Archaeology....

All the new buildings going up around Manchester at the moment are providing us with tantalising glimpses into the city's past. After the old has come down and before the new goes up, the archaeologists go in and have a poke about.

At the moment the old medieval core of Salford, across the river from Manchester Cathedral, is having a major rebuild with no less than seven buildings going up at the same time. On the edge of what they are now calling Greengate Square, a sleek, glass wedge of an apartment tower is about to start. It looks pretty cool.

I found a vantage point and took this picture down into the archaeologists' excavation. What they have uncovered is, I was told, the remains of the Victoria Bridge Inn, an old coaching inn on the busy London to Scotland route. It was like a service station on the M6 of Stuart and Georgian England. Horses would be changed here, people could eat or spend the night. For a few weeks we will be able to appreciate this bit of the past before it disappears under the latest building incarnation this area has had in its long history.