Goodbye to what was once Blockbusters, E Boydell & Company and once a very long time ago our public market

June 2015

Well by the time the sun has warmed the hats of the demolition gang little will be left of the building that was once Blockbusters,  E Boydell & Company in once a very long time ago our public market.

And with it will go a century of stories.*

So it was good that Andy Robertson was on hand to capture its demolition.

He has been building  a unique collection of pictures of changing Chorlton, and here is another of his projects.

The building was once according to Mr Stanley a  “public market place” which closed sometime before 1939 and then reopened as "E.Boydell and Co. Ltd, painting and finishing department, agricultural machinery.”

1959

The OS map for 1934 shows the site with a building which conforms to the present footprint but with no name or explanation of its use.

In the fullness of time I shall wander off to the archives at Central Ref and work my through the street directories to establish when the market place was opened and closed and the dates of its change of use.

It was still operating as E.Boydell and Co. Ltd in 1959 because it was the next in Mr Stanley's collection of pictures of Barlow Moor Road, and though I should remember it back in the 1970s I don’t.

2015

And now a little bit of our landscape is all but gone, and with it that often mistaken notion that this was our cinema, which in fact was next door on the site of KFC.

Pictures;  Blockbuster’s 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and E.Boydell and Co. Ltd, m m17528,  March 1959,  R E Stanley, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Blockbusters,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blockbusters