Never throw away the negatives ....... part 2 .... The Talmud Torah School ....Bent Street

Now keeping the negatives never really seems worth it, but when the original prints get lost or damaged those negatives can prove very important.

All of which just points up how pleased I was that I found the set which I took of the streets around Cheetham Hill Road in the mid 1980s.

Not only have the prints gone but so have the notes I made of the research into the area.

This is the old Talmud Torah School opened in 1880, for “the teaching of elementary education in
Hebrew, the Scriptures and the Talmud and in the principles of the Jewish faith and practise. Talmud Torah schools were traditionally for boys only. Girls were admitted in modern times. 

The School was founded in 1880 and established in purpose built premises at No. 11 Bent Street, Cheetham, Manchester. In 1958 the Bent Street school was sold and in 1959 the new headquarters of the Manchester Central Board for Hebrew Education and Talmud Torah was opened in Upper Park Road, Salford. It closed in 2005”.*

I had half expected that the building would no longer exist but it does, still in commercial use as it when I came across it, but looking a lot better.  All but two of the big signboards have gone and these are neat and discreet.

Added to which a fair amount of the school’s records have survived, including account books payments and registers of contributions and a description of the damage done to the building during the Blitz.

And now its an exciting events place.

Location; Bent Street, Manchester

Picture; The Talmud Torah School, 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

Passing Burton’s on the High Street ...... on a spring day in 1966 ............ with a thank you to Tricia

Now, there will be many people who saw this postcard of Eltham High Street and remembered the scene with fondness.

It belongs to my old friend Tricia who posted it on our “Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history” site yesterday.*

And I am one of them. 

What makes it even more special is that it is dated 1966, the year I started at Crown Woods Sixth Form.

The original postcard was undated, but that didn’t stop a few people suggesting dates for the picture.

These tended to use the vehicles as clues, and I suppose with a bit of ferocious detective work it might be possible to track the date of the advert on the side of the bus passing the church on its way down Well Hall Road.

But as it turns out there is a simpler way, because the picture postcard was produced by Judges Ltd, and it just so happens I have a full list of when each of their  cards were issued.

The list is the work of the Judges’ Postcard Study Group and was published in their September 2005 newsletter, and then reproduced in an article by SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO.**

In the case of Tricia’s postcard, the company had included the serial number which according to the list was produced in 1966.

Now, I am not quite sure if the date 1966 was the year the postcard was published or the year the photograph was added to the collection for later use.

I know in the case of the company Valentine, the date refers to when it was added to their catalogue, but I have yet to check on the list for Judges’.

And that will take me back to V & G Harris who have an extensive collection and were most helpful when I was tracking other picture postcards by the company.

But for now, I am just pleased that I can match Tricia’s card with my own trips up to the High Street, with visits to Burtons, Wilcox’s, the Library and lots more places.

Although, I am fascinated by the identity of the three young men standing at the entrance to the church.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham High Street, 1966, from the collection of Tricia Leslie

*Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history, facebook

** SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO, www.sussexpostcards.info

The bold and the new …… down on Manchester Road in 1973

Now I am not a fan of just posting an old image and leaving it at that.

Often when I come across these on social media, it is posted with no date, no indication of where it has come from and it stands alone with no additional commentary.

All of which makes it difficult to appreciate its true significance, because without a date and a source, there is no context, other than to reflect that “here is a picture which is different from now, when they did things differently back then”.

Of course, that may sound sniffy, but if you are interested in the past you should always be after finding out as much as you can.

So, having said all of that, here is a picture with little in the way of additional information.

We are on Manchester Road where it joins Upper Chorlton Road, and the year is 1973 and it comes from the City’s Local Image Collection.*

It was one  of a series taken by H Milligan in the 1970s and what I like about the picture is the way that it records, just what a collection of “modern shopfronts” looked like back then.

Today, they look dated and even a bit amateurish but in 1973 they appeared sharp, modern and at the cutting edge of what was thought stylish.

I particularly liked the use of timber cladding seen on the bookie’s and that name which seems to topple down from the top of the sign.

Today I prefer the original shop fronts which are still visible on two of the fronts.

And that is all.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Manchester Road, 1973, H Milligan, m17964, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Remembering the Spanish Civil War .... today at Central Ref .... Manchester

 

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 1 .... the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Jewish Soup Kitchen

Now long after the prints have been damaged or worse still lost, there are always the negatives.

Manchester Jewish Working Men's Club, Empire Street, 1986

Of course most of the time, these are consigned to the back of a cupboard.

And so it was with a collection I took in the mid 1980s on the streets off Cheetham Hill Road.

They were part of a research project on the Jewish Community and sadly the pictures and the notes have long gone, but the negatives have survived.

Not so the Club which was on the corner of Empire Street and Wooley Street.

I don’t know when the building was demolished but it has been replaced by a warehouse and factory.

The club was formed in 1886 and it was here in “November 1895 a meeting was convened at the Manchester Jewish Workingmen's Club to consider ways and means to alleviate suffering in the Jewish community. The creation of the Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen in 1896 was the
result of this meeting. 

The Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen, Southall Street, 1986

In December 1906 a building in Southall Street was completed, with a purpose built dining hall. 

The meals consisted of soup containing meat and vegetables, together with bread. 

Mrs Dolly Phillips (1903-) and her husband, Harry, were at the forefront of the organisation. Mrs Dolly Phillips first became involved in the Soup Kitchen in 1920 at the age of 17. As Honarary Secretary she introduced the meals on wheels service in 1942. 

The building on Southall Street was sold and the kitchen of the Manchester Jews Benevolent Society was used. In 1978 the service moved to Holy Law Synagogue in Rita Glickman House, Prestwich. In 1997 they had about 200 clients”.*

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Soup Kitchen, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

A golden childhood growing up in Well Hall in the 1960's

Lost in the woods, 1977

Now Eltham was a pretty good place to grow up in the 1960s especially when you had come from Peckham.

It was partly the opportunity to wander over large areas of open and wooded land where you could play, walk and just let your imagination out for the day.

That said I was 14 when we arrived in Well Hall which made some of the “play thing” a little old hat.

But that freedom to set off up into the woods on a warm summer’s morning with no real idea of where you would end up was magic.

Of course the first few times you took off up there it really was discovering new places, and then later it was equally special as you shared it with a girlfriend.

What started out at Well Hall could by degree take you off to Welling via the castle and offer up some stunning views.

And when you tired of trees, solitude and aimless meanderings there was always the Palace and the pleasure of walking along King John’s Walk towards Mottingham.

King John's Walk, towards Mottingham, 1977

Looking back all that didn’t last long, partly I guess because the summers were all too short and soon there were widening horizons and counter attractions.

Never underestimate just how a sixteen your old starting out a fresh at Crown Woods with a whole new set of friends can be drawn away from the simple pleasures of a walk in the woods.

But they never quite went away, after all when you live on Well Hall Road the woods dominated the view from the back window and on those storming summer nights when the sky was lit up with the jagged flashes of lightening it was hard not to be drawn up there.

Not that anyone with any sense would venture there in such a storm.

A much better attraction was the Welcome from where you could sit out the storm with a pint although all too often I was less lucky.  Those storms seemed to pick me out as I was walking back from a Friday night in Woolwich, and later still falling out of the King’s Arms in the High Street.

And now the woods and Well Hall are a long way from where I live and separated by a gulf of time but they still exert a pull and bring back a pretty perfect childhood.

Pictures; the woods and King Jon's Walk, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

A Chorlton revolution ……….. the self service shop

Now we are so familiar with the supermarket and the convenience store, that it takes a moment to  appreciate just how much self service shopping was a revolution in how we bought our groceries.

I am of that generation, who was part of that revolution, and I can remember just how liberating it felt at the time to wander the isles, and touch and choose which apples, tins of vegetables and packets of biscuits to buy.

Today we can be cynical about it all, not least the way it allowed shops to cut costs, and set the customer doing some of the work, but it was I maintain quite liberating.

Here in Chorlton, there is still a book to write about the arrival of those first self service shops, including which were the first and just what people thought about them.

The Co-op  was the first to embrace the new way of shopping, turning a department of its store in Romford over to self service in 1943 and five years later fully converting its premise in Portsea to selfservice.*

And in 1949, The Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-op  began altering its existing stores the following year, with our own Hardy Lane opening in 1959.

Until this week, I didn’t know that the shop on the corner of Manchester and Ransfield roads, was offering its customers, “Self Service” in 1961 and a quick trawl of the directories should pinpoint when the Mark Down began its new venture.
Leaving that aside, it is the shop window which is equally fascinating, offering up a range of products which are still familiar, but at prices which at first glance appear astonishing.

But those prices must be set against most people’s incomes which were of course much lower than today.
The more pertinent question would be to explore and then compare the average food bill in 1961 with today and its percentage of all house hold bills.

All of which is getting too serious and so instead I shall just leave you pondering on the prices, which are expressed in shillings and pennies, which I suspect will be a mystery to any one born just before we went decimal in 1971.

Our own kids look back at me with sheer bewilderment when I explain that 12 pennies made a shilling, that 20 shillings made a pound and that 240 pennies made a pound.  Added to which there was a coins called a threepenny bit, a sixpence, and a half crown, all of which competed with the farthing and the ha’penny.

Added to which the price of posh objects often came as guineas and not pounds.

And that neatly brings me back to self service shopping which predated our decimal coinage by just a few decades.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Manchester Road, 1961, A H Downs, m18078 and current prices, Mark Down No. 93 Manchester Road, 1961, , A H Downs, m18080, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Spotlight on Self Service, from Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

*Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

Discovering that Shakespearean Garden in Platt Fields ….. courtesy of the new exhibition Shakespeare and Manchester

 It is a sad confession that despite living in Manchester for 57 years and visiting Platt Fields heaps of time I had never come across the city’s own Shakespearean Garden.

In the Shakespeare Gardens, 2026

The Friends of Platt Fields tell me that “A Shakespearean Garden is a themed garden which contains some or all of the 175 plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works. 

Most of these gardens are a late 19th / early 20th century interpretation of the formal Elizabethan gardens. 

The aim being to design an historically accurate garden such as Shakespeare would have recognised.

‘Shakey’, as our garden is affectionately known, is a sunken walled garden which is entered via a central ‘staircase’. The formal garden is divided into 4 quadrants, or ‘rooms’, and surrounded by large banked areas and majestic trees.

The garden is often described as the park’s hidden gem nestled in a discreet corner, just a few moments from Wilmslow Road”*

Model of the gardens in the exhibition, 2026

My failure to know it existed is an outstanding piece of ignorance which was only corrected yesterday when Ian Nickson gave me a personal tour of the new exhibition Shakespeare and Manchester which runs until May 30th on the first floor of the Central Reference Library.

The gardens are only part of an extensive exhibition which explores Manchester’s links to the playwright from theatre producers, actors, and scholars to a description of the Theatre Royal. 

Nor is that all because contained in the glass cabinets are the stories of how it was here in Manchester that new safety designs for theatres were conceived and put into practice along with a pioneering method of photography both of which went global.

I could say lots more, but its all there on the first floor of Central Ref and is an introduction to Ian’s book on the same subject which is due out in September.

Mr. Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal, 2024

Which just leaves me to add that in Ian’s own words “one aim of this exhibition is to raise awareness of the benefits to mental and physical health conferred by the Shakespearean Garden and to obtain funding for a full-time gardener who can secure the future of the garden for the benefit of the citizens of Manchester”.

Shakespeare and Manchester: A Victorian Powerhouse Exhibition Manchester Central Library First Floor Display Cases February 12th, 2026 - May 30th 2026.

For more details please contact:

r. Ian Nickson. Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester, ian.nickson-2@manchester.ac.uk

Kattie Kincaid, Project Lead for the Shakespearean Garden,  kattiekincaid@hotmail.com

The Shakespeare window, 2026 

Location; Manchester Central Library, St Peter's Square, Manchester, M2 5PD

The Rosa Grindon Mural, 2026

Pictures; in the Shakespearean Garden, and the model of the gardens, 2026 courtesy of Kattie Kincaid, and Mr. Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, he Shakeare Window, 2025, courtesy of Ian Nickson, and The Mural Of Rosa Grindon Facing Platt Fields Due To Her Part In The Creation Of The Shakesperian Garden, 2026, from the collection of C.Roman

Next; the story of Rosa Grindon, and her time in Manchester, her role in The Shakespeare Garden and  her contribution to Shakespeare research, with material from the exhibition

*The Shakespearean Gardens, Friends of Platt Fields,  https://friendsofplattfields.org.uk/shakespeare-garden/

The Columbian Exchange ..... on the wireless today

I am a great fan of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.  

Torta di patate, 2025

It's stated intent is to "span history, religion, culture, science and philosophy" and bring interesting and thought provoking radio to the listener

And that is what I think they will do with today's offering entitled The Columbian Exchange*, in which "Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. 

That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox. 

The lists of what was then exchanged are long and as these flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation. 

In parts of the Americas, European viruses helped kill over 90 percent of the population. In parts of Europe, Africa and Asia populations boomed on the new American foods. Sheep from Europe grazed fertile land into deserts in some parts, while the lowered populations in others led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age.

With Rebecca Earle, Professor of History at the University of Warwick, John Lindo, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, and, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production"

Leaving me just to add that there is a purpose beihnd the image of torta di patate which for four decades I have been turning out for anyone who will eat it it.  

We simply called it Italian pie and its made from layers of cooked potato and mozzarella  cheese and topped with tomoato sauce and of course potatoes and tomotoes feature in the story.  Frivilous perhaps when set against syphilis but as the picture is mine it saves looking for a copyright free image.

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; torta di patate, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Columbian Exchange, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002rrvz

Walking the last 88 years of Redbank

2018

I like the idea that there will be people who remember how Redbank has gone full circle, from a place to live and work to one purely to work and after a period as an empty space is again full of residential properties.

For those who don’t know Redbank nestles behind Cheetham Hill Road, rising up from the River Irk like a series of terraced olive groves starting at Scotland which faced the river.*

Not of course that there was anything exotic about the place. The area was well developed by the middle of the 19th century and rows of back to back properties existed beside a mix of industry.

1936

In the 1850s just north of Scotland was a tannery with a nearby piggery and off to the east was the Ducie Bridge Brewery owned by Smalley & Evans while directly over the river were a series of Corn Mills, and the main railway viaduct of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

I hazard a guess that the bright sunlight of early spring struggled to lift the spirits and banish the noise of assorted industrial processes which vied with the all pervading smell from the tannery.

1930

By the time I was exploring the area most of the land from the river up towards the summit was empty waiting for the new development.

The transformation began in the late 1930s when the houses were demolished and replaced by low rise industrial units which eventually also were demolished.

Now I am not old enough to have seen that transformation but there will be people who have.

After all, a person born in 1930 will be just 88 as I write this and could have played amongst the half demolished houses in 1936, worked in one of the small factories or warehouses thirty-years later and have been invited by a grandchild to view a flat in one of the tall apartment blocks that look down on Redbank today.

1960

For the rest of us, there is that fine collection of pictures from Local Image Collection maintained by Manchester Libraries which hold photographs of the area from the 1890s from which I have chosen a few marking the changes.

Location Redbank, 1850-2018

1966

Pictures; the new developments, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1936, m5139, later in the year, J F Stirling, m05142, and 1960, m05145 and 1966, T Brooks, m60605 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*This stretch of Cheetham Hill Road was Ducie Bridge

Adventures across London …… with nothing more than a train ticket a bag of confidence and heaps of curiosity

When you are 15, some days can lie heavy.

In Well Hall waiting for something to happen, 1964

The top park, 2007

It was usually on summer days when the weather turned from being blistering hot and sunny to a muggy wet  one, and the combination of the humidity and the ever-present threat of a heavy shower made going out less than attractive.

How much easier it had all been five years earlier, when even if you were “Billy no mates” there were adventures to be had.

Of course, these usually revolved around Pepys park which was actually two.

The first was your classic Victorian public space, with the remnants of a bandstand, a fenced off lake, and a simple play area.

Pepys park circa 1900

Looking back the play area may once have been another ornamental pond, long drained and filled with the simplest of apparatus, including the hollowed-out trunk of an old tree, which could be anything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.

I was not alone in playing in it and letting my imagination wander, as was witnessed by the thick sides and top of the trunk which were highly polished from countless kids climbing and sliding over it.

Seldon visited, 2007

The eastern side which ran along Pepys Road was a mass of trees and dense undergrowth making it a perfect hidden place to act out all sorts of searches, while observing the other park goers and keeping an eye out for the Parkies.

By contrast the top park, had little to commend it, other than a drinking fountain and some fine views to the city in the distance.  It was also just outside the area you felt safe in, as its bordered unknowns, and at ten you were always aware that some places were someone else’s territory.

Not so the adventures across London courtesy of a cheap return ticket from Southern Region or a Red Rover.

Such trips didn’t require wonderful weather because there was always a doorway, shop, or museum to take shelter in, and friends could be a distraction from going where the fancy took you.

But for every real adventure there were those that turned sour, like the time the promise of the magic of Bermondsey took us to a canal under a railway arch on a wet dismal Saturday.

These were on balance few, compared to the winners, which included a Wednesday in high summer on a railway station in suburbia.  There was little to see outside the station but the magic came from sitting on the grassed area of the platform at midday with just a bottle of warm lemonade and the stillness of  an empty commuter stop, punctuated only by the lazy sound of bees going about their business and the smell of tar on the wooden railway sleepers.

But by 15, there was far more to cope with, starting with that sense that everyone else was more confident, was having more fun and had a girlfriend.

Woolwich, 1979

It would be another year before all that happened to me, and I had to wait to leave the school in New Cross and arrive at Crown Woods.

In the meantime, there were aimless trips up Eltham High Street, hours spent in the library and visits to Woolwich, which reminded me of Peckham and was more edgy, and different from Well Hall, and of course offered up the River.

Even now, almost sixty years on,  I can get excited at the memory of the Thames.  But  not the fashionable clean, twee tourist Thames, but the working river, with its boat building yards, factories, and wharves.

The River, 1979

And here I am the first to point out that there was nothing romantic about living by and working on the River.  The work could be hard, dangerous and the pay pitiful, while much of the accommodation close to the water has seen better days.

That said taking the ferry at Woolwich, or wandering the market was away of killing time till something better turned up, which at 15 was still a year away, and the summers of 1966, 67 and 68 when the sun shone and all seemed perfect.

The Thames, 1979

Location; Peckham, New Cross, Woolwich, Well Hall

Pictures; Andrew in 1964, and views of the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick St Mary’s Church, 1906,from  Parish Churches and Telegraph Hill Park,  circa 1904, M G Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society, http://thehill.org.uk/society/Telegraph.htm

Hair, .....accesories ..... and sunbeds ....... Stevenson's..... and Chorlton's history through its shopping bags

Now generations of people will remember with fondness the hairdressing business of Stevenson.*

J. R. Stevenson, 1910

For many it was where you went to have your hair done, or buy those must have accessories, and of course it provided employment for lots of young people, from those doing Saturday jobs to those training to be "Stylists to the stars".

It is a place I have written about, and its presence here in Chorlotn pretty much spans the last century, first on Barlow Moor Road and then on Wilbraham Road.

My interest was reignited when Annie Keogh offered up this bag from the shop, which is an appropriate image of where we shopped and kicks off a new series on Chorlton's history through its shopping bags. 

 Now that's a zippy title.

Included in the series will be many of businesses which defined Chorlton, from Kingspot and Hanbury's to the big chains like Liptons and Safeway.

And of course I am always open to more contributions.

Hair, cosmetics and fancy goods, date unknown

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The shopping bag, date unknow, courtesy of Annie Keogh, and advert for J.R.Stevenson’s, 1908 from the Souvenir of the Grand Wesleyan Church Bazaar, 1908, courtesy of Philip Lloyd

*Almost a century of cutting hair on Wilbraham Road with the Stevenson family, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/almost-century-of-cutting-hair-on.html

**"Stylist to the Stars" is a lift from Carol Ardern's shop at All Saints who proudly proclaimed its connection to show business in the 1970s.

Synagogues ….. churches …… an Ice Rink and plenty more …. on the trail of Cheetham Hill Road

I never knew that old Cheetham Hill Road with its mix of synagogues, churches, densely packed houses, as well, schools, shops, and the Ice Rink.

Looking up Cheetham Hill Road, 1935

And despite having washed up in the city in 1969 it wouldn’t be till the mid-1980s that I wandered up Ducie Street and on to Cheetham Hill Road taking in bits of Redbank and Strangeways.

Since then, I have been back a few times, and the place remains a busy place.

True there are plenty of empty spaces which have been taken over by car parks, but in between there are heaps of small businesses, occupying some of the surviving old properties as well as specially designed single storey buildings.

You can take your pick of garment manufactures and retailers as well as garages, restaurants and offices.

Walking up Lord Street, 2025

Step off the main road and it is much the same story, but 21st regeneration is creeping up from the River Irk.

Looking down Cheetham Hill Road, 2025

So, Redbank is now the Green Quarter and where crummy houses squeezed between warehouses and factories, tall new residential properties are reaching up to the sky with manicured lawns and open spaces, with new street names.

And now there are plans for something new for Strangeways.

In March of 2025 Manchester City Council released details of a joint development plan with Salford City Council for “a programme of investment which could see up to 7,000 new homes across seven distinct ‘neighbourhood’ areas, [with] increased commercial floorspace of around 1.75m sq ft, [which] could support an additional 4,500 jobs”.*

Bent Street, 2025

It looks exciting and is in line with the last two decades of development which have seen many parts of the twin cities transformed with new residential, and commercial properties which have drastically altered the skyline.

I did rather great carried away with the bold plan and described Strangways as a place waiting for something to happen.

And that was a bit unfair given just how much is going on already, and just how varied and quirky are the businesses occupying the area.

So not more than a few minutes away from Big Image which is really a small garment business on Empire Street there is the Yard at Bent Street,  which is “A space where music and art thrive, and where creative industry start-ups and established pros can shake off the tired and let go of the expected*”*.

Empire Street, fashions, 2025

And close by the Brewery of Joseph Holt.

Watching, Cheetham Hill Road, 2025

Added to these there are bits of the past, from that Ice Rink, the former New Synagogue, Jewish Soup Kitchen and the Torah School which is now home to the Yard.

All of which suggests more walks looking for the historic Strangeways.

Location; off Cheetham Hill Road

Pictures; walking the streets of Strangeways, 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Cheetham Hill Road, 1935, m16264, , courtesy of Manchester Archives and Local History Library, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester City Council, Manchester and Salford present draft proposals for major Strangeways and Cambridge regeneration, March 2025, https://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/9657/manchester_and_salford_present_draft_proposals_for_major_strangeways_and_cambridge_regeneration

The former New Synagogue, Cheetham Hill Road, 2025

** The Yard, https://www.theyardmcr.com/

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... a revolution on wash day

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now this was Dad's welcoming present to 294 when we moved in in 1964.

I say Dad's but the reality will be that it will have been mum who insisted on this piece of cutting edge technology.

And with that "keyplate" which "automatically selects the right water temperature, the right washing action, the right number of rinses and the right spin-drying time for what ever wash you are doing" we could really feel the future had arrived.

And on top of all that here was a front loading machine which was already plumbed in and needed no endless filling of water buckets to put into the machine.

I could also comment on the rather sexist headline but won't.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; advert for the Hoover Keymatic, The Observer Magazine January 30 1966 from the collection of Andrew Simpson







*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, 

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 6. ......... across the village green

I doubt that anyone will remember the corner shop across the green when Mr Unsworth sold his meat from the place, and at present I don’t know the history of the shop from 1911 till 1969.

In that year it was J McNicholls, the hairdresser and a little under a decade later I got my haircut by Bob who ran the shop.

Sometime in the 1980s or later Bob sold up and moved to Norfolk.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; the shop, 1983, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A ghost cinema and a family home ……. Barlow Moor Road …. 1962

There will be plenty of people who instantly recognise the scene.

We are on Barlow Moor Road, and for many the large impressive building with its tiled faced will bring back memories of the cinema.

For this was the Palais de Luxe, which was opened in 1914, changed its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed  eleven years later.

After which the building was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.

This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.

Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.

Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.

But for many it will always be the picture palace, and carried the distinction of being our first purpose built cinema, having seen off the  Chorlton Pavilion and Winter Gardens on Wilbraham Road, which in turn had done for the Picturedrome on Longford Road.

I missed it by just 20 or so years, but have written about it over the years along with all the Chorlton picture houses, and even uncovered the remains of the plaster features above the screen which still survived in the upstairs area of the former supermarket.*

And there will also be many who can reel off the various retail businesses which inhabited the building to the left, and which was once home to Douglas Cook who lived there in the 1940s and remembers, “living in the detached house right next to the cinema, on the corner of Malton Avenue and Barlow Moor Road, no 477, so the cinema wall formed one side of our garden. I went to the Burnage High School for Boys and also the Wilbraham School of Music in High Lane.”

And that I think is enough for now.

Location; Chorlton

Picture a ghost cinema and a family home, 1962-3801.4, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Hanburys shopping bag, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill

*Chorlton Cinemas, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20cinemas

See here the villains of the piece …….. trolley buses and motor buses kill off the tram

Now I have no love for the trolley bus ……… and remember too many journeys where I felt ill soon after we boarded.

I think it was a combination of the quiet purr, the smell of disinfectant and seat fabric, topped off by the heat.

All of which makes me feel no compunction about citing them along with the motor bus as complicit in the killing off of the Corporation trams which for more than a half century dominated the way we travelled, in Manchester and London as well as Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool and heaps of other places.

Here in Manchester as early as the 1920s plans were hatched to do away with the tram, and that plan took a pace during the 1930s, only slowed down by the Second World War.

The trolley bus required no rails which needed maintenance, and the bus had the flexibility that it could alter its routes unhindered by those rails or overhead cables.

I was born in the year that the last Manchester tram ran its last journey and while those in London lingered on a few more years I have no memory of being taken for a ride on one.

So, I can’t testify to how comfortable they were to travel in but judging by the public’s outburst of affection at their demise, and the continuing interest in these stately towers of transport I wish I had done at least one journey in one.

But perhaps I am surrendering to the same romantic tosh that is reserved for the steam railway locomotive.

I never tire of that smell of steam and warm oil but remember mother’s realistic comment about the effect of that plume of dirty smoke and hot cinders on a line of clean washing.

And there were plenty who put the blame for the awful traffic congestion in the wake of a new road scheme in 1938 at the foot of the humble Corporation tram.

The scheme which saw a one-way system around the city centre was dogged by traffic congestion, which both the Transport Committee and the Congestion Committee of the City Council put down to the tram car.

Sir William Davy, chairman of the Transport Committee argued that “The new scheme now appeared to be working fairly satisfactorily, but that there could be no doubt that matters would be considerably improved if they were in a position to dispense with the trams”.*

A position endorsed by Councillor Hugh Lee, chairman of the traffic Congestion Committee, and Mr. J Maxwell, Chief Constable, also emphasised the view "that most of the difficulties with which they were confronted could be traced to the tram cars, [which  included] the nuisance of a permanent tram track in the middle of the road and to the impracticability of establishing roundabouts in the streets where they would be useful because of the existence of the tram services.”

So, there you have it.  I am the first to acknowledge that the economic, and traffic considerations which doomed the tram were the main reasons for their demise, leaving the bus and the trolley bus as complicit in the departure of the tram from our streets.

Pictures; Manchester Corporation Trolley Bus, 1955, m48371, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Manchester Corporation Bus, 1961, Glossop, Manchester Corporation Tram, somewhere in the city, date unknown and Manchester Corporation Trolley Bus, 1961 Denton from the collection of Allan Brown

*The One-Way Route @Abolish the Trams’, the Manchester Guardian, June 15th, 1938