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Trivia: Spooky stations

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Springs Branch

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Manchester Victoria is situated near to the Cathedral and the Hanging Ditch Bridge so you could rename it Hanging Bridge.
That reminds me of Manchester's most grim-sounding (former??) street name - Hanging Ditch - a thoroughfare literally around the corner from Victoria and another potential alternative name for the station (the pesky cathedral probably got in the way at the time the railway was built).


Image shows Old Corn Exchange & street named Hanging Ditch, Manchester in 1895 by Manchester Archives+, on Flickr.

The street's name always had connotations of a nasty corner of the mediaeval settlement where frequent, brutal executions had taken place.

I remember hurrying along gloomy, deserted Hanging Ditch in dingy 1970s Manchester while heading for a late-evening train from Victoria - although more likely to be accosted by a couple of local skinheads in that era than any M.R. James-style malevolent phantom.

The street named Hanging Ditch appears to have been melded into the Exchange Square redevelopment, and it seems the shiny new bars, cafes and restaurants now occupying the historic Corn Exchange quote their addresses as the more palatable 'Exchange Square', rather than 'Hanging Ditch' - although the old street signs are still in place high on walls of the Corn Exchange building at both Cathedral St and Fennel St ends.


Not far from Berry Brow station is a lane curiously named "Deadmanstone".
Another spooky Manchester location is Boggart Hole Clough* in Blackley. Unfortunately not close to a rail or Metrolink station, but there is a bus stop of that name on Charlestown Road - so a public transport destination of sorts.

Comedian and folk singer Mike Harding, who had been a Manchester bus conductor at Queens Road depot, had a song or poem in his repertoire about a bus to Boggart Hole Clough (can't remember the details). Harding was most likely taking a bit of artistic licence here, as I'm not sure Manchester Corporation buses had that specific destination on their blinds.

* A 'boggart' is an evil or mischievous demon, and a 'clough' is a small, steep-sided valley. A hole is a hole.
 
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