Victorian Clock Tower, Manchester City Centre

5 October 2019 · Manchester

Manchester's Exchange Square district compresses a century and a half of ambition into a single sightline. The Victorian clock tower — warm sandstone, columned lantern, clock face reading the same grey afternoon it was built for — rises between a glass-curtain office block and a contemporary retail canopy. The old structure holds its ground; the new architecture frames it without meaning to. A heavy sky presses down over all of it, the clouds breaking just enough to let a sliver of pale light through directly above the tower.