Almost a century of cutting hair on Wilbraham Road with the Stevenson family

Now there will be plenty of people with fond memories of Stevenson’s the hairdressers.

It did the business of cutting, shampooing and much more from 432 Wilbraham Road from 1908 until almost the end of that century.

I remember it well as does Bob Jones who shared with me some of his wife’s photographs of when she worked there in the 1960s.*

And just last week leafing through an old souvenir book I came across this 1908 advert for the shop.

Nothing quite prepares you for how different shop fronts were more than a century ago.

It starts with that large ornate lamp at the entrance which carried Mr Stevenson’s name and I guess would have been lit by gas.

And from there your eye is drawn to the shop window which conforms to that simple marketing approach of fill every bit of space with something to sell which included everything from shampoo, to umbrellas and even wigs.

Now I have no idea just how much call there was for wigs back in 1908 but Mr Stevenson described himself as not only a “hairdresser” but also “a wig maker and fancy dealer.”

I have to confess that the term “fancy dealer” had me stumped but it describes someone who sold imitation jewellery and ornaments which in the context of the shop made perfect sense.

After all having had your hair done for that night out it made sense to buy something special to go with it, and no doubt Miss Emma Stevenson who assisted in “the sales department” could be relied on to offer up expert advice.

At 27 she was 15 years younger than her brother and may well joined the business when Mr Stevenson made the move from his shop on Barlow Moor Road which I think he opened in 1899.

Back then he employed two male hairdressers and seems to have made the move to Wilbraham Road sometime between 1903 and 1908.

Now in 1903 the row of shops from Albany down to Keppel Road had yet to be added on to the front of what had been a fine set of terraced of houses.

Such I suspect was the demand for more retail properties with the growing population that the owners of the terrace recognised the commercial advantages of the conversion.

And that has seemed to have been a sound decision.  For decades it was a prime place to do business, just yards from the railway station and almost directly opposite the post office.

So much so that the Stevenson family along with Burt’s the “gentleman’s outfitters” saw no reason to move and continued offering perms and ties to generations of Chorlton people.

At some point Mr and Mrs Stevenson moved out of the flat above the shop and settled on St Werburgh’s Road where Mr Stevenson died in 1936.

But as they say that’s another story.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Picture; advert forJ.R.Stevenson’s, 1908 from the Souvenir of the Grand Wesleyan Church Bazaar, 1908, courtesy of Philip Lloyd and three young stylists at Stevenson’s circa 1965, from the collection of Bob Jones.

*Stevenson's the hairdressers, cutting and styling from 1909 on Wilbraham Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/stevensons-hairdressers-cutting-and.html