One speaker … 28 guests … heaps of history ..... and you have a Library Walk for Chorlton Book Festival

The sun shone the turnout was excellent and so another walk through our past sponsored by Chorlton Book Festival came and went.

In between we did the story of the library, how New Chorlton came to be and on the way looked in at the Isles, the Ice Rink and Mrs Crump, the first women to speak on Women’s Hour.

Nor did we miss the bit of Manchester Road which was stolen, Lord Egerton’s new road named after his relative Wilbraham, and the emergency telephone installed in the Lloyd’s Hotel in 1881 to alert the fire brigade to a domestic fire which failed to stop the fire.

I would like to thank Gail and Lee from the Library service who did the admin and kept me from talking for ever, Janine and the staff at the Edge which supplied the cake and drinks and of course the 28 guests who walked the walk, asked good questions and said nice things at the end.

And a special mention to Juliette who asked the question which led me to talk for 20 minutes, and Ed from Welling who told us all about the connection between Keppel Road and the Isle of Man.

Nor is that quite all because in the twenty minutes before the walk started, I got to look at the faces carved above the pillars of Chorlton Library.

Location; New Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Library, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson