And I suppose I know why for today all that remains is a bit of the platform on the Fallowfield Loop Walk
But it was here that Muddy Waters, Cousin Joe Pleasant, Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed on May 7 1964.
This was the Blues and Gospel train at Chorltonville which of course was really Wilbraham Road station which had once been Alexandra Park.
The station had opened as Alexandra Park on Sepetmber1 1891 and its name was changed to Wilbraham Road eight months later to avoid confusion with a London station with a similiar name.
“The station was situated on the MSLR’ Fallowfield Loop line, a 7 mile double track route that linked the Midland Railway’s Manchester South District Line from a point just to the south of Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the MSL main line between Manchester and Sheffield at Fairfield. The reason for the line was to give the MLSR access to Manchester Central Station.”*
During the Great War it was where aircraft parts were unloaded to be reassembled at Alexandra Park Aerodrome.**
And that marks the station off as both a place in our history and of course the station many get wrong.
Not so Wilbraham Road which closed for passenger traffic in 1958 and there I suspect is why history has forgotten the place.
Memories of boarding trains there will be fast fading and I doubt that there will be anyone today who can remember the aerodrome which closed in 1924.
But as Andy Robertson’s pictures show there is still something left.
Like him we have walked the Fallowfield Loop and gazed down at the old station master’s house and stood beside the platform.
I just wish I had been at the concert.
Pictures; Wilbraham Road Station, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson
*Disused Railway Stations, http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wilbraham_road/index.shtml
I watched the daylight rehearsal in the afternoon from the railway bridge.
ReplyDeleteTell me more
DeleteNot much to say really. I recall hearing about it at school ( I went to Wilbraham High School on Nell Lane / Mauldeth Road) and went to have a look after school. I think I was there for quite a while thinking it was the actual show being recorded. Alas, it was not. I probably left to go home for tea but it may also have been because it was starting to rain, which it did throughout the recording of the programme. Whatever the reason, I didn't go back later on.
DeleteI don't think I thought much about it until I saw it transmitted at a later date.