Remembering the 1970s at Valentines on Barlow Moor Road

Now the 1970s come in for a fair amount of derision which I am not sure is fair.

It was like any other decade of the 20th century good and bad, happy and sad.

I have a bit of a fond spot for it.  I may have grown up in the “swinging 60s” but it was the following decade when I passed into adulthood, graduated, got a job and got married collecting a mortgage along the way.

So in terms of “rights of passage” I reckon the 70s may well be my decade.

Added to which despite all the fun and new horizons the swinging 60s didn’t always extend to my bit of south east London.

And if you wanted to make a claim for the decade that separated us from the past you might well go for sometime in the middle 1950s, when rationing came finally to an end, the consumer society really took off and there were a shed full of new ideas, styles, and music.

But then again my mum may well have made the same claims for the late 1930s and my dad for the decade before that.

So I shall just reflect on the newspaper advert that set me going.

It was sent to me by Graham Gill and perfectly shows off one side of the 1970s.

Here is the "Exotic Revue 1976" at Valentines on Barlow Moor Road.  “A TASTEFUL MIXTURE OF GIRLS, GLAMOUR , COMEDY with “MAN IN MIND”

And the rest I shall leave for people to read and await the comments and of course I shall also thank Graham whose collection I am in awe of.

Picture; Valentines, 1976 from the collection of Graham Gill

The day I thought I was in the country …… urban tales from Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now, the purist will immediately point out I was not in Chorlton nor the countryside.

But on a hot summer’s day sometime at the end of the 1970s I rather thought I was.

I had taken myself off across the meadows and discovered the old weir at that bend in the Mersey.

The weir had been built in the 18th century to break the force of a flood surge which might have damaged the aqueduct carrying the Duke’s Canal.

The river regularly flooded in earlier centuries and once in the 1840s the force of that surge was so strong it damaged the weir itself.

Even now the base of the weir can still be marshy and after a wet winter the water will stretch out into the surrounding land.

On the day I discovered the spot there was just a hint of water but enough for the cows who grazed on the grass.

And it was the cows, the pasture and the steeple that offered up the illusion of somewhere rural.

Although I did have to frame the picture to miss the tower block and get the chapel of Stretford Cemetery in the centre.*

And before any one sneers, .... yes the quality of the pictures was poor.  In my defence I was just beginning to develop and print images using smelly photography and the negatives have sat in our cellar for over 40 years.

Location; the meadows west of the Mersey, circa 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Stretford Cemetery, https://www.trafford.gov.uk/births-deaths-marriages-and-civil-partnerships/deaths/bereavement-burials-and-cremations/directory-cemeteries-trafford/stretford-cemetery

When Marilyn Monroe came to Chorlton

 It's the silly story that unites an actress, a gift shop and our house here in Chorlton.

The actress was Marilyn Monroe, the gift shop was the Flying Machine on Wilbraham Road and the house was on Beech Road.

To be more accurate Marilyn was a cardboard folding cut out of the American actress which l bought on impulse sometime around 1979.

It moved around the house having briefly spent a while on Reeves Road.

The Flying Machine was a wonderful cornucopia of odd things none of which were too expensive but most of them the sort of silly items which made you feel good.

I remember it being very crowded and always smelt of incense.

Ms. Munroe got to know the house, having once sat on an armchair in the front room and then by degree occupied the dinning room and the study before the ravages of time and the family dog consigned her to the cellar and eventually the bin.

Location; Beech Road,

Picture; Ms. Munroe visits Chorlton, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost stories from Chorlton’s graveyard ………

 I am looking at a picture of our own parish graveyard sometime in the late 1970s and it records a scene which has long gone.

When the gravestones were numerous. 1979

Many of the gravestones would be removed during the make over which turned a neglected and forlorn spot into a pleasant recreational area.

In total there had once been 361 monuments to those who had been buried in the graveyard, but only a few survived the rest are lost to us.

And that of course is a terrible loss, both for the descendants of those who were interred here and also to the historian wanting to uncover Chorlton’s past.

Because here had been buried the people of plenty, along with the less wealthy, ranging from farmers, tradesmen to the families of farm labourers.

The Stopford family, 1979

The earliest recorded burials date from the mid-1700s with the possibility there may have been some from the previous century.

We do have the parish burial records along with an inventory made in 1975 of the 361 gravestones, but that will never be the same as standing in front of them and reading not just the names but also the messages that were left.

The Isherwood family, 1979

Like that of William Barlow Stopford who “fell asleep in Jesus” aged just 23, who was buried with his father who was 31 when he died and William’s brother Frank who died on November 14th just 19 months old. 

Sadly, their gravestone is one of the missing ones, along with that of the Isherwood family, whose gravestone records the names of six, two of whom died at 8 and 14 months.

In time I will go looking for their stories but for now all I have are pictures of their gravestones and the locations of where the two sat.  The Stopford’s rested just east of the lych gate and was the first you would encounter on entering the graveyard while the Isherwood plot was one of six graves that rested against the south wall of the church.

I wish I had taken more on what must have been a spring day in 1979, but soe far I have only turned up the two images amongst the 1500 or negatives which I am slowly digitalizing.

There may be more but at present that is it.

Location; the parish graveyard

Pictures; lost scenes from our parish graveyard, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Snaps of Chorlton nu 16 .............. on Beech Road with Mrs England just 52 years ago

Now I can’t be exactly sure of when Mrs England posed on Beech Road for this photograph but it will be sometime before 1974.

And it is a scene I will have missed by just a few years, because while I remember Threshers, the old frontage of Ettchel's and Richardson’s it is the absence of Ivy Court opposite the Rec which fastens the date to sometime before 1974.

Look closely and just beyond the car on the right is the outline of the farmhouse which was demolished to make way for Ivy Court.

There will be plenty of people who still remember Mr and Mrs Riley who lived there in the 1960s and there will even be some who remember being sent for milk from the dairy.

My old friend Marjorie had the regular job of going across the road from the family home on Provis and had more than a few stories of the place.

But the farm stretched back into the 18th century and was farmed from the 1760s by the Renshaw family and later the Bailey’s who were still there at the beginning of the last century.

By the time they left for Park Brow Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane Beech Road was pretty much as it was in this picture and there was a degree of continuity.

There has always been a news agents on the corner of what is now Beech Road and Chequers, and its companion premises has always been a fish and chip shop.

That said the rest of the parade of shops up to Wilton dates from later in the century while the Thresher frontage was changed sometime after Mason and Burrows departed the building.

So there you have it a little of the history of Beech Road at a time before now, and yes I will conclude with that obvious observation that there ain’t many cars to be seen.

And there I will leave it with just a big thank you to Paul England who allowed me to share another of his family photographs.

Picture; Beech Road sometime before 1974, from the collection of Paul England

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 14, petrol pumps on Claude Road

Continuing the story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

It was at the top of Claude Road as it turns west and is an odd place to site a petrol pump.  I remember it well and vaguely used to wonder why it was there.  My photograph dates from 1972 and the pump was still there twenty or so years later until the bit of land behind the pump was developed into a row of houses in what is now Rainbow Close.  Before that it was just a bit of open land and I guess was the site of either a garage or small builder’s yard.  Now the Egerton and Lloyd estates had not permitted industrial development here in Chorlton but there were plenty of small areas given over to the working of local craftsmen which will  feature in more detail tomorrow, so it maybe that our pump served just such an enterprise.

Which just leaves me to add from a contributor, "I grew up at 41 Claude road there were two petrol pumps one either side.it was a row of workshops where they did repair cars they also owned no. 45 Claude Road which they rented out.the owner had a classic car with running boards and a starting handle as kids in the 70's we cut through the garages to get to the brook to play."

Picture; Street furniture on Claude Road, 1972, m58833, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

A token issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141

The Art of the 1970’s ….

It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.

Floral tea tray, circa 1974

For some it is the time of loons, lava lamps, messy wars in the Far East, and “The Winter of Discontent”.

And maybe that explains the lack of an all defining title.

So, there are “The Swinging Sixties”, "The Roaring Twenties" and “The Gay Nineties” [1890s] to which the Great Depression and the build up to war has framed how we see the 1930s.

But the journalists and pundits with all their superficial and instant descriptive labels don’t seem to have bothered with the 1970s.

Now I am a child of the 60s but it was the following decade that marked out my passage from student to a young married man, with a job and mortgage, and a hot potch of a stereo, with a Pioneer deck, Wharfdale speakers and that iconic Sony receiver with its large single dial set in a wooden tower.

And I retain a fondness for that ten years and like others of my generation I have a soft spot for the ephemera, like this tray.

It was sold by Marks & Spencer’s and we bought ours sometime in 1974.  It travelled with me for the next thirty years from East Manchester out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and to Chorlton, before it finally gave up the ghost.

But it’s bright floral design and heavy yellow and brown colours bring it all back.

I can’t remember how much we paid for it was a lot less than the one I came across in pop boutique on Oldham Street.

Tasteless Chicken soup advert, 1979

At which point I could wax lyrical about the loons I bought from On The Eight Day, the larva lamps in the Pit and Nelson or that Sony receiver which was the only item we lost from a burglary in the 1990s.

But instead I chose that tasteful advert for Chicken Soup seen in Chorlton and a promotional song for Leicester called “It’s a Leicester Fiesta" which has it all.

Location; the 1970s

Picture; the tea tray circa 1974, courtesy of Sue Hampson, and Chicken soup advert, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE

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 Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 15. .........

 Now I am pretty confident that this one will bring up a rich collection of memories.

It continued trading into the 1980s and was a wonderful place where the chesses were piled high and there was pretty much any cheese you wanted.

And l have been corrected by John Paul Moran who tells me it continued trading well in to the 1990s. Thanks John.

Location; Wilbraham Road










Picture; the bacon and cheese shop, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When the bulldozer came to Beech Road ………… well almost

I just missed the battle which if lost would have seen a swathe of properties from Crossland Road north across Beech Road and encompassing Acres Road demolished because they were judged “unfit for human habitation”.

Summer Cottages, 1958

I knew that there had been plans, and at one stage a small row of cottages off Beech Road were demolished in the early 1970s.

These were Summer Cottages, and were probably the last one up one down cottages and occupied part of what is now The Forge.*

And I always thought that Summer Cottages were the properties that Richard and Muriel often referred to as part of a clearance scheme. 

Richard and Muriel ran the greengrocers on Beech Road and Richard in particular was still quite cross about the plan a decade later.

The City Council had already demolished some cottages at the top of Sandy Lane in the 1950s or 60s and went on to clear Brownhills Cottages also on Sandy Lane and another row on High Lane.

Crossland Road, 1972

But I was unaware of the extent of the planned clearance around Beech Road.

It would have included the demolition of some of the houses on Crossland, Road, all of Redbridge and Stanely Grove, some of the shops on Beech Road  as well as Acres Road and possibly a section of Whitelow and even Chequers Road.

The Guardian in the March of 1974 reported on a City Council scheme to demolish 750 properties in the Slade Lane, Chorlton, and Didsbury areas.

Here the residents of the proposed area reacted with a mix of dismay, anger that there homes should be labelled “slum dwellings” and resolved to organise to oppose the plans.

Stanley Grove, 1972

A resident’s association was formed which linked up with similar groups across the city and worked with experts from Manchester University, Town and Country Planning specialists and commercial companies along with “The People of Chorlton”.

Their report dated March 1974 arrived in our house yesterday and it makes for fascinating reading.  

It consists of three parts, which are the Residents’ Case, the Social and Planning Context, and Technical Report.  The third part is supported with costings, suggested alterations to named properties, and a time scale.***

By October the City Council had revised its plans and chose to renovate the properties, a wise decision which has left us with so many fine 19th century houses and retained something of the character of old Chorlton.

Redbridge Grove, 1972

There is much still to so.  I would like to clearly define the area which would have been redeveloped, and solicit the memories of those who took part or just remember the campaign.

Some of those are listed in the report.

Added to this there will be the minutes of the various City Council committees and the story as reported by the local newspapers.

So much still to do.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Summer Cottages, R E Stanley November 1958 m17666,  Crossland Road, H Milligan, m18209, m18209, and m17732,  Stanley Grove, 1972, A Dawson m18210 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Acres Road, 2023, courtesy of Google Maps

Acres Road, 2023

*Summer Cottages, the hidden homes behind Beech Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/04/summer-cottages-hidden-homes-behind.html

**Taken for Granted? Gillian Linscott, Guardian March 23, 1974

***Chorlton Village, the residents association’s case for improvement March 1974

****Council’s about turn on Housing, Michael Morris, Guardian October 3rd, 1973

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 9. ......... Beech Road

Now I had quite forgotten this picture, which had sat as a negative in the cellar for four decades.

And I am rather pleased it has come to light.

We are on Acres Road and to our right is the box factory which had once been a laundry, and opposite is the hair dressers which was to become Cafe on the Green.

Directly ahead is the pet shop which closed earlier in 2019, and beside it The Village Wholefood Shop.

Back then there was a debate about that bit of open land, with some of the traders urging the Corporation to make it into a car park which the Council agreed to if the traders made a contribution to the cost.

This never happened and what had once been a fine house before it was demolished remain open land for another decade.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Beech Road, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When nostalgia gets it wrong

Historically there may have been a time when Beech Road was empty of parked cars, vans and scooters.

Beech Road, 1979

And lots of people will tell you that they remember just such a time.

But you will have to go back a long time.... perhaps to sometime just after the last war or one Sunday before the arrival of the Beech Road bar and coffee culture.

And even then  you might be hard pressed to find the entire road from the Rec down to the Green totally empty.

For proof here is Beech Road in 1979. 

I have no idea now what day or what time but busy it was.

And that offers up a corrective to all those who remark that there were no cars then when seeing an old photograph.

That advert seen on the side of Walker's barn, the Green, 1979 

In the same way lets not pretend that street adverts were any better all that tme ago.

Neither photograph is the best, but then the negatives sat in our cellar for over 40 years, and were taken when I was just begining to snap away.

But they make the point.

And let's not forget that on Friday and Saturday the overflow from the Irish clun stretched along Cross Road, Beaumont Road and Beech Road.

Location; Chorlton, 1979

Pictues; Beech Road and a poster, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 2. ......... on the corner of Stockton Road

This is the second in the short series of the lost and forgotten pictures of Chorlton.

It sat in our cellar with a heap of other old negatives, waiting for the moment I began using chemicals again to make prints.

Instead I got a scanner for Christmas which does the job without smelling out the house.

This one was taken on the corner of Beech and Stockton Road, long before the shop became a deli after being a gift shop.

There may even be some who remember it as a part of the Co-op which occupied the corner plot.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Stockton Road, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

When Chorlton was in Moss Side

The year is 1978 and the Labour Party is defending its Moss Side seat in a byelection which was occasioned by the death of Frank Hatton who had won the seat for Labour  in February 1974.

George Morton and "team" in Chorlton, 1978

The Labour candidate was George Morton, who had served on both Manchester City Council and the Greater Manchester Council and lived locally.

There were four other candidates, drawn from the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the National Front and the Workers Revolutionary Party, and the election was fought against a backdrop of growing industrial conflict, which has come to be remembered as the “the winter of discontent”.

Added to which the Labour Government had lost its slim majority of three in 1976 and entered a pact with the Liberal Party the following year, which lasted until September 1978.

Here in Moss Side and indeed in Chorlton, George was well received and the outcome of the election was a Labour victory, with George increasing his majority and share of the vote in the General Election which followed in 1979.

And for those who are pondering on the significance of a Moss Side story, that is because Chorlton was in the Moss Side Constituency.

The seat had been created in 1918 and was abolished in 1983 when changes to the Parliamentary boundaries moved Chorlton into Manchester Withington.

For most of its existence it returned a Tory MP, with the Liberals briefly winning the seat in the 1923 General Election only for the Conservatives to win it back a year later.

Campaigning in Moss Side, 1978

By 1929 the Labour Party had over taken the Liberals as the main contender to the Tories and across the next three General Elections achieved between 32% and 41% of the votes cast.

The seat was finally won by Labour in the landslide victory of 1945, when William Griffiths took the seat for Labour with 49% of the vote.

Sadly in Chorlton, Labour had to wait until 1986 for its first election victory, which was followed  a year later when Keith Bradly won Manchester Withington, giving Labour voters the double.

Location; Moss Side and Chorlton

Picture; George Morton campaigning in the by-election in Chorlton and Moss Side in 1978, with fellow MPs, the local organizer and volunteers, from the Lloyd Collection

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... before the trend

This is Beech Road as it was just forty years ago.

Where today there is a studio, a gallery, and a clothes shop, there was a flower shop which offered a selection of fruit and veg as a side line, an old fashioned hardware store and Dave the Butcher.

Now if you are of a certain age the smell of a hardware shop is a powerful reminder of how we once did things.

The floor was invariably always the bare timbers, and there was that pungent smell of paraffin, and waxed string.

You could buy anything from a small nut and bolt, to sheets of brown wrapping paper and sealing wax.

And had I been on Beech Road a full decade earlier I could have asked Mr Heger, the relative merits of pink paraffin, and just how many nails I would need to fasten down a lose floor board.

That said back then we did have our own photographic shop which traded from what is now Pottery Corner.

So some things haven’t changed.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Beech Road, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no1. ..... out across the fields

Now some will already have picked up on the  series, The lost Manchester Collection, and the story behind how the pictures came to light.*

And this is the off shoot, being an occasional series from The lost and forgotten pictures of Chorlton.

It will have been taken around 1979 and strictly speaking isn't in Chorlton.

For those who want to know, it was taken in front of the weir built in the 18th century to break flood water from crashing into the viaduct of the Duke's Canal.

The spire is the chapel at the local cemetery beside Hawthorn Lane.

The lane  originally ran as far as St Mathew's Church.

Location; Chorlton and Stretord

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1979

*The lost Manchester Collection, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20lost%20Manchester%20Collection

Down an alley ……..

Now if I were seven again, I rather think I might have been drawn off Beech Road and down the alley.

Down the alley, 2020

One day I will go and search its history, but for now I am content to record that back in 1969 it belonged to Ken Allen who used it as a store for his shop at 115 Beech Road.

Ken Allen, circa 1970s

And back in 1939 it was occupied by Abbot and Connie Palliaser.  Mr. Pallisaser described himself as a  “Furniture dealer Motor Engineer by Trade”, who may well have taken over the property from Harris and Son “decorators who were there in 1911.

A search of the Rate Books will tell me more, and I am inclined also to go looking for Mrs. Annie Dennis who shared 115 with the Palliasers in 1939.  She described herself as a widow with no occupation who had been born in 1872.

I grant you that this search may not be as exciting as the adventure I could have taken back when I was seven and furtively wandered into the alley, but perhaps less scary.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; down an alley, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Ken Allen, circa 1970 , courtesy of Lawrence Beedle

A conversation …. the Saturday boy … and heaps of vegetables …. at Muriel and Richard’s on Beech Road

Now Muriel and Richard’s will always have be a special place for me.

Their fruit and veg was always the best, and at Christmas Muriel always did that Nativity scene where local kids were encouraged to make figures for the display.

But above that they were always very kind to me, and during a time when I was juggling work, bringing up three kids and only shopping on Beech Road they could be relied to help out.

In particular Muriel acted as my bank, advancing me cash and letting me run up a tab.

To the consternation of some I would choose the fruit and veg, Muriel would ask if I needed any money and I would leave with assorted apples, pears, potatoes and more, with cash in hand.  To which some muttered that this was not how it was done.

Shops were not supposed to hand out produce and money and wave goodbye to the customer.  But this was Muriel’s and every Saturday the tab was settled.

I shopped there regularly through the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond.

I will have to ask Muriel just when they took over the shop, because I know in 1969 it was a confectioner’s run by a F. Lyth and now it is a letting agency.

Back then at the end of the 60s their shop was flanked by Joan Newman’s hairdressers and Mr. Morgan’s off license.

And a couple of decades later, the cutting of hair would be replaced briefly by a shop selling pianos before it settled on its long and continuing relationship with serving food and alcohol, while after a time as a vacant premises Mr. Morgan’s place became the Italian deli.

And that is about it.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Muriel and Richard’s, 1979, & 2002, and Muriel, 2004, from the collection of Andrew Simpson