Chorlton pretentious? A late night conversation by a passerby

“Chorlton is s a pretty pretentious place.”

It was almost the last thing I heard last night from a passerby outside and given that I was fast falling asleep and it was nearly midnight I let it go.

But this morning I began thinking about the comment, no doubt thrown out as an ill thought out comment fuelled by six pints of lager, and a desperate attempt to impress whoever he was with.

Now historically it is pure tosh.  We were a small rural community where the majority of families were agricultural labourers, and even with the expansion of the township in the late 19th century there were plenty of low income families reliant on manual trades as witnessed by the large numbers of small two up and two down properties around Beech Road.

Nor had this changed by the mid 1970s when I washed up here on Beech Road.  My neighbours were bus drivers, mechanics and labourers.   Most of the shops along Beech Road were still the traditional ones which would not have been out of place forty years earlier.  Butchers, bakers, fishmongers and grocers as well as a green grocer and old fashioned hard ware shop.

Politically despite a very active Labour Party, Conservative Councillors were re-elected for Chorlton until 1986.

I suppose my late night passerby could have been referring to the Arts Festival, Book Festival or Beer Festival which all have been a feature of the place for many years.  But then we had the artist Tom Mostyn with his studio on High Lane during the early part of the 20th century and in 1910 were supporting a range of cultural and sporting societies.

And we had our own brass band started in the early 1820s and drawn almost exclusively from agricultural labourer’s market gardeners and farmers.  It ranks as one of the earliest predating Stretford and only just beaten by Stalybridge which had marched to Peterloo in 1819.

It played at many of the agricultural and garden shows which were a feature of the place into the 1920s, marched at the head of the Rose Queen Festival and paraded at the Whit Walks.

Of course we have our fair share of picture galleries, cafes, wine bars and restaurants, but then through most of the 19th century we had beer shops which sat beside the hotel and public houses and during the rest of the following century there were tea rooms and  business’s dealing in fine art and photography.

Nor should we forget that we were there at the start of cinema with our own picture house opened in 1904, and for most of the last century had three cinemas.

All of which bring a lot of pleasure and fun to the place, and of course I could mention the history wall on the Albany Road and Brantingham Road site of the developer McCarthy and Stone which Peter and I have put together to tell the story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy but modesty forbids me to say more.

It is true that house prices have gone through the ceiling to the point where my sons can’t afford to buy here and I have to say I doubt I could either.  But that is how it is across much of south Manchester. Nor is that particularly new.

The expansion of the township along the Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Road corridors in the late 19th century brought both the middling and professional and business people, many of whom regarded Chorlton as a pleasant almost twee area, close to the city centre but on the edge of the countryside.

The train took you into Manchester in under ten minutes and well into the first decades of the last century there were farms, blacksmith and open land just a short walk away from the station.

So to conclude, yes there is something special about the place I have lived in for 36 years, there is a lot going on, and its fun, but I rather think it is not pretentious.

Pictures; from the collection of Carolyn Willitts and the Lloyd collection