A new set of BROW STEPS for STOCKPORT?

 Royal Oak Brow.

Steps from ROYAL OAK YARD up to HIGH BANKSIDE (and possible urban park)

 White Lion Passage

New SOTTOPORTEGO; a single storey pedestrian right of way cut through St Ann’s Hospice Charity Shop. Royal Oak  Yard as a secret town piazza



Little Underbank has been adversely by the evolution of the motorised road transport approach to town planning. It gets mistaken for a road/route in local maps. It is a pedestrian zone and a cul de sac that has been allowed to revert to a rat run and short cut.

Cross routes encourage exploration, photography, tourism and access for pedestrians. The private contractors have closed the passage that once led into Great Underbank from the end of Royal Oak Yard. This is an opportunity to create a public space inside Royal Oak Yard and some brow steps to High Bankside

The proposed passageway inserted through St Ann's Hospice Shop as a route through to the ancient town rocks and the new brow steps to High Bankside (which could become a new town park).

 

The acropolis brows of the old town

Market Place Bank buildings suspended above the deep gorge of Royal Oak Yard.  A grand Italianate palazzo. The rear of the Queen's Head dominates the centre of the view. This faces on to Little Underbank

ROSTRON BROW from DUMVILLES BROW. The views across Little Underbank make quite exceptional townscape.  Here the design of the upper storey is easy to read as an independent structure. The use of the Little Underbank as a linear traffic route prevents the lateral reading of the place which can only be done on foot.

LITTLE UNDERBANK Acrylic on 3 canvases 315 x 125 cm. 2015 with further editing Feb 2017. Painted over a period of 8 months from the ever changing view from Studio 7 MMU Market Place Studios. The Exchange buildings have not been built and some trees not yet felled. Signed DC in the place of existing town wall graffiti.




LITTLE UNDERBANK Acrylic on canvas. Chestergate with rear entrance to Primark. The A6 arch is visible as is the bridge across to Merseyway Car Park from Tatton Street

Palette used as if it was a post-it note with testers; cadmium yellow mid, burnt orange (quinacridone) mars black and cadmium orange. Date 2015

 (detail) steps down to Little Underbank near the Egerton Arms. The brick wall is set on the sandstone face of Royal Oak Yard. This corner is still used as a location to dump waste into R.O.Y.



Little Underbank (detail) with its rendered first floor windows and grey slate tiled roofs. A plane heads for Manchester Airport reflected in a puddle on a flat roof

(detail) St Petersgate Bridge



(detail) view across to Rock Row and Stockport Plaza and part of Edgely through the railway viaduct At lower left part of the old road at the top of High Bankside with its steps.

Flowers In Little underbank

There is a shop window insert photograph on an unlet unit on the South side of the street opposite Rostron Brow. This is the right direction and a very good proposition for the area once it is securely pedestrian priority.
 

The beautiful building on the corner of Royal Oak Yard and Little Underbank seems to be purpose built as florist once the local residential demand is sufficient. With hanging baskets a street of flowers with a reputation across the North West?

 

Every May at NOTO in Sicily there is the festival of the INFIORATA - a highly sponsored street carpet of flower petals. Not dissimilar to the tradition of Well Dressing. Immensely profitable for tourism and media exposure. In a town full of artists this type of festival would be the focus for revival and intense competition. Brands advertise here.

Both Stockport and Rome have sandsone rock brows

A beautiful red sandstone rock brow exposed in Royal Oak Yard parallel with Little Underbank, Stockport. Traces of chimney flues and floor joist post holes are all evidence of changing use

The RUPE TARPEIA  (Tarpeian Rock) of the Capitoline Hill in Rome. near the Vicus Iugarius and ancient road that led from the Forum to the Forum Boarium and the Portus Tiberinus a long lost harbour on the River Tiber. The legends associated with this exposed sandstone spur make the location totemic and a place of pilgrimage. A she-wolf was caged here at times to enact the foundation myth of Rome and to attract tourists. A permanent tourist placard explains this. Rocks can be interesting even when they look like nothing at all

A new pride in Little Underbank; signage

Double your pleasure: Merseyway has been good to you but maybe the best experience is yet to be found in the Underbanks pedestrian zone? Children will be able to explore safely and residents will be proud of their homes at the refurbished White Lion Hotel

Dates on buildings found in Little Underbank

1769

When new building work is done to make Little Underbank great then dates always inspire confidence and are a signifier of urban pride. The name of the architect is also of interest.

Is there a lost cross alleyway at Little Underbank leading to Royal Oak Yard?

Little Underbank: sketch plan. The grey dotted line is directly in line with the steps descending from St Petersgate Bridge and indicates a blocked right of way. This area was once very permeable. Narrow passageways are a commonplace of medieval street patterns.

A sight line from steps descending from St Petersgate Bridge across to an alley that might have crossed Little Underbank. This is a pedestrian crossroad.



A letter box was a very useful way of using the blocked access to the alley. The heritage trail logo sits here.

Little Underbank is a secular sculpture gallery

The year 1868 seems to become permanently re-enacted in Little Underbank with images of Britannia and the British heraldic lion in support of this small but proud borough

WINTERS PUBLIC HOUSE: a permanent and active tableau vivant. Extremely rare bell ringing automata.



Time at WINTERS: a dramatic secular deity on a tiny stage




The military ideal. Empire and aspiration making Stockport a focus for loyal English soldiers. This ideal continues through WWI and the Pals' Battalions into WWII 

 Naval prowess: Stockport so far from the sea but always close to maritime loyalties

The four Brows at Little Underbank: Mealhouse, Rostron, Coopers and Dumvilles

Mealhouse Brow leading up the Market Hall. Sympathetic restoration has retained heritage typologies and some characteristic paint palettes around shop windows. Skate boarding supplies and three antique shops co-exist in this tiny curving street. At the exit there was once a town gaol. 




 

Mealhouse Brow leading up the Market Hall. An opportunity to insert pedestrian steps next to the planned piazza to the left




Rostron Brow is still one of the most beautiful streets in Britain. Where else can we walk up to the church tower from shadow to light? This is not an accident, but a skilful understanding of gradient and the structures of the flanking buildings

Coopers Brow; approach from Little Underbank




Coopers Brow; the ramp and steps diminish to less than a metre in width at the summit of this view. A range of materials flank the passage way; brick and sandstone in particular. A true heritage experience





Dumvilles Brow. A very recent addition to Little Underbank above the entrance to the brewery




Dumvilles Brow. The rewards of this climb are really wonderful. St. Mary's sails like a ship through a sea of slate roofs and chimneys. Narrow access increases the drama of this urban walk. Speech bubbles of early signage built into the brickwork make interesting documents on the past uses and owners of a once densely populated area.

Steps from the upper to lower town at St Petersgate

Steps from St Petersgate Bridge against the wall of the bank with its modernist sculpted window. The area has never been undervalued and carries traces of several restorations and additions





Steps from High Bankside to Little Underbank. The flights form part of the bridge structure over Royal Oak Yard. Sympathetic brick and steel engineering from a the period of great prosperity. Little Underbank residents were very concerned that St Petersgate Bridge would take the prosperity away from the lower town. The solution was to engineer three sets of steps to create the greatest access. The fourth set would have blocked the entrance to Royal Oak Yard.

Steps from St Petersgate Bridge at the point of entry into the Market Place. The Archway onto Little Underbank is two storeys high to allow for maximum daylight onto the steps

 

A beautiful piazza at White Lion Hotel

Little Underbank at left meets Great Underbank (centre) with White Lion Hotel at right. Despite the addition of half timbered facades and some later modernist facades the morphology of the street remains intact. Some sympathetic heritage cobbles have made this one of the most beautiful  public spaces in North West England. Townscape this balanced takes centuries to create.
White Lion was built with a round tower embedded into its structure to make a landmark corner with a white dome. 

Little Underbank is like a mid Victorian stage set

Little Underbank as seen from the roof of St Ann's Hospice Shop. St Petersgate Bridge opened in 1868 frames the bend in the street that joins Great Underbank. A medieval highway with a gentle gradient for horse drawn traffic and pedestrians.

The Trustee Savings Bank building is a key landmark at the crossroads where money to made and spent in Stockport could be transacted at the front door of Stockport; Hillgate. Robinson's Brewery follows on the downward slope, right

The gradient of Little Underbank as it enters the medieval town. The view is of a zone that was a product of Victorian heritage rebuilding, Classical inserts and a series or road schemes into the late 20th century. It is visibly a road, but possibly not the useful route it once was. This road led to Manchester. Now it leads to Chestergate and onwards  to Stockport Plaza

The drama of Little Underbank comes from the use of the sandstone gorge to build a colossal 18th and 19th century high rise business district at St Petersgate and in Royal Oak Yard. One of the most important heritage districts outside Manchester. The builder created a little Athenian acropolis from the natural sandstone hill



There are some unlet shops in little Underbank which are literally stage sets; windows that convey the illusion of a prosperous terrace selling high quality grocery items such as cheeses selling pictures of bicycles because cycling may be commonplace in this place and a florist for customers to take imaginary flowers to their imaginary homes, families and friends