When they demolished Withington Library

The demolition of the old library, 1925

I am on Wilmslow Road almost at the junction with Welllington Road and I am looking on as workmen demolish Withington Library.

Of course the date is important.  It is a spring day in the May of 1925 and the City Engineers caught the moment when the old temporary library was being demolished for the one we know today.

It is one of those tiny little stories which I like to write about and it started with another picture from the decade before, showing Wilmslow Road on a summer’s morning.

What caught my eye from this earlier picture was the absence of the Carnegie Library.

Now this did not surprise me because it had been built in 1927 in fulfilment of a promise made when Withington along with Chorlton, Burnage and Didsbury voted to join the city in 1904.

But the promise was a long time coming.  Chorlton got its library in 1914, Didsbury in 1915 and Withington in 1927, leaving Burnage having to wait till 1931 when it got “a travelling library station” in a converted bus.

Now Chorlton had got its own temporary library in a rented house on Oswald Road in 1908 but what I didn’t know was that Withington had been given a similar temporary solution in the October of 1911.

The wall and railings of number 50 Wilmslow Road in happier times

And it was there in my earlier picture showing up as just the wall and railings of the private residence which was to become the library.

There were three of them and they were pretty grand places consisting of anything between 11 and 13 rooms a piece and gardens stretching back to Wellington Road.

They were the homes of professional people, including a dentist and a photographer.

But in October 1911the end house became a temorary library with 1861 books and a newsroom and also contained the post office which in the words of made it "small and indaquate" as a libray.

The post office moved out in the March of 1924 to just opposite and moved again in the November of 1927.

Number 50 Wilmlsow Road May 1925

All of which is quite intriguing and takes me off in new directions not least of which is why the Stephen family who lived here in the April of 1911 should have all moved on by December leaving the property to become a post office.

And for that I shall have to wander into town and look over the old street directories for the years from 1911 till 24.



Pictures; of Wilmslow Road circa 1911 courtesy of Mark Fynn, http://www.markfynn.com/manchester-postcards.htm and the demolition of Withington Library, City Engineers Department, May 9 1925, m41842, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council