The original Bus Station in Hanley was built in the early 1970′s as a gateway to the City Centre of Stoke-on-Trent housing a shopping centre, restaurant and even a night club. The station is now infamous as a light-hearted and jolly failure and is due for demolition to be replaced by a brand new station in the nearby John Street.
Peppers of Hanley was a Garage and Petrol Station opened in the 1937 by John Pepper owner of one of the largest motor traders in the potteries. The garage stood over three floors and included the unusual feature of a car lift. The building fell into a state of disrepair until 2005 when it was passionately restored by local property developer and entrepreneur Andrew Smith of who has won regeneration and local authority building control awards for his sensitive restoration.
The Factory Night included time to explore the bus station and upstairs precinct with an introduction by Coffee Bar employee Carole giving her personal account of the changing bus station over the last 16 years and we then went onto Peppers Garage for a tour by the owner Andrew Smith including footage of his extensive restoration.
This Factory Night focused on regeneration and the changing landscape of Stoke-on-Trent City Centre, using the example of the Peppers Garage building that has already changed and developed and the bus station development that is in its first stages of regeneration. We spent time looking at the heritage of the area and discussing what has caused the decline and how the city and its people have responded.
Piece of Writing in response to the Factory Night by Jeff Phelps:
I.
Who could have foreseen this ending
when they dreamed it up
with such optimism – those drawings
of sunlit arches, bougainvillea
on bustling walkways,
perfectly defined shadows
across glazing? What happened
to those hipster, Wrangler kids,
the well-heeled Letraset women
stalking in their pencil skirts
towards an unimagined
new century?
II.
It is a tide breaking on the shore
of the Potteries, all day in and out
like the roll of pebbles on cold beaches,
a down-at-heel pleasure pier
landlocked in the English Midlands.
You’ll want to disembark, to hurry to the city
that shelters behind its gimcrack façade, for this
is no welcome for tourists.
Yet there’s something of the seaside
all washed up, that gaudy fragility,
the smell of ozone, a hint of ammonia.
III.
The scrap heap’s where I’ll be
when this disappears in six months time,
maybe twelve, who knows?
I’ve seen business come and go
like buses – the needles, the muggings,
the dossers, the shops
closing one by one, the toilets. That
was the beginning of the end when
they closed the toilets. And the internet.
But still we’re always busy. I don’t know
where they come from, our regulars.
They sit and ask for credit and sometimes,
because I know them, they get it.
Don’t tell the boss. He’s OK but even he
can’t stop this rot. At my age
I don’t see it matters much. I can go home,
spend time with the grandkids. It’s the others
I worry about – out of work
and soon enough on the scrap heap
like this place.
IV.
It is near Christmas and we are chilled
though we see art everywhere:
in the light show of passengers,
the fabric of conversation,
the choreography of railings and roofs.
What kind of art would you like to see here?
No answer comes, at least none that can be heard,
only between the words a look that says
art? It’s too late for that now.
Yet it is easy to rest in the past,
to be cynical of the future. There is courage just
in opening a sketch book, searching between cracks
in pavements. There is renewal
in standing in the city
inventing it afresh.
V.
Connextions
Walkaden Shoe Repairs We Sell Christimas Dinners
Trentham, Coalville, Cheadle, Chell.
How about something to keep you going?
Sainsbury’s Triple Distilled Vodka?
Except buses, Premier Pool Club
Saxonfields, Espa, Biddulph, Tean.
Mow Cop Azza Kesic Chris.
Cherry Farm, Banda Bingo
Blue Buses Blurton.
Show’s Over.
Stone.
VI.
Nightclub
Voyeurs, we glue our eyes to the window,
finding gaps scratched in purple paint
as if a story will unreel,
a what-the-butler-saw of scandal behind.
The picture is smoke-damaged, a silent movie.
You have to invent your own drama
from overturned tables, a menu,
stairs to nowhere, a floor carpeted
in pigeon shit.
VII.
In the new world
a frond of glass and steel
will unfurl to embrace you,
buses caked in clay
will dock like worker bees
bringing pollen from the suburbs
to the new world. There will be hotels
and restaurants, maxi multi-plexes
and all will be in its proper order:
cars and people, arts and commerce,
delivery and despatch.
This old hive will be reduced to dust,
and all its stories, not forgotten,
will be shelved like honeycomb
remembering the taste of
coffee, fried onions, oatcakes.
For another forty years
all will hum along perfectly
in the new world