What is the historic building that has gone up in flames in Manchester?
The Hotspur building was one of Manchester’s most historic sites, with a history spanning over 200 years.
Originally built as Medlock Mill, a cotton mill, in around 1801, it was later repurposed as a printing works by the Percy Brothers in the late 1800s, which produced various comics and journals, but failed to be redeveloped and modernised like its counterparts.
Author Jonathan Schofield, who also hosts historical walking tours around the city, shed some light on the history of the iconic mill.
“It was certainly an early spinning shed like all the big ones in Ancoats, and was part of a complex of mills,” he told the Manchester Evening News.
“It was interesting because in its survival, it didnt carry on just in the spinning trade, but it later converted into Percy Brothers, which would print anything you wanted, from brochures, to books and magazines.
“I feel that they didn’t have enough money to modernise it, and it stayed as a very old spinning factory and beginning of the industrial revolution building, so it was very interesting for that.
“There have been big arguments over why it was never protected and grade II listed because it’s so old. There were then proposals for flats which were controversial, but unfortunately it has just exploded now.
“There is so much history… it has seen generations of people walk through those doors.” He added: “To lose something like this makes that part of the city now less interesting.”