image: Bill Boaden, All Souls, Every Street, Ancoats, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
As yellow diggers crush the 186-year-old Grade II listed All Souls Church on Every Street, heritage campaigners and heartbroken Ancoats residents demand answers over how the historic 1840 landmark was left to crumble into rubble, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Greta Simpson, Senior Reporter at the Manchester Evening News writes:
The maw of a digger delicately, painstakingly, begins to work at the wall, sinking its metal teeth down into the brickwork, shedding dust like a snow shower as it finally bites down on the window, the delicate stained glass folding like a piece of film reel before falling lamely to the ground. A yellow digger arm reaches its long sinew up and slowly, almost apologetically, topples one of the pointed, gothic, Grade II listed towers which has loomed over this area of Ancoats for almost two centuries. And what is left at the end? A mound of desolate bricks, twisted scaffolding and half-crumbled wall, hulking as it waits to suffer the same fate the following day….
The demolition of the 186-year-old All Souls Church in Ancoats this week has been met with more than your usual measure of discontent…
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Clips and stills of the demolition have travelled far and wide on social media…
The Georgian Group also condemned the decision…
The MEN understands Manchester City Council’s position to be that they can ‘urge’ a private owner to act but ‘cannot force’ them.
