Some time ago I had an hour spare in Manchester and decided to visit the building where I worked for five years as an apprentice way back in 1965. I had fond memories of Percy’s – better know as The Hotspur Press – as well as a couple of traumas best forgotten. I walked down Whitworth Street and then Whitworth Street West. What I saw saddened me immensely. Although the Hotspur Press building had never been pretty, it represented one of the first industrial mills in Manchester and was prominently positioned on the banks of the Medlock, looking out towards Oxford Road. It closed as a commercial printers in the early seventies, many of its staff finding work at the Cooperative Press or the fortunate ones, at one of the many thriving national newspapers at the time.
This was taken before it was burnt to the ground. It was in a state of dilapidation with security warnings slapped over it and daubed in shades of purple made me think at the time it would soon be decided that it could no longer be developed and be demolished. I used to be naïve enough to think that the lessons of the sixties had been learnt, that we would now cherish our Manchester industrial history and remember with distaste the destruction that led to the Arndale Centre in what had been the heart of the city. As we now know, the building came to an ignominious end with much speculation as to what had caused the fire which finally destroyed Percy Brothers, The Hotspur Press, completely.