Changing Chorlton, on Oswald Road in January 2014

We are on Oswald Road watching as the new build goes up beside the old school.

The picture was taken by Andy Robertson in a series which could well be titled Changing Chorlton.

It reminds me of the need to snap away and capture some of the township before it has changed unrecognisably.

But I have to throw my hands up and admit I didn’t do my bit.

Buildings which have stood in Chorlton for a century and more and which I have written about were demolished by the developers or written off by the city planners and sadly their passing was not recorded by me.

So Andy’s pictures are important not only because of their value for the future but also because they allow us to compare the past with now.

The new build is a direct result of the squeeze on school places and that has an echo in the past.

Even before we voted to join the city in 1904 there were calls for to expand the existing schools.
The old school on the green had been rebuilt in 1879 and less than two decades later plans were submitted for an extension.

The plans came to nought when the new school on St Clements Road was built in 1901 and this in turn was followed by the annexation of what had been Tom Mosytn’s School of Art on High Lane and then by further new buildings into the 1920s.

That said I do wonder at the longevity of that new build.  All glass and steel it may be but I somehow doubt it will last as long as its brick counterpart well over a century old, and still a fine example of a Board School

All of which brings me back to that simple observation that you can never have enough pictures of Chorlton.

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson