The Good, the Standard and the Ugly: Elliot House

Category: Good

What and Who?
Elliot House, Deansgate, 1878, by Royle and Bennett, Manchester architects.

What was it?
It was the School Board offices, named after an indefatigable director of edducation, John Kenneth Elliot, who had campaigned to ensure a decent standard of education for all children. This summer the building will house the lending, music, childrens and local studies part of Central Library as the latter gets renovated - after the renovation the Library returns to its grand St Peter's Square site.

Tell me about the building?
It's red: terracotta, brick and sandstone, blushing at the Deansgate traffic as it slugs by. The sandstone is mainly on the ground floor, the solid ballast tying the building firmly down to Mother Earth. It's very nineteenth century municipal and has the look of one of those sturdy primary schools in hot brick which are still scattered about the city. You know the ones: they usually still have a terracotta sign over the former girl and boy entrances declaring the relevant sex. The School Board financed these. If you want a quick look at an example nearby, wander down Deansgate, turn right on Quay Street, left on Lower Byrom Street and right down Great John Street. The eponymous posh hotel here was the former primary school for the area from 1912 and despite the age difference has that four square, cane-me-for-talking, municipal discipline about it. Elliot House is in the Queen Anne style and.....

Stop please. What's the Queen Anne style?
It's a nineteenth century interpretation of the big chunky classical style of architecture much loved in the reign of Queen Anne from 1702 to1714 – the latter was also called English Baroque. The nineteenth century version was much more cutsy with carved door and window cases, friezes and asymmetrical playfulness with gables jutting out randomly and big chimney stacks, always big chimney stacks, as a decorative feature. The detailing on Elliot House is the main joy though.

How so?
Look at the photos. The detail refers to either the building's function or to the city. There are childrens faces, Athena, the Greek Goddess of wisdom, and a professor who looks like Merlin with a magnificent set of whiskers that become leaves from the trees which make the books. There are scrolls everywhere, very academic. On one corner is Manchester's coat of arms with its ship and its globe covered by Manchester worker bees. On the other corner is the Royal Court of arms - it was through the writ of the Crown that the Council governed the city.

But the corner windows are best.
They are probably the loveliest in Manchester – it's beautiful how the sculptor has turned the building's corners (technical term 'splays' for these little angled ends) from Deansgate into Jackson's Row and Bootle Street. The carving on the windows themselves is extravagant, clearly the work of a talented if anonymous stone-worker - and one with a sense of humour. The cheeky faced chubby cherubs are brilliantly realised rising from skirts of foliage and garlanded in their five-a-day, framing the windows. Even the British Empire lion is made enchanting, almost absurd, with his snout sprouting palms and his bonce sporting a natty shell hat. I wonder if Lydia liked it all?

Who's Lydia?
Lydia Becker was the daughter of the fantastically monikered Hannibal Becker, the owner of a chemical works in the city. She was born in 1827 the eldest of fifteen children. When her mother died in 1855 she took responsibility for looking after her younger siblings. But she had other interests. A fine botanist, she won an award for her collection of dried plants in 1864 and published to great success Botany for Novices in 1866. But it was politics that gave her fame.

Carry on with the story then?
Lydia was a pioneer in the Votes for Women movement. In 1866 Lydia heard a lecture on women's suffrage. She was immediately inspired and promptly wrote an article called 'Female Suffrage'. Later that year she formed the Manchester Women's Suffrage Committee with other disciples. In 1887 she became the president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies. She had fallings out with the more radical Emmeline Pankhurst, who wanted to pursue a more militant path to the vote. Becker preferred constitutional means.

Interesting, but what's this got to do with Elliot House?
The first Act of Parliament to allow females to be elected onto governmental bodies was the 1870 Education Act which allowed women to vote and serve on School Boards. Lydia got herself elected onto the Manchester board right away. She was a ball of energy our Lydia. She would have known this building. It was here where she might have argued the case for allowing girls a better education than one based on simple household management and also that boys should learn how to cook, and repair clothes.

Wonder what she would have made of the Central Library move?
Don't know. But you have to think given her literary predilections that the Central Library's bank of knowledge arriving here, and matching up to the decorative elements on the building, would have charmed her.