It's probably fair to say that most Mancunian splorers have had an eye on this building for a while. Stories were going round about potential access, failed attempts and the rather noisy alarm, connected to the ground floor's PIRs. As such the last pictures from here found on the Internet date back to 2008, revealing a rather nice view from the tower and some amazing internal features and stored hotel property, including a stuffed tiger and bear.
A few months back Gone had successfully managed to get onto the site, just to be caught minutes later by a worker. The access point was there though. So with the sun out, and uni/work finished, Gone, fishbrain, tweek and myself met up to give it another attempt.
After a quick climb and run up the stairs we successfully made it to the top, only to suddenly hear an engine starting below us. As it turned out the site had not been empty, the last worker was just leaving. Driving his van out he locked the gate, our only way out. However, it also meant that we now had the site to ourselves. Avoiding the ground floor for the time being, we had a look around the upper floors, the tower and finally the roof, where we could watch the sunset and enjoy some quality maoam dinner.
Pic by fishbrain
Fast forward a few hours and our number had increased to 10. We once again started the tour from the top, working down floor by floor. Rooms on the first and second floor are now used for storage of large amounts of wallpaper, whilst the ground floor houses more unique items.
History:
London Road Fire Station was build in 1906 and also housed a police station, an ambulance station, a bank, a Coroner's Court, and a gas-meter testing station. The fire station operated for 80 years, housing the firemen, their families, and the horse drawn appliances that were replaced by motorised vehicles a few years after its opening.
The building was the headquarters of the Manchester Fire Brigade until 1974. The fire station closed in 1986, since when it has been largely unused despite several redevelopment proposals by the owner Britannia Hotels.
I trained at London Road in 1981, there are storage cellars under the old engine house, These cellars were called McGinty's, apparently named after some fireman from years ago. In the cellars there are access points, (quite small) to the underground tunnels that we used to train in for sewer rescues etc very narrow crawl spaces, they ran from one end of the station to the other.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures you have of the roll out racks, is what used to be the Laundry room still used in the eighty's.