Our recently published book, Building Towards Bicentenary, marking the University of Manchester’s bicentenary in 2024, provides a lavishly illustrated two-hundred-year history of the University and the changing landscape along Oxford Road. For the first time, the story is told in an accessible and visually engaging way through maps of the growing campuses and the architectural plans and historic photographs of scores of the University’s most fascinating buildings.

One of the most important periods in this historical story, recounted in detail in our book, was in the 1960s, a decade of massive growth in buildings for higher education along the Corridor. There was the large-scale expansion of the Victoria University of Manchester to the east side of Oxford Road and the cluster of new science and engineering buildings along Brunswick Street. Meanwhile, the city council was developing a group of colleges around Grosvenor Square, which would merge into Manchester Polytechnic (formally founded in 1970). Nearby, Manchester College of Science and Technology was developing a completely new campus on derelict land just south of the Sackville Street building. This institution adopted the name University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) in 1966.

To cope with the scale and speed of development, there was a decision to enact comprehensive masterplanning. This exercise examined in detail the whole of the so-called Manchester Education Precinct (MEP) area under the direction of consultants Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley (who were influential in the 1960s more widely in Manchester, being responsible also for the design of the Arndale in the city centre and the infamous Crescents deck-access flats in Hulme).

For MEP masterplanning, Wilson and Womersley’s team delivered a series of recommendations about land allocation, the arrangement of major new buildings and the provision of more student housing around Oxford Road. But perhaps the most radical aspect of their masterplanning of the University development was the promulgation of the ‘Streets in the Sky’ agenda. This was articulated clearly in their 1964 MEP Report:

“To adopt the principle of maximum separation of pedestrian from vehicular traffic throughout the site and to achieve this by raising pedestrian movement to a level above the traffic in those areas where new buildings are to be erected in the region of traffic roads.”

The maps from the 1967 MEP Report set out the wide extent of the upper-level pedestrian walkways that would be built by 1984 (shown in yellow). ‘Streets in the Sky’ were anticipated to run from Oxford Road train station almost down to the Whitworth, linking together most of the planned new buildings and with several link bridges across busy roads.

An important initial element of the walkway system was the Mathematics Building, completed in 1968. The iconic 18-storey tower included a large pedestrian ramp from ground-level Oxford Road up to the large podium. The walkway would subsequently connect to and run straight through the middle of the computer building (now the Kilburn Building) and onto the new chaplaincy (St Peter’s House and Crawford House).

To show how the street in the sky would work as vibrant social spaces, impressionistic sketches were drawn by Peter Wright and presented in 1964 in Manchester Education Precinct: Interim Report of Planning Consultants.

Beyond the chaplaincy, the walkway would cross Booth Street East, taking pedestrians high above roaring traffic and double-decker buses, and connect to a planned major new sport complex fronting Oxford Road. This centre would have included swimming pools, an ice rink, a rifle range and climbing wall. On the other side of the road, the walkway would traverse the front façade of the new music college and onto Grosvenor Square, where it would convey pedestrians gently to the ground in front of the College of Adult Education on an elegantly spiralled ramp. We have photos of an architect’s model, but sadly the spiral ramp was never realised, as the walkway system stalled crossing the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM).

At the heart of the walkway network that was built was the Precinct Centre, with its upper-level covered shopping square. The design of this mega-structure, stretching along most of Booth Street and with a large link bridge over Oxford Road, was undertaken from 1967 by Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley as architects.

With shopping seen as vital to its success, there was provision for 38 retail units — mainly at first floor and arranged around two large covered squares — along with several large showrooms at ground level. Early occupants included Haigh and Hochland bookshop, a newsagent, greengrocer and a travel agent. Later, a post office, various banks and the Phoenix public house opened, though it took well over five years until all units were let. The architects Wilson and Womersley also located their Manchester office at the Precinct Centre. There was also a six-storey block of student flats, named Cornbrook House after a ‘lost’ river that runs nearby in a shallow culvert.

history and heritage

Through the years, the Precinct Centre struggled to retain retail businesses and eateries. The incomplete upper-level walkway system meant the shops positioned at first-floor level were rather marooned, with many customers unwilling to venture up to them, even with the provision of large escalators.

However, Lewis Womersley proudly remarked in 1974 in the University’s staff magazine: “On sunny days I find it exhilarating to stroll along the length of the walkway and experience the variety of interest of internal spaces and external views.”

The positive 1960s vision met economic reality in the 1970s, and none of the proposed upper walkway system along Oxford Road beyond RNCM was ever realised. Likewise, the massive sports centre on the other side of Oxford Road, with its upper-level walkway, remained on the architect’s drawing board (although decades later swimming pools did materialise with the construction of the Manchester Aquatics Centre for the 2002 Commonwealth Games).

The end of the existing ‘Streets in the Sky’ started in earnest with the demolition of Maths Tower in 2005 and its replacement with University Place (the ‘tin can’). This broke the pedestrian bridge to the Kilburn Building, although the supporting concrete plinth was retained and repurposed as a large signpost.

A much more dramatic severing of the walkways came with plans to comprehensively redevelop Manchester Business School in the 2010s, with the Precinct Centre bridge over Oxford Road being pulled down over a summer weekend in 2015. The link bridge across Booth Street to RNCM was also removed. During major reconfiguration of Alliance Manchester Business School, overseen by the architects Building Design Partnership between 2016 and 2019, all retail facilities were relocated to the ground floor.

Today there are only fleeting physical traces left of the 1960s ‘Streets in the Sky’, a vision that was supposed to transform movement along Oxford Road. It was a positive agenda but with misplaced optimism about changing human behaviour. The piecemeal delivery of elements of the walkways also meant it was never a comprehensive system and added to people’s reluctance to waste time going upwards only to have to come down again to reach a different building.

Martin Dodge is a Senior Lecturer in the Geography Department at the University of Manchester. Much of his research is currently focused on critical interpretations of visual representations of the urban landscape. He is also conducting studies of the historical geography of transport, public housing and town planning in Manchester.

Building Towards Bicentenary: A Campus History of The University of Manchester, by Ben Blackwell, Martin Dodge, James Hopkins and Matthew Steele, is available online here.