I bet few people look up at the guardians on their columns at the entrance to Chorlton Library.
Afterall they are high and a century and bit of Manchester weather has done much to erode some of their features.
The practice of Medieval craftsmen working on the great cathedrals of Europe often chose fellow work mates as models offering up all manner of comic and rude depictions of what they might do on top of their columns.
And that led me to ponder were ours modelled on real people, perhaps even Chorlton residents or just stock faces turned out almost on a conveyor belt by a craftsmen mile away and just imported in.
At present I don’t know, and yesterday I wasn’t even sure if we were dealing with just a couple of faces repeated around the columns, and being totally honest assumed there were but three which might be six.
But then Sally at the library did what I should have done on Sunday and carefully studied all of them, which revealed that there are four per column, and all the faces are different, which led me to revisit the library and capture them all.
And I am glad I did.
I may be no closer to knowing who they were but at least I know them better.
Silly history but like so much of what engages me about the past they have slid out of the shadows, and that is good enough for me.
Location; Chorlton Library
Pictures; Faces from a Library, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*So……. who were the Chorlton Six?, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2025-09-23T03:00:00%2B01:00&max-results=7
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