It’s the little bits of Chorlton’s history that can be fascinating ……… the other billiard hall

I bet I won’t be the only one who has passed 446 Wilbraham Road and not given it a second glance.

Two shops hiding a secret, 2021

Today 466 is the Admiral Casino and its neighbour the Royal Cod, and slip back a few years and the two properties were occupied by Quick Silver and a Touch of Class.

Beyond that I must confess I can’t remember …. but someone will know.

They may even be able to offer up a detailed history of the building which always struck me as out of keeping with that stretch of the road, especially as the present east side of the closed Precinct had been a row of five Victorian houses.

Years ago I had gone looking for the story, but pretty much had given up after discovering the plot had been a vacant slot of land as late as 1907, and built on by 1933.

The unromantic side of that former billiard hall, 2024

And then as so often happens in the middle of doing some research I came across the information that in 1929 it was a billiard hall owned by W.R. Bridgens & Co Ltd and was fronted by Malley and Adamson, opticians and Simon Beattie, tobacconist.

There does appear to have been a third shop front which shows up on the 1952 OS map but this may have been a later subdivision of the other two.

I have Anthony Petrie to thank for the update as he was trawling his collection of street directories for me and came up with the names associated to the building.

And he also identified that in 1962 the three shops fronts were occupied by a “ladies hairdresser, estate agent and optician”

And like so much research it just begs heaps of further questions.  

Can we push the date of the billiard hall back?  When did it close?  Was it a rival to the Temperance Billiard Hall on Manchester Road?  What more is there to find out about W.R. Bridgens & Co Ltd, and is there any one out there who used the hall more recently.

Hall and shops in the distance, 1959

So many questions.

Location; Wilbraham Road

Pictures, The shop fronts of the former Billiard Hall, 2021, courtesy of Google maps, and down the side of the hall, 2024 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the hall in 1959 by A.H. Downes, m17486, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass