200 Upper Brook Street reveals its story

This is the story of number 200 Upper Brook Street which I have to confess no longer exists.

It was one of block of houses which ran from Akers Street to Grafton Street and in time I will get an exact date for its construction.

But for now I know that it was built sometime between 1849 and 1894 and looks to be on the plans for demolition in the late 1960’s.

And with a bit more diligent research we should be able to find out who its last residents were and that is important because back in 1968 someone took a whole series of pictures of the place both inside and out and those photographs may will gives us a clue to the occupiers taste in wall paper and furniture.

So I am very pleased that Neil Simpson has shared the images which he became across while engaged in a new project working in the Central Library.

The negatives in the collection are dated from 1956 to 2007 and there are approximately 200,000 negatives to be digitised at three minutes a scan.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online  on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website.

It is rare to see inside the homes of ordinary people and while these rooms are quite clearly almost empty there is enough to get an idea of the style of wallpaper, and the remains of some of the original features.

So over the next few weeks we will revisit number 200 Upper Brook Street and its secret.

In 1911 the property is listed to a Mrs Hannah Moseley and was described as apartments. Mrs Moseley was 70 years old and shared the house with her daughter Janet.

She was a widow, had been married for twenty years and out lived four of her six children.

Back in the April of 1911 she occupied five of the eight rooms, two more were rented out to a clerk with a Mr Habib from Constantinople taking the last room.

And that brings me back to the pictures.  

There will be many who remember the old gas stove, the enamelled cream and green storage jars along with the old cupboards and the doors with their ventilation twirls.

Leaving me just to add that Tony Petrie has unearthed that, "200 Upper Brook Street isn't listed in either the 1962 or 1954 versions of Kelly's. 

There is a listing for 1929.

Which may just suggest that I have got the house number wrong.

Picture; 200 Upper Brook Street, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass