Thursday 25 May 2023

A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 1 ........... a bus garage

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph.

This is all that remains of our bus garage which was opened in 1926. Since the beginning of the last century Didsbury had been served by trams and in 1928 the Corporation had 953 trams running 46 routes along 292 miles of track but the decision had been taken to replace them with motor buses and trolley buses.  Our garage was designed to take fifty buses and served Didsbury well for 45 years but the amalgamation of the county’s bus services and the inevitable rationalization of depots meant that it was closed in 1971.









Painting; Clock Tower at Tesco’s Didsbury  from the series East Didsbury, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures, Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Posted by at
Labels: , ,

3 comments:

  1. John Waterton5 March 2019 at 08:44

    I think that for about 20 years after closure the garage was used by a logistics company called (I think) SELNEC. When Tesco acquired the site I believe they chose to retain the clock tower because they would have been unlikely to obtain planning consent to build a new structure that tall.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ender's Shadow11 January 2021 at 08:17

      My memory of the time was that the tower was seen as iconic, and so was preserved a memory of times past.

      Delete
  2. Tony17 July 2020 at 11:12

    SELNEC was the bus company before Greater Manchester Transport. (Their livery is where the orange came from) it stood for South East Lancashire North East Chire.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)