Attempting and failing to solve the mystery of that building behind Barlow Moor Road

Now here is a mystery

I am looking at Kenton’s the garage business just off Barlow Moor Road.

Like most people it was one of those buildings you clocked because of the big sign which was on the gable end.

It advertised Twyford’s, which was the green grocer’s shop on Barlow Moor Road.

The Twyford family had been trading from this shop since the beginning of the last century and continued until quite recently.

I rather think their sign just out lasted them but has now been painted over although it is just possible to make out the lettering.

But more of them another time, for now it are the building which carried the sign that intrigues me.

Like Andy Robertson who took these pictures I too wandered down the back alley from Silverwood Avenue to take a closer look at the property.

I always thought that they had once been stables but now I am not so sure.

All the OS maps from 1894 through to the 1930s show them as four separate units, and looking at the building today it is possible that they were once residential

There is still evidence of one door and two downstairs windows, and the matching set may have once been where the large double doors now stands.

The other two units which stood to the left of the garage doors seem to have been demolished sometime between 1934 and 1959 when our old friend A H Downes wandered past and photographed the building from Barlow Moor Road.

The lean to which stands beside the block are a later addition and its rear bricks do not key into the existing wall.

That said the there is another structure next to it with a flat roof, and its bricks are in keeping with the bigger property.

So all very house detective and what we may have are two of the original units and two storage areas which stand on the site of the second tow properties.

But if they were residential I can find no trace of who might have lived there.

The four are absent from the 1891 census, and do not appear on the street directories.
Of course by then they may have already ceased being residential and been turned into another use.

Look closely at the first of the upstairs windows and there may be a space for lifting gear.

So all a mystery but one which I am determined to seek an answer to even if it is at the expense of crawling over the 1901 and 1911 census.

Pictures; the two remaining units today from the collection of Andy Robertson, the gable end in 1959 taken by A H Downs, m17487, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the rear of the properties showing the additional buildings, in 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson