The lost Didsbury pub …………

It was the pub which progressed from being a hotel, went on to have a connection with a snooty fox and ended its days as the Mersey Lights.

The Mersey Hotel opened on November 30th, 1939 and was an impressive place which according to the Manchester Evening News was a “modernistic and scientifically built hotel, with “a futuristic design”, but also reflected “the spirit of the past”, with its half-timbered exterior and grand entrance.

Inside, the hotel was divided into several rooms including a Lounge, Smoke Room and smaller areas, which were decorated with paneled walls and murals.

And in a nice touch of recognition to the “workmen who for the last 12 months have been building the premises”, Groves and Whitnall, who had spent £40,000 on its construction, “arranged that the workmen, including, foreman, joiners, carpenters, bricklayers, plasters, plumbers and other artisans shall have the honour of declaring this magnificent new hotel officially open”.*

We might find this a cynical marketing ploy, but I like to think it was genuine, and as the advert proclaimed, “The Opening Ceremony … performed by the Craftsmen who built it”, represented “A Pageant of Labour”.

A full forty years later I occasionally called in for a drink , and would sometimes be tempted to stay on for the big show, for like many of these big interwar pubs, the Mersey offered live entertainment, which had included, Little and Large, Les Dawson, Bernard Manning and Freddie and the Dreamers.

It is a little surprising today to realize that the Mersey, along with the Princess Club, in Chorlton, the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe and pubs like the Princess on the Parkway attracted many of the top entertainers of the 1960s and 70s, including the Drifters, Bob Monkhouse, Billy J Kramer, Lonnie Donegan and Tom Jones and plenty more.

In later years, Mersey Hotel became the Snooty Fox and later still the Mersey Lights.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; courtesy of Sally Dervan  

*The Mersey Hotel, Princess Parkway, West Didsbury, Opens Tomorrow Noon, The Manchester Evening News November 29th, 1939

A bit of co-operative history in Didsbury and a picture of how we shopped in 1935

It is easy to miss the stone with its initials M&S high up on the building which includes Expo Lounge, and  Holland &Barrett.

The M&S sign, 2020

A few who do spot it might ponder on how long Marks and Spencer were located here on Wilmslow Road, before moving to their brand-new store just along from the old Police Station.

But that would be to miss that this is a bit of our co-operative past, because this block was one of the chain of shops run by the Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-operative

It was opened on November 29th, 1929, and was one of the eight they opened that year, marking a huge expansion in the idea of co-operative trading across south Manchester, and was a response to the growth in both social and private housing which characterized the years after the Great War.*

And no doubt our store was part of the new look in co-operative retail, which the Manchester Guardian reported, was “something like a revolution in the shop-fitting of Co-operative stores”.**

Out went the “heavy mouldings [and] expanses of somber mahogany”, and instead “the greengrocers radiate attraction from stainless steel baskets on white marble bases [while] the butter and bacon gain a reflected splendour from a background of white vitroline branded with green, and the counter is smooth and shining coloured glass and stainless steel”.  Added to which the refrigerator counter is “lit from outside by lights above the glass.”.

The Manchester & Salford Co-op, 2020

It all reads very familiar but must have been an eye-catching departure from what had gone before.

And in other ways the co-op shops in south Manchester along with shopping in general was markedly different when compared to other parts of the city.

A survey conducted in 1934, across six Manchester local government wards, showed very different retail experiences.  The six were, Withington, Didsbury, Blackley, Levenshulme,  Miles Platting and Medlock Street.

Didsbury retailing, 2020

They were chosen for their very different profiles, so while Withington and Didsbury were judged, “mainly residential and middle class”; Blackley and Levenshulme  were “lower middle class and artisan” and  Miles Platting and Medlock Street were seen as “mainly working class or slum, thickly populated and intersected by busy main roads, with industrial property amongst houses and tenements.”***

Not surprising “another difference between the rough divisions is that in the first the average is one house [often big], one family; the second, one house [often small], one family; the third, one house to one, two, or three families”.

The total number of shops in the six wards  was 2,869, with a higher proportion of shops in the “poorer areas”, and these often had a limited range of products when compared to Didsbury and Withington, and had a lower ratable value.

How we ate, 1935

The same shops were likely to be closer to their customers than in the more prosperous areas, and very much like today there was a greater number of fast food or convenience outlets.

So, across the six wards there were 144 shops selling “fried fish and chips, cooled meats and tripe” with the highest number in Medlock Street and Miles Platting.

Likewise second hand furniture dealers and licensed pawnbrokers which are a measure of poverty, were “not found in Withington or Didsbury, and Blackley and Levenshulme  could only produce seven, [compared] to Medlock Street where there was 18 second-hand dealers and 29 brokers and Miles Platting has 5 dealers and 17 brokers”.

But on a lighter note the survey discovered that while hairdressers and barbers were more evenly distributed, with the highest proportionate number in Medlock Street with one to every 850 people, compared to Withington which “has one to every 3,000”.

Fresh food in Didsbury, 2019

Make of that what you will.****

Location; Didsbury, and Manchester in 1935

Pictures;  The M&S shop and Oxfam Shop, Wilmlsow Road, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*Ayres Road, Old Trafford, Green End, Burnage, Parrs Wood Road North, Burnage, Warwick Road South, Firswood, Park Estate West, Timperley, Hardy Lane, Chorlton, School Road, Sale

**The Modern Shop, In Manchester, the Manchester Guardian, June 24, 1935

***Manchester Shops, Six Ward Survey Private Trader Predominant, Striking Contrasts, Dorothy Hodge, Manchester Guardian, February 16th, 1934

***To which Dorothy Hodge concluded “the residents of Withington uses the city barber to a considerable extent.”

A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects ... number 17 ……. always beware the Mersey

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph or more.

The Mersey has been both a gift to Didsbury and at times a threat.

On the upside it has provided a natural barrier in more unsettled times, driven the mills along its banks, and provided water.

But it remains a powerful and at times a dangerous force, that can breach the defences and flood large parts of the neighbouring land.

Location Didsbury February 1930

Picture; Didsbury February 1930

A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 8 ........... catching the tram*

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph or more.

Now the caption gives a date of 1937, but the flats in the distance are Parrs Wood Court, which were built in 1939 and opened for sale in the following year.

That said it perfectly records a Parrs Wood in a more gentle and less busy time.

Location East Didsbury

Picture; Parrs Wood Terminus, circa 1939, from the collection of Allan Brown


*The history of Didsbury in 20 objects, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-history-of-didsbury-in-just-20_18.html

Down at Parrs Wood Parade in 1931........... pondering on that park and the litter

It is the detail in this 1930s postcard which I like. 

On a wet summer’s day the Corporation bus has just set down a group of passengers and above them the sign announces that the East Didsbury Station is still part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway.

It would be another eighteen years before the LMS became part of the new nationalized British Railways.

In the distance the small grassed park still retains its ornamental gates and underneath the glass and cast iron canopy of the Parrs Wood Arcade are adverts for Players Navy Cut and Wills Golden Flake tobacco and cigarettes, Hovis Bread and the Dispatch newspaper.

And I was drawn back to the postcard by a discussion with the artist Liz Scantlebury who like me was intrigued by those small ornamental gates

We were both intrigued by their date and I now know the park was laid our in 1928.

And finally for those who lament the passing of a cleaner and tidier Britain I suggest you ignore the discarded lamp shade left under the bridge.

All of which just leaves me to fall back on a piece of outrageous self promotion and mention the first book on the history of Didsbury, which I wrote with  Manchester artist Peter Topping which was published in 2013.

It should not of course be confused with our Didsbury book on the pubs of the area, also available and a jolly good read.

Location; Didsbury












Picture; Parrs Wood Parade, Didsbury, circa 1931

On East Didsbury Station wondering why there are few pictures of Parrs Wood

In that great sweep of photographs of Didsbury, Parrs Wood always seems the poor relation.

It is as if having done the village, the college, Fletcher Moss, the churches and the pubs most photographers pretty much picked up their cameras and went off to their dark rooms.

A few of the more enterprising commercial photographers did snap away at the larger houses and some of the more picturesque roads.

These they would revisit offering the images for sale to the residents and later those same images made their way into the catalogues of the picture post card companies.

But Parrs Wood and East Didsbury rarely got the same attention.  I suppose before the coming of the Kingsway there wasn’t that much to record and after it had been cut the area lost a little of its charm.

After all it would be a bold commercial photographer who would gamble on the attractions of the Kingsway Extension, and yet one did so, recording also the houses along its route, and the Gateway Hotel.

And these along with Parrs Wood Court and the bus garage now sit in the collection and back in the 1930s and 40s no doubt graced the mantelpieces of some of the homes in East Didsbury.

But for me it is this picture of the station which has caught my fancy.

Now as railway stations go it was quite late on the scene, having opened in 1909 a full 29 years after that other Didsbury station opened for business.

Somewhere I will be able to find details of the number of passengers it carried and I guess really came into its own with the development of the housing on both sides of the track.

For me it is all about nostalgia.  I can remember those locomotives and the distinctive smell of warm oil and steam along with the wooden platforms and all the bits that went with the station, including the simple slot machines which offered up Five Boys Chocolate.

I have to say I never learned and was always disappointed at the way the chocolate tended to have gone flaky and white at the edges and invariably tasted stale.

But there were compensations in the form of those evocative train posters for faraway seaside resorts, the big cast iron weighing machines and depending on the time of the day the rows of milk churns.

All of these provided distractions from what always seemed an age of waiting, broken only by the occasional goods train and fast express which swept past cutting the air in a blur of noise and steam with its passengers gazing at you always it seemed with that mix of disdain and pity no doubt reflecting how lucky they were to be moving with such purpose.

We on the other hand looked back glum and a little sad that our train ticket allowed us only the slow
stopping train and a host of suburban railway stops.



Picture; East Didsbury Station, date unknown 

Warburton Street ....... steps into the war

This I think will be the last of the stories on Warburton Street.

Preparing for war, 1939

When I started the project,  I had no idea of the age of the five cottages on the southern side of the street or who occupied them.

The houses were there by 1845, and may even be older, and in the middle decades of the 19th century they were home to labourers, farmworkers, and domestic servants.

By the beginning of the next century there were still some labourers, but fitting the times there was also was also a railwayman, reflecting the arrival of the railway in 1880, a factory worker who may have worked in Manchester or just down the road in Heaton Mersey, along with a shop assistant and a launderess.

All of which brings us to 1939 just days after Britain went to war with Germany.

In the September of that year the Government carried out a mini census, the information from which was used to generate Identity Cards for the entire nation.

It remains one of the few detailed pictures of the age, occupation, and marital status of the country, since the 1911 census, and fills a gap in what we know about the population in the early 20th century, and remained so until the publication of the 1921 census.

That said there are sections which have been redacted, but in the case of numbers 2 through to 10, all the residents are there.

And the first obvious observation is that these two up two down houses were now home to very small families, which was in direct contrast to the 1850s and 60s, when some of the properties were occupied by five and six people.

Warburton Street, 2020

Added to their residents no longer made a living from the land, or as domestic servants.

Instead there was an Inland Revenue Clerk, two in the newspaper trade, and a raincoat machinist.

Most striking of all was Mr. Christopher Worthington who was a “Cutter of Waterproof and Anti Gas Clothing”.

At best I guess this new line in manufacture will date from just after the Munich Crisis the year before, when France and Britain finally decided that Nazi Germany was potentially a threat to the peace of Europe.

Just what happened to all the residents during the war and where they moved to afterwards, is closed to us.

There are no more detailed published surveys of households after 1939, and at best there will be the electoral registers and street directories, but these will offer up only names.

So, this seems an appropriate point to close the story of the street, other than to say the last directory records that in 1969, at no. 2 was "Jimo Cycle Services (workshop), at 4/6, Morton E. J. antiquarian booksllr at 8, Thornhill A. turf commission agt, and at 10, Gay Antiques (storeroom)".

Leaving it to Morten’s the book shop, and the other businesses to contribute a bit more to the story.

We shall see.

Location; Didsbury

Additional reserch, Andy Robertson

Pictures; the reality of war, “Distribution of  Gas Masks Baby Inside Gas Mask”, August 22nd 1939, m09922, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Warburton Street, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Discovering the story behind the photograph

Now sometimes a photograph just takes you over and you know you just want to find out as much as you can about it.

This is Alice Wareing who married Eric Kettle in 1922 at the Primitive Methodist Church on High Lane.

They lived on Buxton Avenue in Didsbury and during the 1930s performed in local amateur dramatic productions.

I don’t know which group but it will be local to south Manchester and there might be a clue in the picture with contains the word Didsbury, but that might just refer to the photographer.

It is also possible that they were with the Methodist players.

This group performed in the Sunday school beside the church on Manchester Road.

Their stage dates from the 1930s and given that I have stood in the hall on the stage I rather think it would be fitting if this were the case.

And that stage will soon be no more as the Edge Company who now occupy the old Sunday School are about to modernise the hall.

In time I hope I will be able to find out more.

The picture is one of two which was sent to me by my friend Ann along with a press cutting of Alice and Eric’s marriage.

This is equally fascinating providing those sorts of details which all too often are lost.

So I know who attended the wedding, the outfits of the main participants and the honeymoon destination of the couple.

All of which offers up a revealing insight into the lives of Mr and Mrs Kettle and opens up a shed load of research into the amateur dramatics societies of south Manchester eighty years ago.

Pictures, Alice and Eric Kettle, circa 1930s, courtesy of Ann Love

Stories from a Didsbury picture ….. no 5 …. always respect the River Mersey

This will be the last of the short series featuring a picture from Andrew and a story from me.

Didsbury floods, 2021

I began the short run after Andrew offered up five images, each of which linked the present with Didsbury’s past.

I had no idea where each story would take me, and over the course of the week, the stories have ranged from Withington Hospital, the first occupants of Knight Road, and the TransPennine Trail, with a sideways glance at defribialtors, the history of a much loved fishmongers, and  Didsbury’s own railway station.

And I end with “The flood basin from the gardens of the University Vice Chancellor’s house Broomhurst”, which is a salutary reminder of the power of the River Mersey and its importance to the township.  

Didsbury Floods, 1930

Over the centuries the river has been both a gift and at times a threat.  

On the upside the Mersey has provided a natural barrier in more unsettled times, driven the mills along its banks and provided supplies of water.  

But it remains a formidable and at times a dangerous force that can breach the defences and flood large parts of the neighbouring land. 

Today the flood prevention schemes allow for excess water to be released into catchment basins.

But as the recent floods have demonstrated, even with such schemes, homes can still be in danger.

Andrew is the Labour Councillor for Didsbury East on Manchester City Council please contact me at cllr.a.simcock@manchester.gov.uk

Location; Didsbury

Picture; “The flood basin from the gardens of the University Vice Chancellor’s house Broomhurst”, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Didsbury, 1930

Discovering the secrets of one Didsbury house ………….. it’s all in the wallpaper

It’s not the most scientific way to research the tastes of 1930 Didsbury residents, but it’s fun.

So here under the layers of more recent decorative styles are the wall paper choices of one family back just under 90 years ago.

They come from my friend Barbarella who came across these clues to what one of the previous owners of the house thought were the cutting edge of design.

To be fair the examples showing 19th century figures set against a rural landscape may have been for a children’s bedroom, and may originally been taken from nursery stories.

And here I remember having once asked and got an entire room decorated with Dan Dare wall paper when I was seven.  

With more research I might be able to actually locate and date the different wall papers.

A quick search suggested that similar “vintage period” wall papers from the 1930s go for between £17 and £44 a roll. Now there’s a thought.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; wallpapers from a Didsbury house, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

A breath of the 1930s on Palatine Road ……………doing the essential walk and making it historic .... no. 17

Now I have always been intrigued by Queens Court, on Palatine Road, which looks out of place amongst the grand old Victorian and Edwardian houses, and the more modern blocks of flats, which stretch down from Lapwing Lane and on towards Wilmlsow Road.

They have a stylish presence, with their arched exterior staircases which marks them off as different and very bold when they were built sometime in the 1930s.

I say 1930s, because I have always thought they reflected that period.

And now I know that they were at least there by 1939, and possibly earlier.

They are on the site of St Mary’s Church which ran along Queens Court Road and Palatine Road.

The church closed in 1929, and I suspect sometime in the next decade our flats went up.

The search for a date for the flats was one of those little detective exercises which involved trawling past copies of the Manchester Guardian looking for any reference to the buildings.*

In 1945 in the local magistrates courts a resident of one of the flats who was described as a married woman in an “extremely good financial position” was cleared of an accusation of theft, while in 1940, an “Aircraft Examiner” was “Charged under two charges of the Official Secrets Act [in a case] heard in camera”.  

“He was also charged with aiding and abetting a German Refugee from Nazi oppression to commit an offence under the Aliens Order.”

And a year earlier the newspaper carried an advert "Queens’ Court, Palatine Road, West Didsbury 2 only Entirely Self Contained   4 roomed Maisonettes”

Now I have Barbarella to thank for the pictures, because she tailored her essential walk of the day to include Queens Court following a request by me.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Walking Palatine Road, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

*Manchester Guardian, July 15th 1939, Jul 6th 1940, March 28, 1945

Travels through the village ………… part 2

The idea is very simple, select almost the same spot along Wilmslow Road through the village, and throw in a series of picture post cards taken from almost the same place over the last century.*

So here are the second two, from the 1930s and 1920s.




Location; Didsbury Village

Pictures; the Village, the 1930s and 50s








*The location of the village green was down by the Didsbury Hotel and Old Cock.

You wait for a tram at Parrs Wood …….. and three turn up at the same time.

Another Didsbury tram story.

Of course, that is not strictly accurate, because this is the terminus at Parrs Wood and beyond that brick wall were the grounds of Parrs Wood House.

Location; Parrs Wood



Picture; trams at Parrs Wood, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

Memories of leaving Manchester as an evacuee in September 1939 ..... in conversation with Bevan Taylor

“There was no chance to say goodbye to my parents, the buses arrived and we were off to London Road Station and three months in the country as evacuees.”

Poster, 1940

This almost throwaway comment by Bevan Taylor will have been replicated thousands of times across Britain during the early September of 1939.

Since Guernica in the Spanish Civil War there was that powerful idea that the “bomber would always get through” and so even before the outbreak of war preparations had been made for the mass removal of children and expectant mothers out of the danger areas.

The evacuations began in early September, experienced a lull during the Phoney War when some children returned home and picked up again after the Fall of France and the beginning of the Blitz.

But there were enormous regional variations with cities like Manchester and Liverpool evacuating large numbers of children while other urban areas sent fewer to neighbouring towns and villages.

Bev and his friends from Burnage High School were sent to two villages outside Leek in Staffordshire.

It had begun  in the spring of 1939 when his parents attended a meeting at the school “which they assumed was about Air Raid Precautions, and while there signed a form which it became clear gave permission for me to be evacuated.

Children evacuees on a bus, 1940

There were approximately 450 other lads whose parents had done the same, and we were all told to arrive at school with a packed bag.

Now I turned up with one of those fibre suitcases while my friends had rucksacks, and I did envy them those rucksacks.

We didn’t know what to expect but perhaps not just to be put in the school playing field under the supervision of some prefects.  

There was nothing to do except play cards.

At the end of the school day we were sent home, only to return the following day for more of the same.

North Manchester Grammar School Boys, 1940

In all we had four days on the playing field and I can say I’d had my fill of playing cards by the end of it.

And then on that fifth day, Friday September 11th some double-decker buses drew up outside the school

We were told we weren’t going home and with that we trooped aboard the buses and went off to the station and from there by train to Leek and on again by bus to the village of Longsdon.

There wasn’t much to the village.  I remember the church,the corner shop,  a telephone kiosk and a hall belonging to the Women’s Institute. 

I had teamed up with my friend and we reckoned that we would accept the first person who offered to take us because we didn’t fancy being there all day.

As it was we didn’t have to wait long because about half an hour after we arrived a severe looking man with dark eyes, wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella walked up to us and said ‘Would you like to come with me?  

He gave my mate his briefcase and umbrella and me the bowler hat and then with us on either side of him we walked off out of the hall and up the road to a house opposite to Salt’s farm."

Next; three months with the Peacock family

In conversation with Bevan Taylor May 8 2015

Picture; Don’t do it Mother, Ministry of Health, 1940, and was scanned and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence, Evacuation of School Children on a Bus, 1940 m09910  and North Manchester Grammar School Boys off to Bakewell, 1940, m09927  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass