I wonder the what the future of the old Co-op store on Barlow Moor Road will be.
At present the store is closed, and there are no planning applications in for a future use.
I won’t put any money on the building reopening as a cinema, which it was for 43 years, nor do I think a bar or even a supermarket seems likely.
But nature and developers abhor a vacuum, so I doubt we will have to wait too long.
And this seems an appropriate moment to look back at its story, since the builders first moved in to build that picture house in 1914.
The story of its time as a cinema is pretty well documented on the blog.
Having opened in the May of 1914, it changed its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed in 1957.
For a while it was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.
This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.*
Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.
Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.**
I liked Hannburys.
It was a no-nonsense place, which dispensed with elegance, and panache for branded goods sold a little cheaper than elsewhere.
And at Christmas its loyalty card was just that ……. a tiny piece of card which was stamped every time you shopped there during the months of December.
But like Kingy across the road it was viewed with affection by those who shopped there, and on a busy day there might be a few who remembered when the building had been our first purpose-built cinema.
Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of when it was Hanburys, but I bet there will be someone who does.
Pictures; the closed Co-op store, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, and as Radio Rentals, circa early 1960s, courtesy of George Cieslik
*Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZZZZBCXT638&activeTab=summary
**List of supermarket chains in the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom
 |
| 2019 |
I won’t put any money on the building reopening as a cinema, which it was for 43 years, nor do I think a bar or even a supermarket seems likely.
But nature and developers abhor a vacuum, so I doubt we will have to wait too long.
And this seems an appropriate moment to look back at its story, since the builders first moved in to build that picture house in 1914.
The story of its time as a cinema is pretty well documented on the blog.
 |
| 1928 |
For a while it was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.
This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.*
Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.
Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.**
I liked Hannburys.
 |
| Early, 1960s |
And at Christmas its loyalty card was just that ……. a tiny piece of card which was stamped every time you shopped there during the months of December.
But like Kingy across the road it was viewed with affection by those who shopped there, and on a busy day there might be a few who remembered when the building had been our first purpose-built cinema.
Sadly, I don’t have any pictures of when it was Hanburys, but I bet there will be someone who does.
Pictures; the closed Co-op store, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, and as Radio Rentals, circa early 1960s, courtesy of George Cieslik
*Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZZZZBCXT638&activeTab=summary
**List of supermarket chains in the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom
I’d forgotten that the reference to Cohen may come from the tessie cohen.....
ReplyDeleteI did not get the oblique reference to cohen that easily....ha.
ReplyDelete