these places all suggest a place of permanence, because of the sublime effort that has gone into their construction.

Bookshop, Grill Room, Restaurant each on ornate fascia above their doorways. The wooden frontage of the original ticket offices, with its own clock mounted into the framework, has been retained. It is all quite charming.

It is charming, quaint and probably a bit of a luxury to preserve these old elements in fast growing, metropolitan Mancunia, but I am grateful they have not been thrown out with the bathwater of modernisation.

Even a really smart café, part of a neighbouring hotel has some of the old train decor. Train notices were displayed by platform number, again with a clock inlaid, to ensure no one could fail to know the time of day.

Across the road is the National Football Museum, its presentation all sharp angles and sheet glass.

This museum used to be out on the coast, at Deepdale, home of Preston North End, which certainly added something to a visit to the town Charles Dickens based his novel Hard Times, about life in the factories and mills of the industrial north. Here, in Manchester, it’s easier to reach for most, bigger and more interactive. It is good to see Pompey well represented in the displays. How the museum addresses the divisive impact of the Premier League as it stands in 2026, I can’t say.

From Victoria, after changing at Peterborough, it was homeward across The Fens.

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n.b. It was in Peterborough where the pub, The Queen’s Head, had a fireplace to the right of the central door from the street, that was draped in a large nylon flag of St George, which covered the solid stonework from mantelpiece to empty grate. Fresh out of its packaging, the Chinese made symbol of English intolerance, still had the creases from being folded up in the factory. It was cheap and nasty. Not The Queens in Littleborough. Sincerest apologies.

CLP 08/03/2026