The Victoria Arches were a series of arches built in the embankment of the River Irwell in Manchester. They served as business premises, landing stages for Steam packet riverboats and as World War II air-raid shelters. They were accessed from wooden staircases which descended from Victoria Street.
Regular flooding of the river resulted in the closure of the steam-packet services in the early 20th century, following which the arches were used for general storage. Following the outbreak of the Second World War they were converted into air raid shelters. The arches are now bricked up and inaccessible; the staircases were removed in the latter part of the 20th century.
Read more about Victoria Arches: References
Famous quotes containing the words victoria and/or arches:
“Sometimes my wife complains that she’s overwhelmed with work and just can’t take one of the kids, for example, to a piano lesson. I’ll offer to do it for her, and then she’ll say, “No, I’ll do it.” We have to negotiate how much I trespass into that mother role—it’s not given up easily.”
—Anonymous Father. As quoted in Women and Their Fathers, by Victoria Secunda, ch. 3 (1992)
“The lean cats of the arches of the churches,
That’s the old world. In the new, all men are priests.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)