Pictures from a Chorlton Bus ..... no 1 ... Kemp's Corner and other nostalgic moments

The top deck of a Chorlton bus must be a pretty neat way of seeing the world below.

The 85, 2024

And when it is the same bus at about the same time every day, then you have got yourself a project.

Stone clues, 2024

And yesterday it was the 85 passing along Barlow Moor Road, although I confess that  on this day, I sat downstairs allowing me a full glimpse of the building which was the former HSBC bank.

There will be plenty who remember it as the Midland, and before that a fast-food outlet and before that as Harry Kemp’s Chemist.

Mr. Kemp opened his pharmacy at the start of the last century, added a landmark clock and so we gained that popular place to meet up which for seventy years was simply known as "Kemp’s Corner".

The name long survived the demise of Harry Kemp and his chemist and in more recent times entered the popular culture as one corner of “Four Bank Corner”, or just simply “the Four Banks”.

Now I have written extensively over the years about Harry Kemp and Kemp’s Corner so I won’t say more.

Kemp's Corner undergoing a makeover, 1978

Instead I am intrigued by the stone blocks uncovered when the rendering was taken off, which offer the promise of some research and a story.

But for now I am back with the bus, and the slight lingering smell that pervaded it as it waited at the Chorlton Office.

It was a feint odour but took me back to those old London buses of the 1950s and 60s, which on a summer’s day reeked of worn smelly upholstery with a hint of dust and warm engine oil.

But which were pleasant when compared to the interior of their rival, the trolley bus which somehow mimicked the smell with that added whammy that they were much hotter, made little noise other than a low whir and made me thoroughly ill every time I ventured on one.

The facelift, 1978

Nor was it just the trolley buses of London Transport, but also their green rivals of Derby Corporation which I had to endure on visits to my grandparents.

But enough of such memories, other than to say the new fleets of buses are a luxury compared to their predecessors.

I shall instead pursue the clues to just what the stone blocks were which were hidden in 1978 during the conversion of the property to the bank.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, from a Chorlton Bus, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, The Midland Bank extension, from the Chorlton edition of the Stretford and Urmston Journal, April 13, 1978

*Kemp’s Corner, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Kemp%27s%20Corner