Just 46 years and about a mile separate our first two pictures but in almost every other respect they are world apart.
What is more remarkable is that it was not raining.
Now I say that not to feed the popular myth about Manchester and rain but because 1958 had been a wet year with “heavy and persistent rain with many severe thunderstorms through the summer months, with April, May, June, August and September with rainfall three times the normal.”*
But July was dry, and the crowds were out. And so were the Italian ice cream men. Most of our ice cream was made by twenty or so Italian families who had begun to settle in Ancoats during the 1860s. The core of the settlement was around Jersey Street and the area not unsurprisingly became known as Little Italy. And those of you who want to pursue the story can either read Antony Rea’s book or visit his web site.**
And on that Saturday afternoon there were plenty of takers.
Not that there weren’t plenty of other attractions, this was after all Market Street and it was as full of crowds then as it is today but with that added dimension that traffic still flowed along it.
Look at it closely and it is the clothes that draw you in. Our two girls on the right are wearing light fashionable skirts and blouses while an older generation have turned out complete with overcoats.
And here I think is one of those fault lines which separate us from them. The 1950s were a period of growing prosperity. It might all still have been relative, with the gulf between the rich and poor still a chasm, but there was more of it about. And of course it was the young in full time employment with few serious responsibilities who could spend their money on clothes specifically designed for them. But there are still those in the picture wearing suits not unlike their father’s. And of course it would be totally unthinkable that that father and son would go out in jeans and casual shirts which were almost undistinguishable. That would have to wait for the baby boomers born in the late 40s and early 50s to reach middle age and who could see nothing wrong in Denham and hoodies.
Nor can we ignore the Kardomah. Eating here or in that range of smaller cafes was nothing like our own cafe society.
And that brings me to my second photograph, taken on Deansgate in the summer of 2009. The contrast could not be greater. It is early in the afternoon and while there are plenty about on the street there are plenty sitting on the street doing what might be done on the pavements of Paris, Rome, or Milan, which is just sipping coffee, casually talking to friends or just watching the crowds pass by.
Of course people in 1958 did drink coffee, and might have sat on a rickety chair pulled out of some storage cupboard and placed on the pavement as a nod to a sunny day, but I don’t think this matches our Deansgate experience. Coffee might not have been the instant variety but it still came with lots of milk, and if you were very unlucky was that odd concoction known as Camp Coffee. Nor sitting on your rickety chair could you expect to have been served wine, for that it was the pub and like as not a smoke filled room which would not have looked out of place in some movie from the Second World War.
Unfair? Well perhaps a tad, but I remember the milky brown stuff, the maghony coloured walls of some city pubs and above all the UCP snack bar on Market Street. Looking at pictures of it in the city archive I am not sure this was the one I ventured into in 1969, but a UCP restaurant on Market Street I did once eat in.
Not that I ate the tripe which in the case of beef tripe is made from the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. I could go into more detail but am not going to. Suffice to say then that UCP stood for United Cattle Products and was a chain of shops and restaurants in the north of England which specialized in tripe dishes. As the UCP supporters site records,
“In Lancashire and other parts of the North of England in the 1950s there were 146 UCP shops and restaurants, specializing in tripe dishes and with long queues for seats. ..... UCP also provided ox tail, cow heal and other bovine extremities.”***
Now before someone writes in, tripe is also eaten across mainland Europe and no doubt where ever there are bits of a cow to dispose of.
All of which is a long way from where we started. But then perhaps not, I doubt that tripe is on the menu at the Starbucks on Deansgate or for that matter any of the cafes, bars and new beer houses which stretch out from Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road and out on either arm of Wilbraham Road. Of course I might be wrong, but on this one I would prefer to remain in ignorance.
Picture; Market Street on a Saturday afternoon in July 1958, A.P. Morris Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m62093, and street living, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
But July was dry, and the crowds were out. And so were the Italian ice cream men. Most of our ice cream was made by twenty or so Italian families who had begun to settle in Ancoats during the 1860s. The core of the settlement was around Jersey Street and the area not unsurprisingly became known as Little Italy. And those of you who want to pursue the story can either read Antony Rea’s book or visit his web site.**
And on that Saturday afternoon there were plenty of takers.
Not that there weren’t plenty of other attractions, this was after all Market Street and it was as full of crowds then as it is today but with that added dimension that traffic still flowed along it.
Look at it closely and it is the clothes that draw you in. Our two girls on the right are wearing light fashionable skirts and blouses while an older generation have turned out complete with overcoats.
And here I think is one of those fault lines which separate us from them. The 1950s were a period of growing prosperity. It might all still have been relative, with the gulf between the rich and poor still a chasm, but there was more of it about. And of course it was the young in full time employment with few serious responsibilities who could spend their money on clothes specifically designed for them. But there are still those in the picture wearing suits not unlike their father’s. And of course it would be totally unthinkable that that father and son would go out in jeans and casual shirts which were almost undistinguishable. That would have to wait for the baby boomers born in the late 40s and early 50s to reach middle age and who could see nothing wrong in Denham and hoodies.
Nor can we ignore the Kardomah. Eating here or in that range of smaller cafes was nothing like our own cafe society.
Of course people in 1958 did drink coffee, and might have sat on a rickety chair pulled out of some storage cupboard and placed on the pavement as a nod to a sunny day, but I don’t think this matches our Deansgate experience. Coffee might not have been the instant variety but it still came with lots of milk, and if you were very unlucky was that odd concoction known as Camp Coffee. Nor sitting on your rickety chair could you expect to have been served wine, for that it was the pub and like as not a smoke filled room which would not have looked out of place in some movie from the Second World War.
Unfair? Well perhaps a tad, but I remember the milky brown stuff, the maghony coloured walls of some city pubs and above all the UCP snack bar on Market Street. Looking at pictures of it in the city archive I am not sure this was the one I ventured into in 1969, but a UCP restaurant on Market Street I did once eat in.
Not that I ate the tripe which in the case of beef tripe is made from the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach. I could go into more detail but am not going to. Suffice to say then that UCP stood for United Cattle Products and was a chain of shops and restaurants in the north of England which specialized in tripe dishes. As the UCP supporters site records,
“In Lancashire and other parts of the North of England in the 1950s there were 146 UCP shops and restaurants, specializing in tripe dishes and with long queues for seats. ..... UCP also provided ox tail, cow heal and other bovine extremities.”***
Now before someone writes in, tripe is also eaten across mainland Europe and no doubt where ever there are bits of a cow to dispose of.
All of which is a long way from where we started. But then perhaps not, I doubt that tripe is on the menu at the Starbucks on Deansgate or for that matter any of the cafes, bars and new beer houses which stretch out from Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road and out on either arm of Wilbraham Road. Of course I might be wrong, but on this one I would prefer to remain in ignorance.
*Sutton, J. M., Agricultural Records 1969
**Rea, Anthony, Manchester’s Little Italy, 1988, and Manchester’s Ancoats Little Italy, http://www.ancoatslittleitaly.com/index.html
***UCP Tripe, http://www.unitedcattleproducts.co.uk/index.php
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