The mystery at Ivygreen ..........

Now I know I am on Ivygreen Road and the date will be around 1980 but exactly where almost defeats me.

So, hence the mystery.

My very first inclination was that I took the pictures at the top end, but that wouldn’t have given me that clear view across to the pumping station.

All of which means that we are at the Bowling Green end, and this is the site of Allan Court.

And that offers up a surprise because it means that the blocks of flats post date my arrival, although I have no recollection of them being built.

But the entrance in the photograph corresponds to what is now the drive into the car park so I am fairly certain where I was on that winter day in 1980.

Added to which other pictures in the batch include views of the rear of the parish churchyard and a shot up St Clements Road to the village green.

So it follows that I was at the bottom of Ivygreen.

At which point there may be those that mutter about a non story, but not so, because both images give a very clear idea of what the meadows once looked like, before the trees and bushes were planted and before they matured to make it impossible to see far away across to the river.

All that we now need, is for someone to describe what had been here on this bit of land beside the road.

I rather think it was a builder’s yard which may have belonged to Joe Scott, and at one time also used by the Walker Brothers who later moved into the barn at Higginbotham’s Farm.

Well we shall see

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Ivygreen Road, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Another lesson in being more historical ……… and that graveyard mystery

I wish I had dated my old pictures more accurately.  

I took a lot in the late 1970s and early 80s and while I carefully saved the negatives, I was a tad careless in recording where and when they were taken.

They were all “smelly photography” by which I mean I developed the film and then by the magic of an enlarger and a tray of chemicals transformed the negatives into prints.

Which brings me to this much-loved image of the lych gate in the snow.

I posted it recently in the run up to Christmas, and causally added the date 1979.

But now I am not so sure, because the graveyard is pretty empty of the gravestones which were packed together and recorded over 300 burials from the mid-18th century.

Those memorials were still there in 1978 but clearly had vanished when I photographed the scene.

They were “lost” during the landscaping exercise which I have always placed in the early 1980s, and as if to confirm my thinking I came across another of my images dated 1980 showing the place before its renovation.

All of which is good because it means I can re-date my snow image but still raises questions of just when the landscaping happened, which in the absence of a date means a trawl of the local newspapers and an interrogation of old weather reports for snow in Chorlton.

For now I changed the date from 1979 to 1984, but that is only a guess.

Of course, someone might remember.

We shall see.

Location, Chorlton

Pictures; the lych gate, 1980 and at some other time from the collection of Andrew Simpson