Fish and chips on Richmond Street

This is Richmond Street forty-six years ago.

Back then I still used it as a cut through from Minshull Street down to Chorlton Street and for a decade was a place I knew well.

I had washed up in the College of Commerce a decade earlier doing an arts degree along side trainee lawyers, accountants and heaps of night school courses. The place had just become part of newly created Manchester Polytechnic, although it still felt like a separate entity miles from the other two colleges.

And that may have increased our sense of isolation or independence which led to its irreverent nickname of the College of Knowledge.

Sadly those not in the know called it ColCom.

That said in the late 1960s and 70s the students Union had hosted some memorable groups which added to our sense of feeling a tad special.

I don’t remember the fish and chip shop, but I will have fallen across the café on Chorlton Street, which was never as popular as Bert’s its close rival on Whitworth Street.

The Minshull Street Courts are still there, although they closed briefly just a decade after I took the picture.

But all those untrendy, traditional little outlets like the transport cafés have gone, and with it a bit of my youth.

Location, Richmond and Canal Street

Pictures; Richmond and Canal Street, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson