'A special place' ... sun finally sets on Owens Park

Former residents share their memories as bulldozers move in at famous student halls

- ETHAN DAVIES

IT'S the mid-1980s and a desperate lover or concerned friend has arranged sheets of A4 paper to spell out 'ROB PHONE ME' across a south Manchester tower.

It's the early 1990s and there are pencils and papers pinned to residents' doors in a south Manchester tower so they can leave one another messages.

It's the mid-2010s and the fire alarm has just gone off in a south Manchester tower for the fourth time that night, after someone drunkenly burned a late night snack.

Many will already know the tower referred to: Owens Park, the home of thousands of students. For some, it would have been their first home in the city.

And it gave a unique introduction to Manchester, as revealed by the memories of alumni shared with the M.E.N.

They've been unearthed because, after 59 years, Owens Park Tower is being demolished.

Built in 1965, the tower was then the gold standard in student digs. It had sinks in every room, shared kitchen facilities as well as a dining room, plus a music hall where the infamous Owens Park BOP student night would run until 2009.

It was at one of those events in the late 1980s that students The Chemical Brothers played their first ever gig. Other musicians who've lived in the tower include Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien.

More famous names also inhabited those walls. Rik Mayall, Benedict Cumberbatch and Jack Whitehall all lived there - with the latter saying it had 'so many sordid memories! But as the decades went by OP, as it was nicknamed, became something of a relic of the past. Its fit-and-finish couldn't match up to newer student digs such as the Richmond Park complex built just behind it in the mid-90s, which was used as the Commonwealth Games athletes village.