Friday 7 September 2012

The biggest Chorlton exhibition yet


Now here’s a story.

Just suppose you were given permission to mount an exhibition about the history of Chorlton combining old photographs and contemporary paintings of the place.

And that the finished exhibition would be mounted on a site stretching 50 meters by 30, in a prominent postion in the heart of where you lived.

I think that would be pretty good, and that’s just what Peter and  I have gone and done with the help of McCarthy and Stone who are developing the site we have chosen to stage the story.

As many of you know Peter paints the pictures and I tell the stories.  We launched the partnership at the Big Green Festival in March, created a history trail across six venues which featured pictures,  paintings and stories of Chorlton’s past and on the way staged exhibitions in the Library.  So the idea of the history wall was a natural next step.

And now it’s here, on the old Cosgrove Hall site on Albany Road. It stretches the full 80 meters round onto Brantingham Road and will take you from our rural past, through the 19th and 20th centuries into the 21st.

Not only will you be able to follow that history but we have designed it so you can walk it in 80 meters.  On the History Wall you start at Chorlton Green in the 16th century you can travel along Wilbraham Road and Barlow Moor Road during the 19th century taking in the changes featured in the buildings along the route and end close to the modern tram station and the proposed new developments on the old Cosgrove Hall site.

It has already excited a lot of interest from people who saw it going up and all day yesterday there were lots stopping to look and read the story we have told.

And the event has been captured by another blog  http://loiselden.com/2012/09/06/presenting-the-history-of-one-small-town/. and the twitter chatter is out there passing on what there is to see down at Albany Road.

So come and join us at 12 as we open the "story on the wall".

Picture; from the collection of Peter Topping

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