Summer days in south Manchester No 6 late morning on Chorlton Green in 1912

Chorlton Green was always a favourite of the travelling commercial photographer, and this one turns up again and again.

What makes it more fascinating is the detail.

Just behind the woman and pram is an advert for the Pavilion which was on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads.

It was our first cinema and opened in 1904, and despite stiff completion from the two purposes built picture houses on Barlow Moor Road and Manchester Road limped into the 1920s before closing down.

But I am also drawn to Mrs Gertrude Green sweet shop at number 5 Chorlton Green and the delivery cart for Camwal which may have been unloading mineral water and soft drinks to her shop.

The firm had begun in 1878 as the Chemists' Aerated and Mineral Waters Association Limited and by 1895 had factories in London, Bristol, Harrogate and Mitcham.

It can’t be sure but it is likely that around 1901 they changed their name to Camwal or were taken over. Those wooden heavy crates would still be used well into the middle of the century for transporting various soft drinks and beers.

Now number 5 looks small and in 1911 it consisted of just three rooms. Fine for Mrs Green who was a widow and lived alone but two decades earlier it had been the home of the plumber James Moloy his wife and four children.

Today the house is bigger but looking again at our picture back then some of number 7 appears to run behind it but just how the internal geography of the two works has yet to be revealed.
Having said that our picture has not yet given up all there is to learn.

Until late in the 19th century the pub was just the space either side of the entrance at number 9 and as late as the 1891 census there were families in numbers 11, and 13. And you might think that when the picture was taken this was still the case.

The fence extends along the rest of the row and separates these properties from the pub. But by 1901 all three were described as the Horse and Jockey which may have happened soon after the death of Miss Wilton who had lived at number 13 and died in 1896.

I would still like to know who owned the horse and cart in front of the Camel delivery vehicle, and whether the woman pushing the pram was the child’s mother or one of the many servants who were employed here in the years before the Great War.

Location; Chorlton Green, 

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, undated