Now I always planned to revisit that corner shop on Kingshill Road partly because it has history and also because it is back doing what all corner shops should do which is to be interesting and offer something to the community.
It began as a newsagents run by Annie Frazier and continued to sell cigarettes sweets and newspapers after she died in 1911.
I say that but I have still to double check using the directories, but her daughter Ada was there at nu 1 Kingshill until she died in the April of 1923.
At which point I have fallen back on the some of the documents held by the current owners who told me that “a chap called Bushell died and his estate was sold to a Mrs Farrington, possibly as part of a wider business.
Whitaker then got the place in 1927.
In the late 60s the shop and house was then owned by the Flanagans, closing in '83.”
Now the Whitaker’s are remembered fondly by many in Chorlton. Bob Jones emailed me to say that
“I lived at no 12 opposite the shop born and bred so nice to see the shop open again after many years boarded up
I was an order boy at the Beech Road shop of Charles Whitaker and Jeff his son, happy days.”
And for those who don’t know the Beech Road shop which was the Whitaker’s first business out let was on the corner by the green.
An advert from 1928 proudly announces that T C Whitaker’s had been established in 1896 but a family with the same name were trading along Beech Road as grocers as early as 1851.
Now I haven’t yet found a picture of the Kingshill shop from when it was owned by the Whitaker’s but there is a 2008 google street image of the shop with the faded lettering with their name still visible.
The current owner like me thinks it is a shame that copyright might prevent me from using the picture and recalled that
“I used to live in the house back then and it was freezing, just an empty flooded space, with no floor, you fell straight into the cellar. Then some kids smashed the shop windows, which is why it got boarded up.”
But all is now well and there is no doubting that transformation from a grim and empty retail property to its current use as The Vintage Beauty Parlour
Pictures; Kingshill Road, in 2016 and 2012, courtesy of The Vintage Beauty Parlour
*The Vintage Beauty Parlour, http://www.bethanyjanedavies.com/the-vintage-beauty-parlour
I say that but I have still to double check using the directories, but her daughter Ada was there at nu 1 Kingshill until she died in the April of 1923.
At which point I have fallen back on the some of the documents held by the current owners who told me that “a chap called Bushell died and his estate was sold to a Mrs Farrington, possibly as part of a wider business.
Whitaker then got the place in 1927.
In the late 60s the shop and house was then owned by the Flanagans, closing in '83.”
Now the Whitaker’s are remembered fondly by many in Chorlton. Bob Jones emailed me to say that
“I lived at no 12 opposite the shop born and bred so nice to see the shop open again after many years boarded up
I was an order boy at the Beech Road shop of Charles Whitaker and Jeff his son, happy days.”
And for those who don’t know the Beech Road shop which was the Whitaker’s first business out let was on the corner by the green.
Now I haven’t yet found a picture of the Kingshill shop from when it was owned by the Whitaker’s but there is a 2008 google street image of the shop with the faded lettering with their name still visible.
The current owner like me thinks it is a shame that copyright might prevent me from using the picture and recalled that
“I used to live in the house back then and it was freezing, just an empty flooded space, with no floor, you fell straight into the cellar. Then some kids smashed the shop windows, which is why it got boarded up.”
But all is now well and there is no doubting that transformation from a grim and empty retail property to its current use as The Vintage Beauty Parlour
Pictures; Kingshill Road, in 2016 and 2012, courtesy of The Vintage Beauty Parlour
*The Vintage Beauty Parlour, http://www.bethanyjanedavies.com/the-vintage-beauty-parlour
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