Now, I know we haven’t lost Oxford Road, but bits of it have been so transformed that it is as if it never existed.
The stretch in question ran from Charles Street almost down to the fly over and backed on to Upper Brook Street.
In all there were fourteen streets and countless houses which were all swept away so that the BBC could have a new broadcasting centre here in Manchester.
The lost streets included Pritchard Street, Hesketh, Leigh and Saville Streets and along with the houses there had been a school and a pub.
Planning permission had been granted in 1968 and after a hiccup building began in 1971 was finished in 1975 and the place was home to the BBC until 2011.
I first wrote about the vanished community three years ago, and at the time residents responded with their memories, but back then all I had to fall back on were old maps, street directories and census records.
Happily all that has changed, and these two pictures offer up a view as it looked in 1963.
It is one that I never knew and I bet many other people will be surprised at just how different it was.
In the background there is no mistaking the Refuge Building and Central Ref, but what fascinates me is the range of shops and residential property so close to the city centre, including a UCP café and snack bar, along with Ash of Ancoats, with its old fashioned shop displays which appear to have worked on that old maxim of “pile them high and sell them cheap”.
I could go on, but the detail is there to see, from the Didsbury bound bus to the woman wearing a university scarf, back in the days when students wore such things.
Location; Oxford Road,
Pictures; Oxford Road, 1963, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection",
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY
*Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ......... nu 56 the vanished fourteen and the story of the BBC, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2016/10/lost-and-forgotten-streets-of_5.html
In all there were fourteen streets and countless houses which were all swept away so that the BBC could have a new broadcasting centre here in Manchester.
The lost streets included Pritchard Street, Hesketh, Leigh and Saville Streets and along with the houses there had been a school and a pub.
Planning permission had been granted in 1968 and after a hiccup building began in 1971 was finished in 1975 and the place was home to the BBC until 2011.
Happily all that has changed, and these two pictures offer up a view as it looked in 1963.
It is one that I never knew and I bet many other people will be surprised at just how different it was.
I could go on, but the detail is there to see, from the Didsbury bound bus to the woman wearing a university scarf, back in the days when students wore such things.
Location; Oxford Road,
Pictures; Oxford Road, 1963, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection",
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY
*Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ......... nu 56 the vanished fourteen and the story of the BBC, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2016/10/lost-and-forgotten-streets-of_5.html
No comments:
Post a Comment