South Drive in 1913 and another of those postcards from Tuck & Sons

Now South Drive was still very new when Tuck and Sons featured it as one of their six postcards of Chorlton in the summer of 1913.

And like all six in the series it will be familiar to most of us, so instead I want to explore the reverse and in particular the reference to R. SOWERBUTTS, NEWSAGENTS STATIONARY & CIRCULATING LIBRARY CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY.

Robert Sowerbutts ran his business from 105 Manchester Road which is that parade of shops running back from Kensington Road to Ransfield Road.

The shop is there still there but will have gone through many hands and changes of business use.

But I am intrigued by Mr Sowerbutts, and I rather think he must have been an enterprising chap, given that as well as acting as a distributor for Tuck and Sons and running his newsagents and stationary business he had also advertised that he had a Telephone Call Office.

Nor was this all because like other newsagents and stationers he offered a private library, which of course has featured in the blog. **

There were plenty of them in the township from Mr Lloyd’s on Upper Chorlton Road, across to Manchester Road, Barlow Moor Road and Sandy lane and Beech Road.

And some of these also sold postcards for both the big companies or like Burt’s on Wilbraham Road marketed their own.

Pictures; South Drive, from the series Chorlton-cum-Hardy, issued by Tuck & Sons, November 1913 courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

*Chorltonville, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorltonville

**Chorlton’s private lending libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20private%20lending%20libraries