One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 33, where have all the shops gone?

The Launderette, 2013

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*


I wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would make of Beech Road on this August day just ahead of a Bank Holiday?

I never met them but I have talked to lots of people who knew them and I suspect they would have embraced the changes which in just over a decade and a half has seen the road go from a mix of shops selling everything from paraffin oil and wax to wet fish, newspapers and wool to bars, restaurants and gift places.

They moved in to their house sometime in 1920.  The Rec across the road had only been a park for just over two decades and the line of shops down from Wilton Road to the fish and chip shop had yet to be built.

And it is of that first shop on the corner of Wilton and Beech that I wish to write about.

John Williams & Sons, 1930

It began life as a grocery and provision shop owned by John Williams & Sons on the site that had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.

Now I have no idea whether once it opened it was frequented by Mary Ann, but if did not she had a bewildering choice of grocers, butchers, green grocers as well bakers, and wet fish shops along Beech Road, and on to the green in one direction and off up Barlow Moor Road into New Chorlton.
She may even have had stuff delivered.

Not all of these shops would have been large or carried a great variety of food stuffs, but there were plenty of them for her to shop around.

The corner of Wilton & Beech, 1930

And if she tired of washing the clothes in the washroom in the front cellar then there were a number of laundries who would do it for her including the Queen and Pasley Laundry in what is now Crossland Road.

Later still she might just have felt up to it in later life to use the Maypole Launderette on Wilton and Beech Road.  This was what had become of our grocer’s shop of John Williams and Son, and in time was change its name to the Soap Opera, although I have some recollection of at least one other name in between.

But the launderette or washateria as my friend John from Leeds always called it was no more able to buck the consumer revolution than the laundry before it.  So apart from service washes, and duvet day the Soap Opera became an ever lonelier place.

And putting it into a context since the mid 1980s the number has fallen by two thirds while the onward march of the bar/cafe and small restaurant seems unstoppable.

As I write there is news that another will open up by the bookshop and a tea room has been mooted for Beech Road.

The Soap Opera, 2012

And I suspect here in Chorlton that is just how it will be.


Most have weathered the depression, and there seems little demand for alternatives, despite the call for something different by the critics.

For just as the cheap washing machine saw off both the laundry and launderette the big supermarkets have pretty much done for the small independent traditional food outlet.

I lament their passing especially as I did almost all my shopping in the Italian Deli and Muriel’s but the economics no longer worked.

The corner of Wilton and Beech, 2013

And even Barry who operated a very small fruit and veg stall on the corner of Beech and Chequers eventually conceded defeat.  The idea that people might only want to buy a carrot and two apples was a sound one but the trade was just not there.

So now in place of the Soap Opera there is the Laundrette not I hasten to add another place for service washes and duvet days but a bar and restaurant, which on the recommendation of a neighbour we tried out.

The cocktails were fun the pizza passed muster and the place was buzzing.

I rather enjoyed it, and while we now have to travel to the Quadrant to do the duvets, atleast we aren’t facing another empty shop on Beech Road.

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection and the collection of Andrew Simpson.

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house