The Nose on Beech Road ............... another lost Chorlton bar

Now I don’t think we do recent history very well.

And that I suppose is because we rarely regard it as history.

It sits there as just a vague memory or an occasional question to a friend about what was down at the Four Banks in 1990 or what replaced

Woolworth's when it closed.

Nor do we bother to take pictures and if we do they seldom survive.

So while there are shed loads of images of Chorlton and Whalley Range in the 1900s there are few regularly posted from the 1970s or 80s.
As we all know there has been a bar revolution, which is a very recent thing.

Go back just to twenty five years and most of what are now bars were shops selling traditional things like shoes, wool, electrical goods and paraffin.

Now I am fully aware of the debate around that revolution but for now I just want to reflect on the rise and demise of one of those bars.

It was the Nose on Beech Road.

Today number 60 is the Parlour but as a bar/ restaurant/cafe it has had quite a few different names and before that it did other things.

My memories only stretch to the mid 1970s when it was briefly a piano shop before it began its long association with food and drink.

And without ever wanting to sound like Methuselah I can claim to have eaten in the place when it first opened as Cafe on the Green, and later when it was known variously as Blue Note, the Nose and Marmalade before reopening as the Parlour.

Along the way it extended sideways on to Acres Road and acquired its set of street furniture. Happily the present set of tables and chairs are more comfortable than the early steel ones which seemed to balance precariously on the uneven surface.

In 1911 it belonged to Mr Wheatley the ironmonger who sold paraffin, waxed string and brass nails and later it was a hairdressers.

There are a few pictures of the business when it did all of those things  but few of the later years.

So I was pleased when I found these.  I can’t remember when they were taken but I printed them off and so will date to a time when I was still using both a digital camera and my old

Pictures, The Nose circa 1990s from the collection of Andrew Ssimpson