Gentrification …… Beech Road ….. and those posh people who lived here

So, I see Beech Road is back in the news with heaps of people on social media comparing it with Burton Road that other interesting row of shops and things.

Chorlton Row, circa 1880s

And in the debate came that old easy assertion of gentrification, which I am never sure whether it is  a] an insult b] a lazy definition or c] something else.

My dictionary describes gentrification “as the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, often displacing current inhabitants in the process”.

Now if you moved on to Beech Road in the 1970s or grew up in the surrounding streets it is just possible to have some sympathy with that assertion.

Charles Clarke our blacsmith from the 1860s

What was an indifferent but nice shopping area offering the range of retail opportunities from food, booze, hardware, and a TV shop has morphed into a row of bars, restaurants and gift places.  Added to which the small rows of two up two down houses, many of which were built for rent by Joe Scott at the start of the 20th century are now desirable and sought after modernised homes, commanding high prices which are beyond the range of our children who were born and grew up on Beech Road.

But all of that is to be a little unhistorical.

Even in that so called pre gentrification Beech Road which I am guessing is meant to be sometime before 1960 stretching back into the beginning of the last century there were a lot of well healed, comfortably off families living here.

That is attested not only by the census records and street directories but by the big houses along Cross Road, and Chequers, Stockton and St Clements Road.

And look again at the shops themselves and there was a mix of basic and slightly up market shops from when Beech Road was developed during the late 1870s onwards.

Go back another thirty years when we were a small agricultural community and Beech Road was called Chorlton Row, and between the blacksmith, a beer shop and some wattle and daub cottages there were several wealthy households.  They included the Holt family in their huge house and garden on the corner of Beech and Barlow Moor Road, and several very comfortable families, one of whom lived beside the smithy. To which can be added the Blomey’s who had the pond on the corner of Acres Road named after them.

Chorlton Row, 1854

The reality is that Beech Road has always been a mixed area, and the expansion of smaller houses on Provis, Neale and Higson was a response to the changing demographics which saw the occupation of the residents defined by clerical and professional occupations and away from the land.

To conclude it is a moot point what came first in the late 1970s and 80s.  Was it gentrification or the collapse of the traditional shopping patterns which saw more and more shops close with no apparent hint at what would replace them?  

Our own brief amusement arcade came and went in the 1980s, and the first restaurants and bars were opening up along with the Italian Delia by the end of that decade.

Bar de Tapas, 2023

And the trend by professionals to buy up and modernise those small two up two downs was only just beginning during this period.

On the cusp of change Beech Road circa 1980s

Go back to the beginning of the 20th century and we find the Manchester Evening News reporting that large parts of Chorlton including the roads off Beech Road were being transformed from open farm land to comfortably off modern properties home to the middling people.

All that seems to have have happened is that a century later the process continues.

And with that comes that other rather blunt observation which is the residents of Beech Road when I moved in in 1976 might well be offended by being told they lived in a "poor urban area". 

Beech Road Cafe Society, circa 2008

Looking at the historical records their occupations ranged from manual, through to clerical, retail and professional and Chorlton -cum-Hardy  was always perceived as a comfortable if not affluent suburb of the city.

I assume the gentrification jibe refers to the shops and restaurants, and here the question is "if not them what?"

Retail shopping has changed and small independent food shops rarely survive, and that has pretty much been the case since the 1980s.  

Leaving aside the deli we do have one grocers shop which competes with the Co-op and Etchells and that I think is all that Beech Road can sustain.

Beech Road, circa 1900

Remember, when there were a multitude of food shops all along Beech Road, and around the Green and off both Crossland and Ivy Green in the early decades of the last century people didn't have either a freezer or a fridge, and were forced to shop daily. 

It is less that Beech Road has gentrified and more that few people  now shop as they did a century ago.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Chorlton Row circa 1880s, , Beech Road circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection, picture of Charles Clark, 1913 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, picture of Charles Clark, DPA 328.18, Courtesy of Greater Manchester Archives, Chorlton Row, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashure, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/, Beech Road in the 1980s, from the collection of Tony Walker, 1980s, Cafe Society on Beech Road, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson