At the chippy on the green with Mrs Jones and "Chippy Madge"

Now I am always fascinated by those pictures which call up a rich seam of memories that cross the generations.

And this one pretty much does just that.  We are inside Chorlton Green Supper Bar sometime in the late 1960s courtesy of Bob Jones.

Just a few years later it would be one of my regular haunts and later still the chosen chippy of my lads.

And I will not be alone in remembering that tiny room with the tiled counter and steamed up windows with the bright lights and promise of something good to eat.

Even now nothing is quite like going into a chip shop on a cold winter’s evening.

It starts with that wall of heat and then the distinctive smell, along with the noise of the chips in the deep fryer and the rustle of paper.

And there is also the conversations which are a mix of the humorous, the mundane and usually a little of the village gossip.

Of course most of what is said might well be repeated over the counter of the newsagents and in the pub but waiting in line for your supper offers up plenty of time to listen to what is being said and an opportunity to add your own contribution.

Now I am old enough to remember getting your chips in newspaper and then walking home on dark nights with that double pleasure which came not only from eating the chips but from holding the bag which kept your hands warm.

So Bob’s picture is just that bit special, more so because on the right is his mum and on the left “Chippy Madge.”

All too often photographs like this one get lost over time and with it go a tiny but important record of how things were.

And it is the little often trivial things, like the name “Chippy Madge” and “Blind Bob the Barber”, which say something about the time and the place.

The nicknames were rarely meant to be cruel and were just one of those things that you said.

Madge worked in the chip shop and her name was Madge so “Chippy Madge” it was, and more often than not there would be a raft of such names for everyone from the milkman to the chap who came round to sharpen your knives.

I may not get out as often these days or visit as many places but I rather think such names are no longer as common and that is a shame.

Picture; Mrs Jones and “Chippy Madge” circa 1960s courtesy of Bob Jones, and the Chorlton Green Supper Bar 1978 from the collection of Tony Walker.

The story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries ...... part 4 Samuel and Sarah Nixon, Mr Hayes, Mrs Lothian and the Bone Man

Number 70 2013

The continuing story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries*

Number 70 Beech Road has been home to many businesses since it opened as a beer shop in 1832 and of all the people who lived there it is the Nixon’s who we know most about.

Now this is all the remarkable given that they occupied the house from the 1840s but that is often how historical research pans out.

Sadly closer to our own time much that would reveal the lives of people are locked away and subject to that 100 year rule.

But the records offer up much about the Nixon’s.

Samuel was born in Staffordshire in 1817 and by the 1830s his father was running that pub across the river by Jackson’s boat.

Mr and Mrs Nixon

In 1842 Samuel married Sarah Ann Mason whose father and grandfather ran the Bowling Green during the first three decades of the 19th century and also described themselves as Land Surveyors.

Given that both came from the pub trade it is not surprising that they took over the tenancy of the beer shop sometime around 1842 and continued running it till their deaths.

Samuel died in 1877 and Sarah Ann in 1886 and were buried in the parish church year where their gravestone can still be seen.

Their eldest son went on to run the stationer’s and post office next door and his son established the newsagents on the corner of Beech and Chequers Road.  Lionel the grandson married Hilda Brownlow whose family had made and mended wheels from their business at Lane End.

The Travellers Rest, circa 1901

Number 70 continued a beer shop until the early years of the 20th century and we can track a number of tenants, including a Mr Valentine and Mr Hayes of which the second presents one of those intriguing little mysteries.

For in 1891 Mr Hayes was selling his beer at number 70 Beech Road which had changed its name from the Travellers Rest to the Trevor Arms not that this lasted for long for when Mr Hayes moved across the road to run a rival beer shop he took the name with him and the old and familiar name of the Travellers Rest reappeared.

And after Mr Hayes and Mr Valentine we enter one of those periods where the building  was pretty much all things to all people.

Mr Riddle ran his upholstery business there from around 1909 onwards and two decades later the widow
Mrs Lothian was offering up prime fish for sale and continued to do into 1936.

Now she had lived at one time or another on Brundrettes, Chequers,  and Wilbraham Road before settling down on Whitelow and I am intrigued by the hint that she may have run two shops, for along with number 70 she is listed at various addresses along Wilbraham Road  during the same period.

She died in 1953 leaving £1074 to her daughters.

Bob Jones circa 1950s

By then our building had for a while become a pet shop run by Mr Jones and it is to his son Bob that I owe the story of the bone man.

Unlike pet shops today Mr Jones offered an extra service which was the humane disposal of loved animals.

Mr Jones would put them in a specially designed box and fed in a lethal dose leaving his son Bob to hand over the remains to the Bone Man who made regular calls.

Now over its long 183 years there will have been plenty of others who made this place their home and I guess their stories will be rediscovered in the course of time.

Pictures, number 70, 2013 and gravestone of Mr and Mrs Nixon, 2010, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, in 1958, as the Travellers Rest circa 1901 in 1979 from the collection of Tony Walker, taken R.E. Stanley, m17658, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass   and Bob Jones outside Mr Neil’s shop sometime in the 1950s,opposite number 70 from the collection of Bob Jones.

*The continuing story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-story-of-one-building-in-chorlton_16.html

Stevenson's the hairdressers, cutting and styling from 1909 on Wilbraham Road

Now just a couple of years ago there was a discussion on which was the oldest shop in Chorlton still trading under its original name.

Steph, Gwen and Janet in 1963

Most people opted for Burt’s on the corner of Wilbraham and Keppel Road which was open for the sale of Gentleman’s clothes, including ties, suits and shirts by 1909.

Sadly it has gone, but until relatively recently it would have been challenged by Stevenson’s the hairdressers which was operating five doors down at the same time.

Today the property is undergoing a makeover having been a cafe and last time I passed it was still empty but with some signs that work was in progress.

I was reminded of Stevenson’s when Bob Jones sent me a collection of pictures of his wife and colleagues in the shop sometime in the mid 1960s.

It was a place I remember because for a while someone I knew also worked there during the early 80s.

I am not sure when it closed but there will be someone who can tell me.  I have a vague memory of it becoming a jewellers but that is about it.

But in the fullness of time all will be revealed including I hope stories of the shop in the 1960s and a picture of our three young stylists when they were reunited last year.

In the meantime Bob tells me that the original Mr Stevenson "bought the shop in a deal struck in the Horse and Jockey, that his wife owned a hosiery shop next door but one and that their son Robert Varley was born upstairs."

Now those  will be all  fascinating stories to follow .

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; three young stylists at Stevenson’s circa 1965, from the collection of Bob Jones.

A business card, a café and another Chorlton story

Now, over the years Bob Jones has shared some fascinating photographs from his collection, and the other day, these two popped into the inbox.

Bob’s dad ran the pet shop on Beech Road, which is now Franny and Filer but was once a beer shop, while Bob worked in the butcher’s shop directly opposite.

I knew his wife had worked at Stevenson’s the hairdressers on Wilbraham Road, but not that his dad had set up J.B. Luxury Cars … “Weddings Our Specialty”.

It was a joint venture with Robert Burgess who ran Bob’s Café at 137 Beech Road and looking at the picture of the car and driver, they were a class outfit.

I don’t have a date for either the business card, or the picture, but next time I ma in Central Ref, I will trawl the directories to fix the date which I suspect will be the early 1950s.

And that set me going on just what other businesses had occupied the two shops.

In the case of no. 70, it had been the Traveler’s Rest from the early 1830s into the beginning of the 20th century, when it was occupied by variety of different businesses, from an upholsterer, to pet shop, bakery and artist studio.

Across the road, there has been more continuity.  In the early part of the last century it was a tobacconist and sweet shop and I can track it through a Mr. William Cheetham from at least 1903, to Mrs. Dorothy Kraus in 1911, and a Mrs. Bertha Hooley in 1939.

After which there is a gap, which again will have to rectified by researching the directories.

In the 1950s, it was Bob’s Café, and in 1969 Benny’s snack bar.  More recently it was Miami Pizza and Chorlton Green Brasserie.

Just leaving me to make an appeal for the missing years, from 1969, into this century.


It is a gap even more frustrating because I will have passed it regularly through those decades, and can’t remember what it was, and sadly have no pictures.

Still someone will.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; from the collection of Bob Jones

Growing up in Chorlton part one, the Rec, Acres Crack and the Bone Man

Bob on Beech Road in the 1950s

I am back with a friend yesterday from whom has come a whole raft of new stories about Chorlton in the 1940s and 50.

Bob Jones was born in 1944 and grew up on Kingshill Road, attended Oswald Road School and has vivid memories of playing in the Rec, and the local farms and shops.

We joked that a test of someone born here or with long memories of the place is that at some point the Rec and Acres Crack feature in the conversation along with the Queen and Paisley Laundry, the Palais de Luxe and the distinction between old and new Chorlton.

Now I am not going to steal Bob’s thunder, but I shall just leave you with these tantalising glimpses of growing up in Chorlton in the 1950s.

Back then at the age of six Bob did a part time job which involvedthe collection the milk from Higginbotham’s farm on the green and later for Mr Neil the butcher at the bottom of Beech Road close to the Trevor.

His father ran a pet shop in that first little shop next to the Beech and each week one of his jobs was to hand over any animals that had been put down to the Bone Man.

All of which is enough for now.

Picture; Bob outside Mr Neil’s shop sometime in the 1950s, from the collection of Bob Jone.

When the Horse and Jockey had a football team

Now I have to say that I was a little intrigued when a story on the blog of the Horse and Jockey in the early 1970s was sent on its way across the social media under the caption of “before the pub became trendy.”

It was an interesting take on how the place has changed.

I rather liked the makeover when it was bought from the brewery some years ago and given the addition of a restaurant and micro brewery.

Of course not everyone likes change and I do have some reservations about the way it has gone since it became part of another brewery chain.

But for those few years after it became “the inn on the green” I did enjoy going in there not least because it was possible to think it back to something like it had been during the middle years of the 19th century when it was a much smaller place and doubled up for inquests.

All that said here is another picture from the collection of Bob Jones.

It dates from the 1970s and shows the pub football team and I am equally intrigued by Bob's comment that "one of the barman we called chopper, his son is on this picture and I would be interested to see if any come up with other names."

After all after his story on "Chippy Madge" we had "Blind Bob the barber", and "Bob the cobbler."

So I await the stories, memories and follow up photographs, which point to the fact that history can be about any time,, any event and just plain fun.

And Bob who lent me the photograph has followed it up with the names of some of the team including another of those wonderful nicknames.
"Rod Hudson right of the cup Malc Dawes bottom row right, fag in hand.

Bob Jones E and F DAWES Insurance Agents & Companies. 35 Liverpool Road m/c The above was run by Farther and Malc and Paul sons for many years , at football.

Malc’s  nick name was the Mars Bar kid as he always had one in his mouth, they lived in Chorlton
Bob Jones Terry Tynan Ralf Darlinton Barry Brunton."

Keep the pictures coming Bob and thank you.

Picture; the Horse and Jockey football team sometime in the 1970s, from the collection of Bob Jones

Trying to unpick the mystery of S.J. Lowe Tobacconists, and Newsagents

I doubt now that I will ever be able to uncover the story behind the picture.

It comes from the collection of Bob Jones, and must date from the early years of the last century.

But there is no name or comment on the back to give us a clue and little in the picture to suggest a place or time.

The stone facing above the shop window makes me think we are not in Manchester and some of Bob’s family came from Yorkshire and the North East but that pretty much is that.

So far a search for S. J. Lowe has not brought up any promising leads and we are left with the shop itself.

I went looking for the magazine Fashion for All which are advertised below the window, but I drew another blank.

Now there may be someone who can date the picture from the style of advertising on the window or the chocolate box in the display but I doubt it.

So for the time being  it is a photograph which stubbornly does not give up its secrets.

And yet it remains a wonderful record of what a newsagents would have been like when my grandfather was growing up.

And it seems I may have got the title of that magazine wrong.  Both Angie and Ken Fish thought it might be Home Fashion.

Ken went on to do some digging and discovered that Home Fashion was  published by Harmsworth in the 1920s.

All of which might place our picture later than I thought.

I just love the way these stories just run and run.

Picture; S. J. Lowe, Tobacconists, and Newsagents, date unknown, courtesy of Bob Jones

Who else remembers "Chippy Madge"?

Now it is one of those rare pleasures to watch as a story brings out a shed full of memories.

"Chippy Madge" and Mrs Jones sometime in in the 1960s 

I don’t think either Bob who supplied the picture and the memories or me expected yesterday’s post on
"Chippy Madge" would bring forth such a rich series of comments but it did.

There were those who wrote of getting “6p of chips old money and asking for Scrapings that had come off the fish,” and going every Friday night to the “chippy on the green” and even on very special occasions of eating in the back room.

But it was Madge and the use of nicknames that was more fascinating.  It seems that Madge had a daughter “who moved to Blackpool and whose husband was called Bob the cobbler.”

And along with Blind Bob the Barber on the green there was Bob Jackson who was known as Bob the Barber, and the man from the chip shop on Beech Road who “the kids called Pop Eye, because he had very large bulging eyes and glasses like milk bottle ends.”

I think it will be one of those that runs and runs, and long may it do so, for what starts as just a few nick names can turn into a full set of stories of how we used live and by extension just how different things have become.

Picture; Mrs Jones and “Chippy Madge” from the collection of Bob Jones