Lost Images of our Commercial Past ...... nu 3 Somerset & Co Ltd Whitworth Street

Somerset & Co Ltd advertised themselves as a packing firm and traded from number 42 Whitworth Street, along with eight businesses all of all listed  as “merchants”

I passed the building countless times and think it once held the offices of the Manchester Conservative Party.

I certainly remember it always struck me as a forlorn and forbidding place which wouldn’t have lifted my heart had I worked inside.

But then Whitworth Street always reminds me of one of those canyons in a western film, all narrow valley and tall steep sides.

I know well the books which describe how impressive these buildings are but they just overpower me and even on a sunny day it’s a dismal place.

And so having been empty for what seemed decades this one came down, served as a car park and is now gone, replaced by a new building.

Location; Whitworth Street, Manchester

Picture; Whitworth Street, 2013, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost Images of our Commercial Past ...... nu 3 I. J. & G. Cooper Ltd, Dale Street

Now this is one of those fine buildings which we do so well.

I. J. & G. Cooper were general warehousemen. They were offering up space in their building by 1911 and I think I shall go looking for some stories of the firm and its owners.

For now I am just pleased that Andy photographed a building I regularly pass and gave little thought to.



Picture; I. J. & G. Cooper Ltd, Dale Street, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Lost Images of our Commercial Past ..... part one ........ down on Marshall Street

We take our commercial history for granted.

If asked most people will talk happily about Manchester’s textile history, remembered in that simple one word description “Cottonopolis” and if pushed will be able to name one of those huge engineering works on the east of the city and may even remember that we had our own coal mine.*

But the countless small offices and warehouses are pretty much ignored.

Most have long since vanished, leaving nothing more than a few memories, the odd business card and an entry in a trade directory.

A few of their buildings still stand but as many of these are in those parts of the city which are fast being developed I doubt that they will be with us for long.

So I was intrigued by a series of pictures taken by Andy on a slow meandering walk from Victoria Station and up around Oldham Road and off towards Rochdale Road in 2015.

This was always one of those busy but shabby parts of the city, full of small commercial enterprises and a few bigger businesses.

Marshall Street and the surrounding streets  are just one of those areas which you know will soon catch the eye of the developer.

With luck some of the more interesting buildings will be saved and converted into residential but others already old and too tired will vanish.

So Mr Swift's building I think is safe but  I wonder about the future of the Marsden Harcombe Company building.

The later was home to the Greater Manchester County Archives before its move to Central Ref and now like its neighbour is empty, boarded up and waiting the future.

Already a planning application is in for the area on the corner of Marshall Street, Oldham Road and Goulden Street for a mixed development, part residential, part retail and including a pub and restaurant.**

And I expect our little bit will soon attract the attention of a developer.

All of which means that  the Marsden Harcombe Company building should be viewed soon.

Pictures; Marshall Street, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Bradford Colliery.

** Manchester City Council online planning, http://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=IMJTXWBC62000

Images of our commercial past

Revisiting Marshall Street and the entrance to Marsden Harcombe & Company

Now it’s been a long time since I was down on Marshall Street and so I have no idea if the entrance to the former Marsden Harcombe & Company factory still exists.

Marshall Street, 2015

I knew the building as the Greater Manchester County Records Office which is now in Central Ref and since they moved the place has been empty.

A full year ago I reflected on its future and then as you do forgot about it but Phil Portus has set me off thinking about both the building and Marsden Harcombe & Company again.*

I don’t as yet know when they set up in Marshall Street or when they closed down, but in 1911 James Harcombe, mattress & manufacturer (Marsden, Harcombe & Co) were listed at 19 Highfield Drive Monton” which is a residential property.

So their manufacturing business will have been elsewhere but there is no listing for them on Marshall Street although my eye was caught by The Cosy Workmen’s Home on the corner with Chadderton Street but that will have to wait for another time.

Soap Street, circa 1900

Eventually I tracked the firm to Soap Street which is off Thomas Street and is one of those narrow little places that would not be out of place in a novel by Charles Dickens.

And at some point after 1911 they made that move to Marshall Street but to fasten on the exact date will mean trawling through a pile of directories but I do know that much of the street was still terraced housing at the beginning of the 20th century.

So for now I will just leave you with Phil’s picture and a map of Soap Street from the 1900s . **

And after this was posted, Pauline Sprague Kielty commented that "my Dad and his cousin worked there.maybe in the 30s they made mattresses. Then when Dad was doing the family history 1999 we went there to look up family records as it turned into the records office . Dad noticed the old clocking off clock still attached to the wall."  Magic

Location; Marshall Street, Soap Street, Manchester

Pictures; Marsden Harcombe & Company, Marshall Street, 2015, from the collection of Phil Portus, and Soap Street, 1900, from Goad’s Fire Insurance maps, courtesy of Digital Archive Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Lost Images of our Commercial Past ..... part one ........ down on Marshall Street, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/lost-images-of-our-commercial-past-part.html

**Salford Project, http://www.philportus.co.uk/salford-project/

That impressive building on Canal Street ................ once the offices of Michael Nairn & Company

Now I will have passed this building on Canal Street countless times in the early 1970s.

The old College of Knowledge which had me as one of its students is just around the corner, and Canal Street was a convienent short cut which avoided the busier bigger roads, and of course it had the canal.

Back then the Rochdale Canal had seen better days but it was still a fascinating spot to stop, and just watch the water cascade over the closed lock gates and ponder on what you did to rent that house that straddled the water.

All of which is leading up to Andy Robertson’s latest set of pictures taken on a bright sunny day down by the canal.

As ever there is a shed load of interesting pictures, but this one of the door way of nu 4 Canal Street caught my attention.

M Nairn & Co Ltd were the firm of Michael Nairn, specialising in floor-cloths, power looms and linoleum.

And according to that excellent site Grace's Guide to British Industrial History "at the 1862 Exhibition in London and the 1867 Paris Exhibition Nairns Floorcloth came into its own and won the prizes.  

In  1870 Nairn and Co built a six-storey factory in Kirkcaldy and by 1877 with the introduction of linoleum, Kirkcaldy soon became the largest producer of the new floorcovering in the world.

In the 1920s the family joined forces with a supplier in Erie, Pennsylvania, which manufactured a three-foot wide simulated wood grain product used to border area rugs and linoleum. 

This product was known as "Congoleum", because the asphalt materials used to make it came from the Belgian Congo in Africa. 

The new company called itself Congoleum-Nairn.

Congoleum-Nairn continued to sell "Congoleum Gold Seal Rugs" and "Nairn linoleum" through the late 1930's, until its researchers started experimenting with a new material called vinyl. 

However, further research into developing vinyl flooring was interrupted when World War II began. 

Following the war, the company continued to grow in the rapidly expanding housing market of that period.

2008 Forbo-Nairn is now the UK's only linoleum manufacturer. Forbo-Nairn have their own website."*

None of which I had a clue about when I regularly walked past the building.  

Nor would I have clocked the Latin inscription the meaning of which escapes me.  

And yes I did go to google translate but that didn’t help over much.

In time I will start looking for the history of the building.  I know it was there by 1903 which just leaves a patient trawl of the directories.

Location; Canal Street

Pictures; Canal Street from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Michael_Nairn_and_Co

See better days and do better things ......... the Cross Keys on Radium Street from Lost images of our Commercial past ...... nu 2

It is a pretty forlorn looking building.

It was once in happier times the Cross Keys.

Back then the large numbers of mills, warehouses and terraced housing will have kept the place busy.

Not so now  as Andy’s pictures shows it has passed its best.

But in the best of all possible worlds anything is possible, and with the fast gentrification of those bits of the city which we all thought neglected and forgotten I reckon there is every chance that what was once the premises of “Elizabeth Louise Bergin ..... Licensed to sell by retail all Intoxicating Liquors to be consumed on or off the premises” will be open again for business.

And I am open to suggestions as to what it might be.  The sensible money will I guess be on a cafe/restaurant, with an option on a smart designer office, or retro clothes shop.

Now there is plenty of new residential property already just a little further up Radium Street, all of which might offer up customers.

A sneaky look at the Planning site hasn’t revealed any developments as yet but it abuts a set of derelict buildings and an open space, so if it fails to catch the eye of an innovative entrepreneur I guess its fate lies with a developer.

Well we shall see.

I shall just close with some more contrasting images of the place as it is and was and reflect that my first experience in a pub in the city was one with the same name, where the landlord turfed us out because we had long hair.

Now despite this being 1969  he may well have thought we some how brought the ambiance of the place down a notch, but none of us had hair which did much more than tickle our ears and we were on Minishull Street.

That said we returned three months later on one of those opportunistic forays having seen him leave.

By then we really had got long hair but the challenge was hollow.

He never returned that afternoon and the beer tasted bad.

It would be idle to speculate on what the landlord/lady of the Cross Keys on Radium Street would have made of us.

Given the time and place I guess we would have not

even got over the door step.

But things change which brings me back to the future of the Cross Keys.

I rather think there will again be pints across the counter mixed I suspect with some interesting New World wines.

Now that should be worth a visit.




Pictures; the Cross Keys, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson and in 1962, T Brooks, m10189, and by L H Price, m49465, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass






And just after I posted the story Neil came up with this interesting addition to the story, The Cross Keys Pub Radium Street, http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/tours/tour12/crosskeys.html from A Manchester View, http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/Manchesterview2.html