A “divi number” …..and a lost shop …….. in Droylsden ……. with a bit of our Co-op history

Now, like many of my generation, I grew up with the Co-op.

It was a movement which offered good quality food, clothing, and a heap of other services at affordable prices and gave its members a “dividend”. 

So, you might well be kitted out in your first baby clothes from one of their stores, later hold your wedding reception in one of its halls, and finally be buried by its funeral department, which plays on that phrase from “cradle to the grave”.

In the early years there were shedloads of small local co-operative societies, catering for a clutch of villages, a small town, or parts of our big cities.

Ours was the Royal Arsenal Co-operative, which operated on the south side of the Thames.

And while many people can still remember their “divi” number, which had to be offered up with any purchase, I long ago forgot ours.  

That said we still have a few odd bits which were bought from the RACS store on Well Hall Road, and I loved the way that on a Saturday in the 1970s I could cash a cheque from my Co-op Bank account at the Arcadia store in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

All of which is an introduction to these two pictures of No. 6 Branch of the Droylsden Industrial Cooperative Society, Moorside Street, Droylsden, taken by Andy Robertson on a day out last week.

If I have this right the Droylsden Co-op was started in 1872, although I have seen an early date of 1861, and it  ran till 1963 when it merged with the Ashton Society.

This will explain why its records were “Placed on permanent loan by Mr. G.R. Bennett, Vice President of the Ashton-under-Lyne and District Co-operative Society Limited, Registered Office, 'Arcadia', Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 7NH. (October 1984).”*

On one level there is nothing exceptional about No 6, other that it has survived, and still carries a reminder of its origins which are there picked out in brick.

And here I cannot claim this short reference to the society is the first.  Others like Stephen Marland and Wikipedia have gone before me.**

Location; Droylsden

Pictures; No. 6 Branch of the Droylsden Industrial Cooperative Society, Moorside Street, Droylsden, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson

* Droylsden Industrial Co-operative Society Minutes and Reports. The records are held by Tameside Local Studies and Archives,  DD264, National Archives, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/4fb568b3-f861-4359-9755-b61acbe5e585

** Ravensbury Street – Droylsden Cooperative Society Store, MOOCH, https://modernmooch.com/2020/05/07/ravensbury-street-droylsden-cooperative-store/ & Droylsden Industrial Co-operative Society, Wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Droylsden_Industrial_Co-operative_Society