Photos from an ex-Fire Station, London Road, Manchester UK. (known locally and perhaps unimaginatively, as London Road Fire Station). Operational from 1906 and widely considered to be one of the finest fire stations ever built in England. Residential flats were built directly above the fire station and during its working life these flats were home to hundreds of fire service families.
When it was decommissioned as a fire station in the late 1980s, the workers and families also left. The building was mothballed for later development but endured a period of neglect and decline. In 2017/18, when redevelopment of the site into an hotel and luxury apartments was imminent, a project to document and archive this unique building began. This was initiated and managed by archivist Jenny Walker.
As part of this wider project, ex- residents of the building were invited back to revisit their old homes, and to temporarily re-inhabit the rooms where they had once lived and worked. Being photographed became part of this ritualised homecoming – the resulting portraits a document of the reunion between these once significant spaces and their former residents.
The temporary homecoming transformed the cold, damp and neglected spaces. It was surprising how there was an almost total absence of sadness and nostalgia present, as the residents embodied their homes again.
The act of revisiting their former homes, often elicited a joy and excitement, that seemed to purge the spaces of thirty plus years of neglect.