They are I suppose a typical cross section of retail outlets here in Chorlton. Along with the empty one and the charity shop there are the bars which seem the real growth industry of the last decade. And there are those that just seem to cling on like the Linen Room, the Barbecue and fishmongers. Each have loyal customers and always seem to be busy places.
My favourite is the Modern Army Store which like the old hardware shops offers a variety of things which you can’t seem to get anywhere else. A few months ago it was a plastic camping set and the previous year a pair of marching boots, and during a thunderstorm recently I found the perfect small umbrella.
My friend Peter painted the row recently. It is part of a new project to record street scenes around Chorlton. Like all of his paintings it is full of colour. But for me it also helps explain something of the history of where we live.
Like his other painting of the shops running from Albany Road down to Keppel Road, it helps explain how an impressive terrace of houses built in the early 1880s became a row of shops catering for the ever expanding population.
The shops were built in the gardens and extended into the ground floor of the houses. But these were a later conversion. All were still residential properties as late as 1911, and despite the location on what was to become an increasingly busy road, their back gardens abutted the much larger gardens of the houses on Manchester and Barlow Moor Roads.
So I am drawn back to Peter’s painting, which captures something of those houses and will be an important record of where Chorlton was at the beginning of the 21st century. There are plenty more many of which can be seen in venues across the township and at https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
Picture; ©Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk & the same site in the early 20th century from the Lloyd collection
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