Now …… you can wait for a bit of the past .... then two turn up at the same time …….. outside Manchester Cathedral

So, here are two bits of how we lived.

Both have now long vanished.

The last Manchester Corporation tram completed its last journey in January 1949, months before I was born.

As for the public urinal, I have no idea when it closed, but like the tram it is now just a memory, which I may have used, but have no idea when it ceased.

The statue of Oliver Cromwell went in the 1980s so maybe it went then.

Location; Manchester Cathedral

Picture; Two trams and a urinal, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

See here the villains of the piece …….. trolley buses and motor buses kill off the tram

Now I have no love for the trolley bus ……… and remember too many journeys where I felt ill soon after we boarded.

I think it was a combination of the quiet purr, the smell of disinfectant and seat fabric, topped off by the heat.

All of which makes me feel no compunction about citing them along with the motor bus as complicit in the killing off of the Corporation trams which for more than a half century dominated the way we travelled, in Manchester and London as well as Leeds, Newcastle and Liverpool and heaps of other places.

Here in Manchester as early as the 1920s plans were hatched to do away with the tram, and that plan took a pace during the 1930s, only slowed down by the Second World War.

The trolley bus required no rails which needed maintenance, and the bus had the flexibility that it could alter its routes unhindered by those rails or overhead cables.

I was born in the year that the last Manchester tram ran its last journey and while those in London lingered on a few more years I have no memory of being taken for a ride on one.

So, I can’t testify to how comfortable they were to travel in but judging by the public’s outburst of affection at their demise, and the continuing interest in these stately towers of transport I wish I had done at least one journey in one.

But perhaps I am surrendering to the same romantic tosh that is reserved for the steam railway locomotive.

I never tire of that smell of steam and warm oil but remember mother’s realistic comment about the effect of that plume of dirty smoke and hot cinders on a line of clean washing.

And there were plenty who put the blame for the awful traffic congestion in the wake of a new road scheme in 1938 at the foot of the humble Corporation tram.

The scheme which saw a one-way system around the city centre was dogged by traffic congestion, which both the Transport Committee and the Congestion Committee of the City Council put down to the tram car.

Sir William Davy, chairman of the Transport Committee argued that “The new scheme now appeared to be working fairly satisfactorily, but that there could be no doubt that matters would be considerably improved if they were in a position to dispense with the trams”.*

A position endorsed by Councillor Hugh Lee, chairman of the traffic Congestion Committee, and Mr. J Maxwell, Chief Constable, also emphasised the view "that most of the difficulties with which they were confronted could be traced to the tram cars, [which  included] the nuisance of a permanent tram track in the middle of the road and to the impracticability of establishing roundabouts in the streets where they would be useful because of the existence of the tram services.”

So, there you have it.  I am the first to acknowledge that the economic, and traffic considerations which doomed the tram were the main reasons for their demise, leaving the bus and the trolley bus as complicit in the departure of the tram from our streets.

Pictures; Manchester Corporation Trolley Bus, 1955, m48371, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Manchester Corporation Bus, 1961, Glossop, Manchester Corporation Tram, somewhere in the city, date unknown and Manchester Corporation Trolley Bus, 1961 Denton from the collection of Allan Brown

*The One-Way Route @Abolish the Trams’, the Manchester Guardian, June 15th, 1938

Lost tramway signs ………………

Now there will be those who shake their heads in dismay at this picture of a Manchester Corporation Tramways sign and mutter how boring.

But not so, because it is a fine example of one of our lost bits of street furniture.*

I have no date, or location, but I like it.

Location; somewhere in Manchester

Picture; Manchester Corporation Tramways, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

*Street furniture, lost and found, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Street%20Furniture%20lost%20and%20saved

Learning to drive a corporation tram and other stories ….. Sidney Kirven

Sidney Kirven worked for Manchester City Council from 1925 till he retired forty-one years later.

Starting out, 1925

In that time, he saw the last days of the old corporation trams, the transition to a fully motorised fleet of buses and just missed the end of the city’s transport department.

Free from Accidents, 1962

Three years after his retirement Manchester’s fleet of buses joined those of the other ten municipalities in Greater Manchester to become a single transport authority, covering southeast Lancashire and northeast Cheshire going under the title of SELNEC.

For a while the various bus fleets retained their original colours of the old eleven municipalities but slowly were repainted in the new corporate orange and white livery of SELNEC.

I don’t know what Mr. Kirven thought of the change, and even if I did that would be a different story because today I want to focus and box full of items from his career with Manchester Corporation Tramways and its successor, Manchester City Council Transport Department.

The documents were passed over to me by a family member and include his training record card while learning to drive a tram, several trade union cards, along with a copy of the 1931 Highway Code, a number of his driving licences, a Safety Award and a letter commemorating his retirement in December 1966.

Uniform Clothing Coupons, 1941-1944

To those historians dealing with the great sweep of history they may appear small fry, but for me they are a wonderful insight into how we lived.

For me the training record card is fascinating giving as it does the route of the of the old trams across the city, while the two receipts for uniform clothing coupons is a reminder that during the war rationing extended to the uniforms of bus and transport drivers.

Of course, a lot more research needs to be done to transform these bits of memorabilia into a detailed story of Mr. Kirven and how they fit into the history of Manchester’s public transport.  Otherwise, they will just have a novelty value.

But today I am just pleased to be able to share them.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Rob and Doreen Lizar

Taking the curve into Shudehill ………….

Now I am a fan of our tram network, and I never tire of watching them move across the city at a stately pace, taking the curves and twists bequeathed by our old road network.

Taking the curve into Shudehill, 2022

All of which says much for the skill of the Metro engineers who managed to plot routes using those roads some of which date back into the late 18th century.

And one of my favourite spots is Balloon Street where trams effortlessly take the bendy way up from Corporation Street crossing Dantzic Street before sliding into the Shudehill stop.

Before the tram Balloon Street was just a cut through up from Victoria Station which I sometimes also used to visit the Co-op archives.

But now the route is closed to traffic and is exclusively given over to the trams which emerge from the canyon like street flanked by tall buildings with a bit of grace.

Location; Manchester

Picture; taking the curve into Shudehill, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On borrowed time, with tram car 562 in the summer of 1938

 I do have to say that this is one of my favourites from the collection not least because there is so much going on in the picture.

Now it is August 2nd 1938 and car 562 is clanking its way along its route to Albert Square.

Once not that long ago its driver would have only had horse drawn vehicles and pedestrians to contend with but by the summer of 1938 it was pretty much free for all with cars, vans and lorries.

And the writing was on the wall for the stately tall tram.  Ten years before our picture, the decision had been taken to replace the 53 route from Stretford to Cheetham Hill with motor buses and just over a decade later in 1949 the last trams were running on their last journeys.  According to one source the switch to buses on the 53 route was to increase passenger numbers by 11%.*

Added to this was the real need to put in substantial capital investment if the trams were to continue to run and so in 1937 the Corporation took the decision to phase out the tram in favour of the bus and trolley bus.

And if had not been for the outbreak of war two years later there would have been no tram on route 38B passing Grosvenor Street.

It would mean the end of a network of 292 miles of tram track which in 1928 carried passengers on 953 trams across 46 routes. And of course the end of that delicate tracery of cables suspended above the roads which gave power to the trams.

You can of course be swept along by such nostalgic tosh, so back to the summer of 1938 on Grosvenor Street.  Our tram is sandwiched between the van of Ball & Lawrence Ltd who dealt in carpets and that swift moving car crossing car its path.

And then there are the adverts, some of which just fade into the background but deserve mention.  In the shop directly in front of the van and by the speeding car are displays for Craven and Players cigarettes while partially hidden from view is a reminder that the railway company offered routes to Liverpool and North Wales.

But for anyone with an eye to the date and to outbreak of the war a year later it is the advert to “Join the Modern Army” which has a special significance.

Picture; from the collection of Alan Brown

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Corporation_Tramways

Tram car 283 out from Victoria Park ……. with Mr. William Becket

I don’t have a date for the picture, but it will be sometime after the Great War.

The guard standing in front of the tram is Mr. William Becket, and his career pretty much matched that of Manchester Corporation Trams.

He started on the trams, but ended his career as a bus inspector, while motor buses slowly replaced the tram, with the last tram car taking its last trip as a scheduled route on Sunday  January 9th  1949.

This was the 35, from Victoria Street to Hazel Grove.  The last moments of that journey have been recorded by Ian Yearsley in his book The Manchester Tramways.*

“That evening a group of us made our way over to Exchange to ride on the last car to Hazel Grove and back. As we stood on the wet pavement by the Cathedral it was hard to believe that this was really the end. ….... Eventually the last through car to Hazel Grove arrived, and we watched it go through the familiar routine for the last time.  The few passengers got off, and the car rolled gently down to the end of the track by Oliver Cromwell.  The light went out and in the faint light of the streetlamps we could see the guard walking around.”**

Tram car 283 had ended it service two years earlier, on December 22nd, 1947 when it was replaced by a bus.

I have Steve Casson to thank for the picture.  Mr. William Becket was his grandfather, and Steve wondered just where the photograph had been taken.

I haven’t been able to find the spot, but I know that in its forty-five years it plied a course from Victoria Street to Princess Road, and later to Fallowfield and Wilbraham Road and then Barlow Moor Road.  Later still the service was extended to Mauldeth Road via Kinsgway and was extended again to East Didsbury.

But I think Steve will be interested to know that its period of service from Victoria Park to Princess Road was from December 1st, 1902 till December 1924, and as this was the time his granddad worked the route, I guess it will be along that corridor that we shall have to look for the location of the picture.

Location; somewhere between, Victoria Park to Princess Road

Picture; tram car 283, somewhere between, Victoria Park to Princess Road, circa 1902 to 1924, from the collection of Steve Casson

*The Manchester Tramways, Ian Yearsley and Philip Groves, 1988
**ibid The Manchester Tramways,  p244

Waiting for the off.......... Manchester Corporation trams lined up in the Princess Road Car shed, 1926

Sometimes the image says it all.

And for anyone who was born after the last of the old trams rumbled their way through our streets and for that matter those who can just remember them, here is a magic picture.

It was taken in 1926 in the Princess Tram depot.

Within two decades and a bit these majestic vehicles had stopped running and now even the garage has gone.

So here they are as stately and magnificent with the sun shining down through the big glass roof.

Now I don’t think it is romantic tosh to say you get a real feel of just how impressive these trams were all lined up and waiting to go.

No wonder they still have the power to call up memories and draw new generations in.

Picture; the Princess Road Car shed, 1926 from the collection of Sally Dervan

Tram jam .............. Oxford Road

Now, somewhere I have a complete collection of press cuttings about Manchester's new road scheme, which resulted in huge rush hour congestion on Oxford Street and Road in 1938.

Tram Jam, 1938

It was a bold plan which was simply called Manchester's No 9 Traffic scheme. 

And it was a one way system that "included Oxford Street, a part of Oxford Road, and Princess Street"*

It had been in operation for eight days, including two Sundays before  "unprecedented congestion of trams in Oxford Street in the morning and the delays later in the day in Princess Street and Grovesnor Street showed showed the necessity  for alterations to the system".

Now the picture has no date, so it may have been taken during the road traffic scheme or was just  a tram jam in the rush hour at some other time in the 1930s.

Manchester's number 9 traffic scheme, 1938

Location Oxford Road

Picture; Oxford Road, circa 1939, from the collection of Allan Brown

*Manchester's One Way Traffic Scheme, The Manchester Guardian, June 13th, 1938

Silly stories from a tram seat …… and other things wot I was taught

So yesterday afternoon I gave up my seat on the tram to an elderly woman, which prompted the man in front to offer his seat to me.

I declined, we all smiled at the sequence of events and then we got on with the journey.

But not for the first time it made me think of that old practice of giving up your seat to a woman or opening a door for people and taking the kerb side of the pavement when out with my wife.

Old fashioned, sexist or just downright stupid?

All are habits that are deeply ingrained in me, and I suspect are no longer common practice, judging by the number of elderly people I see standing on moving trams while people half their age sit comfortably, gazing out of the window tuned into their phones.

It may even be deemed by some as an insult, suggesting that there is something delicate about the woman and reinforcing my own stereotypical male assumptions about gender.

What of course makes it even a bit more absurd is that at 76 I may have just been older than the woman who graciously accepted the offer of my seat.

But there you are such things run deep in me and were acquired sometime in the 1950s.

Along with that equally powerful taboo of not spitting in the street.

Of course, in that pre antibiotic age when many diseases were far more prevalent and dangerous than today the notion of not spitting in public was both sensible from a hygienic standpoint and just good manners.

It was a custom underlined by those signs on public transport calling on people to refrain from spitting, which long ago were consigned to museums secreted away in the section titled “curious practices from the past”.

To which perhaps I am equally a “curious leftover from the past”.

One of those leftovers who can’t quite get used to total strangers at call centres addressing me by my first name, as if we were long standing intimate friends and not just conducting a conversation about a lost shopping order.

But I should stop before I wax lyrical about queues, waiting your turn at the bus stop or saying thankyou to the bus driver.

Location; the past

Picture; crowded tram bound for town from Cornbrook, 2024, at Market Street, 2018, and standing room only from St Peter's Square, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Out to East Didsbury from Albert Square ……. on the new tram

I say the new tram, because quite clearly this wasn’t the old fashioned tall stately tram which rattled its way around the city at the start of the last century.

This was the new tram car.

The first  of which was completed in the March of 1930.  By the end of the year another eleven were in service.

In all 38 were built during the next two years, with the last of them appearing in October 1932.*

They were the Pullman, or more commonly called Pilcher, after Mr. Robert Stuart Pilcher, who took over as General Manager of Manchester Corporation Tramways in 1929.

Location; Manchester







Picture; Albert Square to East Didsbury, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

*The Manchester Tramways, Yearsley, Ian & Groves Peter, 1988

A bus for every occasion .......

The Museum of Transport on Queens Road really does have a bus for every occasion as well as offering examples from all over Greater Manchester, along with "coaches, trams, objects and displays".

Here can be found the Corpi red of Manchester, the green livery of Salford, as well as blue buses, mauve, and of course that odd coloured offering from what was SENEC.

Nor is that all, because  there is a fire engine, a horse drawn vehicle and the opportunity to sit inside a number of those old rear entry buses which those of us of a certain generation remember with affection.

And while those old style buses allowed you to hop on and off and even to chase after them with a view to jumping aboard, they were not user friendly to the disabled and out of reach to anyone using a wheel chair.

Upstairs volunteers are working on the records of the old companies transferring the lists of employees from hard paper to digital which in time will be available to those wanting to study the history of Greater Manchester.

I had never been before and it was a revelation made all the more memorable by the premises which dates back to 1930s and was originally part of the bus garage, which was later used by the G.P.O to service their vans and lorries, before becoming a museum.

It is open on Wednesdays and weekends and attracts a wide range of visitors, from school parties to crinklies like me.

Location; The Museum of Transport on Queens Road

Pictures; wot I saw on my trip to the museum, 2024, from  collection of Andrew Simpson

*Museum of Transport Greater Manchester,  https://motgm.uk/ 

Tram jam, ........ waiting for the shift to end at Trafford Park

The caption is not over helpful.  Just “Car 929, AEI Trafford Park.”  

But I guess we will be sometime in the late 1930s or ‘40s.

The photograph perfectly captures that moment just after the end of the shift at AEI.

The long line of trams waits for the workforce which is just appearing through the factory gates.

This was the period when Trafford Park was still a major industrial centre.  In 1945 75,000 people worked there and produced everything from bricks to electric cables, and food.

All of which is well documented, so instead I shall concentrate on the detail.  The first of the workforce is out of the factory and hurrying to catch the first tram.  It is a scene captured countless times in photographs and news reels from the period.

What is missing are the hundreds of of people who any minute will appear on their bikes, reminding us that this was still the time when the cycle was a cheap alternative to the tram or bus.  And of course what we won't see in any great numbers are workers driving home in cars.

I had hoped that the products in the shop might give a clue to a date.  But Robin cigarettes were being marketed at the beginning of the last century and were still being produced in the 1950s, long after our line of trams had gone to scrap heap.

But the shop front in its way is also a comment on the period.  Look closely and almost all of the products being advertised are cigarettes or tobacco.

A timely reminder that this was still a time when smoking was common place and when the upstairs of the bus or tram would be blue from the tobacco smoke.

Much of which would be from the roll up which like the tram is almost a thing of the past.



Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown

Taking the bus ………… a silly Didsbury story

I say silly but that would be unfair on this bus destination roller board, and equally unfair to Southern Cemetery, Withington, and the White Lion which also featured as places on the route.

My old posty friend David Harrop sent it over with the covering note that it dates from 1939 and alas “the original blind has been cut up I'm afraid”.

You might be forgiven for wondering about the historical significance of what looks to be at best a  trivial piece of transport ephemera.

But not so because if I have got this right, this destination board will have been for one of the buses which replaced the old tram services on the route from town to Didsbury.  

Long before the last Manchester Corporation Tram slid into oblivion the Committee had been replacing tram by bus.

And from December 1938 through to February 1939 the 41 service  [Chorlton-Exchange/Piccadilly] and the 42 [Didsbury-Piccadilly/Exchange] were turned from tram to bus.

All of which makes this bit of roller blind quite something.

Well, that is if you mourn the passing of the old Corporation trams and are fascinated by a 1939 bus.

Of course, I might have bits wrong, and will no doubt be corrected.

I was assisted in this story by David Posty Harrop and that excellent book The Manchester Bus, by Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, which I borrowed from Andy Robertson who may want to ask for an overdue fine given the the time it has sat on our shelves.

Location; 1939

Picture; bus destination roller board, 1939, courtesy of David Harrop

*The Manchester Bus By Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, 1989

In St Peter's Square on an August Sunday in 1937, reflecting on what was and what was to come

We are in St Peter’s Square on a Sunday.  

Now I can be certain of that because the picture is dated August 8th 1937 which was a Sunday.

And like many of the pictures in the collection there is much that you can peel back from what on the surface is just a photograph of a tram.

So starting with the obvious this is car 575 on its way to Burton Road and in the absence of a crew and passengers appears parked up.

Behind it is one of those buildings which were everywhere in the city centre, a mix of offices and shops, fronted in stone which had over half a century become grey and grimy, but with some nice arched windows on the upper storeys.

It was a solid sound building, most of which is out of view or hidden by the trams. But we can just glimpse the premises of Isaac’s Wallpapers who were at number 8.

They were an enterprising business and were quick to take advantage of the the coronation of King George V1 which had taken place in the May of that year, and so just four months after the event they were advertising as a “Coronation Offer Pure Oil Paint at 1/11d.”

David Isaacs had been trading from the shop since 1911 and I rather think there is a story here, as there will be in following up the entry from the directories for the Association Football Players Union which was at number 14 and whose secretary was Alfred S Owen.

The building has gone now, although I do remember standing on the steps of Central Ref gazing over at it on Saturday mornings as I took a break from some dusty article on the Anti Corn Law League.

By then it was a drab tired looking sort of place ready for its end waiting only to be replaced by something new and exciting.

This was to be Elisabeth House all glass and concrete walls which seem to have had few friends.  A building so misunderstood and disliked that no one can quite agree on when it went up.

Various sources suggest a date in the 1960s which does not quite fit with my memories of gazing across at it in 1970.

But recollections of events, places and buildings can so easily be wrong and I was prepared to accept that this was just one of those times when I was mistaken.

But not so. According to A Manchester View run by David Boardman,* Elisabeth House was built in 1971, which I am pleased to say means that my long term memory is fine, even if I can forget to put the wash on, turn off the lights.

I do have to say I am becoming a fan of his site offering as it does some interesting walks around buildings that have now vanished, and he has done an excellent job on chronicling the rise and demise of Elisabeth House which it is true had by the turn of this century become as tired looking as its predecessor and  it has to be said in perhaps half the time.

Now I do not have the same hard opinion of Elisabeth House as some but I will let you decide, for here is a 1924 picture of the old building taken from the Midland.

By the end it had become a sad sight, abandoned by both the Pancake and Italian restaurants and by the camera shop I occasionally visited.

One of its last episodes was to be used by a television crime series, and I rather envied the cast their view across the square to the Town Hall Extension.

All of which was a long way into the future on that August day in 1937.

But had I been there in the Square I would have felt at home on the steps of the Ref which was opened in 1934 and no doubt would have admired the Town Hall Extension which was almost finished and would be ready for its municipal staff and the public the following year.

Now us historians are always looking for continuity in the events of the past and so it is nice to reflect that just over forty years after the old majestic trams of Manchester Corporation vanished from our streets, they are back.

And that large white insurance building has also vanished although it survived until quite recently.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; St Peter’s Square in 1937 from the collection of Alan Brown, Elisabeth House, 1988,m04395,the premises of David Isaacs from the Midland Hotel, July 1924, City Engineers Department m04465 and the Town Hall Extension February 1937, m74925, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
*http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/tours/tour6/area6page61.html

The Milk Maid …. a train station ….. and the place that changed its name and changed it back again ….. Manchester stories ….

There are plenty of ways of telling the story of Greater Manchester’s history but no one has done it by using the tram network, and yet with eight tram routes and 99 stops it is the perfect way to do so.

The Milk Maid, from 1906

Each route and each stop have a heap of stories so find those stories, add a few more from the surrounding areas and very quickly they will by instalment build into a rich account of how we lived set against the big and small events.

Small events like visiting the Milk Maid bar in Piccadilly Plaza in the 1970s and gazing out at the historic Gardens which was once the site of a hospital and before that a place of punishment.  Or taking the tram to New Islington via a railway station and discovering its textile and canal past while pondering on how it changed its name and changed it back again.

All of which and more are contained in our new book, Piccadilly Gardens to New Islington.

It is the fourth in the series, The History of Greater Manchester By Tram and includes memorials, the old BBC building, with a look at the new Mayfield Gardens and that nightmare for motorists which is Stoney Brew.*

There is the big stuff like the Manchester Blitz, but also stories about the Doll’s Hospital and Sundays on a deckchair in Piccadilly Gardens.

And having read book four you can collect the first three, which take you on a journey out of south Manchester, into the city centre and on to Victoria Railway Station.  

In between there will be stops in rural Chorlton, industrial Cornbrook, the elegant St Peter's Square and those bold new civic enterprises from Manchester Town Hall to Exchange Square.

The books are available at £4.99 from Chorlton Bookshop, the shop at Central Ref, St Peter's Square, or from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

Location; Piccadilly Gardens, the Railway Station and New Islington

Pictures;  Out of Manchester Piccadilly, bound for Vrewe, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, The Milk Maid, from a 1906 picture postcard from Tuck and Son, courtesy of Tuckdb, http://tuckdb.org/about

Out of Manchester Piccadilly bound for Crewe, 1979

*A new book on the History Of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram

Back on Barlow Moor Road sometime after 1911

Now sometimes you do have to wonder about what makes a particular spot so likely to be photographed again and again.

Barlow Moor Road at that point where it crosses High Lane and Sandy Lane is just one place.  On one level you can understand why.

This was where the trams terminated, and where the tram office was, and a little later after this picture was taken would be where the new terminus was constructed.

It was one of our landmarks known for a great chunk of the 19th century as Lane End and for a while as Brundrett’s corner but that is a story for another time.  All of which meant it was a popular place for a rendezvous which would be agreed in advance given that this was a time before the mobile phone.

So being a popular place it was a natural choice for the travelling photographers to capture and make into a postcard scene.

Earlier in the month I included one that had been taken around 1911, A late day in summer on Barlow Moor Road sometime after 1911 

And today I turned up another possibly made at roughly the same time, and I rather think it speaks for itself, although I will just point out that litter is not something peculiar to today.

Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown

Capturing a moment on Corporation Street in the December of 1902

It took some working out but I know exactly where I am and when.

We are on Corporation Street just after it has crossed Market Street and if we hitched a lift with the chap on the wagon as it passed M. Drapkin we would be heading towards Victoria Station.

Today this corner is dominated by Marks and Spencer’s, but then it was a collection of shops and offices which included at number 1 a chemist at number 3 Drapkin Major & Co tobaconists, and a music seller at number 5.  Beyond that stretched out more offices before Corporation Street crossed Cannon Street, skirting the Corn Exchange and passing on to Victoria Station.

Of course all that has gone, swept away by the redevelopment which included the Arndale on the opposite side of the road and Exchange Square which pretty much stands on top of Cannon Street.

I won’t bore you with the detective story but placing the wagon and tram car 327 on Corporation Street on December 7th 1902 required a sifting excercise.  Drapkin’s had a number of tobacconists in the centre of the city but only one by a music shop and this was on Corporation Street.

I suppose the clincher was the tram with its destination board showing a route from Victorai Station and on to Albert Square.

Now my sense of direction is not very good and it took a bit of time to place the tram in the right direction and square it up with the buildings behind.

What helped was Goad’s Fire Insurance map which details many of the properties in the city centre including the materials used and the design of the property.

So as they say the boy got there in the end. And I rather think the pillar box in front of the shop selling “Pianos by the best makers for cash or hire” is in the same spot as the one which survived the IRA bomb.

This was the main route from Albert Square to Victoria Station and Cheetham Hill and so was a busy place, along with the people thronging the streets there are plenty of  horse drawn vehicles that catch the eye which is a reminder that as late as the start of the last century most goods were still transported by horse.

There were stables, vets and blacksmiths still operating in the centre of the city to support these horses and all the railway companies had their own stables close to their warehouses.

But it is that tram that draws me long after I have clocked the contents on the wagons or gazed at the pedestrians.

The tram driver turns to talk to the conductor while on the top deck amongst the animated conversations one man leans on the rail, his attention caught by something on the street below which maybe the young woman just at the extreme edge of the picture.

Nor is he alone for another on the top deck  looks down in the same general direction.

And while all this is going on one passenger chooses that moment to leave the rear of the tram.

There is just one little point that I can’t quite resolve and that is the date.

I902 seems fine but I rather think we can not be in December given the lack of overcoats, but that is down to who ever wrote the caption and after a century there seems little point in shouting about that.

So I shall finish with one last tiny bit of detective work for which again I will never know the answer but down to our right to the right might just be the subject of our man on the tram''s gaze.

She is that young woman at the extreme edge of the picture.  Dressed in a blouse and fashionable hat she may have just turned on to Corporation Street from Market Street.  But as there will be those who accuse me of idle speculation I will let all that hang in the air.

Picture; from the collection Alan Brown