Whose idea was... Old Trafford?

There’s actually only one area of Manchester that anyone outside Manchester has ever heard of, says Paul Stevens.

For all the crowing and bigging up of every fashionable enclave and middle class suburb from Whitefield to the Northern Quarter, there’s actually only one area of Manchester that anyone outside Manchester has ever heard of, writes Paul Stevens.
 

Strangely for such a famous name, the area itself remains pretty obscure. Of course, for the main part that’s due to the (drowsy if no longer so sleepy) football giant, sat at the far end of Warwick Road. For the many MUFC fans worldwide (and one or two here), United IS Old Trafford and the surrounding area is paid no heed at all. For the locals, the football club provides a source of income for a few, a source of passion and pride a fair few more, and perenially fertile ground when it comes to anecdotes and jokes for us all.

The football stadium – just in case you need us to distinguish between the two – is an impressively curvy, modernist pile, though the exo-skeletal structure of the roof does lend it a somewhat unfinished look.

Local fans tend to make their way through town down Deansgate on their way to and from the picturesque journey up Chester Road or Warwick Road via Talbot Road. Fans from outside the area, meanwhile, tend to park as far away as possible and then they can’t find the ground. As if they don’t realise the ammunition they are providing for those down the road, there seems to be no shame in whole families getting decked out in replica shirts and “Pride Of Manchester” scarves from Hereford market prior to an aimless wander while asking the way to the match.

Before City’s move to Eastlands, it was considered fair sport for residents to direct them the wrong way up MossLane East just to see if they fell for it. Me? I’m not a malicious person. OK, once, but you should have seen the car.

Many visiting fans use the trams to reach MUFC via the bespoke stop but there is no way you can get on a tram from Trafford Bar to town anywhere up to half an hour before the last whistle, as they are packed, Tokyo style, with bored-looking students in red shirts all checking the scores on their mobiles.

The cricket ground is a proposition latterly divisive for completely different reasons, unless your globalised worldview extends to links between Tesco and the Glazers. Given to the area in 1857 by the de Trafford family (who give their name to the borough, and who own Thistle Hotels), it’s been home to LCCC since 1864 and to David Lloyd since shortly after that. That it’s retained a lot of its character has also proven an Achilles heel, in that it had its Test status withdrawn in 2008 amid murmurs over ageing facilities.

Undergoing a controversial major refurbishment partfunded by Tesco, campaigners complain that not enough community consultation accompanied the proposed supermarket and that Trafford Council railroaded the proposals though. On the other hand, most of them either go on blind dates to Unicorn, eat thistles, have funny looking eyes, hate sport or are undercover coppers anyway.


At the time of writing, the only major development at LCCC has been ‘The Point’ a giant letter box cum conference facility, but by 2013 we’ll surely be monorailing to zero gravity Test matches as Bumble commentates while drunk in charge of a helicopter.

The cricket ground has also been home to a number of high-profile gigs – Radiohead, The Strokes, Take That, Genesis and more have played to thousands of fans who’ve enjoyed 45-minute queues for £3.70 paper cups of warm, canned lager and completely inadequate toilet facilities.

The area itself is one of the most diverse in Manchester – witness the range of shops on Ayres Road. Chorlton prides itself on its independent food shops, but it’s got nothing on Ayres Road, as eulogised in verse by Lemn Sissay for its six independent butchers (two English, four Halal), eight greengrocers ranging from Pakistani to Polish to West Indian and a mix of takeaways, specialist off licences and tat shops.

The Hong Kong Chippy is far better than its name, (whereas “Very Tasty” isn’t) and the Paan House is a brilliant café serving dishes such as Kaphoore and Nehari besides the usual fayre – up there with anything in Rusholme. There’s a Chinese healing centre plus West Indian and Polish restaurants, and an ice cream parlour modelled on the milk bar from Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange”.

It remains a supermarket and chain store-free zone if you don’t count White City, the king of shops being the large independent grocers Manchester Superstore – a retailer so prestigious they have their own TV channel, albeit one that only broadcasts in the shop itself. Sometimes, pretending to browse the onions, I’ll go just to watch the TV, my favourite shows being “These are some vegetables” and “All about your milk”. There was consternation from the usual sources when a Tesco Express opened in nearby Brooks Bar, yet it provides a few local jobs and folk tend to use the cash machine before heading for Ayres Road, where everything is much cheaper and there’s far more of it.

There’s a strong sense of community in OT, unusually for South Manchester, which comes from this probably being the last area not completely inundated by students, thus avoiding the pitfalls of a largely transient population. Local community groups, churches and mosques work hard at integration. St Johns Centre has long offered interfaith activities as well as a comprehensive education programme supported by the Workers Educational Association, plus premises for “Old Trafford News”, a relatively professional community magazine featuring an ongoing serial about a magic camel.

Recent years have seen a slight change in the demographic with an influx of the sort of people who’d clearly rather live in M21, but who can’t afford to; who tell their friends they live in “Upper Chorlton”, and who are determined, in the way that these people always are, to change the fundamental character of their habitat to fit in with their own anaemic worldview. In ten years I’m glad to report they’ve got nowhere at all, and were last seenl ocked in a room planning to generate their own electricity by fusing together different strains of bullshit.

OT has been home to a large and established lesbian population for a number of years, bringing to mind an eccentric local butcher, now deceased, who took umbrage once and manically waved an oxtail in the street as a supposed “cure” for female homosexuality.

The downside? Lack of nightlife. Despite a vibrant street life there’s not much in the way of pubs anymore, The Throstles Nest and The Star Inn being closed, and the couple left less than welcoming. If you’re young, loud or posh, or if you like them young, loud and posh, Chorlton’s a short stroll away, and Whalley Range is literally over the road – much improved of late with The Jam Street Café and The Hilary Step good options, if representing two sides of a weird age-apartheid. The lesbian community is partly catered for by the not exclusively lesbian Nip and Tipple.

Periodically, someone from the Council will ring or visit to conduct a survey, and will always ask “Do you have any antisocial neighbours” to which I am obliged to reply “Yes; 75,957 of them,”,but I’m joking, and I know how lucky I am to live here.

Manchester has changed dramatically in 20 years, not necessarily for the better… South Manchester especially. Old Trafford, however, despite being the most prestigious area of the city by a long chalk, remains refreshingly and paradoxically down-to-earth. On holiday in Scotland recently, I told someone where I lived and he said, “Is Old Trafford really a place, not just the ground?” I suppose the longer people don’t realise that it is, and a fine place at that, the better.

First published in Chimp, January, 2011 issue.