A little mystery down at the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads

There has been a petrol station on the corner of Wilbraham Road and Buckingham Road for a long time and now it’s gone, but in the fullness of time there will be one there again.*

The demolition of the old one will be followed by the erection of a new one with the addition of a little bit more.

The planning application was made in December of last year and granted in the March of this year and as ever Andy Robertson has been there to record the story of the site.**

And in the fullness of time I know Andy will be back to photograph what happens next.

But for me I am more intrigued by that old building which in turn replaced what had been our own variety hall and for a while Chorlton’s first cinema.

It is a place I have regularly written about and will do so again especially now that I know something about one of Variety acts who were performing there.***

These were the Whips who were performing there in June 1910 at about the time that the place was doubling as a cinema.

All of which takes me back to this picture of the demolition.  I had never really studied the side of the petrol station and I doubt few others have done so either, partly because it was not easy to see and also just because it was so familiar.

I had always just assumed that when the old theatre had been cleared away and the petrol station built the brick structure had formed part of that development.

But part at least of the old theatre became the sales room for the petrol station which was there by the 1962.

And that rather ugly replacement which has now just been demolished used that earlier building as a base.

So I wonder what the inside of the lower story contained.  The blocked up windows suggest there were rooms which may have been the changing rooms for the old theatre or possibly a restaurant and storage area.

And it does mean revising the earlier ideas that the theatre was just a temporary wooden building because behind the smaller structure was a much bigger one which I have totally ignored.

The theatre shows up on both the 1907 and 1934 OS maps and on the street directories up to 1911, and with a bit of digging we should be able to push that to the mid 1930s, when it closed.

Now that is how I like my history, a story which sets you off on fresh roads of discovery, all of which I will attempt to explore and in the meantime continue to feature Andy’s pictures of the developments down on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.

I can not think that there will be any one around who remembers the site as a cinema although my friend Ann has told me that her dad went there.

I suspect also that I would be hard pressed to get many memories of the petrol station as it appeared in 1962 but I travel in hope.

So I shall close with another from Andy when its successor had also been swept away.

Pictures, the changing site in 2014 from the collection of Andy Robertson, The Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens, later the Pavilion 1910 from the Lloyd collection and the petrol station in 1962 by A Landers, m18047, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pas

*The old cinema by the metro stop and a closed petrol station, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-old-cinema-by-metro-stop-and-closed.html

**04424/FO/2013/S1 | Demolition of existing petrol filling station (PFS) and redevelopment to provide a new petrol filling station facility comprising of canopy/forecourt, ancillary sales building with ATM, underground storage tanks, associated parking and other ancillary works.  http://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=externalDocuments&keyVal=MXKZLUBC6K000

***When Tom Mix played at the Pavilion, our first picture house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/when-tom-mix-played-at-pavilion-our.html