523 Barlow Moor Road back in 1961

The Stables, 1961

The recent past is a time I take for granted. 

I guess for some of us this is because it really doesn’t seem history.

I was born in 1949, grew up in the 1950s and 60s, came to Manchester in 1969 and began full time work in 1973.

Those decades and the next two are still vivid and familiar periods and I don’t count them as the past, and yet they are and we did do things differently then and this is the starting point for some new stories.

Back in 1961 my friend Ann lived on Barlow Moor Road in one of those large houses facing Chestnut Avenue.  This was number 523 and it was also where her father ran the family undertaker’s business.

The rear of 523 Barlow Moor Road, 1964

At the time Ann was still at school and regularly recorded the house and surrounding streets in a series of pictures for her art classes.

“The ground floor plan was quite unusual, in that there was a very large room on the right at ground level. 

The rest of the house was raised up about 6 feet, so there were steps at the front, back, and inside, above the basement, which stretched under the whole house.

In the garden there were the old stables at the end of the garden which my Dad used as a workshop to make the coffins, and also doubled as a garage.  

Previously it had been numbered 66, and before that 52.”

Looking out on Chestnut Aveneu, 1961

Like so many of our bigger house which has survived being demolished this one has been converted into flats with an extension added at the rear.

I am hard pressed now to remember it as it was which is why I am so pleased that we still have Ann’s painting and line drawings of the property.

They are almost the only record of this bit of Barlow Moor Road from the period and remind me of how things can change without us even noticing.

Over the next few weeks I shall be featuring more of Ann's pictures and it occurs to me that there may be plenty more photographs, paintings and drawings of Chorlton which it would be nice to include.

Pictures; 533 Barlow Moor Road, 1961, © Ann Love