Lost Images of our Commercial Past ...... nu 3 Somerset & Co Ltd Whitworth Street

Somerset & Co Ltd advertised themselves as a packing firm and traded from number 42 Whitworth Street, along with eight businesses all of all listed  as “merchants”

I passed the building countless times and think it once held the offices of the Manchester Conservative Party.

I certainly remember it always struck me as a forlorn and forbidding place which wouldn’t have lifted my heart had I worked inside.

But then Whitworth Street always reminds me of one of those canyons in a western film, all narrow valley and tall steep sides.

I know well the books which describe how impressive these buildings are but they just overpower me and even on a sunny day it’s a dismal place.

And so having been empty for what seemed decades this one came down, served as a car park and is now gone, replaced by a new building.

Location; Whitworth Street, Manchester

Picture; Whitworth Street, 2013, from the collection of Andrew Simpson