Adventures on Burton Road and beyond ………..the silly story

As adventures go it was all pretty mundane and over in less than an hour.

Adventures by tram, 2021

But for someone who has not ventured into Didsbury from Chorlton for a long time it was a bit of a change.

I could blame the virus, but that really was only an issue until I had had the two vaccinations, and then it was just sheer laziness.

So with an appointment at the drop in centre out of the way, it was the slow meandering walk up Burton Road towards the metro stop.

The sun was promising to crack the paving stones, a few couples were already sampling coffee, and others seemed to be about to join them having done the morning school run. 

A shopping experience, 2021

But most of the shops were closed, leaving me to gaze at their displays and yet again ponder on Burton Road’s transformation from small ordinary street full of traditional shops to that mix of cafes, restaurants and “interesting retail experiences”.

In the 1970s I remember that the cutting edge of cosmopolitan dinning was the Canadian Charcoal Pit, which after a night in the Old House at Home was where you ended up.

And because I lived on the corner of Burton Road and Malvern Grove the burger or “dog”, wrapped in its tinfoil would still be warm when I got home.  

If I am honest it was the corn relish and the tomato variant which made the meal.

There may have been other restaurants and takeaways in 1970, but I don’t remember them, and within a year I had moved on, although not before I returned to the house in the September of the following year, and with nowhere to live, slept in the cellar on a settee for a few nights.

And then it must have been a full decade and a bit before I was back on Burton Road which had undergone that retail change, which was fine if you wanted Victorian antique lace, or an Art Nouveau lampshade, but not if you were after a lb. of potatoes, four old fashioned screws and a gallon of paraffin.

The shop with the lot, 2021

I might be wrong,  and the transformation may have been later, but I am confident someone will correct me.

Leaving me just to reflect that the stretch of Wilmslow Road, from Barlow Moor Road down past the old Police Station, has retained more of those old traditional retail businesses, although like so many high streets it has its fair share of charity shops, which seem more upmarket than those you might find in other parts of the city.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Burton Road, Burton Road Metro stop and Wilmslow Road, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson