Now I think there may be something in the old idea that stick around a parade of shops long enough and eventually some at least will return to their former trade. But the problem is that you may have to wait a long time, which is a roundabout way of saying that there has been an off license of sorts on the corner of Beech and Chequers Road for a hundred years.
In 1903 it was Mason and Burrows, grocers and wine merchants and was still trading as C.P. Burrows in 1958 when R.E. Stanley photographed the shop. Since then it has been an off license run by a national chain and is now a deli trading as an independent which is what Chorlton does best.
Back just over a hundred years ago there were also confectioners, a furniture dealer, draper and butcher. And in that way of continuity the butcher’s was also still there fifty years later and today is a clothes shop just one door down from the drapers shop of Mrs Mary Ann Holland.
Now Peter’s painting and my stories will be part of the exhibition Glad to be in Chorlton Past and Present at the Big Green Festival on March 31st which is in part a reflection on the changing nature of Beech Road and its retailing history.
Looking again at these five shops it is possible to capture that change. True there is again a grocer’s shop at one end and a clothes shop at the other but in between we has the new style businesses typical of Chorlton today, including two restaurants and a picture gallery.
Now there will be those of us who remember when the grocer’s, barber’s and book shop as well as the plumbing business at the end of the row. The plumber fixed our boiler one cold winter in the early 80s, I was one of the last to get a short back and sides from the barber’s and was certainly one of the last customers in the grocery shop and Brian the Books.
So there you have it the changing history of Beech Road.
Peter’s work is on display around Chorlton and can also be seen at https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
Picture; Mason and Burrows circa 1910, from the collection of Rita Bishop and ©Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Great
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