Four screws, a couple of nails and a gallon of paraffin ....... Beech Road before now

I am looking at a picture of Beech Road from 1979, which I took just three years after I settled here.

Hardware, grapes and melons, 1979

It’s not a remarkable image and that is the point.

To the extreme right just beyond the edge of the photograph was Mr. Henderson’s butcher’s shop while just in view is the hardware store and next to it what had been a Howarth’s greengrocers.

But I rather think that by 1979 Howarth’s has passed into the hands of the plant and flower shop whose main business was located on Wilbraham Road.

Washing, photos and lots more, 1969

Today almost 50 years on butcher’s is a clothes shop and the hardware and green grocers have become a studio and gallery.

Back all those decades ago this stretch of Beech Road was a mix of retail businesses, offering up all the usual stuff, from waxed string and paraffin to sliced Sunblest, potatoes and much more.

The much more included a fabric shop, several bakeries, a launderette, three butcher’s shops as well two offi’s and a barber’s, to which I could add the short-lived Amusement Arcade and Sunflowers.

All of which many will remember with fondness in that time when you still shopped locally and daily because the fridge and freezer revolution had yet to arrive.

Looking back it is easy to fall into the trap of nostalgia, but it’s as well to remember that despite the number of grocery stores, the variety of food on offer was limited, and sometimes perilously close to their sell by dates.

I still recall our local shop in Peckham which was full of tinned food and had a choice of cheese …. white or red while proudly displaying their biscuits in open boxes for all to paw through.

It had the lot, 1979

All perhaps a tad grim, but set against this was that Aladin’s Cave which was the hardware store, where you could buy four screws, a couple of nails and a light bulb taking in that pungent mix of smells which came from the bare floor boards, paraffin and freshly sawn timber.

So, to re-echo an older theme, was it better back then or just different?

Hand written answers on a postcard with a 1d postage stamp of the old Queen affixed in the space indicated.

Location; Beech Road before now

Pictures, numbers 38 & 40 Beech Road, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and in 1969 from Manchester & Salford Directory, courtesy of Andy Robertson