To me you are a work of art

There’s a bridge if you’d like to go. It spans the tramline that runs from Altrincham to Manchester, just north of Stretford tram stop. You can access it from Kings Road, at around number 500, about 500 metres from where Morrissey once lived, at number 384.

It’s difficult to imagine an uglier construction. The bridge truly is an eyesore, obviously built with zero consideration given to aesthetics, and purely as a functional means of allowing pedestrians to cross the track. Climbing the concrete steps up to it, you are greeted by a bewildering display of giant spikes, with the full length of the bridge itself flanked on either side by greenish coloured six foot corrugated iron, preventing the pedestrian from being able to look down at the tracks, or up and down the line, and giving a sense of enclosure that encourages you to hurry across. This is not a bridge designed to accommodate contemplative reflection.

Or is it?

Affectionately known by Morrissey fans as ‘The Iron Bridge’, this isn’t just any old ugly Manchester bridge. Given its proximity to Morrissey’s old house, and given the location of Morrissey’s school at the time, it seems a given certainty that a teenage Morrissey would have crossed this bridge on a daily basis.

Some think the bridge is the ‘iron bridge’ referred to in The Smiths’ song ‘Still Ill’. Others think not, pointing out that the line in the song was taken from Viv Nicholson’s autobiography, and that it could be referring to any bridge. But whether it is or not seems somewhat irrelevant to me. The point is, this was a place frequented by Morrissey during those formative years that he sang about in early Smiths songs; songs with which so many, myself included, instantly identified. Here walked a great writer, an iconic artist in the making. For anyone as fascinated with the man as I, this is indeed a place to pause and contemplate, and many a Morrissey fan has done just that. Those ugly green iron flanks are covered in graffiti scrawl, as visitors from all over the world pen or scratch messages of love, and mostly Morrissey’s own lyrics, creating a sort of shrine to the artist. The result is ugliness and beauty combined, in what seems to me a sort of accidental, spontaneous piece of modern art. I simply love it.

Every so often, when the mood takes me, I make the 50 mile journey from my home in Leeds. And any other reason for a trip to Manchester usually results in a side trip to this bridge. It never fails to interest me, as I try to picture Morrissey there some 30 – 40 years ago, to see what he saw, walk where he walked.

Is it really so strange? I say no. People have been visiting the former homes and haunts of famous people for years. In the Lake District you can do a Wordsworth tour, in Dublin an Oscar Wilde tour, to name just a couple off the top of my head. As a lover of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, I have of course visited Haworth, and spent time on the surrounding moors, trying to imagine how these scenes influenced her writing.

The iron bridge in Stretford is no different. Indeed, it’s included as a stop on organised bus tours arranged for visitors to Manchester who are interested in the city’s musical history.

But preferring to visit alone, and do things at my own pace, I stand alone on the iron bridge, and walk the surrounding streets in delicious solitude, taking it all in, following in the footsteps of Morrissey.