Kemp's Corner

Places live in peoples’ memories and once the memories fade something of the place is lost. So it is with Kemp’s Corner. I had never heard of it until about a year ago and then as if on cue everyone I talked to was able to recall the spot, remembering it with vivid nostalgia as a commonly accepted rendezvous. The name has lasted for over half a century but it does not appear on any map or street sign and may soon pass out of history.
It was on the corner of Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Road. Today the junction is known as Chorlton Cross and is dominated by the four High Street Banks. But from 1901 and perhaps even earlier until the 1960s it was Kemps Corner so named after the Chemist shop which stood where the HSBC bank now stands. The shop was a local landmark not only because of its position but because of the big clock above the entrance.
Ida Bradshaw remembered how “Mr Kemp checked the clock twice a year” and Tony Walker how “if you wanted to meet someone you told them to meet at Kemps Corner.” Its longevity as a local place is further testified by Philip Lloyd who would have nothing of the name Chorlton Cross, “I’ve known it as Kemps Corner for all my life.”
Harry Kemp owned the shop and lived above it. He had been born in 1855 in Brandon in Suffolk and grew up there. His father had started work as an agricultural labourer before becoming a book seller and hair dresser, and by the time he had brought the family to Manchester he was “the keeper of an eating house” on Chester Road. Later still he listed himself as a Directory Complier before ending up in London as a news vendor.
People remember Kemp’s Chemist with affection. It was where Tony Walker and Ida Bradshaw arranged to meet friends but for Oliver Bailey it was where
“My brother and I used to buy saltpetre from him and sulphur to make black powder (gunpowder) happy days”
And like many chemists “it had huge jars blues and reds come to mind in glass fronted cabinets and lots of names that I did not understand at 12 or 13 Lots of mahogany”
Now Kemp’s Corner is no more. It would be nice to think that the name will be used again. After all it has more historic resonance than Chorlton Cross but I doubt it. Not that Chorlton Cross has caught on in the popular imagination. Instead more often than not people will refer to it as the Four Banks which echoes its earlier unofficial name of Bank Corner which was in use at the end of the 19th century.
Picture of Kemp's Corner from a popular postcard in the collection of Bronwen Bhabuta