Withy Grove Records ….. one building on Thomas Street … and John and Betsy Greenwood

 I am standing outside number 5 Thomas Street thinking of going into Withy Grove Records which will be a treat.

Withy Grove Records, 2026

I belong to that generation that bought vinyl.  Of course, back then I doubt I ever used the word vinyl. They were just records, coming as singles, E.P.s or L.P.s, and they are still my chosen way of listening to my music.

Selling the vinyl, 2026

True I have an equally large collection of CD’s but there is something different in putting the L.P. on the deck and listening to the sound which comes with all those scratches, which I can still place alongside the girlfriend I was with at the time.

Despite the temptation I didn’t go in and instead turned my attention to the building which I reckoned has some history.

Throughout the late 19th century into the 20th shop appears to have been part of one premises which included 42 Shudehill and round into Thomas Street as far as Salmon Street.

It was occupied by the firm of Joseph Brook wholesale druggist and drysalter and for those unfamiliar with the word drysalter my Wikipedia tells me that they “were dealers in a range of chemical products, including glue, varnish, dye and colourings. 

They might supply salt or chemicals for preserving food and sometimes also sold pickles, dried meat or related items. The name drysalter or dry-salter was in use in the United Kingdom by the early 18th century when some drysalters concentrated on ingredients for producing dyes, and it was still current in the first part of the 20th century”.*

So far, I can track them in this building from 1851 to 1929 and with more research it should be possible to pinpoint when the firm vacated the site.

The Drysalters on Thomas Street, 1888

I rather think that this makes it over 170 years old and begs the question of when it was built.  And that I think might be around 1850.  Adshead’s map of 1851 and Goad’s Fire Insurance map from 1888 show it as one building and despite what appears to have been serious rebuilding at the Salmon Street side, it does still look like one original construction.

The 1850 street directory lists four distinct buildings facing onto Thomas Street, each with a different occupant, ranging from a surgeon, hairdresser, leather cutter and last maker, and this is confirmed by the OS map of 1849.

And it is the surgeon that offers up a bit of a mystery.  He was John Greenwood who in 1851 lived in the largest of the four.  He describes himself as “a surgeon, chemist and druggist”, and his actual address is listed around the corner in the same building which looked out on Shudehill at number 42.

Those four separate buildings, 1849

The rate books show that this property commanded a rateable value of £10 and a yearly rent of £12 compared to the other three in Thomas Street which were much lower.

Mr. Greenwood lived here with his wife two children, a house servant and a “shop boy for the chemist shop”.

But a decade later he has moved on which would fit with the theory of new build.

And here is the possible mystery, because according to the 1861 census he is alone and living as a lodger with six others at the Temperance Coffee House on Deansgate which was just down from Blackfriars Bridge.

As yet I can find no reference to his three children who would have been fifteen, thirteen and 12, while there is a suggestion that his wife had remarried, moved back to Yorkshire and had a new family.

All of which will demand more research and takes me away from Thomas Street, and Withy Vinyl, but then that’s how stories go.

Where we began, 2026

Location; Thomas Street

Pictures; Withy Grove Records, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Thomas Street in 1888 from Goad’s Fire Insurance maps and in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

*Drysalter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drysalter