Standing on Chorlton Green ....... remembering the Oven Door

Now there is enough detail in the picture to anchor it in a time long before, but well within living memory.

We are of course on the old village which for a big chunk of the 19th century had been the Wilton family garden.

Directly ahead is the Horse and Jockey, but clearly not the one of today and off there to the right is the Oven Door which at one time was a competitor to that other bakery further up Beech Road.

And there will be some who remember when the Oven Door, was two shops of which the first was a pet shop.

Not that anyone will now know that the first of the two which stands next to the Beech was itself a pub called the Traveller’s Rest.

Although strictly speaking the Traveller’s Rest was actually a beer shop which had opened in the mid 1830s and for many years was run by the Nixon family who also ran that pub over the water.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Chorlton Green, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson