Who ruined Chorlton? ……….

 It’s a simple enough question and so daft along with that other equally banal observation that Chorlton was better in the past.

And they are banal because they rarely go into detail and are usually a side swipe at a group of people or an organization and are predicated on that unhistorical idea that things were always better before.

So yesterday we had that memorable “Southerners have ruined Chorlton” which appeared on a Facebook site and occasioned over 140 responses. 

I don’t know if it was meant to be flippant, or a bold statement to announce her presence on the site which she had joined this month.

And on one level I don’t care, but many of those who replied were dismissive while a few attempted the impossible by agreeing and going on to explain why.

But supposing it was a genuine observation the question must be which ones?

Those who arrived in the 1840s from the Home Counties to work as domestic servants. Or perhaps Joe Scott who built a chunk of Chorlton in the late 19th and 20th centuries?

True he was born here in 1887 but his dad was a southerner from London.

In the 1840s and 50s you could have walked the lanes of Chorlton -cum-Hardy and sat in the beer shops and heard a mix of accents from all over the country including the south.

While the housing boom that took off in the 1880s and which over the next quarter of a century transformed what had been a small rural community into a suburb of Manchester was not the work of London based property developers but local entrepreneurs and builders.

And those houses were occupied by a mix of people some of whom were professionals, others who were middle management, as well as clerks and a range of semi manual and manual occupations.

It was my friend Marjorie who having been born just off Beech Road and lived her whole on Stockton, Whitelow and Provis Roads who heaped scorn on those who lived in New Chorlton or the New Town, which was the area around what was once known the Four Banks and some will remember included Kemp’s Corner.

Her ridicule often expressed in the dismissive line “those there are all fancy cakes and silk knickers” had nothing to do with where they were born but more that New Chorlton was not Old Chorlton, which was the green and Beech Road.

Old Chorlton was the heart of that rural community which stretched back from the mid-19^th century into a time long ago.

And perhaps here is the time to confront that golden time which seems so attractive. 

A time before mains water, sanitation, gas or electricity when for most there was no retirement age, just a slow slowing down of what could be done as a labourer in the fields or as a launderess and which might end in the Workhouse.

But then those who ache for that other time are usually looking back to sometime in the 1950s to perhaps the late 1970s. A time which seemed simpler and where kids could roam free in the holidays making their own mischief, which was rarely vindicative, dangerous or malicious.

A time of tiny corner shops, and a wealth of other small retail businesses from butchers, grocers, green grocers and hardware stores.

Beech Road had its own telly repair shop and that magical place where you could buy a gallon of paraffin, four nails and ball of waxed string taking in a heap of “hardware smells” as you stood waiting to be served on a wooden floor.

And there was of course in the 1960s a heap of grocer’s shop on and around Beech Road, less because that was what people wanted, but because in the absence of home freezers and fridges you had to shop on a daily basis.

Nor and I remember this from our corner shop where could never  you be sure the food was entirely fresh, as a low turn over meant produce was not quickly changed. 

Nor was there always the variety you might want.  

Our grocers sold “white” and red cheese", there was just two brands of tea, and those much-loved open boxes of biscuits were just that open to the air and to anyone who wanted to finger through the assorted bourbons, rich tea and creams.

We can all feel remorse at the loss of all those friendly and not so friendly shops which have been replaced by the supermarkets and online shopping.

And we can all bewail the presence of so many bars and restaurants that have taken the place of Muriel and Richard the greengrocer, Dave the Butcher and Joy Seal’s Chemist shop, but for many the pattern of retail shopping has changed and there can be only so many charity shops and estate agents on a High Street.

Things change.  Those who lived in Old Chorlton saw their village green stolen by the Wilton family around 1818 and had to wait till it was returned to community use in 1894.

They were deprived of watching bull baiting which was the practice of setting dogs on a bull and betting on the results.

And no longer had to suffer the public humiliation of "Riding the Stang", which in a lightly policed community was how we showed our dislike of those who strayed from the norm or were cruel to their partners.

Likewise from the 1880s they watched as the fields they had known and maybe worked on were lost to rows of houses. 

A generation later they will have marvelled at the coming of the cinema only to see all three of ours close as television claimed their place, having seen the first two picture houses, and the ice skating rink go by the early 1920s followed by  our own night club.

The Corporation trams came, following Chorlton’s railway and both went before eventually Timmy Tram arrived.

So not all southerners have ruined Chorlton-cum-Hardy and not all the things in that cosy nostalgic warm past were wonderful.

Yep I played on bomb sites, roamed the streets all day and had plenty of adventures but Sunday's were a day to endure when the telly closed down in the middle of the day and more often than not could not deliver the programme and left us watching the Potter's Wheel and London to Brighton by train in 4 minutes.

And it did rain in the summer holidays and I am a Londoner and to be more accurate a southeast Londoner who first set eyes on Chorlton in the autumn of 1969.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2022