You can find them all over Chorlton usually tucked away behind other buildings or hidden by tall walls. Some I guess were once stables or perhaps even cottages and now they serve as lock up workshops. They are a reminder that in that crossover period when we were in transition from rural community to dormitory suburb there were still plenty of craftsmen about serving the needs of the township. In some cases they inhabited what had once been farmyards and in others just patches of land not yet built on. So opposite the Bowling Green Hotel where the remnants of the United Serviceman’s’ Club stands was one of the building yards of Scott the builder and just a little closer to the green in what had been Greenwood’s farmyard was a smithy, lock up garages and where Mr Holmes carried out his carpentry business. And much closer to now the Walker Brother’s ran their builder’s yard from what had once been the farm buildings of the Higginbotham family. Now mostly the lock up workshops belongs to mechanics, but some are offices while others and morphed into keep fit venues.
Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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