On Portugal Street ……..reflecting on Hugh Fay & Co ……. purveyors of all things grocery

It was one of those incidental photographs I found to illustrate an earlier story about Portugal Street which runs behind Oldham Road.

Portugal Street, 1962

The street was cut sometime before 1793 and I suspect has always been a place which few people ever clocked, and many of those that lived there wish they lived somewhere else.

And having posted the picture I moved on but Anthony Hewitt was curious, and commented on the building and with that I set off looking for its story.

The photograph is dated from 1962 and so I went to Tony and Andy who both hold copies of street directories from the period.

 The lists show that it was the premises of Hugh Fay & Co, grocers, with 25 branches spread out across the city.  Most were on the east and north of the city, but the empire extended into Wythenshawe, Burnage and Flixton, and out beyond the Manchester to Droylsden and Flixton.

Portugal Street, 2021

All of which means someone will remember them, and indeed Andy told me remembered them from when he first arrived in the city in the 1970s.

So there you are.

Look closely and the picture does revel the name of the company.  The 1960 photograph is of the rear and the front faced onto 240 Oldham Road.  There is still a property there although changes in street numbering places it at 140 Oldham Road, and it does look as if the front of the building has changed, and indeed from Portugal Street it would seem to have changed dramatically.

Leaving me just to think there is a lot more to the story.

Location; Portugal Street

Picture; Portugal Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson, Portugal Street facing north, 1962, T. Brooks, m10415a,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Travels along Oldham Road ..... a pub … a canal …… and a name change

It would of course be stating the obvious to say that Oldham Road has changed over the last 80 years.

Oldham Road, 2021

For those who walked the stretch in the 1950s from Great Ancoats Street up to what is now called Ancoats Green, the scene would be pretty much the same as it had been at the turn of the last century.

The northern side was dominated by railway lines and the good station, while opposite was still a mix of terraced houses and small industrial units, only the open space of Ancoats Green was still recorded as a Recreational Ground.

All of which was an off shoot for trawling back into the history of the building which Andy photographed recently and which goes under the name of LBNS Nail Supply, but was once the Wheatsheaf.

The Wheatsheaf, 1986

The pub closed sometime between 2011 and 2014, and there will be someone out there who can offer up an exact date, and maybe some memories.

For now I can track it back to 1827 when it was run by a John Stafford.  He is recorded as occupying the house the year before but according to the rate books in 1826 it was still a residential property.

Fast forward to April 1911 and the Wheatsheaf was run by a Lucinda Lynch who at 33 was already a widow, and shared the pub with her brother and sister.

Mrs. Lynch appears a fascinating subject for more research, especially given that a few months later a Lucinda Lynch sailed for New York, another namesake was buried in Dublin in 1933, and yet a fourth was running a boarding house with her husband in 1901.

This last Mrs. Lynch married Peter Lynch in 1893, when he was 63 and she was 34, but like so much research the devil is in the detail, and the publican of the Wheatsheaf would have been just 15 when Mr. Lynch walked his Mrs. Lynch up the aisle, and their maiden names was not the same.

So as l have wandered off on a fools errand I will close with that startling discovery that just behind the pub was an arm of the Rochdale Canal, which terminated Portugal Street.

The area behind Oldham Road, 1851

In 1851 it served the glass bottle manufactory of J Woolfall and the Cross and Openshaw Cotton Mill, the Falcon Mill and McGregor’s Iron Works.

A full century later and part of the land on eastern side of canal arm had become our Recreation Ground while the rest of the land on both sides was given over to small factories and the Corporation Yard.

Leaving me just to explore the strange demise of Prussia Street which was located just to the east of the Recreation Ground, was renamed Kemp Street and is now Wadeford Close.

It was Prussia Street way back into the early 19th century, but along with German Street nearby it fell victim I suspect to the Great War.  

Today as Wadeford Close it has an odd existence, running from Oldham Road to Portugal Street, before becoming a footpath only to become Wadeford Close again where it continues till it joins Jersey Street.

All of which reinforces just how much this patch has changed, in less than eighty years.

Location; New Cross

Pictures; LBNS Nail Supply, Oldham Road, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson, The Wheatsheaf, 1986, m50788, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the area in 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester,  courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

Remnants from another time ……. on Oldham Road

Now the remorseless onward march of the developers seem to have Radium Street in their sights.

For those who don’t know it runs back from Oldham Road down to the Rochdale Canal, cutting across a series of historic streets dating back to when the area was being developed for the first time.

So here are Silk Street, George Leigh Street and Jersey Street, along with others which have long since been renamed.

Which of course brings me back to Radium, which was originally German Street and its neighbour Prussia Street both of which underwent a name change, and now makes the pattern of streets a little out of kilter given than all the surrounding ones also carry place names, like Poland and Bengal Street.

Not that I suspect the new inhabitants of the renovated old industrial buildings and the modern counterparts which are springing up across the area will be over bothered.

Indeed by the time lockdown is over even more of those open spaces which were once factories, warehouses and terraced properties will have gone.

On a recent visit I noticed the Cheshire Cheese on the corner of Radium Street which closed ages ago has become just a space.

All of which means that the properties Andy recorded are all the more remarkable because they are still there running north from Radium Street along Oldham Road.

Location; New Cross

Pictures; Oldham Road, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

On the cusp of change ……… Oldham Road

We are on Oldham Road, standing midway between Addington Street and Marshall Street as the area continues to undergo a period of regeneration.

Oldham Road, and Marshall Street, 2021

Most of the buildings are pretty new, but there are still a handful left  from the last century and just maybe the odd one which was built during the reign of Victoria.

I don’t suppose many of these period buildings will see the decade out.

But that is pretty much what you would expect for an area which was transformed by industrialists and speculative builders who in the space of thirty years filled the fields with factories, foundries, and terraced houses during the Industrial Revolution.

Oldham Road, and Marshall Street, 1851

So that when Mr. Adshead made his map of Manchester in 1851, our spot was densely packed with textile mills, and timber yards, the odd  sawmill and heaps of houses, some of which were back to back and locked away in a series of open and closed courts.

Nor would you have wanted for pubs, because on the corner of Addison Street was the Robin Hood, with the St Vincent Tavern on the next corner, and away  back from Oldham Street there were another six including the Hat and Feather which was yet to expand from Mason Street on to Marshall Street where it remained until 2005.

Added to these there were countless beer shops, which opened and closed depending on the fluctuating economic climate.

Oldham Road, and Marshall Street, 1951

Fast forward one hundred years from Adshead’s map and the area shows the devastation wrought by enemy bombing during the last world war, with large open plots of land along both Marshall Street and Addington Street, including the corner to the right of the building with the mural.

All of which now appears to be changing, and leaves me to think that within the next fifteen years the remaining historic bits of Marshall Street and Addington Street will be lost.

Location; Oldham Road

Pictures; Oldham Road, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson, the same area, 1851, from Addison’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and in 1951, from OS of Manchester and Salford, 1951

On Oldham Road in 1916 looking for secrets

I like the way that photographs can reveal their history and in the process the little stories which often just get lost or forgotten.

So today I am on the corner of Oldham Road and Thompson Street running along towards Bennett Street in the summer of 1916.

Now I say that with some confidence because the photographer recorded the date of July 1st 1916 on the picture and also because of the large advert for the John Bull magazine which is partly obscured by the cart.

John Bull was a fiercely patriotic and populist journal which during the Great War poured out its bile on the Kaiser, and ran a particularly nasty campaign calling for naturalised Germans to wear a distinctive badge.

And like all such publications it was quick to roll out conspiracies as explanations for events. So when Lord Kitchener the Secretary of State for War, drowned after his ship hit a German mine on route to Russia in June 1916 John Bull led with the Kitchener Plot Unmasked.

Now out of interest and in the absence of the particular edition I briefly trawled for stories of the plot and then as now found the usual rag bag of speculation, convoluted logic and the inevitable mix of anti-Semitism and claims of establishment cover up.

Nothing new then. After all there are those who still believe the Jewish plan for global domination, bought into the idea that all human advance was at the courtesy of aliens and that there must be more to two men landing on the moon, or a terrible car accident in a Paris road tunnel. *

All of which has taken us away from Oldham Road in 1916.

I am intrigued by the residents in these rather ramshackle set of properties. A few years earlier they had been the home and business premise of the butcher George Spurr who lived on the corner and to Mrs Mary Harrey confectioner and Frederick Proctor, veterinary surgeon.

The presence of a veterinary surgeon is a reminder of the large number of animals that would have shared the city and in particular horses which were in 1916 still an important part of the transport network.

Mrs Harrey and Mr Proctor can both be tracked across the city but at present George Spurr has left no trace but that usually means I need to look more closely.

 Back in 1901 there was a Thomas Spurr, master butcher at the address. And this presents a mystery. For the properties were occupied in April 1901, and continued to be so until the beginning of 1911, but none are recorded on the census of 1911 in the April.

All of which can I suspect only be solved by a closer look at the directories for the years after 1911 and the rate books which should show who lived there and in the case of the small cottages running down the side of Thompson street just how much rent was being asked for these one up one down jewels in the property portfolio of some landlord.

But the buildings are no more. Exactly when they went is still unclear. By 1961 the whole stretch from Thompson Street to Bennett Street was a garage and petrol station, which in turn has been replaced by in industrial unit selling locks.

And nor is that all. Bennett Street has been renamed Bendix Street and the close packed mix of houses, shops workshops and schools have all gone. 

In their place there are a few undistinguished buildings and of course lots of car parks.

Now car parks are sometimes the result of slum clearance and just occasionally a lingering reminder of the damage to our cities during the last war.

 Just a little to the north of our row of properties was the Oldham Street Goods Station and further south the commercial centre of the city while in between there were all sorts of chemical works, timber yards, cotton mills and the canal as well as a small power station and engineering works.

But the bomb maps** show that our little row survived, despite heavy damage to surrounding streets and the loss of half of the Oldham Street Goods Station.

So in the meantime having led you down a crooked path I have to admit that there are some secrets which photographs can’t reveal. Sadly this includes the identity of the two young girls standing on the corner on what judging by the puddles had been a wet July day.


 *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion published in 1903 described a Jewish plan for global domination and is widely regarded as a piece of misinformation possibly written by a member of the Russian secret service.

Chariots of the Gods? Unsolved Mysteries of the Past written by Erich von Däniken argued that the technologies and religions of many ancient civilizations were given to them by ancient astronauts who were welcomed as gods.

 The moon landings and the death of Princess Diana remain fertile grounds for anyone with a powerful imagination and a willingness to construct elaborate theories purely on the basis that a simple explanation is too obvious.

**http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/maps2~1~1~342609~123257:Manchester-bomb-damage?sort=Reference_Number%2CPage%2CCurrent_Repository

 Pictures; numbers 63-61 Oldham Road on the corner with Thompson Street, July 1916, J Jackson, m36556, and the same spot in 1961, T Brooks, m36675, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council