What a difference 40 years can make, Wilmlsow Road in 1930

I can’t be exactly sure of the date but sometime in the late September of 1969 I stood on almost the same spot and looked down Wilmslow Road towards the library.

And in many ways what I saw was pretty much what the photographer captured in 1930.  

Once you eliminate the tram lines and their overhead cables it is only the odd looking cars which really date the scene.

I don’t remember what the shop was on the right but the White Lion on the left and the Scala Cinema were places I visited regularly during the three years I lived in Withington.

Thinking back the pub, the picture house and the library were pretty much where I spent my time during my student days along with the odd Sunday visit to the launderette when my flat mate was “entertaining.”

Both the White Lion and the Scala attempted to move with the times.  In the case of the pub this constituted turning the cellar into a dive bar and decorating the walls with posters from the brewery, which in a forlorn attempt to market Watney’s Red Barrel had hit on the idea of using lookalikes for dead leaders of the Soviet Union posing with pints of beer.

I suspect it was all very tacky but suited me down to the ground.   Likewise the cinema experience at the Scala was hardly ever likely to be on a par with the Gaumont or Odeon in town.  But there was something in the fact that the seats were cheap and the pub next door.

I only wish I had paid more attention to the surroundings.  This was after all one of our oldest surviving cinemas having been opened in 1912.

As it was the Scala screened films that were not far from their original release date, so in the November of 1970* the programme offered Secret of Santa Vittoria  with Anthony Quin. Ulysses starring Milo O‘Shea, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice.

And the programme is itself a wonderful piece of history.  Many of the advertisers were local businesses, like Sandra Williams, Hair stylist, Rhona’s “Ladies Separates, Baby and Children Wear, Stockist of Aristic, Kayber, Ballitto, Stockleigh Hosiery and Tights, Goslin Electric “For all Your Electrical Radio and TV  Requirements” along with the usual collection garages, schools of motoring and food shops.

It is a world long gone squeezed out by the large supermarkets and online shopping.

And once again I have to conclude it’s a world that would have been equally familiar to my parents and one that comes no wherenear  the experiences of my children.

So if I stand on the self same spot today the White Lion is a supermarket, there and a new building has taken the place of the Scala.

But by some odd stroke, the railings outside the pub survived.

Pictures; Wilmlow Road, 1930, m41845, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and the Scala in 2004 before demolition, Graham Squires, his image, which was originally posted to Flickr.com, was uploaded to Wkipedia Commons

*Scala Cinema Programme, November 1970, Scala Cinema, http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alscot1/CinemaProg.htm