Four floors of tiny independent stalls in a former department store, unchanged in spirit since 1982.
Affleck & Brown was a Victorian department store, one of the grand ones, occupying a whole block on the corner of Church Street and Oldham Street. It closed in 1973 and the building emptied out.
In 1982 — Manchester at its most derelict — a pair of traders took a floor and sublet it in small units to anybody who would pay a weekly rent. It spread. Within a few years the whole building was full of stalls the size of a shed.
It has been like that ever since, through the building nearly being sold off twice.
What is actually in it
Vintage clothing, in bulk, at every price and quality. Band merchandise. Records and tapes. Piercing and tattooing. Fancy dress. Anime, manga and gaming. Vinyl toys. Vape shops. Incense. Bubble tea. Barbers. Several places selling t-shirts with slogans on.
It is the sort of building where a serious independent hat maker sits next door to a stall selling novelty socks, and both have been there for a decade.
The rents are low and short — the whole model is that a nineteen-year-old with an idea can afford a unit — which is why some of Manchester’s now-established independent businesses started here.
The honest view
Afflecks is a teenage rite of passage in Greater Manchester, and if you are not fifteen and not looking for anything specific, an hour is plenty.
Prices on vintage have risen sharply, as they have everywhere, and some of the stock is the same mass-produced stuff you find in any market. There are also genuinely good, genuinely specialist traders in there, and finding them is the point.
It is not a beautiful building inside. The floors are odd, the corridors do not make sense, and the lighting is poor. That is the character.
Outside
The exterior is covered in mosaics by Mark Kennedy — large portraits in broken tile of local figures, added in the 2000s. Tony Wilson, Emmeline Pankhurst and the Coronation Street titles are all up there, and they are much better than they need to be.
The corner of Church Street and Tib Street around it is the middle of the Northern Quarter and full of record shops, coffee and bars.
