Another lost picture and a glimpse of what it was like

One of the most popular posts I have produced was one of a rarely seen postcard of Barlow Moor Road from the very early years of the 20th century. A lost photograph and a clue to a vanished building http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/lost-photograph-and-clue-to-vanished.html
I suppose its appeal is that it is of a time and place which has all but passed out of living memory.

Now this one which I also found by sheer chance is 52 years old but most of us would be hard pressed I think to recognise it at first glance. It comes from that wonderful collection of digital photographs held by our own library service and can be accessed at http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass



It was taken by AH Downes, who captured the scene in April 1959. Nothing over remarkable I hear someone muter. Yes there is an old lorry with bottles of milk an equally old fashioned car and of course the woman’s coat is very long.

But its location is unfamiliar. Well that is until you clock the building to the extreme right. It was then the Gaumont cinema and opened in 1937 as the Savoy. Today it is the Coop undertakers. All of which means that the buildings stretching back to our long coated lady are now the side of the shopping precinct. The house furthest away stands at the corner of Nicholas Road and beyond the gardens of the house to our left were more houses which fronted Manchester Road, which until the building of the precinct ran from Wilbraham to Nicholas Road.

So there you have it another lost picture and a glimpse of what it was once like. Well I say a lost photograph which it isn’t really, just I hadn’t gone looking for it.

Picture; west side of Barlow Moor Road, by AH Downes, April 1959, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council