Buddleia Building

I took the train this morning into Manchester (making use of my senior rail card). It’s haircut time.

With time to spare when I arrived I walked the short distance from Oxford Road Station to have a look at the derelict Hotspur Press building (originally Medlock Mill). It has planning permission recently granted for a tall tower housing 595 student rooms, with commercial at ground level. The facade of the Mill would be retained, although from the CGI I have seen I’m not sure it would be recognisably the facade seen here. Controversially there are now two applications with Historic England for the building to be listed, and the prospective developer is seeking local support from local residents via a petition to oppose any listing on the basis that that will mean failure of the current scheme and further deterioration of the building’s structure leading to its eventual loss entirely. It’s a classic example of the competing arguments with which the Planning system has to deal with every day.

Buddleia loves derelict industrial buildings like this. It would be interesting to see the plant’s original habitat in China and Japan, I imagine it must be rocky with very thin soils because buddleia is adapted to get a foothold and exploit some very unpromising terrains.

Extra - on returning home I saw that the bumble bees are back, and in numbers. They love Echinops.