The tram office ...... a mile of pennies ..... and the story of Sport Diving in Chorlton

So, who would have thought that the waiting room of the Corporation tram office would end up as the home of the Manchester Diving Group?

The door to diving, 2022

I have yet to find out when it stopped its connection with the travelling public, but it may have been in the 1950s when the Manchester Diving Group was set up or a tad later during a rationalization of transport facilities.

That building circa 1920s-30s

As far as I can remember it was no longer the Chorlton Office when I arrived in 1976.

But an email to the Diving Group may reveal the date.

For now, I enjoyed the history of “Sport Diving” from their web site and the story of how Diving came to Chorlton.*

Leaving me to look for when our building was erected, which will be around some time soon after 1914,when according to the Manchester Guardian "The Manchester Tramways Committee have bought a piece of land at the tram terminus in Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, for the purpose of a siding, a verandah and shelter and other convivences"**

Interestingly in 1922, the waiting room of the building featured in a fund raising exercise for the Save the Children Fund in Russia organised by "a committee of Chorlton- cum-Hardy residents who planned to make a mile of pennies on Sunday October 30th."  

"A mile of pennies", 1921

The Lady Mayoress was "to place the first pennies on the line in the middle of our mile which we are making in the tram waiting-room, as we feel this is the most densely populated on a Sunday afternoon between three and four thirty. 

If we complete our mile, we shall be able to send through £220.  

Twenty four pennies will keep one Russian child for a week and so every step in that 'proposed mile' would bring hope and happiness where there is only despair."***

The appeal was made by a Mrs. Nicholson of Gilda Brook, on Edge Lane which I think may prompt more research.

Leaving me just to add that the tram office  the subject of a firebomb on October 9th, 1940

Location; Chorlton

Picture, the door to diving, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chorlton Office circa 1920s, 30s, from the Lloyd Collection

* Manchester Diving Group, https://www.manchesterdiving.org.uk/

**Tramway Shelters, Manchester Guardian, March 11th, 1914

***From Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the Volga Valley, Manchester Guardian, October 20th, 1921