Stories from a Didsbury picture ….. no1. ….. a bike, a campaign and a much loved street ...

Now the challenge was straightforward.

I asked Didsbury resident Andrew Simcock to supply a series of photographs from his collection and what follows is a story which might drift off in any one of a number of directions.

And because I have been featuring Warburton Street recently it seemed an obvious first story.

I first came across the street back in 1969, when like a lot of young students living in the south of the city, I ended up in the bookshop, and 50 odd years later I trawled the records to see who lived there.

And along with the inhabitants of no.4, I followed the lives of many of the people that called Warburton Street their home, from the 1841 census onwards.

All of which brings me to no. 8, which in 1911 was home to the Schofield family.  Mr. Walter Schofield was a “night soil man", while next door there were the Blomileys, two of who worked as labourers, one was a charwoman and the youngest member of the family was a “gardener’s apprentice”.

Fast forward 81 years and no. 8 was the cycle shop of Neil Walton which leads to Andrew’s photograph and his story which I shall leave him to tell.

“It’s 1992. Neil Walton now runs the cycle shop on Warburton St, John Major has unexpectedly won the 1992 General Election and the Save Withington Hospital Campaign is in full swing. 

Campaign Treasurer Andrew Simcock and  MP Keith Bradley meet outside the cycle shop. 

Neil has donated a bicycle as a competition prize. Andrew will go to the offices of the Penwith Pirate in Penzance after he completes his Manchester to Lands End cycle ride. 

He will collect a sheaf of competition entries. 

Local school children had written in conjunction with the South Manchester Reporter to predict how many miles Andrew had cycled. The entrant closest to the 376 mile will win the prized bike”.

There will be many who remember the campaign and Andrew’s cycling adventure as well as Neil Walton’s cycle shop, but memories fade, bits of recent history are left unrecorded and newcomers are oblivious to events which are just a few decades old.

So that is it.

My thanks to Andrew for the picture, and the bit from our not so long ago history.**

Location; Didsbury

Picture; outside no.8, 1992, from the collection of Andrew Simcock

*Warburton Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Warburton+Street

** Andrew is the Labour Councillor for Didsbury East on Manchester City Council please contact me at cllr.a.simcock@manchester.gov.uk