Now whenever I think of a market place two thoughts come into my mind. One is an image from school history with the villagers or townspeople going about their lives, stopping perhaps for a conversation by the old Medieval cross and if they were feeling particularly vengeful lobbing rotten fruit at anyone in the stocks.
The other is from weekend stay aways in rural Yorkshire or somewhere down south. The most recent was a delightful stay in Ripley which on the Saturday had taken us in to Ripon and the market place. It was all that you might expect with old and not so old buildings cluttered around a square with the obligatory cross, market stalls, some Morris dancers and a red telephone box.
All of which is a far cry from our own Market Place on Beech Road which consists of the seven shops running west from the old Police Station. Although back in the 1890s you might have also meant the parade on the opposite side. Now there is something odd about calling this small row of shops a Market Place, but given that before the 1880s there were very few shops on Beech Road the addition of so many in such a short amount of time must have seemed like the offer of bewildering choice. Later still there was another market place up on Barlow Moor Road by the bridge and yet another on the corner of Oswald Road and Nicolas Road.
So to people who had been born when we were still a small rural community this was indeed a veritable market, but one fairly quickly cut down and dwarfed by the retail development along Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Road, which heightened the divide between our old Chorlton and the new brash one which had the banks, railway station and large numbers of new people, few of whom made their money from the land.
Now I have written in the past about the divide between old and new Chorlton and the distinction has all but been forgotten, but not quite.
There are those who still talk of the two and point to the fact that while the area around Martledge stretching out from the Wilbraham and Barlow Moor junction had the banks all we had was the post office and the Penny Savings Bank which met in the old school hall on the green.
But then we did have the Police Station and I suppose I must have been one of the last people to visit it before it became the Lead Station, but as ever that story along with the shops on its eastern side are for another time.
Looking at Peter's painting it is possible to get a sense of the splendid sweep of the old Market Place. Peter’s work is on display around Chorlton and can also be seen at https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
An occasional series of stories and pictures in the run up to the Glad to be in Chorlton Past and Present exhibition during the Big Green Festival on March 31st.
Picture; Picture; the Market Place circa 1910 from the collection of Rita Bishop and the Row today © Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
The other is from weekend stay aways in rural Yorkshire or somewhere down south. The most recent was a delightful stay in Ripley which on the Saturday had taken us in to Ripon and the market place. It was all that you might expect with old and not so old buildings cluttered around a square with the obligatory cross, market stalls, some Morris dancers and a red telephone box.
All of which is a far cry from our own Market Place on Beech Road which consists of the seven shops running west from the old Police Station. Although back in the 1890s you might have also meant the parade on the opposite side. Now there is something odd about calling this small row of shops a Market Place, but given that before the 1880s there were very few shops on Beech Road the addition of so many in such a short amount of time must have seemed like the offer of bewildering choice. Later still there was another market place up on Barlow Moor Road by the bridge and yet another on the corner of Oswald Road and Nicolas Road.
So to people who had been born when we were still a small rural community this was indeed a veritable market, but one fairly quickly cut down and dwarfed by the retail development along Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Road, which heightened the divide between our old Chorlton and the new brash one which had the banks, railway station and large numbers of new people, few of whom made their money from the land.
Now I have written in the past about the divide between old and new Chorlton and the distinction has all but been forgotten, but not quite.
There are those who still talk of the two and point to the fact that while the area around Martledge stretching out from the Wilbraham and Barlow Moor junction had the banks all we had was the post office and the Penny Savings Bank which met in the old school hall on the green.
But then we did have the Police Station and I suppose I must have been one of the last people to visit it before it became the Lead Station, but as ever that story along with the shops on its eastern side are for another time.
Looking at Peter's painting it is possible to get a sense of the splendid sweep of the old Market Place. Peter’s work is on display around Chorlton and can also be seen at https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures
An occasional series of stories and pictures in the run up to the Glad to be in Chorlton Past and Present exhibition during the Big Green Festival on March 31st.
Picture; Picture; the Market Place circa 1910 from the collection of Rita Bishop and the Row today © Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
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