'Another nail in the coffin': Stallholders at 'unique' Manchester market prepare to say goodbye for good

The remaining stalls are preparing to close for good this weekend as the adjoining building on High Street prepares for redevelopment. 

McCall’s Organic food shop, Afro Asian Caribbean and Manchester Book Buyers are the last holdouts of a once thriving market community and will be sorely missed by customers. McCall’s has called Church Street its home for more than 20 years, and the book stall even longer at 54 years. 

Eddie, the owner of the book stall, is very matter of fact about the forthcoming closure. “This is it. History. 1970,” he said, referring to the year he opened the stall. “It's another nail in the coffin.”

His corner stall opposite the Arndale always has, at any given moment, a couple of people rummaging through the piles of books. It’s not somewhere you go when you’re looking for something specific, but it’s always worth a quick look if you’re passing by. It’s the kind of stall where the books find you, rather than the other way around. 

There was one shelf that seemed dedicated to music biographies, and another at ground level that simply had boxes of maps of different parts of the UK. I’m sure I spotted some Egyptian papyrus on another. 

Most of the books were being sold off for £1 each. Once the shop closes on Saturday, September 14, the business will cease to exist so Eddie is selling off all the stock. When I ask if I can take some pictures, he points to a hefty copy of the Domesday Book on the shelf, he thinks it would be a fitting image to illustrate the situation.

“There's not a lot we can do about it really because the building behind here is being demolished, there's nowhere for us to go. It's a bit of a unique place, this. Same as the fruit and veg and the other units that are down there,” Eddie said, pointing to his colleagues next door. “There's nowhere to replace them.”

The staff at the Afro Asian Caribbean food shop next door were already packing up stock into boxes and loading it into a van. The shop floor was empty save for the wooden shelves against the wall. The staff were busy chatting to customers, who all seemed sad to be seeing them go. 

It was a similar story at McCall’s. Most of the people visiting the stall were regulars and were coming in to thank the shop for all their hard work over the years. One man who walked in behind simply said “F*****g devastated” as he said hello to the staff there.

Chloe Miller is another regular customer who has been coming here since she moved to Manchester in 2022. She described the shop as “unique” compared to the city’s other organic shops, owing to its diverse range of products. 

She told ManchesterWorld: “It's no exaggeration to say that it honestly makes me question whether Manchester is really the right city for me. I feel like there's something fundamentally wrong with a city that prioritises soulless profit above what's really valuable, which is health and unique, small businesses. That's my feeling.

“You see that around all the new developments. There's no shops, there's only big chain supermarkets with the same, limited, rubbish stock everywhere. I've been here all day and it's really clear that this shop means a lot to a lot of people. It just feels like the people in power really don't care about what's important. And that's really, deeply sad.”

The development plans for the High Street building where the markets are located include a 22-storey apartment building with retail space on the street level. The Northern Quarter has historically been associated with independent shops and the kind of retail you won’t find on nearby highstreets. In recent years though, it has seen significant development, including high rise residential buildings, that some people fear will change the character of the area. 

As Eddie puts it: “When do you ever hear of a Tesco closing down? There's a Tesco down here. And the Post Office has just closed down. And the car park is being closed down. End of an era.”