The day the photographer took the picture of the charabanc

Sometimes a photograph stubbornly refuses to give up its secrets. Now I know that to personalise the search for the identity of the people, the location and date is silly but that’s how it is.

It is a wonderful picture full of period detail. On what must have been a warmish day the community has turned out to be captured beside the vehicle. If I was better versed on early 20th century motor cars I might be able to be confident of the date, but I can’t. The clothes suggest the early years of that century but that is as far as it goes.
There is not even a guarantee that this is Chorlton, but given the collection it came from I think it might be. There was a Carver family living in Chorlton during the period and a Brierley who listed himself in the early 1900s as a tobacconist on Sandy Lane.

But this not Sandy Lane. Looking at the glass and iron canopy it should be Barlow Moor Road but I don’t even think that.

For a while I thought that the chap sitting next to the driver might be Charles Shaw whose garage dominated the stretch of shops from the tram terminus to High Lane, but this man looks too old.
So unless someone recognises the place, the people or makes out a good case for a date I reckon the picture hoards its secrets.

Well not entirely. It conveys that sense of public curiosity at what must still have been a bit of a novelty. Trips out in motorised charabancs like this were not a common occurrence and its appearance has drawn a crowd.
I have to say that those onboard seem a smug bunch, a few smile back at the camera but most are more than a little indifferent, and as for the man beside the driver, there is more than a little arrogance about him.

I don't think I am being unfair, especially when judged against the spectators. Here are a rich group of faces. At the back there is the woman beaming at the camera, matched by the dour face of the lady behind Mr Carver the Butcher. He on the other hand stares forthright at the photographer as does the chap next to him. And then there is the woman with the hat and what looks like an umbrella. Hers is an altogether different expression. She neither smiles nor scowls but just looks and there are many more just like her.

On a busy Saturday they have stopped to gaze back at the man behind the lens. For some it will be an opportunity to pose for others just a pause in whatever they were doing. Some haven’t even bothered to stop what they were doing. So behind the lady with the umbrella and the lady with the scarf, two of Mr Carver’s assistants carry on amongst the sides of meat hanging from the rail.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection