Dear readers — the reviews are in. Once again, people are saying really nice things about our journalism.
Last week we published three great articles. There was Ethan Penny’s exploration of what a collapsing building in Oldham says about the town’s bizarre local politics (a “fascinating article”), Ophira’s Facebook-sleuthing masterclass which revealed the anonymous Greater Manchester school at the centre of a national book-banning scandal (a “truly superb piece”) and Jack Walton’s woe-is-me tale of being trapped in the shared ownership he bought in part to get one over on an ex (a “really interesting piece” but also evidence of Jack being a “red flag” in the dating game).
On the topic of that last piece, Jack joined the other Jack for our first podcast recorded out in the real world. We went to Colony, a former Mill turned co-working space, for a kind of podcast-therapy-session mashup about poor Jack’s housing situation. You can listen to that below, and enjoy this picture of both of the Jacks looking very professional.
Onto today’s briefing then, which has span, depth, vim, pep, gravitas and which reverberates with a quiet authority. We’ve got an update on the Gorton and Denton ‘family voting’ allegations, an iconic Chorlton pub being put up for sale, another fire at a mill in Manchester, and a collaboration between a certain Salford school you might have heard of, and the Tate (the gallery, not the manosphere influencer). Read on for all that, plus our usual updates, event recommendations and alternative takes on the weather.
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Revealed: The famous school at the centre of another Guardian long read
Yesterday, the Guardian published an article about the Tate lending an LS Lowry painting to “a school”. According to the piece, one chosen school in Worsley received a two-day loan of the painting ‘Dwelling, Ordsall Lane, Salford’ to mark the 50th anniversary of the artist’s death. We did a little digging (see: we read the Guardian article) and are now in a position to sort of reveal that the school is, once again, the Lowry Academy. Yes, the same school from Educating Greater Manchester, the same school whose previous headteacher made headlines for weeks after being permanently barred from teaching, and the same school that we revealed last Thursday was at the centre of an alleged book-banning scandal. In fact, at this point, it feels safe to assume that any article at all referring to a ‘school’ is probably about the Lowry Academy — including, of course, the follow up we’re working on to find out what really went down in the library last November. Know anything about this? Get in touch with Ophira here.
Middleton’s oldest mill goes up in flames
Sometimes it feels like we’re the only mill in Manchester that hasn’t gone up in smoke. After last year’s fire ate the Hotspur Press, which we covered in depth (and which will soon be reborn as a high-rise student tower), another historic mill has suffered the same fate. Lodge Mill in Middleton, built around 1850, caught fire early yesterday morning, with firefighters arriving at the scene around 6am. Residents in the area reported hearing a series of loud bangs. A previous fire in 2021 damaged the back of the building, but the front was being used as a community events space. As the MEN reports, there was also an ice-cream parlour, the Ice Cream Shop at the Lodge, run by Martin Cove and Paula Hickey, who had been renovating the site over a number of years. “They’ve put everything into that mill,” the landlord of the nearby Britannia Pub said on Facebook. “Worked relentlessly on it. They love the mill and worked everyday, day in day out with dreams of transforming that part of town… We need more people like Martin and Paula who not only want our town to be better but actually do stuff to make it happen."
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