Ghost signs and a story

It is just a name on the side of a gable end but the advert for Cooper family butcher has begun to intrigue me and of course there is a story.

It is what we call a ghost sign which are hand painted signs that have been preserved long after the shop keeper, product or business have vanished.

In most cases it is just pure luck that they haven’t been painted over or covered with a modern advertising hoarding.

There are a few around Chorlton but not many, and this one at 432 Barlow Moor Road is the best preserved.

Today it is an estate agent but not so long ago it was a fruit and veg shop where I occasionally bought things.  But at some time around 1891 the Cooper family moved into the premises and started a butcher’s shop.

Alfred Cooper had been born in Derbyshire in 1846 and by 1871 he was selling meat in Manchester.  His progress says something about the family fortunes, because in the next 20 years they moved from London Road in the heart of the city, out to Upper Brook Street and by 1891 they had settled here in Chorlton just as the area grew.

The shop On London Road was hard by the bend in the river and close to the Hanover Cotton Mill and the Ardwick Bridge Chemical Works.

And prosper they seem to have done.  In 1911 they are listed as having a telephone and the business is there twenty eight years later in 1939 run by his son Alfred.  The challenge is now to uncover how long they remained there.

Looking at the building to day it was a large house and in 1911 had eight rooms beside the retail area. Something of what it looked like is just possible from this picture of Barlow Moor Road.

When it was taken the Cooper's were well established. It is the building on the left.

And in 1911 there were seven of them there, but not young Alfred who must have taken over the business sometime in the next decade. But that is for another time.

Pictures; the Copper sign today from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Barlow Moor Road circa early 20th century from the Lloyd collection