A Chorlton secret ……. the demolished cinema …….. and Mr. Shaw’s superior garage

 Unless you were in the know I doubt you would ever have realized that behind the shops on Barlow Moor Road between the former Co-op and Coriander there is a large building which specialises in MOT’s and car repairs.

A garage revealed, 2024

But then you would either have to be a customer or wandered down the alley from the main road and found the place.

Shaw's Motor Garage, 1959

Today it is clearly visible from Barlow Moor Road but for a century and more the garage was obscured by that Co-op store, which was once our first purpose, built cinema which opened as The Palais de Luxe de Luxe in 1914.

That relic of the picture age, and the store which once traded as a Tesco, Hanbury’s and Co-op was recently demolished and the open space reveals the line of the garage.

Back in the second decade of the last century it was Shaw’s Motor Garage which had  the first kerb side petrol pump in Chorlton.

The garage was still there in 1959 when Mr. A H Downs took a picture of the building which pretty much matches an earlier one from 1912 which shows Mr. Shaw and a large crowd admiring the petrol pump for the photographer.

Mr. Shaw and his garage, 1912

And not to be out done some time in the 1980s I clocked the same spot when part of the original signage was briefly on show.

The ghost sign, 1984

Mr. Shaw was one of those enterprising men who seized the “motor car moment” at the start of the 20tth century and may even have rented out space to the company which built the Chorlton cars.

All of which I have written about.*

At some point the open space of the former Palais de Luxe de Luxe will be filled with new build, leaving me just to pin down just when the front part of the garage became shops and renew my search for Mr. Shaw.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Pictures; the space wot was the cinema revealing the garage, 2024, row of shops and ghost sign, circa 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Shaw’s garage in 1959, A.H. Downes, m17515, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 1912, from the Lloyd collection

**When Chorlton made cars ………..https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/01/when-chorlton-made-cars.html

A chance photograph, some demolished houses, a lost Chorlton road and a lesson in always carrying a camera

It is one of those curious things that it is often the most recent history that goes unrecorded.

I must have walked down Ransfield Road loads of times in the late 70s and early 80s, but cannot remember these houses which were being demolished in Andrew’s photograph.

It was taken in the April of 1983 and like always there is a bit of story.

They date from the last decade of the 19th century and didn’t make their 100th birthday.  All of which is more puzzling given that they were six roomed properties and occupied by relatively well off working class people.  Here was a salesman a secretary, two clerks a plumber, tailor and a telegraphist.

And judging by Andrew's picture they were typical of what had been built at this end of Chorlton

Added to this the properties on the northern side of the road and those in the adjoining Claridge Road are still there. So there is a puzzle which a trawl of the clearance orders might throw up a reason or perhaps it was just a case of a developer buying the properties.

I had wandered down Ransfield Road just a few weeks earlier and couldn’t place when the new properties went up and for a while tracking the history of Ransfield was equally hazy.

Maps from 1907 showed them there but the street directories stubbornly refused to mention them.

All of which was because during the early part of 20th century Ransfield was called Richmond Road and may have been renamed because of the presence of another Richmond Road in Fallowfield, several Richmond Streets and two Richmond Groves one of which was here in Chorlton.

So in the process of exploring a line of demolished houses in the 1980s the quest turned up  another of our lost roads and in the process also points up that simple rule “never let an opportunity go by to record those moments of change."

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Robertson

Buying that armchair and bed from M E Coupe on the corner of Wilbraham Road in 1985

Now I am never surprised at the interest shown in photographs of Chorlton in the recent past.

In many ways they are more interesting than those from a century and a bit ago and I think it is because it is of a Chorlton many of us can remember and relate to.

That said the passage of even thirty years makes many of them look very dated. 

It is like looking through a dirty window, some of what you see you recognise but the rest is just a little unclear and unreal.

So here is the last of Chorlton in 1985.  The picture has featured before at  WilbrahamRoad where there is the story.

A little bit of our unremarkable past ...... that hut in the Rec

Now here is a little piece of our past which makes me very happy.

The picture was taken in 1980 and confirms that I wasn’t imagining that once the Rec which new comers call Beech Road Park did indeed have its own hut.

I have no idea when it was built.

I know that it doesn’t appear on photographs from the 1900s but is there by the 1940s, because it shows up in a picture of our own barrage balloon.

Nor am I quite sure when it vanished.

All of which I suppose is indicative of the state of my memory.

But there it is, and for those now in the 40s who sat on its bench on long winter’s nights passing the time till they were old enough to visit a pub, here is a memory.

And soon after the story was posted, Bruce Wemyss commented, 

"Andrew Simpson I remember it well in the sixties and would guess it was removed in the early 70s 

It was turned on by the Park Keeper each spring and back off again in the Autumn Chorlton Park and Longford park each had a couple 

They where double sided and operated by pressing a Brass button on the top of the font 

They we’re all the same design I suspect Manchester Corporation will have some pictures hidden away somewhere 

As a footnote In the sixties and early seventies we local lads played football in the Rec most weekends and summer evenings sometimes with games going on all day and well into the evening breaking off to go home for lunch and tea it was not unusual for there to be 12 to 15 on each team Great times I feel very lucky to have grown up in Chorlton back in the day"

All of which was repeated by my own kids, who did the same Bruce, and had to be called in at night
  

We even had a special box full of their friends football boots for the games, and my lads would exhaust shed loads of their friends which came and went.

Location; Chorlton.

Picture; the hut on the Rec and football games, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 8. ......... giving the graveyard a make over

This was when the parish church yard got its last makeover.

But it will have been in the early 1980s and involved clearing away many of the old gravestones, and landscaping the area including picking out the footprint of the old church, which had stood on the site since 1800 and replaced an earlier chapel which dated back to around 1512.

I can’t exactly remember the old cluttered grave yard or when the makeover happened but the picture will date from the early 1980s soon after it had been completed, when the trees and bushes had yet to grow.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; the churchyard, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Dangerous times and peaceful protests

“the dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.”

That was Abraham Lincoln speaking to the US Congress in 1862 on the eve of the Civil War, and it aptly sums up the response of many to the international scene during the 1980s.

This was a time 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.

I remember travelling across France with a young American back packer from the Mid West who remarked how he had come to see the European perspective to this arms race which from the comfort of middle America had never occurred to him.

Here in Britain the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament saw its membership increase dramatically, there were growing numbers of demonstrations across the country and the woman’s peace movement focused on Greenham Common which was one of the sites of the deployment of US missiles.

Here in Chorlton there were attempts to set up a women’s peace camp on the Rec on Beech Road and on a hot summers day in 1984 hundreds attended a peace festival in the park while the City Council declared Manchester a nuclear free zone.

There were those who derided such actions and  some who  still  scorn this popular response. They point to the demise of the Soviet Union and the other Communist Governments of Eastern Europe for a relaxation in those tensions.

But this is to ignore the genuine belief by countless millions that something had to be done.

Picture; badges from the collection of Andrew Simpson, photograph of the peace festival on the Rec from the collection of Tony Walker

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

On Beech Road 44 years ago looking for a second hand telly and electric fire

This is another of those images of the more recent past and one that plenty of people will remember.

Picture; from the collection of Lawrence Beedle, circa 1980

Eighty-six years in the story of the Rec on Beech Road

I don’t usually do then and now pictures, and certainly not without a story, but today I shall.

Here are two both from the Wilton end of the Rec.

They are separated by about 80 years, and in the interval we had a bowling green which many remember, but not me.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; on the Rec, sometime in 1900 from the Lloyd Collection and again in 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Wilbraham Road just 30 years ago

Now just occasionally I like to revisit an old photograph I have used before.

This one comes courtesy of Tom McGrath and is from a series he took in the mid 1980s.

30 years later he went back and repeated the shot.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy


Pictures; by kind permission of Tom McGrath

Just what 46 years does to a bit of Wilbraham Road

Now I can remember this bit of Wilbraham Road in the late 1970s.

I shopped in Liptons, ate in the Asian restaurant next door and bought a couple of holidays from the travel agents and the rest of the shops are a blur although I think one was a Butcher’s and of course along the row was the toy shop.

And so it makes a nice contrast to Andy Robertson picture of the same spot in 2014.

There is more I could say but will just leave you with the observation that if you look closely you can see how the mobile shop and Rainbow trade from a building which was added on to the original house.

Nor was this unique on Wilbraham Road but that is for you to find out, along of course with the fate of the buildings where Liptons and the the Post Office now stand.

For the lazy the answer is there in the blog.
And the postscript is that the mobile shop is now Chocoberry.

Pictures; Wilbraham Road circa 1979 from the Lloyd Collection and the same spot today courtesy of Andy Robertson

A new history of Chorlton in 20 objects, number 8, an amusement arcade and the future of Beech Road circa 1983

I can’t be exactly sure of the date of the picture but it was during the early 1980s when Beech Road was about to enter its troubled period.

The old patterns of shopping were beginning to change and one by one many of the traditional shops closed.

It had begun a decade earlier with the closure of the TV shop, moved on apace with the disappearance of the grocers shops  and sweet shops followed by the hardware place with its familiar smell of paraffin and waxed string and then one by one the butchers went until only Muriel’s was left.

So this was an uncertain period with plenty of closed shops and the hint that Beech Road was past its best.  Into this came the amusement arcade at 111.  It sparked a bit of controversy and lasted but a short time.

And after its closure there was another quiet time till Patrick opened Primavera followed by the Lead Station and the rest as they say is history.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

A new history of Chorlton in just 20 objects no 4 the community newspaper 1984

From January 1984 to sometime in May 1986 Chorlton had its own community newspaper. The first editorial set the style “Let 1984 come alive with Chorlton Green....Chorlton Green is a community newspaper, and offers Chorlton the voice it’s never had before – in personal opinion, in creative work and as an information exchange”. And over the next two years the paper covered a lot of what went on in Chorlton and never shied away from controversial stories but could also ponder on the return of the tram and a time in the future when we might become “South Manchester’s Bohemian Heartland” including an “artist’s quarter” with a “glossy sheen of alternative bookstores, exotic antique shops, delicatessens and specialists in ....countercultural accessories”.  All of which makes the story one to explore in more detail at another time.

Picture; courtesy of Bernard Leach.

A day in Chorlton …… sometime between 1979 and 83

There is nothing very remarkable about these three images of Chorlton on a winter’s day.

I can’t even be sure just exactly which year I took them added to which the scenes they show are not so different from today.

Bus experts will offer up details of the vehicles, from the make, and the dates they joined the fleet, while someone will chime in with a piece on SELNEC, the company which preceded Greater Manchester Transport.

I can’t ever remember using the 262 but the 82 was the one we occasionally used to go up to Oldham which terminated at Werneth to visit Lois.

It was a long journey but had the advantage of being almost door to door.

All of that said there will be little things in each of the three which will jog memories and may also be a revelation to those who didn’t know Chorlton back then.

Leaving me just to say I will resist all those usual observations, that there “were fewer cars back then” “less litter”, “better shops” or even “there were shops back then”.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road, 1979-83 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Challenging Chorlton myths …..

I fully expect to upset a few people, but sometimes it is worth exploring those cherished assumptions about our past.

Busy Beech Road, 1979

They regularly crop up on social media and nostalgically offer up a picture of Chorlton in which at best is a rosy glow memory and at worse just wrong.

The most popular observations range from the lack of cars in the olden days, to the amount of litter that swirls across the roads and takes in the loss of traditional shops.

And each in their way reminds me of my own cherished memories of summer holidays in the 1950s when the sun always shone, Wagon wheels were gigantic and jubbly’s retained their flavour until the last bit of frozen orange juice was eaten.

Litter and vacant shops, Barlow Moor Road, 1982

It is true that if you go far enough back into time, there were fewer cars parked up and a range of traditional shops selling fresh food, and groceries.

To these can be added shops selling paraffin, an odd number of nails, milliners, photographers and places that repaired everything from televisions, shoes and picture frames.

So, I do remember a Beech Road where there were all of the above, but there are enough pictures which show that our roads were congested with stationary cars, litter was a problem, and the rise of charity shops and empty premises were already on the march at the start of the 1980s.

A chance photograph of Beech Road in 1979 offers a busy scene of cars while another of Barlow Moor Road three years later shows both heaps of litter, to let signs and the temporary use of a butcher’s shop for a political party.

Litter on the Rec, 1910

Go back to the beginning of the last century and our litter louts had been busy in the Rec and on the long roads off Oswald Road.

I grant that each might have been an exception to the rule or in the case of the piles of discarded newspaper and other stuff were about to cleared away, but I doubt it.

Leaving me just to muse on that other more unpleasant criticism that somehow Chorlton is now home to lots of strangers who weren’t born here and are only passing through.

History however reveals a different picture.  The 1851 census lists people who have settled here from all over the country, which meant that a walk along some of our more popular roads and lanes could have been interrupted by accents from the Home Counties, as well as from the far north and also Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

And again the housing boom of the 1880s onwards saw new residents from across Manchester and further a field making this place theirs.  

All of which is evidenced by our own brass band, which dates back to the 1820s.  Back then it was made up of local farmers, and agricultural labourers, but by 1893 the majority were drawn from bandsmen who were first generation Chorlton or had been born elsewhere.

Leaving me just reflect that if I am honest my summer holidays in the 1950s and 60s could be gloomy affairs when the rain came down like stair rods and Sammy sunshine hid behind the clouds.

Tasteful and subtle, chicken soup advert, Beech Road, 1980s

And while we are on punctuating myths, I have to say this 1980s advert for chicken soup which graced a hoarding on Beech Road was hardly the pinnacle of taste.

Location; Chorlton before now

Pictures; Chorlton in the 1970s and 1980s from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Rec in 1910 from the Lloyd Collection

When Chorlton nostalgia proves iffy ……….

I am looking at a picture of Chorlton in 1982 which offers an interesting take on just how easy it is to view where we live through rose tinted spectacles.

You know the line, which starts by bemoaning the amount of litter discarded across the road, runs on to call down the way the place has become a haven for takeaways, charity shops, and bars.

To be fair I do have some sympathy with the idea that perhaps there are now too many bars and takeaways, but the retail model that saw heaps of small local traders has gone, banished by supermarkets, and online shopping, and charity shops are good value, make sense on this recycling age and of course benefit those who need help.

But the image I took forty-three years ago belies that assertion that the 1980s were a haven of litter free streets, thriving traditional local businesses, and an area in want of a charity shop.

Here in 1982 on the corner of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads, the litter drifts around the Nat West Bank, the Butcher’s shop is no more, and already there is a charity shop.

I know it is 1982 because the relatively new Social Democratic Party were contesting all three Chorlton seats in the local elections and had rented the empty Cash Butcher’s shop making an SDP presence in the centre of the township.

Already the decline away from those traditional shops was evident on Beech Road, which saw some close but for a while not reopen and during the 80s saw the brief appearance of an amusement arcade.

Historically the litter louts of the 1980s were not new, and a close examination of photographs from the beginning of the 20th century offer up scenes of the discarded stuff, not only on roads but also in the Rec on Beech Road.

As to the number of alcoholic outlets in the 1900s, they were still limited to few pubs, there was a very successful temperance lobby which blocked applications for new pubs and even objected to the expansion of new existing ones.

That said the trend for bars, and charity shops ahs quickened, but given the demise of that old retail model, I suspect the alternative would be empty shops.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton in 1982, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

30 years ago and bit more .......... Wilbraham Road

It is over 30 years since Tom McGrath took a series of pictures of Chorlton. 

Recently he returned to the same locations and photographed them all over again and it makes for fascinating stories. 

I have often remarked that it is our more recent past which we tend to ignore.

Look at any of those old black and white pictures of a century ago and you are prepared for things to be different.

But  just over a quarter of a century seems no time at all.  It spans the life of my eldest son, is well within the range of the music I still listen to and is redolent with vivid memories.

And yet it is in some ways as unfamiliar as the age of the gas lamp and tram.

Now I am not going off on one so there will be no reference to Mrs Thatcher, or that Back to the Future was the highest grossing film at $210,609, 762.

Instead I shall just comment on what 27 years did to this corner of Wilbraham Road.

We still had a night club at this end of Chorlton or though if memory serves me it was really just an opportunity to carry on late night drinking.

The burgar bar still retained that logo which I remember from a similar out let on Burton Road and I rather think the concrete stumps which had encased the old petrol pumps were still in place.

And for those pondering on what our houses sell for here in Chorlton, I have to say that the rising spiral of prices had yet to take off.

Pictures; by kind permission of Tom McGrath

Stories from an election, Chorlton May 1980

It was the first year into a Conservative Government and the 1980 election campaign in Chorlton was fought out on both local issues and national ones.

The Conservative called on the electorate to “Stop The Labour Rot in Chorlton” the Liberals pointed to their growing “revival in the city of Manchester” and Labour reflected on the cost to the electorate after a year of Conservative Government.

So here are extracts from leaflets that the three parties pushed through doors in the May of 1980.

The Conservative candidate was Maureen Vince, the Labour candidate was Harold Brown, and the Liberal candidate was John Commons.

Some wondered about a slogan that called for the electorate to "Stop the Labour Rot in Chorlton," when all three elected councillors were Conservative, but the upshot was a Tory victory, although their vote was well down on previous years.

And in 1986 Labour gained its first council seat here in Chorlton with the election of David Black.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Two pictures ….. three names ……. and forty-three years apart

Nothing more complicated, that an image from 1980 and its mirror image four decades later.

Location; Chorlton Precinct

Pictures; Chorlton Precinct, 1980 & 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

40 years ago ….. Chorlton pictures from the archive

I was producing a series of leaflets for the 1982 local election and Jack, Sylvia and others consented to having their picture taken.

As it turned out Jack made into the leaflet and Sylvia didn’t.  

In Sylvia’s case this was because she was to be in follow up material which didn’t get printed.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton faces from 40 years ago, 1982 from the collection of Andrew Simpson