Snaps of Chorlton No 4 Bringing down the chimney of the Queen and Pasley circa 1990s or perhaps even earlier

An occasional series featuring  private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

I can’t remember exactly when this was but I reckon it was in the 1990s and points to that simple observation that much of our recent past slides away without us bothering to record it.

Now I have written about the Queen and Pasley Laundry along with the other ones that served us including the one on Beech Road and others on Manchester Road and Wilbraham Road.*

But the Queen and Pasley was the biggest and was still in business in the late 1980s on Crossland Road.

My old friend Tony Walker took the picture which may have been linked to an article which was published in Chorlton Green in 1985 or was taken later.

I can’t now remember if this was during a repair of the big chimney or just prior to its demolition.  And I pretend to be a historian.

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20lost%20laundries%20and%20launderettes

Mrs Keal and the mystery of 419 Barlow Moor Road

Leon's, 2015

It has taken sometime but I am closer to solving the mystery behind the date on the wall of  419 Barlow Moor Road.

Most people will know the place as Leon’s the fabric shop but I have long wondered why the building carries the date 1885 when it was built around 1915.

The Leon family began trading there in the 1990s and before that it had been the Addressal  Print Works which is listed in the directories by 1921 and for an even shorter time between 1915-17 it was the Chorlton Laundry owned by Mrs Keal.

Not that this helps with the date of 1885 which appears above the door along with the word Established.

Addressall Printing Works, 1959

Now it is just possible that the date refers to either establishment of the laundry or the printing company but there is no reference to Addressal in any of the directories in the late 19th century and any way the stone lettering looks like it was done when the building went up.

So I rather think we must be with Mrs Keal who was running a laundry business on Beech Road in 1894.

That said there is no evidence that she was trading before that date and in 1881 Mr and Mrs Keal were living in Croydon.

But by 1889 they had settled in Chorlton and were running a business from nu 30 Wilbraham Road.
Mr Keal described himself variously as a brick layer or builder and I suppose it is just possible that the date 1885 refers to the start up of his business.

Either way in1915 Mrs Keal was in that building on Barlow Moor Road operating the Chorlton Laundry.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when she moved in but in the April of that year Mr Keal of “Brookbank Bridge Barlow Moor-road died at Chorlton Laundry Brookbank Bridge.”

London Gazette, February 1917

And just over a year later the business went bankrupt.*

According to Mrs Keal at the bankruptcy hearing in the February of 1917 “the main cause of her coming into court was the shortness of loose working capital when she removed to her new premises in Barlow Moor Road after having carried on a similar business on less extensive lines for many years in Beech Road, Chorlton.

Mrs Keal further stated that after she had expended over £900 on new machinery so that she might undertake the laundry work of the military hospitals in Manchester a large proportion of the work was undertaken from her.”

But the “military authorities had established laundries under their own control.  Difficulties in the way of getting sufficient labour had it impossible for her to get the work done as promptly as the hospitals required [and] she could not overcome these difficulties by paying higher wages.”

She went on to say that “she had taken steps to strengthen the weak point in her business affairs which had been pointed out by her accountant.”

But it seems that was it and she finished up the business and moved to St Annes-on-Sea where she died in 1935 leaving £2625.

It is just possible that the date refers not to Mrs Keal's Laundry but to the building business of her husband which may well date from 1885.

And it t maybe the Leon family can help who could have the deeds to the building which will offer up its history.

Peter painted the picture of the building and while there he spotted the story of the Leon family which is displayed inside the shop.

It is a fascinating account of one family business stretching back across the last century and so by the time I get round to writing their story they may well be able to offer up a missing document.

Well we shall see.

Additional research from Tony Goulding

Picture; Addressall Printing Works (originally built for laundry), House adjoining used as office for printers, RE Stanley, m17530 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Painting; Leon's Barlow Moor Road, © 2015 Peter Topping,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*First Meetings and Public Examinations, The London Gazette, February 16, 1917

**Laundry Proprieters Ill-luck. Failed with a surplus of over £3000, Manchester Evening News March 6 1917

The Queen & Pasley

Sometimes it is amazing how quickly our recent past can vanish.

The Pasley Laundry was opened in 1893 on what is now Crossland Road and did not reach its 100th birthday.

Laundries are a measure not only of the size of a community but of their prosperity.

 Given the arduous nature of wash day it is not surprising that those who could afford to pay for the weekly washing to be cleaned did so. The population had doubled in the ten years before 1901 and the next decade saw an equal increase. The occupations of the residents of new Chorlton ranged from manufacturers, bank managers and solicitors to clerical and skilled workers.

The very mix which is reflected in the large detached and semi detached houses stretching along Edge Lane and High Lane and the tall terraced properties radiating out from the station.

Here were the customers of our five laundries which in themselves were a mix. Yapp’s Laundry was big enough to have branches on Ashton Old Road, Chorlton on Medlock and in Whitefield and Stretford. 

Others like Wing Sam operated from one shop while Martha Keal’s premises on Beech Road was also the home of a her builder husband John. The biggest was the Pasley, later renamed the Queen and Pasley on Crescent Road. It opened in 1893, and at one point employed 50 staff.

All the washing machines were belt driven by a huge steam engine and were the first to install the “float-iron system” which consisted of the multiple roller pressing machines. This was 15 feet wide and 15 feet long and
“was a mass production ironing machine, with delicately poised rollers. You could put a shirt with pearl buttons on it and it wouldn’t leave a mark.”

Vans from the laundry would collect the washing and deliver it to the sorting office where each item would be marked, and classified into bins, before the loads were emptied into the ten washing machines. After being washed the clothes went through stages of being dried before being set out still slightly damp for the ironing and pressing and finally being re-sorted in the packing room and returned in the vans to the customers.

But the Queen & Pasley like all the rest were slowly being squeezed as the growing prosperity of the 1950’s led to people buying their own washing machines and by the self service launderette which are themselves now in decline.

And just after this was posted, Bob and Jean commented that "both my Gran and Granddad worked there in 1911 he was a van driver and I used to pass it a lot as a kid," and  "my mum worked their in about 1946 and then moved to the Grange .I used to go in the summer holidays with other children and one of the staff would take us to the park and look after us."

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the inside of the Queen & Pasley circa 1960 from the collection of Tony Walker

Snaps of Chorlton No 9 Kathaleen Leavy in the Queen and Pasley, mid 1960s

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

We are inside the Queen and Pasley Laundry on Crossland Road.

I have featured both the picture and stories on the laundry* but rather think it is time to bring it out again for this series.

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20lost%20laundries%20and%20launderettes

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton …. part 120 ....... ironing with a view

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. *

Now I have no idea where Mary Ann Scott did the ironing, or if she just sent it away to one of our local laundries, which offered the full service of washing and ironing.**

And of course despite the very un PC assertion, given the time, it would have been one of the many tasks which fell under the heading "unpaid domestic duties", which is a description which crops up on census returns and the 1939 Register.

If she indeed opt for the laundry, there was one on Beech Road and the big Queen & Pasley one on  Crescent Road.***

But if she did her own, I suspect as soon as she could she bought or rented an electric iron, and given the absence of power points around the house, she may well have used one of those Heath Robinson looking attachment which drew power from an electric light cable.

Mother used one in our old house, although I suspect on a scale of one to ten of Health and Safety don'ts it would command a minus 13.

Leaving me to return to the picture .... because if you have to do the ironing, .... always choose a view.  Or in the years when foreign holidays were just a dream, there was always the alternative of ironing in the garden in the sunshine, achieving the double of getting through the boring task and getting a suntan.

But of course these days I know better.

Picture, Ironing with a view, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and inside the Queen and Pasley, Crossland Road, [Crescent Road] date unknown, from the collection of Tony Walker

*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 110 ......... washing day with Mr. Baxendale’s amazing labour saving device, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/07/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

***The Queen and Pasley, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Queen%20and%20Pasley

When you lose a vegan sausage roll but gain a Laundrette ………….

Now, someone will have written the definitive history of the Laundrette, including a chapters on the Bedsit, and Single on a Sunday.

But for now, I will just settle on the observation that their arrival did much to kill off the laundry, and their demise has had a lot to do with family washing machine.

In the last few decades, the numbers of Laundrettes have tumbled, and with their passing has come the frantic search to find one and find one that will take a king size duvet.

Once Chorlton had lots.  I often used the one on Beech Road along with the one on Barlow Moor Road almost opposite the old cinema and tram terminus.

And there were others, including another on Barlow Moor just down from the corner of Needham Avenue and one on Wilbraham Road.

At which point there will be a surge of memories and a fair few contributions pointing to ones I have missed.

Now there is a new one on Wilbraham Road in what was once Greggs, which of course inspired the silly title.

Leaving me just to wish the new owners a heap of prosperity, and end the long journey to the Quadrant of Stretford to wash the duvets.

Location; Wilbraham Road,

Picture; the Laundrette, Wilbraham Road, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Chorlton's corner shops number 16 ........those two shops on Crossland Road in 1972

Now I have been meaning to write about those two corner shops on Crossland Road because they were still doing the business when I washed up in Chorlton in the 1970s, and also because of the presence of the laundry just a little further up the road.

This  was the Pasley, later renamed the Queen and Pasley and opened in 1893, when this was still known as Crescent Road  and at one point employed 50 staff.

All the washing machines were belt driven by a huge steam engine and were the first to install the “float-iron system” which consisted of the multiple roller pressing machines. This was 15 feet wide and 15 feet long and
“was a mass production ironing machine, with delicately poised rollers. You could put a shirt with pearl buttons on it and it wouldn’t leave a mark.”

Vans from the laundry would collect the washing and deliver it to the sorting office where each item would be marked, and classified into bins, before the loads were emptied into the ten washing machines.

After being washed the clothes went through stages of being dried before being set out still slightly damp for the ironing and pressing and finally being re-sorted in the packing room and returned in the vans to the customers.

I suspect that many of the staff would at some time or other have called in at the two shops.

And I also know there will be plenty of others who will remember the two.

Pictures; Stanely Grove and Crossland Road, H Milligan, 1972, m18209 and m18207, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The price of preserving the past is eternal vigilance ....... recording a vanishing Chorlton

The price of preserving the past is eternal vigilance which I am the first to admit is to misquote what the American Abolitionist and liberal activist Wendell Phillips said in 1852.*

But it serves the purpose for today which is to revisit that simple observation that often great chunks of history disappear without us noticing until it is too late.

So with that in mind I always carry a camera and snap away whenever I come across a building in danger.

And I also plunder the photograph albums of friends, colleagues and anyone who has taken a picture of places I like in the last three decades.

Nor is it just photographs for since local artist Peter Topping began his "A moment in Time" series of paintings of Chorlton, bits of it have vanished or changed beyond recognition.

As he says “lossing  so many familiar places spurred  me on paint Chorlton as it is now."

Shops close and become bars, houses add a dormer window or garage and old faithful buildings are demolished for another anonymous development.

Nowhere is this more apparent than on Beech Road where business change and in the process the buildings are totally revamped.

So here were are on the corner of Beech and Wilton looking at the Soap Opera which has washed people’s clothes for three decades and now is another bar.**

The building  began life as a grocery and provision shop owned by John Williams & Sons on the site that had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage, which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.

Sometime in the late 1950s or early 60s the grocery shop became the Maypole launderette and continued so until quite recently.

But the launderette or washateria as my friend John from Leeds always called it was no more able to buck the consumer revolution than the laundry before it.

So apart from service washes, and duvet day the Soap Opera became an ever lonelier place.

And putting it into a context since the mid 1980s the number has fallen by two thirds while the onward march of the bar/cafe and small restaurant seems unstoppable.

And with that in mind earlier this year Peter went back to that corner of Beech and Wilton and did the business all over again.

Paintings; Painting; The Soap Opera, © 2011 and the Launderette, © 2013,  Peter Topping, 
Facebook; Paintings from Pictures, Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 33, where have all the shops gone?

The Launderette, 2013

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.*


I wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would make of Beech Road on this August day just ahead of a Bank Holiday?

I never met them but I have talked to lots of people who knew them and I suspect they would have embraced the changes which in just over a decade and a half has seen the road go from a mix of shops selling everything from paraffin oil and wax to wet fish, newspapers and wool to bars, restaurants and gift places.

They moved in to their house sometime in 1920.  The Rec across the road had only been a park for just over two decades and the line of shops down from Wilton Road to the fish and chip shop had yet to be built.

And it is of that first shop on the corner of Wilton and Beech that I wish to write about.

John Williams & Sons, 1930

It began life as a grocery and provision shop owned by John Williams & Sons on the site that had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.

Now I have no idea whether once it opened it was frequented by Mary Ann, but if did not she had a bewildering choice of grocers, butchers, green grocers as well bakers, and wet fish shops along Beech Road, and on to the green in one direction and off up Barlow Moor Road into New Chorlton.
She may even have had stuff delivered.

Not all of these shops would have been large or carried a great variety of food stuffs, but there were plenty of them for her to shop around.

The corner of Wilton & Beech, 1930

And if she tired of washing the clothes in the washroom in the front cellar then there were a number of laundries who would do it for her including the Queen and Pasley Laundry in what is now Crossland Road.

Later still she might just have felt up to it in later life to use the Maypole Launderette on Wilton and Beech Road.  This was what had become of our grocer’s shop of John Williams and Son, and in time was change its name to the Soap Opera, although I have some recollection of at least one other name in between.

But the launderette or washateria as my friend John from Leeds always called it was no more able to buck the consumer revolution than the laundry before it.  So apart from service washes, and duvet day the Soap Opera became an ever lonelier place.

And putting it into a context since the mid 1980s the number has fallen by two thirds while the onward march of the bar/cafe and small restaurant seems unstoppable.

As I write there is news that another will open up by the bookshop and a tea room has been mooted for Beech Road.

The Soap Opera, 2012

And I suspect here in Chorlton that is just how it will be.


Most have weathered the depression, and there seems little demand for alternatives, despite the call for something different by the critics.

For just as the cheap washing machine saw off both the laundry and launderette the big supermarkets have pretty much done for the small independent traditional food outlet.

I lament their passing especially as I did almost all my shopping in the Italian Deli and Muriel’s but the economics no longer worked.

The corner of Wilton and Beech, 2013

And even Barry who operated a very small fruit and veg stall on the corner of Beech and Chequers eventually conceded defeat.  The idea that people might only want to buy a carrot and two apples was a sound one but the trade was just not there.

So now in place of the Soap Opera there is the Laundrette not I hasten to add another place for service washes and duvet days but a bar and restaurant, which on the recommendation of a neighbour we tried out.

The cocktails were fun the pizza passed muster and the place was buzzing.

I rather enjoyed it, and while we now have to travel to the Quadrant to do the duvets, atleast we aren’t facing another empty shop on Beech Road.

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection and the collection of Andrew Simpson.

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Who else will lament the passing of the Soap Opera?

Yesterday I wrote about the end of the laundrette on Beech Road.

Its passing says much about how we live today. Most people have a washing machine and are not over keen to trek with a bag of dirty washing to have it made clean in the company of strangers.

But even with a machine at home we all still use them. The obvious moment is when the washing machine breaks down and that dread panic settles like snow on the household. That which we take for granted is no more and in our house a fierce competition develops over whose washing has a priority.
And then there are the duvets, most are too big to fit into a domestic washing machine but can be comfortably contained in the big ones at the laundrette. There also those young professionals whose busy lives demand that they give up this basic chore to others which I suppose brings us almost full circle to the old laundries. In the case of Soap Opera this included an optional ironing service. And not everyone does own their own washing machine.
But as I found out yesterday from the BBC News Magazine, “The rise and fall of the laundrette”, August 13th 2010, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10957093 one of the prime reasons for the demise of the laundrette is the cost in setting up in business. It can cost anything between £60,000 and £100, 00.

And the cost of repairing a machine is very expensive which according to local historian Ida Bradshaw is what did for the Soap Opera. Repairing the machines was just not viable option and nor was buying new.

So the Soap Opera has gone and I think it will be missed. On the rare occasion I went in people knew each other and were happy to pass the time away as the sheets and towels went round the tumble drier.

And in its way it marks one more step away from the old Beech Road where there were the practical everyday shops, be they the butcher, the green grocer or the baker. Now don’t get me wrong this is not a charge against the collection of wine bars, restaurants and craft and art shops but an observation on the passing of something.

On the other hand the laundrette on Beech Road had replaced the grocery shop of John Williams and Sons a picture of which appeared in the story What we have lost which I posted last year http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-we-have-lost.html

Picture; The Maypole laundrette in 1965 which replaced the grocer’s shop on the corner of Beech and Wilton Roads, from the collection of Tom Craven, made available by Bernard Leech

No more will I sit in the Soap Opera.............. a lament for another lost way of life

If you have ever lived in a bed sit most probably you will also have sat and washed your clothes in the launderette. For me the two go together.

Being single and on a low income meant my early years in Manchester were spent in one room in converted Victorian houses which were sad neglected and shabby versions of their former selves.
If you were lucky the landlord would have redecorated the walls with wood chip and some neutral colour of emulsion, although in my case in one flat the original paper had just had an amateur coat of some watered down paint thrown over it.

And the delights of such living just went on. You shared the bathroom which was seldom cleaned, the whole house was always cold with a hint of damp and the hall always seemed full of junk mail and letters to residents who even the landlord had forgotten

So in the absence of a washing machine you went to the launderette. They could be a meeting place but all too often in my student days the place was empty and you washed alone, watching as the soap suds took over the porthole of a window which only confirmed you had used too much powder again.

But I am being a bit unfair. Launderettes were on every high street and back road from the 50s onwards and in their way I suppose were part of that bright new post war future. No more sending the dirty clothes to the laundry now you could do it yourself with no fear that the stained underwear and socks with holes in would be the topic of conversations for the whole laundry over the tea break.

Nor did you have to brave the municipal laundry which was fine if you were the adult but all so boring for a child of seven. These council run public laundries were a marvellous asset for anyone living in small terraced house where wash day could take over the whole house. Moreover they were a place to meet and talk. But again not if you were seven and had plans to play in the park.

Now all of this is because the launderette on Beech Road has closed. The last wash was just before Christmas and now the Soap Opera is no more. It has joined thousands of others who could not compete with cheap washing machines and an attitude which preferred that clothes should be washed in the privacy of one’s home. And that too chimes in with the trend for each member of the family to occupy them elves in a different room doing different things.

So from a peak of twelve and half thousand outlets there are now fewer than 3,000. I remember talking about the demise of laundries with my friend Lawrence who had been told by the owner of a launderette that they would go the same way in the next decade. I should have seen it coming. First the one on Barlow Moor Road went and now ours on Beech Road.

The Soap Opera had been the Maypole and must have seemed so thoroughly modern when it opened four decades ago but now no more.
All of which leaves me with one thought, where will the bed sit residents go now to wash their clothes?

Picture; Miles Platting Public Wash House 1950, m57371 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council and
The Soap Opera on a sunny day on Beech Road from the collection of Andrew Simpson