This is how you honour a shop with history

Today over fifty people gathered on an indifferent morning to commemorate and indeed celebrate one of our local Co-ops.

Gathering for the event, 2026

What makes this Co-op as special is that it has retained its public hall which for nearly a century has acted as avenue for a variety of local community events.

So it was fitting that Chorlton Civic Society should erect a blue plaque to honour its place as a centre for education, social events and  home to the Co-operative and Labour Movement.

The plaque was unveiled by Kathy Lee who as a member of the Co-op Party was active in promoting the ideals of co-operation.

Kathy about to unveil the plaque, 2026

Unveiled, 2026

Many of those present will also remember that Kathy's husband, Lawrence Beedle played a unique role in recording the history  of all things co-op and retold the stories in his  blog.*

Sean, Cll Shilton-Goodwin

So much so that when Angela Downing began to explore the possibilities of a blue plaque it was to Lawrence that she first turned and much of what we now know about the hall and its activities is due in no small part to Lawrence's knowledge. 

Which leads me to thank Angela for liaising with Chorlton Civic Society's blue plaque committee and the Co-op who funded the plaque.

The shop was opened in 1929 to serve the new housing estates which were being built along and behind Barlow Moor Road.

Lord Bradley

At the time most of the shops had their own hall but sadly most have now gone and ours may indeed be the last in the Greater Manchester area.

Some of the Hall's friends

The Hardy Lane Co-op Rooms can boast a rich and diversified series of events which have taken place in its room.

They range from meetings of the Wood Craft Folk and Co-operative Guilds to pollical assemblies of the Labour and Co-operative Parties doubled up as election committee rooms and the venue for  heap of social events from film nights to whist evenings.

All of which made today's unveiling very special, and so along with Kathy we had Lord Bradley who as Keith Bradley was elected in 1987 as the first Labour MP for Withington, and the present MP Jeff Smith, both of whom spoke of their vivid memories of the hall.  Cllr Manie Shilton-Godwin and Sean from the Co-op were also present and I think the ghosts of  all those who have in some ways been part of the hall over the last century.

Jeff Smith, MP

Sean from the Co-op

The Friends gather

Location; Hardy Lane Co-op

Pictures: on the day from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Peter Topping, 2026

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, https://hardylane.blogspot.com/

Chubby Checker, cowboys and Pathe News ........... Saturday morning at Well Odeon with a thank you to Sandra

Now  I am revisiting Saturday morning pictures and in particular the Odeon at Well Hall.

And as ever the memories came flooding back with a fair number of people sharing their stories which got me thinking that so much of our recent history gets lost because we just take it for granted.

But these bits of our collective story are as important as any of the great events and are often just lost.
So here is Sandra Axford Wilcox’s own vivid recollections of the magic that was Saturday morning pictures.

"I remember Saturday morning pictures at We'll Hall Odeon. 

Everyone stamping their feet when the cowboys were chasing the Indians. 

The unmistakable voice of Pathe News. 

And the competitions, my big sister made me go up on the stage for a dance off - doing The Twist to Chubby Checker. 

The manager would walk along the stage holding a much coveted biro over each dancers head and whoever got the most cheers would win the pen.... and no, I didn't win."

All of which just leaves me to hope that a shed full of more memories will tumble out.

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Picking a municipal bus company and travelling across the city in 1963

Cover of Maps of Manchester & District, 1963

Now I am looking at a copy of the 1963 Manchester bus routes which my friend David has passed on to me.

Like me he was one of those that never went to a grammar school and recalled that

“I went to St Gregory's Technical High School in Ardwick Green from 1960-1967.

And because it was over 3 miles from Chorlton I was awarded a free bus pass...Joy of Joys, and could travel freely anywhere I liked in school hours for free.

Not that I did - but it did allow me to experiment with the various routes to Ardwick Green from the stop near Chorlton Baths.

I finally ended up using the fastest way - the 81 or 82 to Brooks Bar, and then the 53,  a great route known as the 'banana' service because " they came in bunches"  and from Greenheys the 123 to Ardwick Green.”

Now all of this reminded me that even the humble guide to the City’s bus routes comes with a story and opens up a fascinating glimpse into that not so distant past.

Back then according to another friend there were bus loads of students crisscrossing the city.

And like David many were in receipt of a free bus pass.  I too briefly had access to the same although in my case it was a season ticket for the train to travel from Well Hall to New Cross and back again.

Of course the sting in the tail was that they could only be used in term time and during school hours which rather limited the opportunity to boldly go and explore to the outer limits of the Corporation’s bus routes.

Detail of bus routes in and around Chorlton

But they were just another part of that welfare provision which some today frown upon.

Looking again at that bus guide is to follow long forgotten routes, and be reminded that the early 60s was still a time when a lot more people relied on public transport or did it themselves on a push bike.

The scenes outside all our big factories at clocking off time were characterised by people cycling home or waiting to catch one of the long line of buses parked up waiting for the evening rush.

And here there was a bewildering choice. Running through Chorlton there was the 80, 81, 82, 85,  and 94 along with the 41 and 43 all of which went into town.

Stevenson Square December 1966

There was also cross routes including the 16, 22, and 62 and it was possible to travel by bus into Chorltonville up to Rye Bank Road and out to Firswood.

The network also provided for more connections and all of this ran alongside a regular train service from Chorlton into Central Station or out to Didsbury, Stockport and the Derbyshire hills.

It was a complex system which involved not only Manchester Corporation buses, but also those of Salford, Oldham, Ashton, smaller local authorities, and the North West Bus and Car Company.

And so beside  the distinctive red livery of Manchester and the blue and cream of Ashton there was the green of Salford and the green of the Stalybridge, Hyde, Mossley and Dukinfield Joint Transport and Electricity Board along with the maroon and cream colours of Oldham.

Piccadilly with an Ashton-Under-Lyne trolley bus, 1960

For those of a certain disposition this was a wonderful cornucopia of municipal transport that made the car less essential and can only be dreamed of today and one that vanished at the end of the 1960s.

Ah I hear you say all of that is fine, but getting in a car at work and driving home with the radio to listen to is far superior than having to wait in the rain at the bus stop, fight for a seat and end up beside that rather boring chap from the end house whose sole topics of conversation revolve around pigeons and the poor performance of Huddersfield F.C.

All of which maybe so but I do miss the ease with which you could move around the city and so I shall revisit David’s 1963 bus route book and plan a few trips of my own, which may or may not have left me at ease in the company of that chap from the end house.

And that just leaves a correction and comment from, John Anthony Hewitt.

"Minor correction Andrew Simpson, the bus company mentioned was North Western Road Car Co., and they were based in Stockport. Other bus companies included LUT (Lancashire United Transport), Walkden and Ribble, Preston. Probably the longest bus route I rode departed from Victoria bus station in Salford, but was operated by MCTD, No.10, I think, to Liverpool via a zig-zag route crossing the East Lancs Road several times - Eccles, Worsley, Walkden, Newton-le-Willows, St Helens and a few other places long since forgotten. Like your friend David, I too had grown up in C-C-H and had a bus pass to St Greg's., 1956 - 1963, but my adventures in Greenheys were courtesy of trolley-bus 213 (later motor bus 123)".



Pictures; Maps of Manchester and District, Manchester Corporation, 1963, courtesy of David O’Reilly and Manchester Corporation trolley bus, Stevenson Square 1966,  © Alan Murray-Rust, geograph.org.uk Wikipedia Commons, Ashton-Under-Lyne Corporation trolley bus in Piccadilly, 1960,  from the collection of J.F.A.Hampson,  Museum of Transport, Wikipedia Commons

History on display today ... the Chorlton event not to miss ..... at 11 am at the Co-op on Barlow Moor Road

 History comes in all shapes and sizes and none more so than the Hardy Lane Co-op store here in Chorlton which is just a tad short of celebrating its 100th birthday.

The Hardy Lane Co-op, 1966

That in itself would be worth commemorating, given that the Co-operative Movement was at the heart of providing good quality food and other products at affordable prices with the bonus that its members received a share of the profits in the form of a dividend on all their purchases.

It is a retail model which was already offering an excellent deal before the Rochdale Pioneers opened their successful shop.

At its zenith the movement had shops, factories, and ships providing families with all they could want from food, furniture, clothes and holidays as well as banking and a funeral service.  

It was organised through Co-operative Societies and for many households it was the place you went to for everything.

Household HintsCo-operative Wholesale Society, undated

And so embedded were the societies in the lives of working people that many can recall their “divi” number which customers proffered up every time they bought something.

R.A.C.S token, undated

We were in the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society which was a vast organization covering all of south London and into the Home Counties, and like other societies had both a political and educational wing through which it promoted the ideals of co-operation and a host of events designed to enhance cultural activities and international understanding.

And here in Manchester was the headquarters of the movement centred around Balloon Street.

What marked out the retail arm of most of the societies were the meeting rooms above the shops which could be hired for community use.

All of which brings me back to the Hardy Lane Co-op which is one of only a few shops which still have a functioning meeting space.

Over the last 97 years its room has hosted everything from the Chorlton and Manley Co-operative Women's Guild to the Woodcraft Folk, meetings of the Co-operative and Labour Parties to cinema nights and Whist events.  

Co-op products, undated

As such it has been at the centre of the community it was opened to serve.

Now I have already written about the Chorlton and Manley Co-operative Women's Guild.*

Yet to be written is the story of Barbara Castle’s visit.  She was a  British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1979, making her one of the longest-serving women MPs in British history.  

And with that story should be an account of the Woodcraft Folk’s activities and the many events held to promote Co-operative products and the underlying principles of the Co-operative Movement.

But I will close with the story of the tea trolley.  

It was an essential part of any meeting and would be trundled out at many of the meetings I attended there.  It was not as old as the tea urn or the big brown tea pot but old enough to have clocked up plenty of events.

That tea trolley, 2012

And I suppose in its way is a symbol of all those meetings going back almost a full century when the great business of the day stopped for light refreshments including Co-op tea and co-op biscuits.

Co-op tea, undated

Just leaving me to announce that Chorlton Civic Society in partnership with the Co-operative movement will be unveiling a plaque at the store to commemorate the historic role of the meeting room to the community.**

The ceremony will be on Saturday July 4th at 11 am.

Location;

Pictures; Barlow Moor Road, 1966, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, R.A.C.S., token undated from the collection of Andrew Simpson, remaining images from the collection of Lawrence Beedle http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* On small things history turns …. commemorating the Hardy Lane Co-op https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/06/on-small-things-history-turns.html

** Blue Plaque for Hardy Lane Co-op Store https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Blue%20Plaque%20for%20Hardy%20Lane%20Co-op%20Store

Living on the edge of the village, part 3 of the story of our own one up one down cottages

It is another one of the buildings that has fascinated me and is now revealing some of its secrets and in doing so has a lot to say about how we lived in the township when we were still a rural community.

This picture was taken sometime around the first decade of the last century by which time the cottage was maybe a 100 years old. It was one of those one up one down properties I have been writing about which could be found all over the township. The front door opened directly into the downstairs room and usually at the back was a boxed staircase which led to the upstairs room.

It stood on the edge of the green, just past the parish church, close by what is now the car park to the meadows.

In the 1840s and 50s it was home to John and Mary Taylor. In the June of 1841 he had described himself as an agricultural labourer and a decade later aged 72 he was still working on the land while his wife took in laundry.

Now it is impossible to say which farm he worked for or whether he was part of the casual workforce which found work where they could, but there were three farms around the green and another along what is now Brookburn Road

They rented the house from John Renshaw who had owned properties around Chorlton and paid him 1/6d a week in rent. Now this was about the going rate for such a cottage although rents began at just over a shilling [5p].

The cottage stood on open land with fine views back across the green and out toward the Mersey. Like most homes of the day there was a small cottage garden.

In that summer of 1841 John and Mary were sharing their home with their married daughter Eliza and her husband and three children. John Bentley like his father inlaw was an agricultural laborouer and it maybe that this was a temporary expedient because ten years later John Eliza and the children were living at Lane End. Now given that there were few labourer’s cottages at Lane End it is just possible that they were living in one of the four one up one down properties.

But this is to over push the documentary evidence. So I shall stay with John and Mary Taylor who continued to live at our cottage well into the 1860s and there is more. We can track them across the baptism of their children and their grandchildren and to John’s death in 1868.

They were there at that cottage from 1841 and maybe even earlier. As for the cottage it was still inhabited in 1911 when it was home to William Travis who was 52 years old widower from Ireland who like John Taylor worked on the land. He may have still been there when it was demolished around 1928 when the British Legion Club was opened on the site.

Picture from the Lloyd collection

A lost photograph and a clue to a vanished building

Sometimes you fall across a picture by chance which fills in a gap in your knowledge and at the same time is a joy to look at in its own right.


It is also unusual in that it is not one I have seen before and I doubt that at first glance many today would be able to place it.

 It is a postcard sent in the summer of 1905 and shows that section of Barlow Moor Road running north from the junction with Wilbraham Road towards what would now be the library.

There is little that is familiar. But perhaps the first clue is the building of John Bailey, joiner and cabinet maker. It is still there today but is now the solicitor on the corner of Barlow Moor and Warwick Road. 

Adjoining the building and further down Barlow Moor Road there are other buildings which are still there today albeit with some changes.

All of which leaves the two buildings beside Bailey’s the joiner behind the chap leaning on the fence. The white building set back is the old Royal Oak which had been selling beer from early in the 19th century.

It was here in the 1860s that drunken mobs from Manchester had to be chased off by locals and earlier still the scene of a pub theft which resulted in the convicted thief being transported.

But it is the building to the right of the Royal Oak which really caught my attention. This is Renshaws Buildings owned by a local farmer who lived on the Row.* It dates from the very early 1830s and maybe even older.

It was one of a number of properties built for rent by local businessmen like Renshaw the farmer, Brownhill the wheelwright and Grantham the tailor.

They may have been the first wave of new brick built cottages, replacing the old wattle and daub properties and aimed at the increase in population in the township.

These were for the local market and the census returns show that they were inhabited by farm labourers and tradesmen.

I cannot be sure of when Renshaws Buildings went up but we can be sure they were in place by 1832 because their ownership along with other properties guaranteed Renshaw a property vote after the 1832 Reform Act

Looking at the number of units in Renshaws Buildings and the number of families recorded in the census record they have been one up one down dwellings in a block running at right angles to the main road.

The picture may also be unique in that it could be the last time it was photographed like this.

Within perhaps ten years the front had been converted into a garage and by the late 1920s had been demolished to make way for the new Royal Oak.

Today the only evidence that it was ever there is the kerb running down the south side of the pub.

So there you have it, this postcard from 1905 remains one of the best images of Renshaws Buildings, a building which I have followed from its construction sometime before 1832.

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

Picture; Renshaws Buildings and the Royal Oak circa 1905, from the Lloyd Collection

The wrath of the Jelly Men …….. comic terrors no.1 …… 1960

In truth I wasn’t frightened of the Jelly Men ….. more just fascinated.

They appeared one day in the Beezer sometime in 1960 as an invading force.

They came out of the sea and had the power to trap people, animals, vehicles and even buildings in giant bubbles which were blown from their tentacles.

Just where they originally came from, their real purpose and their eventual fate are now lost in time.

And here I have a confession which D.C Thompson who published the comic may well shudder at, but the Beezer and its comic pal the Topper were not my first choice. 

That fell to the Beano and Dandy, and years later when our own children came along, our Ben got the Beano and Josh the Dandy.

Almost thirty-nine years later Ben still gets the Beano annual in his Christmas stocking.

And as I am in to confession in that great league table of comics I have to admit that the Eagle triumphed over all of them.

But this is about the Jelly Men and the heroic struggle by a group of school children to defeat them, and what a titanic struggle it became.

The Beezer reported that “Edinburgh! London! North, South, East, West – Britain is overrun by The Jelly Men”, filling the page with images of a television broadcaster describing scenes of horror as they wade ashore in Scotland, are fished up by trawler men, derail trains and imprison news vendors, as well as soldiers guarding Buckingham Palace, and interrupting a football match by encasing the goalkeeper in a bubble. 

I should have spotted the clue in a trailer the comic ran on January 22nd, which took the reader deep into the ocean,  offering up that “There are few places on this Earth where Man has not set foot. 

The highest mountain, the deepest jungle and the frozen wasteland.  

All have been explored, their mysteries laid bare.  But one area remains unconquered.  

It is the mysterious floor of the World’s deepest oceans. 

Wearing special diving suits man has invaded the home of the shark, the swordfish and lower still the giant ray. 

In enormously strong steel chambers, he has penetrated even farther into the bark depths.  But beyond in the inky blackness undisturbed for centuries who know what form of life may exist.  Perhaps strange creatures like THE JELLY MEN?”

So I now know what happened to them but as yet not their fate.

But here the kind archivist at D.C Thompson may take pity and trawl the old copies of the Beezer for the answer.

He was kind enough to help me get permission to use images of The Jelly Men and I rather think on a cold December day he might enjoy finding out for me.

That said the strip first appeared in 1960, ran to five series of which the fourth in 1985 was a reprint.*

Location; Britain in 1960

Pictures; The Jelly Men, 1960, courtesy of DC Thomson & Co Ltd"

* List of Beezer comic strips, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Beezer_comic_strips