Collecting street parties ……… the one near you

I have started collecting street parties.

Or to be more accurate the stories associated with them.

It is a project prompted by Saturday’s coronation and the party held on Beaumont Road yesterday.

Preparing for the party, 2023

The road was blocked off early in the day and preparations were well under way when I snapped the signs and the tables in the distance.

And it got me thinking of the heaps of other celebrations which on Beaumont go back a decade and more and were associated with past World Cups and International Rugby competitions.  

The bunting would go up a few days earlier and the tables came out on the day.

From memory I think there was one for the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977 and locked away in the collection there is a fine picture of Hardy Lane partying the afternoon away on that summer’s day forty-six years ago.

Added to which I have a photograph of the party on Halstead Avenue held to celebrate V.E. Day on May 8th, 1945, which marked the end of the war in Europe.

Halstead Avenue, 1945

So if people have pictures, memories and stories of their street party, however far back the event was held I would love to see them.

And it is the stories and memories that are equally important, because these form the basis for remembering our past here in Chorlton.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, street party, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and street party, 1945 from the Lloyd Collection