Forty-three years of shopping in the Precinct ………. that exciting new retail experience

Now I’m not usually a fan of those then and now pair of pictures, mainly because you can’t always compare like with like.

Chorlton Precinct, 1980

So here are four pictures of the shopping precinct separated by 43 years and it doesn’t appear to be so different.

True the name has changed from Chorlton Place to Chorlton Cross, and there are now  gates which  ensure that  another area is locked off after dark. 

Chorlton Cross, 2023

Added to which some of the shops have gone replaced by different ones, but it remains a small walk through retail centre, which every so often undergoes a debate on its future, followed by a set of grand plans which after a decent amount of time, are overtaken by new discussions and more schemes for change.

I just missed its construction, but only by a few years, and there are plenty of people who remember a time before the precinct.

Back then Manchester Road continued over Wilbraham Road before gently curving round in front of the former cinema and Undertakers and heading off past the library and on towards town.

And flanking that stretch of the road were some grand houses, one of which for a while was a private school while from another a piano teacher offered tuition to the  ambitious, the gifted and the not so gifted young pianists.

The precinct does have its detractors and I was one of them  for a short while, but I have come to like it again.

There will be those that argue that even before the addition of night gates it took a slice of shops off the grid, because the businesses faced in on each other, which meant unless you were using it as a short cut to the library it was a ghost place.

All the shops and Safeways, 1980

Looking at the two pictures it is notable that what appears to be a busy bustling retail parade  in 1980 has lost its customers.

But I am not sure we are comparing like with like.  

The second picture was taken just after 10 on a Monday morning, while the first I think will have been a Saturday, and of course in 1980 there was no Trafford Centre and no fast tram link to the heart of the city.

Nor can we ignore that in 43 years  our patterns of shopping are different.  

In 1980 we didn’t shop on line and fewer people did the “big supermarket shop” on a Friday, and if you wanted a pair of shoes or a holiday, you shopped locally, using Timpson’s on Barlow Moor Road and Simpson’s Travel on Wilbraham Road.

Charity shops, Quality Save and Boots, 2023

All of which just leaves me with the four pictures, to which a few people with long memories can recall what shops they visited in the Precinct all those years ago.

I shall start off the journey with the wallpaper and paint shop from where I bought vast amounts of emulsion paint rolls of wood chip, heaps of paint pads and two pasting tables.  

And I will continue with the easy ones of Safeways, the dry cleaners and the newsagents.

There is one constant retail business and that is.........?

There is also one postscript which is that wood chip is no longer sold owing to its content.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, two shopping experiences, 1980 and 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson