The World Isn't Working

Twas the night before Christmas Eve 1940, and my mum often tells the horrendous story of her second night in the Manchester Blitz, and being bombed-out from my great grandma Groarke's corner shop, where she was living along with her mum (my grandma). The shop was totally devastated, as a huge parachuted incendiary device exploded at altitude, scattering clusters of bomblets directly over the RC All Saints Church, in the poor 'Little Ireland' district of Manchester's Chorlton-on-Medlock. The priest it seems was sadly killed that night, along with many others (the crypt being a bomb shelter).

Afterwards at midnight, the family flagged down the car of a passing stranger, and hitched a ride to nearby Withington to stay with relatives. My mum still talks of her intense fears that night: Not that they had lost their home; but that Father Christmas wouldn't know where she had been moved to; and second, that the passing Good Samaritan, was in fact a Nazi spy kidnapping them for good.

This part of Manchester has cropped up quite a few times ever since: My dad went to the School of Art there in the early 50's; and I later studied architecture at Manchester Polytechnic there in the 80's. Both of these institutions overlooked All Saints Park, which is in fact the consecrated ruins of that same destroyed church from my mum's Blitz night.

I stopped off at All Saints again tonight after an afternoon of Manchester meetings, and some late Valentine's Day shopping (a whole Bonito Tuna for MrsB to go with her roses, chocolates and Papaya lip balm). I was tempted to call in at our old student haunt, the nearby Salutation Inn, for a lonesome drink for old time sake, but thought better of it. People might get the wrong idea, and MrsB was waiting at home.

My photo taken tonight is the 1905 Listed Righton Building, also facing All Saints Park. It was once a famous drapers store in my mums day, but now houses the Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD). In my student heyday it was the Manchester Poly Student Union, and was the place I saw a totally unknown Bono and U2 perform twice in the early 80's.

Postscript: Being a saddo curious, I found this bomb pattern map still held by John Rylands Library in Manchester and showing all bomb damage by the Luftwaffe during the Blitz in this part of Manchester, and including the direct hit (bottom right) directly over All Saints Church.

It is overlaid on the original map of Manchester: Ordnance Survey Revisions of 1932-1935. Scale: 25" to 1 mile. Annotated with: red circles for fire bombs; blue circles for high explosives; pink shading for damaged buildings; red shading for demolished buildings; green marks for line mines.