Now just sometimes you can be pulled into a story which promises to go off in all sorts of directions.
And so it is with the mystery of the mortuary on Keppel Road which began with a request from Joe the editor of the Chorlton and Whalley Range Community Index who wrote “a builder said that the building my flat is in used to be a morgue!
Would you know how I'd go about finding out more on this or is it anything you know about? I'm just fascinated.”
I have to confess that I didn’t have a clue but it was too intriguing to pass up.
The house dates from before 1893 but as yet I don’t have an exact date although I can track some of it residents including Mr Archibald Bowers-Taylor who was a “Wesleyan Methodist Minister (Retired)”who lived there in the April of 1911 with his wife and four children.
It may have been a temporary mortuary opened during the last world war. There had been up to 30 casualties on the nights of the Manchester Blitz with the roads off Oswald taking a battering, but most of the dead were taken to the mortuary on Corkland Road.
Still it is just possible that someone was taken there and a folk memory has been passed down.
But the other obvious answer may be that it was at one time the house belonged to an undertaker.
My friend Ann’s parents ran their business from their home on Barlow Moor Road and there were others who did the same.
In the early 20th century Pepperdine’s had their business on Barlow Moor Road which is close enough to Keppel, and this could offer up an explanation.
All too often a half remembered conversation about a building or a person slowly become written in stone long after the actual truth has been lost.
And there is one last possibility which like the others trespasses on a mix of folk memory and confusion and rests on that tradition of laying out the dead in the family home.
There are those here in Chorlton who can remember the practise and testify to the visit from “the woman” who quietly and methodically looked to the dead relative before leaving the body to lay at rest in the back room or an upstairs bedroom.
It may even be that here at Joe’s house resided just such a woman which with the passing of the years and a bit of retelling became the mortuary of Keppel Road.
That said I don’t dismissany of the above and will continue to trawl the street directories and old telephone directories.
In the meantime and for no other reason than Ann had it in her collection is a small reminder of Twyford the Undertakers who practised their trade close by.
Pictures; issued by Geo Twyford, 1962 from the collection of Ann Love, and a bit of Keppel Road in 1960, A.E. Landers m18304, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
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| Geo. Twyford & Sons, 1962 |
Would you know how I'd go about finding out more on this or is it anything you know about? I'm just fascinated.”
I have to confess that I didn’t have a clue but it was too intriguing to pass up.
The house dates from before 1893 but as yet I don’t have an exact date although I can track some of it residents including Mr Archibald Bowers-Taylor who was a “Wesleyan Methodist Minister (Retired)”who lived there in the April of 1911 with his wife and four children.
It may have been a temporary mortuary opened during the last world war. There had been up to 30 casualties on the nights of the Manchester Blitz with the roads off Oswald taking a battering, but most of the dead were taken to the mortuary on Corkland Road.
Still it is just possible that someone was taken there and a folk memory has been passed down.
But the other obvious answer may be that it was at one time the house belonged to an undertaker.
My friend Ann’s parents ran their business from their home on Barlow Moor Road and there were others who did the same.
In the early 20th century Pepperdine’s had their business on Barlow Moor Road which is close enough to Keppel, and this could offer up an explanation.
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| Keppel Road, 1962, looking down towards Joe's house |
And there is one last possibility which like the others trespasses on a mix of folk memory and confusion and rests on that tradition of laying out the dead in the family home.
There are those here in Chorlton who can remember the practise and testify to the visit from “the woman” who quietly and methodically looked to the dead relative before leaving the body to lay at rest in the back room or an upstairs bedroom.
It may even be that here at Joe’s house resided just such a woman which with the passing of the years and a bit of retelling became the mortuary of Keppel Road.
That said I don’t dismissany of the above and will continue to trawl the street directories and old telephone directories.
In the meantime and for no other reason than Ann had it in her collection is a small reminder of Twyford the Undertakers who practised their trade close by.
Pictures; issued by Geo Twyford, 1962 from the collection of Ann Love, and a bit of Keppel Road in 1960, A.E. Landers m18304, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
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