Of books…… endless hours of study ….. and 93 new homes*

 This is the third in the series on the changes to Didsbury over the last two decades.

Homes from the former chapel and library, 2022

Now this may seem a blink in the eye for a Dinosaur or anyone born in the 1940s but will be news to some who spent their growing up as the 21st century dawned or arrived in the township after 2014.

So, for some of the residents of St James Park off Wilmslow Road and many more who pass it each day, those 93 homes grouped around Sir John Bland Way, Bloomesbury Avenue, The Grove, and Skylark Close could have always been there but are almost brand new.

Planning permission had been granted in the July of 2015 and work began the following February.*

The centre piece of the new development for me at least is the Pump House and the Methodist chapel.  

The Pump House dates from the 18th century and was added to in the 1840s by the Methodists who had bought the property and established a theological college to which they added the chapel.

I only knew them as the Admin block and the library of Didsbury Teacher Training College where I spent part of 1972 into 1973 doing a Post Grad course on how to teach history to secondary school students.

The Admin block was the former 18th century home which became a private school before being taken over by the Methodists and ending up as offices at the end of the last war, while the chapel had been converted into the library having served as a Red Cross  hospital during the Great War.

Drama Studios, and Assembly Hall, 2015

I can count the number of times I visited both.  Two of my tutors were based in the Admin block and the library was less a place to study and just somewhere you went to acquire precious materials to use in the classroom.

The college campus closed in 2014 transferring to what was then called Birley Fields and an uncertain wait settled on the place.  But its 17acres set in much sought-after Didsbury meant it would fall to the developers at some point.  

What followed was the demolition of the 1960s build and the slightly up market huts which were home to a series of lectures on the philosophy and politics of education, made only remarkable by one lecturer who asked that simple question  “What would you do if all the Year 7 students got up and walked out” and that quote “It could all be marble Sir but it would still be bloody school”**.

The former chapel and library, 2015

All of that has now vanished leaving just the former Admin block and library, and it is the library that Peter painted last week handing it over with the challenge, “What about writing something that deals with changes in Didsbury over the last twenty years”.

Adding “you could focus on two neighbouring buildings, parks or places and explore how one has stayed the same and its neighbour which has undergone sweeping change”.

It is a template that has worked well for the first two stories in the series but has come a little unstuck with this one, because the two historic buildings have both changed their use on several occasions and are now both residential.

Still why let that get in the way of a story and a challenge.

Location; Didsbury, 

Painting; the former chapel and library, 2022, Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures

Picture; The Drama Studio and Assembly Hall, 2015 and The former chapel and library, 2015, from the collection of Peter Topping

*New Didsbury housing development to be named St James Park after village’s first building, Beth Abbit, January 11th 2016, Manchester Evening News, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/st-james-park-didsbury-houses-10717332

**Half Our Future, The Newsome Report, 1963, Part 1, page 2