Seven bars .... one road .... and a Cafe culture

This is Beech Road in 1935, and I doubt that anyone at the time would have thought that ninety years later it would be the centre of Chorlton’s bar and restaurant revolution.

Beech Road, 1935

When I arrived in 1976 it was still a mix of shops where you could buy fresh food from several butchers, a green grocer and at least two grocery stores, as well as a bag of nails a gallon of paraffin,  balls of wool and get your hair cut.

But the growing dominance of supermarkets and changed patterns of shopping dealt a death blow to these traditional shops which had cornered the market for almost a century.

In their place came Café on the Green on the corner of Acres and Beech, Bob Amato’s Italian Deli and Primavera, quickly followed by the Lead Station.

Cafe on the Green, 1995

And it is of Café on the Green and its successors I am reflecting on.

The building has had a varied history, starting off as a hardware shop, becoming a hair dressers and then  briefly selling pianos, before settling down for its long association with food.

And without ever wanting to sound like Methuselah I can claim to have eaten in the place when it first opened as Cafe on the Green, and later when it was known variously as Blue Note, the Nose and Marmalade, the Parlour and then Suburban Green.

And now it has The Jane Eyre run by the two brothers who made their name with the Northern Quarter restaurant, Jane Eyre, which was “Built and named in memory of our mum, [and is] a warm and welcoming neighbourhood bar. Serving classic cocktails with a twist, an eclectic range of keg and bottled beers and simple, great tasting food using the highest quality ingredients”.*

The Jayne Eyre, 2025

I could of course just make the observation that the entire stretch of land from Acres Road up to Chequers was Blomely's Fish pond, which vanished sometime in the 1870s, and that according to our local historian, Mr. Ellwood a small water course ran the length of Acres Road which was paved over.

But that is for another time.

Marmalade, 2007

The Nose, undated

Surburban Green with look back at the Parlour, 2020

The closed and sad looking Parlour, 2020

For now, I present a selection of pictures from them olden days.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Beech Road in 1935 courtesy Marjorie Holmes of the transformation from the Nose, Marmalade, the Parlour and Jayne Eyre, 1990s-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Jane Eyre, https://www.thejaneeyre.co.uk/