Saturday, 2 March 2024

That house beside Malton Avenue that everyone remembers

Now this is one of those buildings with a history and almost everyone you talk to will remember it as everything from a doctor’s to a cafe and to an office.

It is on the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Malton Avenue and was built sometime after 1910 when the area was redeveloped.

It had once been part of the estate of the Holt family whose extensive garden ran from the corner of Beech Road along Barlow Moor Road down High Lane almost to Cross Road and then across back to Beech Road.

When the last of the family died in 1908 their large house was demolished, the trees along the eastern side of the garden were cut down and the Corporation used a stretch to build the tram terminus while the rest became houses, shops and the Palais de Luxe cinema.*

Sadly until now I had not come across much more about the place, and then out of the blue Douglas wrote to me asking about the cinema.  He “lived in the detached house right next to the cinema, on the corner of Malton Avenue and Barlow Moor Road, no 477, so the cinema wall formed one side of our garden. I went to the Burnage High School for Boys and also the Wilbraham School of Music in High Lane.”**

And all of a sudden the building was given a new lease of life as a place which was a home.

Now in the fullness of time I hope that Douglas will share more memories of number 477, the cinema and life on Barlow Moor Road in the 1940s

*A forgotten photograph, ............ the Palais de Luxe in 1928
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/forgotten-photograph-palais-de-luxe-in.html 
from the series Chorlton cinemas, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20cinemas

**Douglas Cook, www.whitedownmusic.co.uk
Picture; 477/483 Barlow Moor Road, 1959, A.H.Downes, m17516, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

4 comments:

  1. I remember when it was an Antique shop in the 1950's. I bought my mother a wooden sewing box for her birthday,

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    1. I remember this very well as I lived in Malton Ave all my growing up. The thought the family that had the antique shop may have been called "Cross"? The son was an actor. They were lovely to us as children and we used to look through the shop every now and again.

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  2. Yes,l remember it as an antique shop. Always interesting windows to peer through while waiting for a bus.

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  3. I worked there when it was an office 1970's

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