Layered City: Phantom Streets

We met this couple in the Cathedral. In quite a captivating manner they began their story. It was about their brother who had once visited the Cathedral area to have a look around. It was a few years back when there was some rennovation work being done around the surrounding buildings, which included some work on the streets. Unfortunately their story never got beyond generalities, it was second-hand, based on their relatives experiences and not their own. Additionally, some specifics have been lost by my own recitation - now third hand. A sort of vagueness hangs over all this. But to continue- in a particular section of the building work, the street level had been removed and an opening was exposed. Unmanned and without any barriers to stop him, the brother climbed down, below ground, completely unchecked. It was here, underneath this small section of the city centre that he discovered a whole different world. There was a surprising amount of space underneath - cavernous, wide passages, almost street-like. And that was just it, slowly in the darkness, the space revealed itself - it was a street. This man had stumbled upon a series of shop fronts, buried yet preserved just beneath the city skin. Where they Victorian? Medieval? It was never made clear and I should have asked. Still, this was the amazing thing about this story: according to the claim there was a long abandoned and long forgotten series of shops entombed right underneath our feet. Unseen and unknown to us. Except, of course, through barely believable second and third hand stories. Yet somehow they are entirely believable. Wasn't the Hanging Bridge buried for centuries, expelled from living memory and reduced to a faded myth? Now the Cathedral's cafe rests inside it. This phantom street is vivid to me. I can imagine figures down there, going about their lives unaware of us, just as we have forgotten them.

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The Temple, 8.30 pm

Dr. Curran and I have been sitting by the bar for well over an hour, Krombachers at hand.
Sam steps over to us: "Mark, the manager wants to know if there is another street hidden under Market Street?" "Yeah", I reply adding "but it's only a rumour".

New Blog

I've got a new blog: www.markandtomoko.blogspot.com

It's wedding related.

Layered City: A Cathedral Tale

The Head Verger of the Cathedral began his story with a simple mention that a few years previous the Cathedral flooring had been rennovated. It was a whole section of the North side of the nave. As essential part of the repair work the builders had to go underneath this flooring - made of stone slabs. The Verger continued by putting the Cathedral flooring into its historical context. In centuries past, in Medieval times, just after the church had been constructed, wealthy families in the area paid for chapels to be cosntructed within the church. These chapels would be dedicated to each particular family with special Masses performed for them conducted by the church priests. Aling with this, Christenings, confirmations and funerals would be held in these chapels. And in the end, family members were to have their final rest entombed beneath the chapel floor. In those days the church had yet to become a Cathedral. It was a Collegiate Church, a religious training ground in all its gothic glory in the centre of the town. Imposing, yet fundamental to the life of the community.
Most of the family chapels were ripped down in the English Civil War when Parliamentarian soldiers enterd the collegiate church. The chapels not only stood as symbols of the High Church but also as glaring examples of social inequality where wealth brought special religious privilege. The militantly protestant hands of Cromwell's troops brought them down and anything else they deemed remotely Catholic. The damage they inflicted is still visible today, as the Verger was quick to show us. Of course, these Puritan soldiers never removed what lay beneath the church.
And so the story continued . . . these builders, only a couple of years ago, sure enough stumbled upon a medieval crypt hidden for centuries beneath the floor. Her lay aristocrats of old Manchester, with all their former power and prestige entombed with them. Inadvertantly the lid was knocked off one of those tombs, revealing a centuries old body yet to decompose. It was a woman, with skin and long hair - never exposed after being sealed in a lead casket without air. This wasn't a sign of sainthood though. "She would have disintefrated within an hour", concluded the Verger. But he didn't conclude. "This whole city is a graveyard. All around the Cathedral is the old parish graveyard. Then there is Victoria Station, Piccadilly Station, St. Ann's - you name it. I even interred bodies when they were building Urbis. It was the site of an old plague pit."
Perhaps this is all a bit morbid, but nonetheless, this is what rests just beneath our feet in the city centre, whether it is a public park, a city square or a transportation hub. It lies forgotten until, whether through accident or planned constructed it returns to our memory once again.
In his book Hidden Manchester Glynis Cooper regularly reminds us, with a wry smirk, that when we sit to have a drink in the beer gardens of Mr. Thomas's Chop House, we are sitting above the graves of the various people buried in the former church yard of St. Ann's. The whole graveyard was lowered 1 ft in 1890 to make way for a new town sqaure in the ever expanding city. And then there is St. John's - the church has since been demolished and is now a public green space, yet thousands rest beneath. St. Wilfred's in Northenden is also worth a mention. It has been a site of Christian worship for centuries with its church community originating, quite possibly, in the eigth century. Yet the circular graveyard around the church indicated that it is even a pagan burial site. Pre-Christian, and existing well-beyond our common historical knowledge of the area. Like the Jewish cemetery in the Prague Old Town, St. Wilfred's church yard elevates itself 4 ft above the surrounding area, testimony to the amount buried within its confines. Yet this is not a tourist venue - instead forgotten and easy to pass by.