On a sunny afternoon on Barlow Moor Road sometime in the 1930s

It’s not the best quality picture in the collection but I still like this postcard of Barlow Moor Road sometime in the 1930s.

The parade of shops with their cast iron and glass veranda were not much more than fifteen years old when the photograph was taken.

It is a summer afternoon and I wish I could be certain of when in the1930s the scene was caught on camera.

But many of the usual clues are absent.  So the registration plate on the car and the lorry can’t be read, and I have yet to track down enough information about the postcard company to be able to use the catalogue number as a guide.  None of the shop names are visible and the newspaper poster is just a white blob.

So clutching at straws I wonder if the ALL CARS STOP HERE sign hanging in the air might yield something but that depends on when Manchester Corporation Tramways went in for such signs and more importantly if anyone has that level of knowledge.

So it’s just a slightly poor quality postcard of Barlow Moor Road on a sunny afternoon in the summer of a year sometime in the 1930s.  But that is to miss some of the detail which reveal a little of how this bit of the road has changed.

Look closely and the tops of the buildings have a stone feature above the apex of the roof which has all gone.

They were almost all still there in 1959 but are now lost forever, as is the building in the corner behind the lorry.

By 1959 this had become a car show room and by degree sold tiles, cycles and most recently was a restaurant.

This may well have been the original building dating back into the 19th century which served as the grocery shop of the Brundrett family.  This junction was officially known as Lane End but for half a century was often popularly referred to as Brundrett’s Corner.

For all I know it may still have been called Brundrett’s Corner in the 1930s just as the junction of the four banks continued to be called Kemp’s Corner well into the late 50’s long after Harry Kemp and his chemist had gone.

So there is a bit more in the old picture and for good measure you can just make out the twin spires of the Macfads church in the distance.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection