30 years ago and bit more .......... Wilbraham Road

It is over 30 years since Tom McGrath took a series of pictures of Chorlton. 

Recently he returned to the same locations and photographed them all over again and it makes for fascinating stories. 

I have often remarked that it is our more recent past which we tend to ignore.

Look at any of those old black and white pictures of a century ago and you are prepared for things to be different.

But  just over a quarter of a century seems no time at all.  It spans the life of my eldest son, is well within the range of the music I still listen to and is redolent with vivid memories.

And yet it is in some ways as unfamiliar as the age of the gas lamp and tram.

Now I am not going off on one so there will be no reference to Mrs Thatcher, or that Back to the Future was the highest grossing film at $210,609, 762.

Instead I shall just comment on what 27 years did to this corner of Wilbraham Road.

We still had a night club at this end of Chorlton or though if memory serves me it was really just an opportunity to carry on late night drinking.

The burgar bar still retained that logo which I remember from a similar out let on Burton Road and I rather think the concrete stumps which had encased the old petrol pumps were still in place.

And for those pondering on what our houses sell for here in Chorlton, I have to say that the rising spiral of prices had yet to take off.

Pictures; by kind permission of Tom McGrath