Now as I have said before old postcards are a wonderful way of taking you back into the past. On one level there are the fashions of the people, the absence of road traffic and above all the clues to the changes in the buildings all of which put you into a different time.
This photograph of Wilbraham Road where it met Barlow Moor Road was posted on October 8th 1909, and may be just a little older.
Using the street directories it is possible to identify each shop. Street directories were not unlike telephone listings. They gave the householder, but often also their occupation and of course the number of the house or shop. But what they do not allow the historian to do is find out who else lived there, for this we have to fall back on the census returns. The trouble is that however detailed a census record is they only came out every ten years, while the street directories were printed annually.
This also allows the researcher to fairly accurately date the buildings in a postcard, add to this old maps and modern street maps and the true story behind the picture emerges. Google maps also allow you to get a modern picture of the location to compare with the image from the postcard.
And if you are lucky there is always the chance of an advert in the local paper.
Picture of Wilbraham Road from the collection of Rita Bishop, with permission from David Bishop
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