The Nooks and Crannies of her Being: Howard Spring’s Shabby Tiger and Northern Camp

Abstract

When we first moved to Manchester we were in a flat on one of those wharves where everything is Done Up. All the ex-warehouses had been redeveloped in the same red brick as the original mills and the viaducts, over which trains still rumble into Deansgate and into the heart of the city. We were just yards away from Coronation Street. On the Ordnance Survey map the fictitious street is even labelled — in italics, right inside Granada Studios, seemingly making it real. All around Coronation Street, Castlefield mimics its old red brick and cobbles in rather bijou fashion. In a bar round there I heard a Swedish girl asking the barman about the area’s history.