Greater Manchester’s collective history: Linda Carver, Save Ancoats Dispensary

There is, you know, the interest in heritage, particularly by university students, both the Met and Manchester Uni. It’s incredible, really.

I mean, the amount of students that have interviewed me during the campaign and used the dispensary as part of their final dissertation has just been amazing.

So I joined the [Ancoats Residents] Forum representing the older people at Victoria Square. That was my role. And so that’s how I came to join this forum. And we met about once a month or something like that.

Anyway, quite a few people were there at this forum and Urban Splash, suited and booted, gave this PowerPoint presentation and it was all very colourful and all very ‘people sitting outside under parasols drinking coffee’, and part of it is like that [nowadays] on the canal, Pollen Bakery and the cake shop and all this kind of thing.

But I couldn’t see the hospital, even though I knew it was for sale and there was all scaffolding around it. So I thought something must be happening to the Ancoats Hospital. It was at this meeting I found out it was to be demolished.  The decision had already been made and it was only a matter of time before the building would be razed to the ground.  I was mortified and decided to do something about it.

I went as a representative of Ancoats Residents Forum, rather than speak for myself as a tenant of Ancoats, right. So first of all, I went down to the council and it was obvious to me that half the councillors, most of the councillors on the planning committee, hadn’t even heard of Ancoats Dispensary.

They hadn’t even heard of the hospital. They didn’t even know where it was. There were only two people on that committee that knew anything about it. I could tell, Ancoats, where is it, you know, all this, where’s the other.

And so I spoke about the heritage. It was a Grade II listed building, that it had served the community for over 100 years. And surely demolition was the last resort. This building should be restored for the community, not as a hospital, but as a community hub, because it was a gem. It was a gem for Manchester.

When we first held a public meeting, there was a feeling of companionship, of a vision. We knew we had to do something, we had to do it fast, and that everybody that was there wanted to do it. We all wanted the same thing, to stop this building from being demolished. We didn’t know what was going to happen after that, we just knew we had to stop the demolition first and foremost.

I was going down the heritage route. I wanted to find out more about this hospital, who designed it, who paid for it, who worked there, what happened there, what were the accidents that happened there, what were the celebrations that took place there.

And of course, the more I uncovered, who built it, who designed it, who was the architect, the more fascinating it became. So that’s what I loved about it.

But too late, it was too late because by then, the money that we had to match the heritage and enterprise funding with, we just didn’t have it. We were £300,000 short. But I can’t keep looking back on the mistakes because we did what we said we’d set out to; we stopped it from being demolished.

We didn’t get the funding because we hadn’t raised enough money. The building went back to the council. Well, it went back to Urban Splash, then it went back to the council.

Well, by then, it was practically, the building was on its knees, and then instead, Great Places Housing Trust, who say “we’ll take it on”, said this to the council.

That was 2019. So we thought, amazing. A housing trust, who were interested in heritage, taking it on. And we met, we actually formed a relationship with the housing trust.

So we imagined that most of the façade would be saved and that they would do… Don’t forget, our vision then had just crumbled because what we wanted, we weren’t going to get, wasn’t going to happen.

So it took us about two years. I think some people still haven’t got over it because they were involved in something that they knew was important.

And we didn’t want to disappoint people, but in the end we had to disappoint people because it wasn’t going to work.

---

When it comes to people feeling included in our local heritage, what is Greater Manchester doing well and what could be better?

I don’t think it’s doing very well at all, because it’s demolishing most of it. In fact, I’ll tell you about this, and this is something that Manchester City Council ought to hold their heads in shame about, and which says to me that these things are already set in motion long before people become aware of what is happening.

There was, quite close to the hospital, just about on the edge of Ardwick, what was called an Ancoats Boys Club. It was a beautiful building, nothing wrong with it at all.

Beautiful red brick. It was right next to the River Medlock, actually. It was down in the dip where the River Medlock goes under Pin Mill Brow.

It was on the right-hand side. There’s houses there now. But it was called the Ancoats Boys Club. And that was a listed, no, it wasn’t a listed building. We tried to get that listed. When we found out about it, we tried to get it listed because it could link in with our saving of Ancoats [Dispensary].

And they knocked it down and there were beautiful wooden floors in there. The roof was perfect, lovely red brick. It was a gorgeous building and they knocked it down. So that was a piece of Manchester’s heritage about the boxing fraternity.

You know, it’s there one minute, it’s gone the next. So people have to be alert and I sometimes think, maybe they don’t notice so much that something is precious until it’s gone. And then they think, oh, that was there last year.

I’m going to have a look around after our meeting, but I’m wondering how much of the mills I remember are still there.

Well, Murray’s Mill itself hadn’t been converted when in 20-, I think it was 2011, I got involved with the Library Theatre on a production of Hard Times and we used the mill as the location for Dickens’s Hard Times.

It was absolutely fantastic because when you went in the mill, I mean it was pretty grim, you know, when you went in the mill, you could almost smell the cotton. You could almost smell it. It was like stepping back in time, which in fact that’s what it was really.

But the impression I get from the council is almost like they don’t have the vision. They’re really interested in individual sites and like…

A piece of land here, a piece of land there. We want the land. We want the land. They weren’t interested in the hospital and its past. They wanted the land to put a block of flats on it.

That’s what they wanted. We knew that they just wanted the land. They weren’t interested in what was on it then.

So the next part of the question is, what could Greater Manchester do better?

Anything that preserves anything about Manchester. If it’s a building not being used, what could it be used for? Keep its external facade, the beautiful bricks, and even the history of the bricks. Who designed it? Who was the architect? You know, there’s so much stuff around old buildings.

Yeah, there’s not like how you’d see on the side of old buildings, a plaque. We don’t have anything like that on the newer stuff.

Up it goes. Up the glass goes. Higher and higher. So I’m afraid I see there’s a terrible short-sightedness in what they’re doing. You know, blocking out light here, there and everywhere, which it does.

If you drive now down past what was the fabulous new Co-Op building, driving down towards Victoria Station, up has gone two other buildings and it used to be quite light as you drove down there, or walked down there. And now they’ve just blocked out that light.

Wow, it’s like we’re going back in time, amazing. So do you mean Miller Street, or?

Miller Street. Oh yeah. Yeah, you know that fabulous new Co-Op building. It looks like a spaceship. I love that. I mean, some architecture is just fantastic. I love it. I think it’s beautiful. And then other stuff is just… It’s like Lego, sticking Lego together.

You don’t see plaster-, well, you do see plasterers, you don’t see brickies, because it all comes on a sheet now, bricks come on a sheet.

De-skilling has taken place. And yet we’re crying out for skills, for these very skills that we’ve de-skilled. It’s ‘everybody go to university, everybody get a degree’, and you know, what about fixing the toilet? What about building an actual building? There’s nobody to do it.

So I think bring back technical colleges, people take apprenticeships in what was a skill. I mean, to be a bricklayer, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.

But that sort of education isn’t valued in this country.

And I think that’s got to be overturned. It’s not going to happen overnight. I mean, I’m hoping this [Labour] government does something about it, because I think they’ve seen the lack of practical skills. I mean, that’s part of education surely. But I can’t do anything about it, can I?

Do you think that, based on the way that the council is running the city, do you think that people feel included or feel a connection in any way to our heritage?

Well, this is a personal opinion, I’d say no. I’d say no, partly because of my personal experience about Ancoats. And again, I think if we’d have had the opportunity of continuing a relationship with Elaine Griffiths of Gorton Monastery, I think we’d have done a lot better because she was a business person.

So I don’t think we had that business side. I think ordinary people are trying to save something. I don’t think it’s going to work anymore in this climate.

Because developers have got the ear of the council?

That’s it, you know.

And everything’s so professionalised, too.

Everything’s become professionalised, so it’s almost there’s a sense of ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. We do, because we’re professionals’. You know, we’re developers, we’re architects – not so much the architects – but we’re this, we’re that.

And ordinary people feel they have no power, because they don’t. Oh yeah, the ballot box, yeah. That’s the only thing you can do to change anything. And even that is becoming, people are very disillusioned about that.

I think people have lost faith in institutions like the council, since the Post Office scandal, since COVID, what happened during COVID.

So there’s a lack of trust and ordinary people thinking, ‘I don’t want anything to do with them because they’re not doing their jobs properly’. They’re not doing their jobs properly. That’s the top and bottom of it.

That’s ironic because the council are in a position where they’re so powerful that they’re the only ones who can actually change it. But people don’t want to connect with them.

There’s some great people working within the council. And I’m sure they feel frustrated about what’s going on. I mean, I always remember one young councillor who said to me one night after a meeting, “Linda, it’s terrible when I think about it. I’d love to support you, but I’ve got too much opposition”.

But I’ve no doubt within that council there are people doing their level best to do their job with what they’ve got, with what they’re given, you know, because it’s crap what they’re being given or what they’re not being given.

What could they do better?

They could invite people into the town hall because it wasn’t for people down there [in Ancoats]. They could get people in for tours around the town hall, which they may very well do, I don’t know.

To talk to people, to attend planning committees, to see what goes on, so that people see the wheels of politics working.

So instead of saying, ‘I’m not interested in politics’, well, actually, politics affects your everyday life. ‘No, no they don’t. I’m all right. I’ve got a house. I’m earning’.

And who do you think’s got you the wage that you get? So it’s maybe engaging people in the system that’s actually working for them, or should be working for them, the people of Manchester.

So, yeah, let them sit in on committee meetings and stuff like that. Instead of people that would think, ‘I just want an extension, so I’ll go down and get it’. Go and see how it works, who’s saying what, who the councillors are on these planning committees. More involvement.

I suppose you can find out this information if you go to look for it, but do you think the council needs to put out more information?

Yes, you have to go, you’ve got to make a tremendous effort to find out things. And there’s nothing like the visceral feeling that you get from being in a meeting with bodies of other people, with human beings.

What are the gaps you’re aiming to fill? I know that the work you did in running the campaign to save this building filled a gap that nobody else was doing; but what other gaps are there in that sort of environment?

Well, it was mainly there were a lot of professional gaps, there were a lot of financial gaps.

You did speak about the funding pots that got taken away when the coalition government came in.

Yeah, the North West Development Agency. It became something else, it became a community kind of funnel, which I’m not sure still exists either.

Even opening the bank accounts for Save the Dispensary, where a couple of us went down to the Co-Op, don’t forget this is over 10 years ago now, walked into the Co-Op, went to the counter and said, we’d like to open a community bank account.

You can’t do that now. You cannot do it. Because they don’t allow community accounts anymore. You have to become a company or a charity. Well, to be a charity, you have to have so much in a bank account, it’s about £3,000. So there’s lots of obstacles to prevent ordinary people.

We were lucky in a way, we were bloody lucky, that we were able to do that. I mean, when I think of it, the sheer nerve of it, we want to open a bank account. It seems, it seems so simple and naïve now to be able to do that.

I think we came at a time when we were able to do it. I think it will become more difficult now for a group of ordinary people to try and save something.

Because we faced obstacles and it was only because we were so tenacious and because we really believed in what we were doing that we lasted so long really.

But now, to get that kind of, I don’t know what it is, to get that sense of, it’s a sense of history, isn’t it? You all have a sense of history, whereas it’s like a new generation’s coming into Ancoats now.

And maybe they don’t feel exactly the same about it, because they’ll maybe have come from university and then got work in the city, got an apartment, which they’re paying the bloody earth for.

And it’s interesting because when I’ve given talks about the Ancoats dispensary, in Ancoats, guess who’s not come to that? The original people from Ancoats. But they’ve not been interested.

The new people are wanting to find out the history of the area, they’ve come. But the ordinary people, surrounded by all this newness, and, you know, £3.50 for a loaf of bread, and all the fancy apartments, feel that they’ve been pushed out now.

So it’s almost like the generations are distinct groups. There’s no overlap.

No, because communities don’t just emerge, do they? They sort of start as seeds and then I think maybe if you came back here in another 20 years, maybe there would be more of a cohesive mix. At the moment, I don’t think there is.

Because when you do try and hold something like an intergenerational history of the area, they’re not interested. It’s almost like a kind of, ‘we lived it, love, we’ve lived through it, we don’t want to see it on screen’. There is a little bit of that as well. ‘We lived it’.

Do you think if perhaps more of the older features of the area had been retained, that people would stay?

I do. I do. If that hospital would have been, not rebuilt as a hospital, obviously, but become a community hub, with lots of stuff going on. Yeah, they just would.

When you’ve got the square outside like this, on a summer’s day, like it was last weekend, and you’ve got bars all around, and you’ve got eating places. This place is packed, it’s seething, with everybody from these apartments.

Mainly young people. And to me, that’s great. I think it’s great. You know. It’s change, isn’t it? It’s changed and the change in Ancoats has been rapid. So it’s kind of not been done at a steady pace, it’s been rapid.

There was a period of real stagnation, wasn’t there?

Stagnation for years. And people have become used to that stagnation. That’s the way it was. Something will be done eventually. We’ll start to build houses again.

I remember there was a period, I think it was just before the global financial crisis [of 2008], that the new construction here seemed to halt, and a lot of stuff was either half-built or there were empty sites where things had been demolished.

If my relatives were to come back today, they wouldn’t recognize anything. They just wouldn’t recognize it. And some of that I think they would like. And others would just be bemused by it all.

But the structure, the infrastructure in Ancoats is pretty much the same. It’s a similar infrastructure, and this is one of the problems with it.

They say that Manchester was built in a hurry before they had time to think about things like infrastructure. So all these mills and the houses were all built around little cobbled streets and back entries, built in a hurry, and it stayed like that for hundreds of years.

If you had a magic wand and you could wave it, what would you wish for?

Well, I wish that we had been able to secure the second part of the funding. And to realise our vision for the Ancoats Hospital and Dispensary and that it became a community hub. And people came from all over the country to see what was going on there and wanting to work in there.

What about the current Ancoats?

I would wish for more social housing in Ancoats, and I would wish for more green space for Ancoats instead of building on it.

I’ve got a foot in both camps really. I really like the busyness of Ancoats now. I like the idea I can go to the shop down there, the Ancoats store. I like the idea there’s a Co-Op around the corner. And I like the idea I can come to the Halle to hear a concert during the day, sometimes.

But I just wish that more older people would maybe not dwell on the past so much. Recognise and celebrate the past, but not dwell on it too much.

And embrace, you know, technology and embrace what’s coming.

Do you think that they could be more involved in the community here?

I don’t know about that because I don’t know what’s going on in the community here. And I wish that people would become more political.

And that includes young people as well. I think young people are more political than I ever was at their age, but more of them [should be].

You know, you’ve got the environmental campaigns going on. So I wish that more people would be doing that in Ancoats maybe.

Do you feel the Greater Manchester Establishment version of our history is the correct one?

I don’t maybe think we celebrate it enough.

I think that ties into what I’ve said in that I don’t really know what their version even is.

I don’t see anything coming out from the establishment about a vision for Manchester that the public could have a say in. You know what I mean?

Yes, they send out public consultations for little things that are going on. You know, do you agree with the one-way traffic thing? And I think, I might go at that a little bit, but these are all small things, like you say, small pieces of land. What is the overall vision of Manchester as a city?

And I don’t know what that is.

When I say the whole of the city, we can’t cover absolutely everything. But the big things, that people feel. Showing an interest in what people think and say.

And they might not have a university degree, but they know what life is about and, you know, they’ve lived a bit and they’ve worked in Manchester, and they know what they’d like, and they know what their grandchildren would like to live in, if they stayed in Manchester.

But I don’t know the what the vision for Manchester would be. I mean, I could say, Manchester’s been very kind to me because I’ve worked in Manchester and met a lot of lovely people in Manchester. My home’s here.

And I can decry Manchester like nobody else. I can come back and say, do you know what, I’ve walked down Oldham Street, and it’s bloody filthy. And you know, you come into Piccadilly, I’m sick of seeing it, all this mess and litter and everything.

But if anybody was to say to me, who didn’t live here, I’ve been to Manchester, it’s a right mess, isn’t it? I’d be down on them like a ton of bricks!

So it’s that sense of knowing who you are. Maybe a lot of people don’t know who we are, but do they feel Mancunian? Do they feel ‘I belong to Manchester, Manchester belongs to me’? I get football fans saying that, you know, especially now they’re going to build this massive bloody stadium.

How could everyone be included and represented in a shared heritage for Manchester?

Who would be invited, to whatever’s happening about heritage? If there is a heritage officer for Manchester, and you’re on a poor wicket for staff, so there should be a heritage officer. I think there was at one time, but where’s that gone?

How can everyone be included? Well, they can be invited, so it’s not just architects and planners and developers, it’s people being united. To listen to whatever’s being said.

Yeah, because if there is a heritage event, that’s put on by private individuals and things, isn’t it?

And I always feel that if I think of a heritage group of people, I think of middle class people.

Usually they either have been professionals or still are professionals, who either are lawyers, teachers, architects. They’ve been in some kind of profession where they’ve had like a hobby, a hobby of some sort, like interested in Brutalism or Modernism or whatever, and they form this heritage group, maybe in the village where they live or something like that.

Whereas, because the city is so diverse, isn’t it? It’s kind of, where would you have a meeting like that? I don’t know, because let’s face it, you’ve got the Chinese community in Manchester. With their own, they’ve got their own parts in Manchester, haven’t they?

It’s kind of… You’ve got the Muslims who have the mosques. You’ve got the Jewish synagogue, which has been restored and I’ve not visited there recently. I should go. You’ve got so many different cultures here in Manchester.

It’s almost as though, this is what I’m trying badly to say, all these different cultures that have come to live in Manchester seem to have been quite comfortable in developing their heritage and embracing it and showing it to the rest of Manchester or whatever.

Whereas Manchester itself, because it’s had an industrial background of hard work and hard labour, and hasn’t maybe revered its heritage as much, as much as these other cultures do.

It’s like there’s a kind of discipline within these different cultures, which somewhere or other we’ve lost.

It’s not just [about being] Mancunian, is it? It’s not just made of people of Manchester. It’s kind of a mixture of people, Indians, Muslims, Jamaican people, Irish people.

So maybe there isn’t one Mancunian identity, but should there be?

Well, there isn’t now. If there was, there isn’t now.

Do you think we’d care more about sort of the heritage of the city if we were closer, if the communities were closer?

Well, I think if city leaders cared about heritage, then the people would care about that. If they felt that they cared about the heritage in Manchester, then we would. You know, we’d be proud to be in Manchester.

Nothing’s filtered down to say to me that Manchester cares deeply about its heritage.

My only remaining questions are to do with, what you are doing at the moment to make your vision a reality, but is that really relevant?

No, it’s not relevant, that really. I mean, I’m doing things like this.

I guess the average person might see a need like this and just feel quite overwhelmed, like wondering what they could actually do.

Yes, I know. Especially someone maybe with a young family and they want to get involved, but how do they do it? I don’t know. Because they’re probably both working. Oh, I know what I wish for about Ancoats, another thing. Free childcare.

Is there anyone working on Manchester’s heritage right now who deserves a shout-out or who’s doing something good or has the potential to do something good?

No, I can’t think of anyone. I mean, this is years ago now, of course, when Elaine Griffiths and her husband built up Gorton Monastery and their intention was to also build a learning building attached to the monastery, I don’t know whether that’s gone ahead or not. I hope it has.

So, a shout-out to somebody. About heritage. Well, I think the one person that helped me a lot was a guy called Mark Watson of the Victorian Society. And it was through him really that we got donations from not only the society itself but from individuals within that society, who were sending more cheques through the post of a hundred pounds here and there and all this was so important at the time and I think he’s still involved in the Victorian Society, so shout out to him.

I wish I could choose someone younger but I don’t know of anybody. There’s bound to be people at uni, that are interested in heritage. There’s a woman called Jenna Ashton, a lecturer. She works in the North East area of Beswick, Ancoats, Miles Platting, on community projects.

---

Linda Carver currently has a children’s book out called ‘Fly Rory, Fly’. It is a story about heritage, friendship and adventure, featuring animals and insects to be found along the local canals and a pigeon from Scotland. A mixture of fact and fiction.  Of course the Dispensary plays a part in the story.  The cost  of the  book is £12 and this includes postage and packaging. If you would like a copy, please send a message to Linda on Facebook.

Save Ancoats Dispensary archived nearly all their material with Manchester Central Library’s archive department, which you can access here.

For the story of the campaigns to save the hospital in the 1970s and 1980s, read ‘Stitched Up! Action for Health in Ancoats’ by Mary Catherine Dunne. The Working Class Movement Library has a copy.

Sign up to The Meteor mailing list – click here

The Meteor is a media co-operative on a mission to democratise the media in Manchester. To find out more – click here

Featured image: taken from Block To Block by Joe Malamed