There's a bridge if you'd similar to go. Information technology spans the tramline that runs from Altrincham to Manchester, just north of Stretford tram finish. You tin admission information technology from Kings Route, at around number 500, about 500 metres from where Morrissey in one case lived, at number 384.

It'southward difficult to imagine an uglier construction. The bridge truly is an eyesore, obviously built with zero consideration given to aesthetics, and purely every bit a functional means of allowing pedestrians to cross the track. Climbing the physical steps upwards to it, yous are greeted by a bewildering display of behemothic spikes, with the full length of the bridge itself flanked on either side by greenish coloured six foot corrugated iron, preventing the pedestrian from beingness able to wait downwards at the tracks, or up and down the line, and giving a sense of enclosure that encourages you to bustle across. This is not a bridge designed to accommodate contemplative reflection.

Or is information technology?

Affectionately known by Morrissey fans as 'The Iron Span', this isn't just whatsoever old ugly Manchester bridge. Given its proximity to Morrissey'south sometime house, and given the location of Morrissey'south school at the fourth dimension, it seems a given certainty that a teenage Morrissey would have crossed this bridge on a daily basis.

Some think the span is the 'iron bridge' referred to in The Smiths' song 'Still Ill'. Others think not, pointing out that the line in the song was taken from Viv Nicholson'south autobiography, and that information technology could be referring to any bridge. But whether it is or non seems somewhat irrelevant to me. The signal is, this was a identify frequented by Morrissey during those formative years that he sang virtually in early on Smiths songs; songs with which then many, myself included, instantly identified. Hither walked a great writer, an iconic artist in the making. For anyone every bit fascinated with the man equally I, this is indeed a place to pause and contemplate, and many a Morrissey fan has done just that. Those ugly green iron flanks are covered in graffiti scrawl, every bit visitors from all over the world pen or scratch messages of dear, and mostly Morrissey's ain lyrics, creating a sort of shrine to the artist. The upshot is ugliness and beauty combined, in what seems to me a sort of adventitious, spontaneous piece of modern fine art. I simply love it.

Every and then ofttimes, when the mood takes me, I brand the l mile journeying from my home in Leeds. And any other reason for a trip to Manchester usually results in a side trip to this span. It never fails to interest me, equally I try to picture Morrissey there some 30 – 40 years ago, to see what he saw, walk where he walked.

Actor Jack Lowden crosses the bridge during the filming of Morrissey biopic 'England is Mine' in 2016.

Is information technology really then strange? I say no. People take been visiting the former homes and haunts of famous people for years. In the Lake District you can do a Wordsworth tour, in Dublin an Oscar Wilde tour, to name just a couple off the height of my head. Equally a lover of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, I accept of course visited Haworth, and spent time on the surrounding moors, trying to imagine how these scenes influenced her writing.

The fe bridge in Stretford is no different. Indeed, it'southward included every bit a stop on organised double-decker tours arranged for visitors to Manchester who are interested in the city'due south musical history.

But preferring to visit lonely, and do things at my own pace, I stand up lonely on the iron bridge, and walk the surrounding streets in delicious solitude, taking it all in, following in the footsteps of Morrissey.