The Civic Centre

A colleague, who has had cause to visit all of Greater Manchester's ten Town Halls, was telling me today that in his view Salford's at Swinton, together with Oldham's, were looking the most tired.

There is some truth in this. The other eight have either seen major investment which has brought them into the 21st century, or have seen the construction of entirely new buildings replacing the old. With the huge budget cuts it has faced, Salford has sold off buildings and centralised a greatly reduced workforce onto the Swinton site, on a bit of a make do and mend and patch up approach.

Having said that though, what the Civic Centre has which the others all lack is the setting. This panoramic view, taken with my phone, is deceptive. The Civic Centre is surrounded on its public facing sides by wide lawns and avenues of trees, which I find quite uplifting - easy to take for granted of course. It is in that sense the greenest of the ten.

This part of the "campus" is actually the old Swinton town hall, enlarged in the 1970's and early 1980's. It was built in the late 1930's, one of those projects to create employment during the Great Depression. It replaced the old Industrial School, which Dickens called the "Paupers Palace", a 19th century way of educating poor orphans. On old photographs that building looks quite spectacular - if it had survived it would be one of the wonders of Greater Manchester. But this 1930's building, with it's clean lines and simplicity, is not half bad.

In other news - another colleague reported a little egret at Salford's second flood basin. Another side of a surprisingly green city.