Forgotten Manchester: The lost street and flats on top of the Arndale Centre

While Manchester’s famed Arndale Centre is known these days for its abundance of shops and  mind-bogglingly confusing lay out (or is that just me?), it was once known as home to a number of residents living on its roof.

Yep, when the Arndale opened in 1975, it did so with a number of three-storey apartment blocks, collectively containing sixty individual studios, two bedroom and three bedroom flats hidden away up on the roof. The complex even had communal gardens with trees and hedges, something known at the time as an ‘oasis in the city.’

Now, it’s no secret that city centre living can come with many flaws – tiny studios, nightmare landlords, sky high rent, you get my gist. But have you ever fathomed living directly on top of town’s busiest shopping centre? This was actually a reality for many city-centre dwellers back in the 1980s, a time when only 1,000 people lived in the centre, a stark comparison to todays estimate of 60,000. 

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Cromford Court, known to tenants as ‘the podium’, was officially opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on July 20th, 1981, and was named in tribute to the area that existed prior to the shopping centre which housed it above the city.

One person who can offer a rare insight into life aloft the Arndale is former Hacienda DJ Graeme Park, who previously recalled: “Not long after I started DJing at The Hacienda, Mike Pickering moved to one of the flats above the Arndale Centre in Manchester. 

“In 1988, I’d roll up to Mike’s every Friday and park my car in the Arndale’s multi story car park and get the lift from the street up to the roof.

“It was weird, because you’d expect a great view, but the flats weren’t as high up as people thought.  You could see some of the city and look down at people on the street whilst walking from the lift to Mike’s flat but once inside you couldn’t see anything but the lift.”

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He went on to describe the rooms in the property, recalling how the flat itself was ‘very dark downstairs but bright upstairs.’ On one occasion, Park got stuck in the lift between floors, so would frequent the ‘foul smelling stairs’ when he visited instead.

However, life for Cromford Court tenants changed forever on Saturday June 15th, 1996 – an IRA bomb was detonated from a vehicle just yards away on Corporation Street. A surveyor for Manchester City Council, Mr. Larmett, and his colleagues were assessing the damage when they heard there may be someone still in the flats.

Mr. Larmett said, as per the BBC: “Effectively, the Arndale had been cordoned off, so we met police at the entrance and picked our way up to the flats. Sure enough, there was an older chap still living in his flat.

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