When only the pubs were left ........

It is pretty true that during many of the urban redevelopment schemes of the 1960s and 70s, it was the pubs which remained long after the homes of their customers had been bulldozed down

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures; from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Walking through the lost Hulme and Moss Side

 Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Vanished Manchester communities ...........

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Walking Hulme and Moss Side over half a century ago ......

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Carts …. horses ….. and another busy day …… the lost Hulme and Moss Side .. part 3

This is the third dip into a collection which recorded life in Hulme and Moss Side during the house clearances of the 1960s and 70s.

They were taken by Roger Shelley and they are a powerful visual description of communities who continued to work and play as around them the wrecking ball wiped away a century and a bit of houses and workshops.

I have to say I had almost forgotten “the rag and bone man” who went door to door collecting the broken, the discarded and the out of fashion household goods.

Today it’s a man in a van, often as not only interested in scrap metal and who announces his presence with a bout of loud music and still occasionally with a call for “any old iron” which would have been recognised in the streets by characters from a novel by Charles Dickens.

And Roger captured the scene as it played out in the 1960s.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side

Pictures; from the collection of Roger Shelley, 1960s and 70s.

The lost Hulme and Moss Side

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

The lost Hulme and Moss Side .....

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Standing amongst the groceries in Hulme ..... sixty years ago

When you look through the collections of pictures of old Manchester, you seldom find many of the interiors of buildings.

I can think of plenty of reasons why that might be so, but the result is to deprive of us a huge slice of our past.

And so, I was very pleased when my old friend Ann shared a picture she drew in the 1960s, while at Art College.

It is of the inside of her aunt’s shop in Hulme, and it takes me straight back to similar shops I remember from my youth.

These were the corner shops, which seemed to stay open all hours, and were prepared to flout the Sunday trading laws.  I can still remember being sworn to secrecy one Sunday morning when I left the local grocery shop with some product which had been double wrapped to disguise what it was.

Stuff was piled high and  bunches of bananas might share a space, with a several tins of salmon, and a pile of newspapers, while somewhere near the front of the counter would be those open boxes of loose biscuits, which always presented a challenge to see how many you could grab while the shop assistant wasn’t looking.

Added to which there was that smell, which was a mix of the competing foods on display and the bare wooden floorboards.

Location; Hulme





Picture;  Ann’s auntie’s shop in Hulme. Early 1960s, from the collection of Ann Love

How we lived …….. the lost Hulme and Moss Side

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures; an alley and some kids, from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Fish … chips… Vimto ….. and the abandoned lavatory …… the lost Hulme and Moss Side .. part 2

This is the second dip into a collection which recorded life in Hulme and Moss Side during the houses clearances of the 1960s and 70s.

They were taken by Roger Shelley and they are a powerful visual description of communities who continued to work and play as around them the wrecking ball wiped away a century and a bit of houses and workshops.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side

Pictures; from the collection of Roger Shelley, 1960s and 70s.

The shop that had almost everything ………… Lord’s Wholesale Retail Stretford Road …… 1963

It took a little while to locate just exactly where we are on Stretford Road back in 1963, but I now know the shop on the corner is at the junction with Upper Medlock Street.

And if you were to head down Upper Medlock Street you would cross, Dale Street where the car is parked by the road sign and then Bonsall Street.

Back then it was part of a tight network of streets and terraced housing, all of which was swept away in the wholesale regeneration of the area in the 1960s and again more recently.

So much so that I suspect a time traveller from 1963 would be totally confused and at a loss to find that street corner.

Happily, Stretford Road and Bonsall Street survived and offer up a means of anchoring where the pictures were taken.

So,  with that sorted the rest of the story will be about that shop and the advertising hoarding.

Lord’s Wholesale and Retail shop was one of those places that pretty much offered everything in the way of clothing, from Donkey Jackets, moleskin trousers , to rubber boots and riding breeches, reminding me of that sign “If we ain’t got it, you can’t get it”.

I do have to wonder what demand there would be for riding breeches in Hulme, although given this was still the age of the sailing ship there might well be people wanting a cabin trunk.

That said there was a full range of things anyone might want to kit themselves out for work.

And having done work for the day, the advertising hoarding on the corner of Dale Street, gives flavour of what was showing at the cinema.  Judging by what the Crescent and the Grosvenor were showing that week, my choice would have been Samson and Delilah with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamar.

But the Grosvenor only held just over 900 seats, while the Crescent had a thousand, added to which Cossack Street was closer than All Saints.*

That said in 1963 I was just 14, and I rather think Night of the Blood Beast, showing on Tuesday, Peeping Tom and Demons of the Swamp, which followed on Wednesday and Thursday would have won over on Victor Mature, but all three, along with The Bad One and Teenage Frankenstein would have been X rated, to which I would have been barred.

But  I would have drawn the line at Subway in the Sky,  which was showing on Saturday.

The film centered on an American soldier in West Berlin who goes on the run after being falsely accused of trafficking drugs. He hides in his wife’s flat where he meets a cabaret singer who helps him prove his innocence.

And after a melodrama like that, there could only be a recourse to some fried bread, and Ovaltine, given that at 14 the joys of Wilson Ales were some years in the future.

At which point I should draw to a conclusion were it not for that beer advert, which has got me a tad confused.

As a south east Londoner, newly arrived in the city in 1969, I picked up the divide between north and south which came not by way of my accent or the dominance of the Home Counties in so many things but simply the shape of the beer glass.

My friends pointed out that those dimpled pint pots were a southern affectation and they would always demand a straight glass.

Such was the chasm between me and them.

Leaving me just to record that the church at the end of row of shops was the Catholic Apostolic Church.

Location’ Stretford Road

Pictures; Stretford Road, 1963, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

*Kinematograph Yearbook 1947

On a day in 1969 ……..waiting for the new Hulme.

Now, I am not going into the debate on the regeneration of Hulme in the late 1960s and early 1970s, other than to say, some tired old properties were swept away to be replaced by others which failed the test of time.

Instead I shall reflect on the picture which perfectly captures that a moment in the cycle of city regeneration.

In the distance are some of the flats already erected and beyond them the landscape of the city centre.

But the rest is just an open building site, pretty much cleared of the demolished houses, with few recognizable points of reference.

Location; Hulme

Picture; Regenerating Hulme, 1969,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

   

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester …….. nu 90 ….. in the name of progress

We are in Hulme, on the corner of Erskine Street in 1965, and the pub and the adjoining buildings will soon be gone.

I can’t be quite sure when they were cleared away, but some one will, and that person will probably remember the Old Trafford Inn, and that parade of shops.

They look a tad faded and beyond their best, but Eileen’s, the Shoebox and the newsagents are very much still in business.

And for those that want a bit of historical detail, there advertised outside the first shop are the News of the World, the Daily Sketch, along with Kensitas, Player’s and Senior Service.

Location; Hulme














Picture, Erskine Street, 1965, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

Recording the end of communities .......

 Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures; Lost Manchester,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018