Longsight Police Station has played an indispensable role in policing central Manchester since it was opened in 1948. In this month’s story, the GMP Museum looks back at the history of this station through the eyes of Mike McCulloch (a current museum volunteer and motorcycle aficionado) who joined Longsight as a constable in 1979, and Valerie Lorne who joined Longsight in 1993 as a constable and who still works on site as police staff.
Before it was Longsight Police Station, the building started as St. Joseph’s Industrial School for Boys, which operated until the 1930’s when industrial schools were abolished across the UK. Whilst it continued as a public school, and in 1941 was turned into training college for the newly created National Fire Service during the height of the Second World War
Following the end of the war, the building was repurposed into the divisional headquarters for the Manchester City Police, formally opening in 1948. As Longsight grew in operational importance, it became the site of various specialist departments, such as the fingerprint and photographic suites and a criminal records office.
When Mike McCulloch joined the GMP in 1979, Longsight had become a key site for the Greater Manchester Police (GMP), which formed in 1974, and the large police complex had cemented an additional role as the main driving and police training school for the Manchester City Police cadets, which began in 1962. It also remained an active police station and was the divisional headquarters for GMP’s ‘D’ Division, the two other sub-divisional headquarters at Wythenshawe and Didsbury police stations.
During Mike’s time at Longsight, he witnesses Longsight become a site of constant change and adaptation, with various specialist squads coming and going, including: a plain clothes department, a Crime and Vandal Department and a Check Squad. By the 1980’s many of these departments had moved to other sites in Manchester, including the driving school which moved to Openshaw in the 1980s.
One of Mike’s strongest memories of the original Longsight building was its social club and bar area, called the ‘Delta Club’, located on the top floor, which was a full licensed and operational pub.
This unusual section of the building would eventually be closed down in the late 1980s, but the empty bar could still be found on the top floor in 1993, when constable Valerie Lorne joined Longsight, where she has spent most of her policing career. Arriving in the twilight years of the original building, Longsight has also by this point been re-districted to become the headquarters of GMP’s ‘C’ Division which covered areas like Openshaw and Greenheys (also called Moss Side).
Valerie witnessed the rebuilding and refurbishment of Longsight in 1998, in which the old three-story tall headquarters was rebuilt and became both a Central Identification Suite (one of the main suites in Manchester), as well as a Custody Suite which was specially designed to process and hold a larger number of prisoners than regular police stations. This transition massively increased the number of cells at Longsight, from just 4 to around 60 by time it reopened.
Since then, Longsight has kept to its new focus on the identification, processing, and holding of potential offenders, even as Longsight itself bounced between divisions as the GMP re-organises its policing divisions across the 21st century.
Skip forward to 2026, and Valerie, now a member of police staff, witnesses Longsight renewed for a second time. Like 1998, the 2026 refurbishment of Longsight focuses on expanding its capabilities as a custody suite. Valerie was quick to highlight how much focus was placed on improving the security and quality of the cells themselves. Whilst the new Longsight has gone down from 60 cells to 44, these cells have been designed to accommodate a variety of people who need specific considerations, such as children, those with disabilities, and who are neurodivergent.
For Valerie these new cells, combined with a virtual court room, airport-like full-body scanners and detectors, and updated fingerprinting and photographic suites, are examples of how much consideration has been given for the safety of police, the public, and for those arrested at the new Longsight.
From an old school building to fire safety training school, to a divisional headquarters, to a state-of-the-art custody suite, all in 78 years! And with a fresh refurbishment only weeks ago, we should expect Longsight to continue its crucial operations far into the future.
Maybe the GMP museum will be celebrating Longsight’s 100th year anniversary 22 years from now!