Just in case you don’t know where you are ……..

Now, the railings that front the Rec have become a bit of a free advertising site.

On any one day there can be posters advertising missing pets, the regular visits of the travelling fair, and the annual event that is the Chorlton Arts Festival.

And yesterday it was the turn of Beech Road itself to get pride of place on the corner with Cross Road.

I suppose it was designed to make sure that the Friends of Beech Road travelling here from all corners of south Manchester and beyond knew they had arrived.

To which the poster confirms that here on the world famous throughfare our visitors can “Shop, eat and explore”.

All of which is reassuring.

Of course, there was a time during and directly after the last world war when the Rec was bereft of its railings.  

Taken up I suspect to aid the war effort and not replaced until long after VE Day.

Just when they were put back I suspect is lost, but someone might remember, and indeed there may be someone who was there when the workman came and took them down.

And soon after the story was posted one person contacted me to say they were still missing when she moved to Chorlton in 1954.

I shall go looking for a reference to the events but for now every morning I will gaze out at the poster just to confirm where I live.

And then on my way down the road I will pass the other two Beech Road posters just in case I thought ours was the only one.

So good they named it twice more.

And judging by a little before 3 pm today so did heaps of people witnessed by the long line of cars whose drivers can't quite get the idea that you park on the road not the pavement.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; Poster corner, 2023, and a heap of badly parked cars, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Beech Road, circa 1940s-1954?  from the Lloyd Collection