“I’ve had some fabulous times here”- Salboy restores Castle Irwell’s Racecourse Turnstile building as part of 500-home urban village

Image credit: Salboy

Property development company Salboy has restored a Salford landmark as part of its 500-home urban village.

The turnstile building at the former Manchester racecourse at Castle Irwell, which closed in 1963, has been renovated years after it was almost demolished due to fire damage in 2015.

Fred Done, a co-founder of Salboy, used to run bookmakers near the course and was happy to save the site.

He said: “A lot of people didn’t realise this was a racecourse.  

“The crowds used to flock to this place. We’re gonna name all the streets and the avenues after racing people and race horses.”

Benjamin Ashcroft, head of marketing at Salboy, said: “It’s personal to a lot of the team at Salboy.

“Our co-founders and most of our senior management are Salfordians ‘born and bred’ and are really passionate about their hometown. 

“Many of them enjoyed Castle Irwell Student Village when Salford University owned the site in the ’70-’80s.”

The newly restored building will have a couple of uses.

He said: “The Turnstile building is being used as a sales and marketing suite so that potential home buyers can come and see plans for the site and options for how they want to fit out their new homes.

“It’s also being used by the Domis construction team as a site office for the team.”

The remainder of the land will become an impressive brand new housing facility.

Ashcroft says: “The rest of the site is being turned in to 500 homes with phase 1 made up of 157 properties, open space and associated infrastructure, including a cycle route.

“In total, there would be 41 two-bedroom, 97 three-bedroom and 19 four-bedroom homes.

“It’s a great location, surrounded by the River Irwell and Kersal wetlands. So it’s very close to nature while also only being 15 minutes from the city centre.”

The site is hopefully set to be completed in 2025. Ashcroft continued:”The Turnstile building only needed a couple of months, the rest of the site will take about five years to wrap up fully.

“New health and safety rules have meant we’ve had to build new rule covid-19 rules into our sites, things like temperature checks, one system, and a lot of sanitiser and masks.”