Take me to the heart of Salford
esK is a multidisciplinary artist from Little Hulton creating work which brings people together. The invitation in many of his works is to leave a mark or to find a mark which looks like it could be yours.
Alongside this arts practice is a community-organising focus, which has most recently manifested in 100 days of back-to-back activity, a production of 100 days of opportunities, events, and celebrations from suggestions made by residents of Little Hulton and Walkden.
Here he takes us on a journey to find the heart of Salford, as we mark 100 years of Salford’s city status.
You can find out more about esK by visiting his website www.artist-esk.co.uk or following him on Instagram @salford.esk.
At this very moment someone, somewhere in Salford is asking for directions, and the advice they are getting is surprising them as they speak with different people along the way. One helper talks of North, East, South and West, and the previous in left and right turns. Shared knowledge of places recalled along the way, doubling as an opportunity to point out places they must or mustn’t go, as well as what is and isn’t Salford.
In times gone by the direction given would have been to follow the rippling of the hillsides through the many encampments and manor houses which made up the Salford Hundred. Walk for a day and a half to two days and the destination would surely be found in one of the twelve parishes from Bolton le moors to Manchester to Ashton-under-Lyne.
With a little more time the best chance at finding the way would be to set off early in the morning before the smoke stacks of Manchester, now it’s own area, begin huffing and puffing their soot all over the place.
Leave it too long and the dense smog will have you wondering which direction Salford is in, but at least now you can hop on a train to where you need to go and the rails can’t lead you astray. The conductor can even tell you the exact minute you’re due to arrive, and it certainly won’t take you a day.
After some time Salford is no longer twelve parishes spanning as far as Turton to Denton, rather, sixteen municipal wards between Broughton and Trafford. When the mill-clocks chime, the church bells toll and the school bells rings everyone knows it is time.
Finding your way around would have meant meeting the whole neighbourhood playing on one long street or in the sun-sheltered back alleys of the rows upon rows of interlocking two-up, two-down’s. Despite the beauty of the markets, fayres, and whole generations living on the same street, sometimes even in the same house, this is no place for so many people to live.
So Salford grows and, in time, it will be twenty wards from Irlam to Little Hulton to Broughton and to Ordsall. The question of direction is no longer ‘which street off of Chapel Street am I looking for?’, rather, ‘which Manchester Road am I looking for? The one in Walkden or the one in Cadishead?’, and time continues to run on in the background, now digitised. So the mill-clocks no longer chime, but the workers’ time is watched ever more closely, down to the millisecond. Meanwhile the church bells still toll and the school bells still ring on time, now echoing across an area that we have come to know as the Salford of today.
So I ask where is it this person is looking to find? In response they tell me the heart of Salford, and I can see my efforts to help this person find their way through the bristling hillsides, now cross-stitched estates, and to navigate the softly breathing boundaries has got us nowhere, so it is time to talk in terms of feeling.
A vast area becomes smaller whilst a small area becomes larger, more vertical. When the sun manages to pierce the thick grey film to shimmer along the miles of newly dug canal, Salford feels like family that had been through the worst of it together.
How that feeling must have been tested as entire neighbourhoods were demolished and families split up to be relocated elsewhere, some finding their way to ample green space, whilst others found themselves on top of one another, as though they had never left the mills.
Salford feels like other places, too. It feels like Ashton-under-Lyme, Bury, Canary Wharf, Nasouri, Faro, Kaohsiung, Iowa, Clermont-Ferrand, Lünen. Salford’s heart radiates so strongly.
So how can it be that Broughton, Irlam, and Little Hulton feel forgotten? And if so many places in Salford feel forgotten how can anyone be expected to find their way to its heart?
Maybe the heart of Salford is in its oldest place, Ordsall Hall. A curious heart overlooking its changing neighbourhood. The River Irwell would make a good heart – despite the widening and tightening of its arteries it continues to flow life through Salford.
Could it be hidden within Chapel Street between its luxury apartments and coffee shops, or is it somewhere wedged between tree branches in Peel Park, the one in Pendleton or the one in Little Hulton? Where is the oldest resident in Salford, or the one who has just been born within its current boundaries, could they help us find the heart?
Somewhere deep underneath the winding estates of Little Hulton is where I expect to find the heart of Salford.
It is a weathered yet strong heart washing around the underground canals with glee.
Every now and again it will beat its way to the surface and, if you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of it.
I’ve seen it in the people who’ve been around for donkeys years chatting on a street corner on bin day, children playing together on an empty field supported by a mischief of six magpies, in the paper through my door that I never asked for that has a mention of Little Hulton I didn’t expect to see, in the transit van cutting me off in traffic with the dust love-hearts etched onto the back doors, in a small group meeting about something important under fluorescent lights, in the cat balancing along a fence and in the endless works going on.
For whatever reason the heart of Salford seems to like sticking around Little Hulton.
This is part of a series of blogs commissioned for our Salford Voices project and supported by The Booth Charities.
That’s where I see it most often, illuminating the streets from below even on a dreich day until they glow like the yellow brick road. But you won’t hear that in the news, it’s Salford’s best kept secret that Little Hulton is not what people say it is – you’ll have to come and find out for yourself!
You can find out more about esK by visiting his website www.artist-esk.co.uk or following him on Instagram @salford.esk.
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