Just how many different businesses fitted into 477 Barlow Moor Road? ….… Part 2 …. before today

Yesterday I visited Department Manchester, that new place on the corner of Malton Avenue and the old Co-op which offers up “Vintage, Mid Century Retro, Contemporary Furniture” with some pretty interesting posters as well as art and other “Homeware” accessories. *

499, 1959

It opened last Saturday and has been a great success.

The building has always fascinated me sitting there and occupying a prime position between the tram terminus and the former cinema, making it a place which had the potential for plenty of footfall.

And over the last century various owners, and traders have pretty much thought the same, because it has been  a DIY store, a furniture emporium, a doctor’s surgery and long before that a private home.

To which I can add that the furniture emporium styled themselves “antique dealer”, in 1954 Mr. Crosdale specialized in “stage and studio furniture” and very briefly it was one of those discount places where almost everything was sold for a £.

499, the Department, 2022

Along with a memory from Andrea Morgan that it may also have been a solicitor's office in the 1980s, which she remembers because "I went for an interview for a secretarial job around 1981, I think it was called Cohens", and she got offered the job. To which Claire Mackie has added, "It was Clifford,Cohen's and Co. It was part of Clifford and Co whose main office was on the corner at Brooks Bar".

Trawling through selected directories I know that in 1929 it was occupied by Mr. Alex Norman Pollock MB., Ch.B. who was a surgeon, by 1954 was the antique shop of a Mr. Clarence Crosdale who eight years later was specialising in “stage and studio furniture”.

And after that had a varied set of uses.

But it began as a private home, although just when I have yet to find out.

The Holt's garden 1854

Before 1908 the site along with a huge plot of land belonged to the Holt family and this spot was part of the family garden which stretched from the corner of Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road, down High Lane and then back running parallel with Cross Road to join Beech Road.

The eastern wall of the garden ran up to the modern edge of Barlow Moor Road and what is now the bus station was part of that garden.

Here generations the Holt’s had lived since the 1830s, but when the last died in 1908 the family home was demolished and the land sold off, to Manchester Corporation and developers, one of whom built the cinema which opened in 1914, and later had several uses before ending as the co-op.

Just when number 477 was built has yet to be discovered and will involve looking back through the directories from 1914, which in turn will give us a list of subsequent owners and traders up to 1969.

The sign, 2022

That said I know that it dates from at least 1921, because in that year the recently released census shows that it was occupied by William Finney, his daughter, son in law and two grandchildren.

I can track Mr. Finney across Manchester back into the 1870s, and he appears to have worked in the textile trade, while his son in law was a plumber.

Mr. and Mrs. Finney were married in 1879 and she died in 1913, and the following year, their daughter  Edith Mary married Andrew Pollock.

There doesn’t seem a connection between Andrew Pollock and the surgeon Alex Norman Pollock but we shall see.

Leaving me just to add that by the 1940s, the house was home to Douglas Cook, who went to Burnage Grammar School and remembers the house and its garden as big and comfortable.**

Just when the property took on its commercial as aspect awaits a bit more research, but I think there is a continuity in the idea that what was once an antique shop and later dealt in in “stage and studio furniture" is back in the business of offering a mix of household accessories.

And Department Manchester has its own Facebook site.***

Inside the shop, 2022

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; 499, Barlow Moor Road, 1959, A H Downes, m17516, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Department Manchester, 2022, from the collection of Stephen Hall and Heather Linnett, and the Holt’s garden in 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1845-1854, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The shop ……the poster and heaps of vintage treasure …… the continuing story of 477 Barlow Moor Road … Part 1, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-shop-poster-and-heaps-of-vintage.html

** Douglas Cook, www.whitedownmusic.co.uk

***Department Manchester, https://www.facebook.com/Department-Manchester-104044198925948