Murals at Castle Irwell

The first thing I saw when I arrived at Castle Irwell for my walk round the area and its wetlands was the side wall of a flood basin storage building covered in a mural featuring the old Castle Irwell house. The other three walls also featured murals, each one having some significance to Castle Irwell and its past. The mural on the front represented the old racecourse while the one on the back wall was difficult to place. When Castle Irwell house was in existence it had extensive gardens and pleasure grounds so presumably these included a pond or a lake at some point although I’ve been unable to find any mention of one.

The mural on the other side wall, which reminds me of a Lowry painting, includes a depiction of Kersal Flats, an estate of twelve high-rise blocks of high-spec, spacious modern apartments built by Salford Council between 1958 and 1960. Although initially very popular, by the mid 1970s and into the 80s the place had become very run down and no-one wanted to live there so in October 1990 all but four of the blocks were demolished. It took half a ton of explosives and just eight and a half seconds to simultaneously drop the high-rises to the ground and they entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest number of buildings brought down at once. Of the remaining four blocks two were eventually demolished in 1999 while the other two were renovated and upgraded by private property developers, and they exist today in a pleasant area just across the river from the Castle Irwell wetlands.

Over on the far side of the wetlands the walls of the river overflow channel and embankment were decorated with more artworks, this time mainly depicting a lot of the wildlife which inhabits the wetlands, riverside and woodlands, while further along the path more wildlife adorned the walls of another storage building.

All the murals were painted by Manchester-based street artist Kelzo, whose work has appeared in several of my previous street art posts. I actually missed a few on the walls of the overflow channel as I wasn’t aware of them at the time, however there’s more of the area to explore yet and it won’t be long before I go back so I’ll look for those on my next walk round.