West Point again

Yesterday I was at West Point and I have decided to stay there today.

It is that bit which I often thought was Whalley Range but was just inside the township at its northern edge.

It was also known as the Flash, and back in 1840 there wasn’t much there.  Just a little to the west and out of the township was Firs Farm and a little further along Upper Chorlton Road was Whalley Cottage and Whalley House.

But our parade of shops is a late addition. In the 1840s the site was just open fields and while there had been a steady encroachment down Upper Lloyd Street towards Chorlton our block was built sometime between 1909 and 1911.

And in 1911 there was along this parade almost all you could want, ranging from a grocer, milliner, fruit shop and confectioner, to the Post Office which was also a stationary, a draper next to the tailors and a butcher, boot dealer, hair dresser, fishmonger, baker, chemist and dairy shop.

Of course by the time the picture was taken sometime in the mid 20th century, some of the premises had changed usage, but remarkably the post office remained in the hands of the Lloyd family well into the last century.

What I particularly like is the way each shop keeper proudly displayed their name on the sun shade.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection