We are on Chorlton Green and the year is about 1909. I know it can be no later than the April of 1911 because by then the shop had been taken over by a Mark Glazenbrook who was also a butcher.
This is the first in a short series exploring the story of retailing in the township and the first obvious thing to notice is the absence of modern ideas of hygiene.
No food outlet today would be permitted to hang fresh meat outside the shop on open display.
James Unsworth is a shadowy figure and so far I have been able to turn up nothing more than an entry in Slater’s 1909 directory and that he posed outside his shop for this photograph which may have been taken by a friend.
It isn’t a commercial postcard and there is no name on the back or for that matter a date, but that is how the research often goes.
As for Mark Glazenbrook by 1924 he had moved on to a shop just off the Ashton Old Road. And that rather highlights one aspect of retailing which was that some shops have a very short life and in some cases a premise changed its business use a number of times in the course of a few decades.
All of which has set me off on a new mission who is to peel back the history of this and the neighbouring two houses in the block.
I think they may date from 1903, and all were in commercial use soon afterwards with the end property selling groceries and the middle shop making cycles. They may date back earlier but looking at the census returns I don’t think much before 1890. Either way all three are now residential.
Picture; from the Lloyd collection
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