Claude Road and a clue to the vanished Beech House

The date on this postcard of Claude Road is 1915 but the scene must be earlier.

On the surface it seems an unremarkable image.

It would look to be a morning perhaps in the holidays and the peace is disturbed only by the children playing close to Beech Road and the appearance of the delivery man who has attracted the woman on the right who I guess has come out of her house to catch him.

It is not unlike the same scene today with of course the absence of parked cars and passing traffic. But what does make it remarkable and dates the photograph to sometime in the first decade of the 20th century is the wall and gateway at the bottom of Claude Road where it joins Beech Road.

They are part of Beech House which had stood in its own extensive grounds since at least the 1830s.

Three generations of the Holt family had lived there but the last had died in 1906, and by 1908 the house was empty and the estate was awaiting sale. By sheer chance a postcard showing the lodge has survived. 

The message records a pleasant afternoon spent in the grounds and the speculation that it was soon to disappear. “Edith and I had tea on the lawn of the big house which you see the lodge in the picture. It will soon be sold and then will probably be divided into small plots.”

By the following year part of the garden which ran the length of Barlow Moor Road as far as High Lane had been bought by Manchester Corporation who felled the trees demolished the wall and built the tram terminus on the land. 

The remaining land was developed with the cinema and a row of shops and the garage of Mr Shaw.

But we can be even more precise about the date of our photograph. Claude Road and its neighbouring Reynard had been built by 1907 and the estate wall demolished in 1909.

So that little detail of wall anchors our photograph and provides a view of Beech Road that has gone forever.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester

Picture, from the Lloyd collection circa 1907-09

Snaps of Chorlton No 8 the loss of Rowe House

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

Row House had stood on the corner of Beech and Acres Road from the early 19th century.

It had been home to the Blomely’s who also gave their name to the fish pond which stretched up Beech Road, and was later lived in by William Batty, politician, jeweller and Methodist

For a while the house was also used as our “Penny Reading Room”, while the adjoining building had been a laundry and factory.

None of which saved it from the developer.

Picture; from the collection of Lawrence Beedle

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 154 ..... one day in the kitchen and a look back

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Seven A.M

Kitchen's change, dictated by fashion the changing needs of the house and the family that occupy it.

Eight A.M

Ours has undergone four transformations in 50 years.

The first ripped out the original from when the house was built in 1915, creating a bland utilitarain space.

This was followed by that 70's love affair for white tiled units on reclaimed brick which gave way to wood and a natural wooden floor.

All were bespoke and with an eye to the aquistion of more and more electrical goods saw more and more power points added to the walls.

Finally we called in the experts to design kitchen number five.

Ten past ten

2019

Along the way we discovered the house had been designed for an old fashioned kitchen range, but Joe and Mary side stepped the installation and instead went for a free standing cooker.

And in its first sixty years the kitchen had just three power points and a dark scullery with a tiny window looking out into the garden.

Over the years we added a variety of fridges and freezers culminating in those big double door leviathans. 

To these were added a heap of labour saving and fashionable appliances many of which have gone, including the toaster, electric kettle and microwave.

All of which reflects the history of the domestic kitchen in one room in one house.

That said we never knocked through into the dinning room, or created the "hatch".

Both of which turned out to be very sensible as all the kids came back and spent the statutory year and a bit with us.

And confimed my belief that the best you can do with an old house is respect the original design which often as not got it right ...... except for the power points.

2009

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; One day in the kitchen and a bit more, 2019-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/08/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

Snaps of Chorlton No 2 Beech Road, 1935 King George V’s Jubilee

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

Beech Road, 1935

Today we are on Beech Road during the Jubilee of King George V.  I cannot be exact but it will have been between May 6th and May 12th.

It was taken by Marjorie’s sister sometime in the afternoon.

Despite its’ lack of clarity there is enough here to give us a flavour of Beech Road in the 1930s.

To our immediate left is the wall in front of Row House and the adjoining building which by 1929 was the Grange Laundry.  And beyond on the corner of Acres Road was William Allen the iron monger’s who has dropped his canopy to shield the shop from the bright spring sunshine and like all the shop keepers of the period has some at least of his wares on display outside.

It is a fine May day and the bright sunshine has brought out the people, even so there is enough of a breeze to lift the flag and bunting.

And I suppose the thing that most marks this off from today is the absence of cars.  There well away up Beech Road at the corner of Chequers Road is the only one.

What also makes the picture just that little bit more priceless is that the young girl in the foreground is Marjorie.

Picture; Beech Road, 1935, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes

Summer days in south Manchester No 3 the Chorlton Peace Festival 1984

It is an event I have visited before, but it is well worth another outing.*

It was at the height of the second Cold War when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place.

Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

So there we were in the Rec on a hot day listening to music, engaged in some politics but above all just relaxing with friends and family.

And having posted the story someone left a comment who helped organise the event and reminded me that there had been a badge designed for the event, which I have, and decided to update the piece with a picture.

It was a designed by Jim De Santos.

Location; The Rec

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, and Andrew Simpson

*Dangerous times and peaceful protests, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/dangerous-times-and-peaceful-protests.html

School’s out for summer …. the day after

The summer term ended with strong sunshine and a party in the Rec.

Heaps of kids, parents and picnic stuff spread out across the grass and all was fun, play and noise.

Saturday came with rain, and the reminders from the day before.

One discarded Brookburn sweatshirt and rubbish bins appropriately filled to the brim and three abandoned tyres.

Location; The Rec, 

Pictures; School’s out for summer, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One place …. just 87 years apart ….. Beech Road 1935 …. 2022

The blog doesn’t usually do then and now pictures.

Beech Road, 1935

But this one which was taken by the sister of Marjorie Holmes is a favourite of mine.

It is a bit blurred but that is what comes with a “snap”, but then the quality of the second is only marginally better.

 The first was taken during the Jubilee celebrations for King George V in 1935 and mine just a few days ago.

I will leave it to others to make the obvious observation and repeat that request for more “snaps” of where we live.

For those interested behind the wall on the left of Marjorie's picture was still a laundry, while what is now Suburban Green, had been variously an ironmonger's, a hair dressers and even a piano shop before settling down to its long association as a bar and restaurant in the mid 1980s.

Beech Road, 2022

The first of which was Café on the Green.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Beech Road, 1935, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes, and in 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The sweetness of doing nothing …….

There is an Italian saying ….. “La dolcezza del non fare niente” which simply translates into the “The sweetness of doing nothing” …….

In the Rec, at Beech Road and on the Green, yesterday.

Location, around Beech Road

Pictures; The sweetness of doing nothing, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 

That mystery house on Beech Road ........

Now number 121 Beech Road vanished a long time ago.

Hunts Croft, circa, 1960s

It was one of our more elegant early 19th century properties which was set back from Beech Road, and went sometime in the 1970s.

For a long time after its demolition the land was left an open space, with the occasional suggestion that it could be a car park, a project which came to nought when the Corporation and the local traders couldn’t agree on a funding package.

There will be a few people who remember it, but sadly I am not one of them, which means it had gone before I arrived in 1976 or like so many things I was just not that observant back then.

Either way, there is little to mark its presence, save an entry in the tithe schedule for 1845, the Rate books and official maps.

If I have this right, it was Hunt Croft House and in 1845 was the residence of Thomas White who rented it from the Lloyd Estate.

With a lot of digging it will be possible to track its history through the 19th century till its demolition. I know that in 1969 it was occupied by a Frances. J Casse, and in 1911 by Mr and Mrs Chester, their five children, and a boarder.

Looking into the garden, circa 1970s

The house had nine rooms with a biggish garden at the front, ending in a tallish stone wall which ran along Beech Road.

Back in the mid 19th century it looked at on fields.  From the rear Mr White could look out on a field and orchard, while from his front windows he could gaze across to Row Acre, which stretched up to High Lane.

But by the 20th century the fields had all gone, and on either side of this fine old house were shops.

Beech Road, circa 1970s

And here I must admit my mistake, because for years I had mistaken Croft House for Joel View which stood a little further down the road and had been built in 1859.

Many will remember Joel View as the property owned by J Johnny, which I assumed had been built much later.

I even compounded the mistake by arguing that the stone tablet which carried the  name of Joel View had been salvaged from Mr White’s former home and been added to J. Johnny’s.

Dating the picture

Now, even then I knew that this was pushing it, because our own historian Thomas Ellwood had written that Joel View was one of the new developments in the township at the end of the 1850s.

All of which goes to show that sometimes when it is easy to ignore the obvious and create an elaborate theory which is built on sand and that is really just a lead in to two pictures of Hunt’s Croft sent to me by Roger Shelley who took them sometime in the 1970s and which had lain in his negative box until yesterday.

The two images compliment an earlier one taken by N. Fife for which I don’t have a date for, but maybe from the 1960s.

That said it might be possible to date Roger’s pictures, from the shop which is up for sale.  This had been Mr Westwell’s fruit and greengrocer shop in 1969, but sometime in the next decade became The Village Wholefood Shop.

Hunt's Croft demolished, circa 1979-early 1980s

It was still trading when I took a picture around 1979, showing the shop and the site which had once been Hunts Croft.

So that is it for now, although I am hoping Roger has more pictures.

Location; Chorlton



Pictures; Hunts Croft circa 1960s, courtesy of N Fife, the Lloyd Collection and again circa 1970s from the collection of Roger Shelley, and after it had been demolished circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Chorlton Row, a road half as old as time

You have to get up early to see Beech Road at its best, preferably on a spring or summer morning when there is no traffic on the road.

 Only then can you can get a real sense of how it twists and turns following long forgotten obstacles like the old beech tree which stood for most of the 19th century almost opposite Reeves Road and the field boundaries which cut into the road.

For me the best vantage point is at the corner of Wilton Road by the railings of the Rec. Look up towards Barlow Moor Road and its twists and turns more than once, while its lazy route down to the green is even more pronounced.

I guess it will be almost as old as time, linking Barlow Moor Road with the village green and in probability was there before the Tudor buildings which include the Horse & Jockey. Various dates have been suggested for the block but its position beside the road as it turns onto the green would suggest that it post dates the road.

Picture; detail from the 1854 OS by kind permission of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Will those responsible ……… return the drinking fountain to the Rec on Beech Road

It is one of those silly stories which started with a couple of pictures of the Rec in the early morning.

Early morning on the Rec, 2021

And progressed through to a newspaper report from September 1897 of an ordinary meeting of the Withington Urban District Council at which Mr. Burgess “intimated that a gentleman in Manchester, whose name he would not at present mention, had offered to give a drinking fountain to be placed in Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.*

I had been looking for information about the early years of the Recreation Ground on Beech Road.**

It had been opened in the May of 1896, and was gift form Lord Egerton of a strip of land which had for centuries been known as Row Acre.***

And here I went very  wrong, because so engrossed was I in the research that the fountain and the Rec came together and for a brief while I went searching for just where the drinking fountain might have been located on what is now called Beech Road Park.

Waiting for something to happen, 2021

All of which will allow Mr. Pedantic of Provis Road to mumble that the story is a nonsense, and artificially connects pictures of the Rec on a Tuesday morning with the real drinking fountain which was on Chorlton Green.

And he would be right, leaving me to reflect on that earlier bit of public open space which is surrounded by two pubs, the old parish burial ground, the village school along with two former farm houses.

Today most of us think of Chorlton green as an open space of grass ringed by trees but this was not how it has always been.

Before the turn of the 19th century it may have been much bigger and indeed for most of that century was not even open to the people of the village, having been enclosed by Samuel Wilton and not returned to public use until the 1890s.

And then for a great stretch of time remained without grass but did have a pretty neat water fountain.

The Green, circa 1900

The picture dates from 1906 when the Horse and Jockey was still just a set of beer rooms on either side of the main door, Miss Wilton’s outhouse still jutted out from the building and the space between the main entrance and the sweet shop was still a private residence.

I have always liked the lamp which stands on the green, with its hint of Narnia.

And back in the May of 1986 I can remember walking past it in the early evening and coming across a string quartet playing around its base.  Today people would just take it in their stride mutter something about it being typically Chorlton, but back then it struck me as the promise of things to come.

Which later that night with the defeat of the Conservative candidate and the election of the first Labour Councillor it  indeed seem to herald something new.

But being a historian I have to own up to the fact that the following year the Conservatives were back but they were on borrowed time, and 1987 marked the final year that a Conservative would be elected from Chorlton to the Town Hall.

The year before may have been the first string quartet on the green but it has not been the last.

The drinking fountain, circa 190o

I have to say I prefer the grass but lament the loss of the fountain.  

First it lost its cups and then vanished sometime in the 1920s or 30s.  To my mind that was a loss.  Public fountains are wonderful places to meet people, spend time chatting and just having a drink on a hot day.

Once it would have been the village pump which offered all three and which on hot summer days had the added bonus of a place the kids could play.

Now there is a lot more history to explore in the photograph of the fountain but I rather think I will leave that for another time.

To which Michael Wood has added, "My recollection is that the fountain on the rec was located centrally outside the shelter, as on the attached snip from the georeferenced maps website showing OS 25” 1892-1914 series.  

It was the same design as was used in Chorlton Park near the tennis courts, a perfunctory iron structure with domed hoods over the outlets, operated by a button on top -  nothing like the elaborate ornamental feature on the Green.  Can’t find an image at the moment, but I could draw one!  

The Rec, 1914

They must have been a common municipal feature in their time, but by the mid-sixties they were semi-functioning or defunct. "

And I hope he does, as it is I never knew about the bandstand.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Rec very early on a Tuesday morning from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the drinking fountain on the green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection

*District Councils, Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1897

**Public Recreation Grounds at Withington, Manchester Guardian, May 18th, 1896

***Breaking News ……….. the Rec on Beech Road is officially opened, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/breaking-news-rec-on-beech-road-is.html

Jack Beasley ……… his collection of Chorlton pictures ……. and a story … part 1

This is Chequers Road, sometime in the 1940s.

Chequers Road/Church Road circa 1940s

Of course, back then it was Church Road, and it is one of a remarkable collection of family snaps belonging to Kirsty.

Her family have lived in Chorlton for over 80 years and many of the photographs are of this one road

Her dad lived at number 41, and as they say the cross in the picture marks the spot.

Walk along the road today and the scene is pretty much the same, barring the inevitable number of cars and the lack of net curtains which were still a badge of respectability.

Outside 39 Church Road, with the "criss cross brown paper", circa 1939-45

Now if I wanted to hazard a guess, I think our picture will predate 1939, or certainly have been taken after 1945.

And the clue is in the absence of “the criss cross brown paper anti blast tape at the windows”, which Jack Beasley refers to on another of the pictures which was taken in the garden of 39 Church Road during the last world war.

The group consist of “Gerald Booth left, Jack Beasley, right, Gerald Vodon, [below] left, and Phyllis Vodon, [below] right”.

 Flo Beasley, date unknown

I know Kirsty has done some family research and the stories of the four will feature later, but for now I am intrigued by the unknown woman posing with a bunch of flowers.

I think she will be in the front garden of number 43, because comparing the image with others the front gate behind her is a match for number 41.*

And a trawl of the 1939 Register shows a Mrs Pauline Donbavand listed as living there along with her husband and Walter Meadows who was a Police Constable.

Pauline gave her occupation as a “Theatre Usherette”, had been born in 1909 and was two years younger than her husband.  

There is a slight confusion of the spelling of her surname which is a little unclear from the official record and Police Constable Meadows is listed as married but his wife is missing.

But like census returns, the 1939 Register was conducted on one night in early September and Mrs Meadows may have been elsewhere.

Added to which our unknown lady may not be Mrs Donbavand.  

According to Kirsty  she  could actually be  "my grandmother Flo Beasley", and certainly looking at family photographs there is a resemblance between the lady with the flowers and her grandmother.

So I rather think that is our mystery woman.

Outside 41/43 Church Road, date unknown

Equally intriguing is the way that some entries are redacted, so while Florence, Lilian and George Beasley appear, another two are hidden from view. 

That said I know that Florence was a “Bedding Machinist”, Lillian a “Shorthand typist” and George a "sapper" in the “Royal Engineers”, added to which an official returned to the list and changed Lillian’s status from single to married and including her new surname of Symonds.

There was nothing odd in the official alterations, as the 1939 Register was a working document and was used both for compiling the war time Identity cards, and for the new National Health Service which came into being in 1948.

Leaving me just to reflect that 83 years ago the occupations of those on Church Road, included two “house painters and paper hangers” a “retired Foreman lamp lighter”, an “Electrical engineer” along with a "chimney sweep", "a salesman", and a lorry driver.  With these were the familiar “unpaid domestic duties” and with a nod to the war, an “Auxiliary Fireman based at No.158 Manchester", and a number of servicemen.

I wonder what a contemporary tally of occupations would reveal.

Location; Chequers Road/Church Road, Chorlton

Pictures; Church Road circa 1939-45, from the collection of Kirsty

*There is however one hiccup and that is the modern street numbers for 41 and 43, do not correspond to what I think was the case in 1939 which may mean there was a change of numbers after 1939 ..... or I have just got it wrong.

 

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 152 ….. birds …. Mr Gratrix …. and a pipe

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *

In the garden, 2025

Yesterday we had the crows.

Well, I think they were crows.  They were black made that distinctive caa, caa sound which was both loud and repetitive and stayed with us all day.

But then apart from robins, pigeons and magpies I would be hard pressed to identify any bird.

Back in the 1950s growing up in southeast London there were heaps of house sparrows, those brown small birds which were the backdrop to urban living.

Not that they seem to like us in our house.  

I can’t remember the last time there was one in our garden, which my Wikipedia confirms with the brutal observation that since the 1970s house sparrows have “declined by 68% overall and about 90% in some regions … [with] the RSPB listing the house sparrow’s UK status as red”**

Not so in the 1840s when our bit of land was rented by Samuel Gratrix who lived just a little east of us on the other corner of Beech and Beaumont.

Mr Gratix's farmhouse and his field to the left which is our house, 1854

His farm was known as Bowling Green farm and in total he rented seven acres of land.

Some, like our field was turned over to arable, but he also had pasture and meadowland along with an acre and a bit of orchard.

And I doubt he would have welcomed the sight of sparrows in his fields. 

They were particularly thought of as troublesome and a danger to the crops in the township, and so there had been a tradition of paying a bounty on each dead sparrow presented to the constable who paid the prize from the local funds.  

A dead sparrow or its head duly taken to the constable was worth a halfpenny each, while an egg brought in the lesser sum of a farthing.  For the young eager for a little spending money this was a wonderful incentive, although some enterprising young lads were less than honest when they found a few dead sparrows on a manure heap at Oak House Farm in 1843.  

The sparrows were given to John Brundrett who was the constable for the year, which had a tinge of irony given that it was his farm. ***  

The clay pipe, 2014

But already by the time of this great sparrow crime, the practice was on the way out.  Farmers were realizing that the bids actually performed a valuable service in eating insects which were more of a pest, and it was down to Thomas Cookson another constable and farmer up by Dark Lane to abolish the custom. 

Where in all of this were crows is yet to be discovered.

But I have always associated them was cold winter weather, which has more to do with a book I read in Junior three at school sometime around 1959. 

The book featured a young boy much my age living in the countryside in the 1920s.  Given the other reading books available to us I suspect mine dated from that decade, and what has stuck with me is the image of a desolate and empty country lane in the middle of December save for a pair of crows making their melancholy call to each other across a crisp landscape.

Along Beech Road, 2024

Of course there is no evidence that back then they were here, and all I do have for that time when Mr Gratrix farmed our garden is a small broken clay pipe, which may have been discarded by someone walking past the field or perhaps even by the man himself.  

That said it is equally likely to have come from a consignment of night soil transported here from Manchester and spread over the fields.

Looking for the butterfly, 2025

His close neighbour Mr. Bailey regularly bought the stuff to spread on his bit of land on the opposite side of Beech Road and we have a receipt for a ton which he bought in 1853.

None of which gets me closer to the crows, which today have left us, making the garden a quieter place, save for the occasional butterfly which flits from one plant to another, reminding me again of the abundance of such insects which occupied my growing up.

But that is for another day.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Photographs, 2014-2025 of our garden from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Mr Gratrix's field, 1844, from the OS Lancashire, 1844, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/11/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

**The House sparrow, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_sparrow

*** Ellwood, Chapter 8 Pace Egging & other customs, December 26th 1885

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 151 ….. building the boat

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Bare frame, 1977

I doubt that many in Chorlton can claim to have had a boat built in the back garden of their house.

But that was exactly what happened in Joe and Mary Ann's property.

And despite being a builder and building many of the more modest houses in Chorlton, it was not Joe who was responsible.

It was in fact John  who on death of Mary Ann bought the house, and after a year of "renovating" the place, set off n the grand plan of building a bout from scratch.

Just when he started is now unclear but by the time I washed up in the house in 1976 the hull had been constructed and the vessel turned upright.

That "turning" the vessel had involved all of us and as you do on completion turned into a party.

Jack & John, 1977

I think that would have been in the summer of '75 and project was finished in the Easter of 1978.

Jack, 1978

And of course building it was one thing, getting it out was another, which in turn led to the demolition of the side wall which was never rebuilt for another 30 years.

I remember the early stages had been done in the cellar with the bending of the ribs completed in the dining room.

Along the way John attracted the interest of Jack Harker, who being retired quickly found a new a role, as assistant, often completing  while we were all at work.

The boat was moored in North Wales, John sold up in 1979  only for me to move back a few years later.

Out and ready, 1978

In the interim John's two companions from the  house moved in with me and in turn helped me return.

To this day we still turn up the odd bit of glass fibre and blue resin in the garden which compliment the stains in the cellar.

And that is it.

Jack Harker, 1983

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; building a boat circa 1976 from the collection of Lois Elsden and Jack Harker, 1983 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Location; Beech Road

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/11/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

A second hand shop, a skiffle group called the Rattlenakes, and the Bee Gees

It started as a story on the second hand shops of Chorlton, and along the way someone mentioned Chorlton Curios which was quite a coincidence because in the Lloyd Collection there is a photograph of the shop along with the three owners.

The picture was taken in October 1978, and I am a little puzzled as to how it got into the collection.

The notes on the back are less than helpful, running simply to “Former Bee-Gees L TO R Paul Frost, Mrs Frost Kenny Horrocks Former Bee Gees”.

I remember the shop and we do have two coloured glass lamp shades which I think date from the 1930s and could have been bought from the place.

A little research turned up, that Mr Frost and Mr Horrocks played in the Rattlesnakes which lasted from 1957 into 1958.  

Paul Frost is listed as vocals and drums, Kenny Horrocks, vocals and tea-chest bass, and the line up was completed by Barry Alan Crompton Gibb, Robin Hugh Gibb and Maurice Ernest Gibb who respectively were vocals, acoustic guitar, and vocals, toy guitar.*

Now I wasn’t expecting that, and I rather think there will be lots more.

All of which just leaves me with how the picture got into the collection, and here I have a vague memory of my old and dear friend Allan Brown telling me that John Lloyd one of our local historians wrote articles for the Journal and on occasion borrowed pictures from the news desk.

If so it was one that was never returned, but that is a story for another day.

I have to confess to being a cautious chap, and so until I find Mr and Mrs Frost and Mr Horrocks to ask permission to show the picture, you dear reader, just get the shop front. 

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Chorlton Curios, October 1978, from the Lloyd Collection.

*The Bee Gees Family Tree, The British Sound, July 13 2011http://thebritishsound.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/bee-gees-family-tree.html