Lost Images of Whalley Range number 6 ....... the Allied Library 1962

This was the Allied Library which was on the corner of Upper Chorlton Road and Wood Road North.

It had grown as a chain of rental libraries in the years after the last world war and at its peak in March 1962 it hired out 362, 000 books through 1,489 bookshops.

And it is a reminder that a long side the public libraries there were a shed load of small shops ranging from newsagent to bookshops which rented out books.*

Picture; Allied Libraries at No 202 Upper Chorlton Road taken in August 1960 Downes A H m40870 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Chorlton’s private lending libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20private%20lending%20libraries

A photograph and a clue to how we used to read

I like this picture. It is not very remarkable one but that is the point. 

In a sense it is the ordinariness of the scene which is interesting.

It was taken in the May of 1959 by A Downes who spent that year walking up and down the main roads of Chorlton, stopping and recording each block of houses and shops.

This was the parade of shops on the east side of Barlow Moor Road, opposite what is now the Co-op but was once the Palais de Luxe Picture House next to Shaw’s Garages.

It must have been a sunny day but a bit on the cold side. It was that time when people still wore overcoats rather than the padded outfits which would not be out of place on the ski slopes.

And it is the other little things which mark out the period.

There is the old fashioned machine for dispensing Polo mints which could quite easily have been for chocolate or cigarettes and a decade later might have sold cartons of milk.

Then there are the two belisha beacons at the road crossing which had been introduced in the mid 1930s but are now a rarity. Add to this the headscarf and the unfamiliar looking car and the scene is complete.

But it is the small detail that captures my eye. Just at the top of the right of the picture and partially obscured is a sign for a library. Now this was then and still is a parade of shops and the municipally owned public library is a way at the other end of Chorlton.

Privately owned lending libraries were a feature of all our towns and cities until well into the 1960s.

I well remember the one that my mother visited on New Cross Road in a bookshop which was opposite Deptford Public Library. For a small fee she could borrow a selection of books.

Some of my contemporaries have similar memories. David for instance recalled
“my parents would visit it on a Saturday afternoon. They were friendly with the couple who ran it. 

There was a counter at the back of the shop and my parents would chat with the owners - for what seemed like hours. 

My brothers and I would entertain ourselves by looking at the lurid covers of pulp science fiction titles in the room at the front of the shop” while Linda remembered “visiting the small room at the back of the newsagents, Charlesworths, in Holmfirth with my mother in the 1950s. 

 I think she paid 6 pence a week for 3 romantic novels, before the County Library opened up, and she then choose her books from there as they were free.“

And there were plenty of them. Along with the one on Barlow Moor Road, Oliver remembered Mr Cuthbert who lent out books from his newsagents at 64 Sandy Lane. Thomas Cuthbert had been in business from the late 1920s and was still there thirty years later.

It would be an interesting project to chart the rise and fall of these enterprises and look to why they eventually disappeared.

Picture, of 362 Barlow Moor Road, A H Downes, May 1958, m17608, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,

http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Revisting and revising assumptions, .......... the private lending libaries

History is messy and it sometimes defies attempts to fix it into simple explanations. I was reminded of this after I had posted a series of stories about private lending libraries.

 Now these have a long and proud record and some like the Portico Library in Manchester are a wonderful resource.

But as readers to the blog know I had become interested in the small ones operated from the backroom of the local newsagent or bookseller.

I have yet to come across any hard evidence to fill in the details. The membership and subscription lists have not survived, nor have business records for individual shops and the trade directories are little help.

Trade or street directories document the local business’s but I suppose because the lending library was a secondary enterprise shop keepers preferred to be listed as newsagents or bookshops.

So I fell back on personal memories, anecdotal evidence and a few assumptions and perhaps distorted the reality in past stories.

So I am indebted to Philip and Oliver who grew up in Chorlton for sharing some of their knowledge and broadening the picture.

Philip’s family ran a library from their post office on Upper Chorlton Road from the 1890s through to the 1950’s and their clientele was broader based than I had come to think.

As he says
“In the first half of the 20th century Whalley Range was a very prosperous area, and some of our customers were very 'well heeled'. I
remember one lady from 8, Upper Chorlton Road, then a very well-to-do area at Brookes Bar, was a loyal customer for many years. Darley Park, like its sister estate, Chorltonville, although originally designed as better housing for the people of Hulme, never fulfilled that purpose and were taken up by 'the middling sort', and we had people like Miss Peacock from 1, Darley Road, whose father had been a librarian at John Rylands Library.”


Likewise Oliver has reminded me that
“the political make up of the area is also a guide as Moss Side returned conservative MPs for most years in the 50s and early sixties Dame Florence Horsbrugh then Frank Taylor that I remember, as well Alexandra Park Ward and Chorlton were solidly blue at the same time. 

That is not to say they were all of the same social or political stripe but a reasonable indicator. People at every level had far less disposable income so in socio-economic terms people would probably only buy serious tomes to keep and for relaxed reading borrow from Boots or wherever instead of investing in westerns or detective stories that might get read only once, more bangs for their buck in a way.”


And I think that is the point. Private lending libraries by their very nature catered for a local reader and until the arrival of the cheap paperback, most people settled on borrowing from either the local shop or the public library or following a novel serialised in a weekly magazine.

And I might add that the larger private libraries were themselves attractive places to visit. I referred to the library run by Boots the Chemist yesterday and in particular the one in Inverness which had “tables, chairs and even flowers and notepaper”.


A similar memory comes from Ida who told me “my aunt lived in Buxton from the late 40's to late 50's and there was one at Boots on High Street - they had a restaurant up stairs and the library was there as well. As far as I recall it was very well used - especially on Market Day.”


So the story goes on. ........... And with a correction from Bill Sumner, "Nice story but your informant seems not to know that the area where he lived and even had a Post Office was in Stretford, the West Point shops and Darley Ave, Chatham etc. were all in the Old Trafford district of Stretford. Whalley Range/Chorlton faces them and the boundary is the centre of Upper Chorlton Road".

Picture; Upper Chorlton Road, circa early 20th century, the Philip Lloyd’s family post office and lending library is in this parade of shops, from the collection of Tony Walker

More on those private lending libraries

Sometimes a story just does not want to go away.


I didn’t think there would be much information on the private lending libraries which I have featured on the blog in the last few days. They were after all small time affairs, run from the back of the local newsagent or bookshop and most had disappeared by the mid 1960s.

But of course this does mean that their existence is still within the living memory of many people. So I have been indebted to Philip, David, Jill and Ida for sharing their memories of these libraries. And today Ida phoned me again to tell me about the newsagents on the corner of Beech and Chequers Road.

In the 1920’s it had been run by Lilly Brown and the family were still there in the 1960s. Ida remembers ”the counter was along the side of the shop facing Beech Road and the lending section was at the end. It dealt mainly in romances and Sci Fi and was a branch of a big concern based in Whalley Range.”

This was the Allied Library which was on the corner of Upper Chorlton Road and Wood Road North.

 It had grown as a chain of rental libraries in the years after the last world war.

At its peak in March 1962 it hired out 362, 000 books through 1,489 books.

The Lloyd family which had operated their own private lending library from 1909 accepted an offer from Allied to supply books on a rotating basis, which greatly increased the number and range of books which the "Lloyd's Circulating Library," could lend. The arrangement according to Philip lasted into the 1950s.

Boots the Chemist which had started its library in 1898 closed the service in 1966. I guess the continued expansion of municipal libraries, cheap paperbacks and television each played their part in making private libraries less viable.

My mother stopped visiting hers in the early ‘60s and she would no doubt not have been alone in looking elsewhere to read.

By all accounts the Boot’s libraries were impressive, “The Inverness branch of Boots the Chemist, was in the High Street. - it was on the first floor and was fitted with wooden bookshelves, chairs, tables and even notepaper and fresh flowers. Members paid a subscription and were able to borrow books, light romances and 'whodunnits' being the most popular. By 1938 Boots libraries were issuing 35 million books each year. 

The company liked to emphasise its reputation for providing clean books.”
http://www.ambaile.org.uk/en/item/item_photograph.jsp?item_id=777


And this is the key to the success of all these privately run libraries. There was no deposit, the subscription was modest and the service friendly. My close friend told me the library my mother and hers used “was a small place but absolutely packed with books - a lovely, warm place in the middle of winter! I would get Mum her books sometimes - just went to the counter and asked for romances and, between the man's memory and mine, we nearly always managed to find something she hadn't read.”


This probably also accounts for their popularity in the US where it peaked in the 1930s. For anyone wanting to go further visit http://purplemotes.net/2009/05/03/circulation-from-rental-and-public-libraries/

Picture; Allied Libraries at No 202 Upper Chorlton Road taken in August 1960 Downes A H m40870 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Chorlton's private lending libraries a second story

There is a real story yet to be told about the private lending libraries which were a feature of all our towns and cities for perhaps a half a century.

 I have mentioned them before and since then I have come to think more and more about what they might tell us about the growth of literacy during the last years of the 19th and most of the 20th century.

Here alongside the municipally provided public libraries were these private lending libraries. T

hey could be found in bookshops and newsagents and mostly seem to have offered light and romantic novels.

Unlike their council counterparts they charged a small fee but everyone I have talked to maintain the charge was minimal. In some places until the arrival of the public library they offered the only opportunity to lend rather than buy a book.

It is impossible to deduce much from the small number of people who I know used them, but I rather think we are dealing with customers in the lower income groups. Both my mother and her friend were from working class families where incomes were tight.

 Likewise Thomas Cuthbert whose newsagents at 64 Sandy Lane lent books was situated amongst rows of smallish terraced houses and it would be fair to assume his trade came from these houses.

It is also difficult to know how many of these lending libraries existed. Just around the corner from Cuthbert’s in 1929 was the newsagent’s and lending library of Harry Jackson at 364 Barlow Moor Road and there must have been more.

Ida Bradshaw visited one in the shop which is still a newsagent on the corner of Beech and Chequers Roads. "It was all fiction and you could only borrow one book at time but could change books several times in one week. From what I recall quite a lot of newsagents had them mainly for people who didn't belong to council library.”

Philip Lloyd whose parents owned the post office on Upper Chorlton Road, remembered
“We had a private lending library here at 268, Upper Chorlton Road, started in my Grandfathers day, maybe soon after the shop was opened in 1909, and lasted till the 1950s. 

The books were generally Mills and Boon, or that type, and we had a loyal group of people who paid their 3d per book per week, usually putting their initials in the back when they had read it, in case they picked up the same one again. 

 We pasted the front of the dust cover onto the inside front cover and our library label on the page opposite, Lloyd's Circulating Library, leaving room for the rubber stamp of the date due back. 


In the 1950s, Allied Libraries, on Upper Chorlton Road approached us with an offer to supply the books on a rotating basis, which would give us a bigger range, so that is what we did. They were based in two big old houses on the corner of Wood Road North, where flats have since been built.
Our business was newsagents, stationers, fancy goods, toys, games, greeting cards and sub post office.”

I rather think they were perhaps a little less intimidating than the public library. I always remember the one on New Cross Road as a far friendlier place than Deptford Library which was almost directly opposite.

As befitted a municipally run establishment there was an atmosphere of authoritarian silence punctuated only the sound of the date stamp recording the day of return for the book.

By contrast the book shop was a noisy place. My close family friend and adopted big sister Jill remembers “it was a small place but absolutely packed with books - a lovely, warm place in the middle of winter! I would get Mum her books sometimes - just went to the counter and asked for romances and, between the man's memories and mine; we nearly always managed to find something she hadn't read. 
I think you paid a very small sum but I'm really not sure about that.”


Picture; Sandy Lane circa 1910, showing the newsagents which from the late 1920s lent books, Sandy Lane m18194,and 44 Beech Road where Ida borrowed her books, taken by R E Stanley in 1958, m17655 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

South Drive in 1913 and another of those postcards from Tuck & Sons

Now South Drive was still very new when Tuck and Sons featured it as one of their six postcards of Chorlton in the summer of 1913.

And like all six in the series it will be familiar to most of us, so instead I want to explore the reverse and in particular the reference to R. SOWERBUTTS, NEWSAGENTS STATIONARY & CIRCULATING LIBRARY CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY.

Robert Sowerbutts ran his business from 105 Manchester Road which is that parade of shops running back from Kensington Road to Ransfield Road.

The shop is there still there but will have gone through many hands and changes of business use.

But I am intrigued by Mr Sowerbutts, and I rather think he must have been an enterprising chap, given that as well as acting as a distributor for Tuck and Sons and running his newsagents and stationary business he had also advertised that he had a Telephone Call Office.

Nor was this all because like other newsagents and stationers he offered a private library, which of course has featured in the blog. **

There were plenty of them in the township from Mr Lloyd’s on Upper Chorlton Road, across to Manchester Road, Barlow Moor Road and Sandy lane and Beech Road.

And some of these also sold postcards for both the big companies or like Burt’s on Wilbraham Road marketed their own.

Pictures; South Drive, from the series Chorlton-cum-Hardy, issued by Tuck & Sons, November 1913 courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

*Chorltonville, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorltonville

**Chorlton’s private lending libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20private%20lending%20libraries