The 42 from the Refuge Building …..a furniture shop, Wimpy Bar, and a shed load more …..1967

Now, with the passage of a full half century, it is the detail you forget.

I stood at the bus stops outside the old Refuge Building for years, and never gave much thought to the building opposite.

Back then it was just a furniture shop, and as I was a first year student on a grant, living in a series of drab and worn out  bed sits I gave Shaw’s Furniture shop scant attention.

And likewise I don’t think I ever went in the cinema round the corner, or took a train from Oxford Road Railway Station, and gave no attention to the features of the Refuge Building behind me.

It would be years before I went in to the former furniture shop, and only after it had become the Cornerhouse which was an art gallery, cinema, bookshop, bar and café, with superb views up Oxford Street, and some pretty interesting films which you would never see at the Odeon.

Likewise my discovery of the railway station with its wonderful 60s entrance would be delayed for a few years, and instead I fastened on the Oxford Road Corridor from town to Withington.

Which also meant that the hospital opposite Shaw’s, along with the kiosk which announced “You Are Safe With The Oxford Rubber Goods” was just a blur from the window of the 42.

Nor do I think I ever went in the Wimpy, which has over the decades changed its name and the food on offer.

And now, Shaw’s is No. 70, the Refuge Building is a hotel, and the kiosk became Euronews, although last time I passed it all seemed closed up.

But I still use Oxford Road Station and marvel at that entrance.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Shaw’s, and the Wimpy, 1967, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,  and Oxford Road Railway Station, 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Out with the photographer Robert Banks on the streets of Manchester sometime before 1912

Now I can be fairly confident that Mr Banks took this picture of Oxford Street sometime before 1912, but more about that later.

In the meantime I shall start with the man himself who had one of those remarkable careers which seemed to epitomise the self made Victorian man.*

He stands alongside some of our other Manchester photographers.**

He was born in 1847, he father was a journeyman carpenter and at the age of 15 he was working as a woollen piecer in a mill.*

And yet within a few years he had become an illustrator on the Oldham Chronicle and at 21 had opened a photographic business on the High Street in Uppermill all of which was but a prelude to a successful career in Manchester.

Having set up business in the city in 1873, he quickly won a series of commissions and as they say never looked back.

During the rest of the century and into the next he photographed many of the most important events that occurred in the city and was quick to issue these in collections for sale.

And never one to miss an opportunity I am told that having taken pictures of the unveiling of the statue of Queen Victoria he made a special journey to Windsor Castle and presented them to the Royal Family.***

But he will also be remembered for a wonderful collection of street scenes like this one of “Oxford Street from Whitworth Street. [Showing] on the left St Mary’s Hospital and Total’s Warehouse, and on the right the Theatre of Varieties and St James’s Hall, with St Peter’s Church in the distance.”

It is a scene few now remember.

St Peter’s Church and the hospital were demolished a long time ago and the elaborate facade of what is now the Palace Theatre disappeared behind those drab tiles in 1957.

And what no one will now  recognise is the building beyond the theatre with its tall clock tower, for this was St James’s Hall, built in 1884, closed in 1907 and briefly reopened as a cinema in 1908 and was replaced in 1912 by St James’s Buildings which still stand on the site today.

Something of what the hall was like can be seen from the Gould’s Fire Insurance Map which dates from around 1900.

But that is enough for now.  My friend Sally has kindly given me more of Mr Bank’s pictures from a collection she bought and I now have a promise of some of his earlier photographs taken in Saddleworth which the Museum there has promised to pass over.

So it rather looks as if there will be lots more of Robert Banks to come.

And as often happens, someone has helped with the story.  Lee Hutchins has written that "St Peters Church in the distance was taken down in January 1907 and St Mary's Hospital to the left was completed in 1901 so taken between 1901 and 1906"


Pictures;, Oxford Street before 1912, courtesy of Sally Dervan and detail of St James’s Hall from Gould’s Fire Insurance Map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Robert Banks, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Robert%20Banks

**Manchester artist and photographers, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Manchester%20artist%20and%20photographers

***from a conversation with James Stanhope-Brown who also told me that sadly there is no reference in the Royal collection to the event.  He has also published Manchester From the Robert Banks Collection, in 2011, the History Press

The Chorlton billiard hall …. St Mary’s Hospital …… and that much loved night spot

I am back with that forgotten billiard hall on Wilbraham Road and a series of twisty turney paths that reinforce that old idea that history is messy.

The front of the former billiard hall, 2024

First, the billiard hall which stands behind the two shops, Admiral, and Royal Cod.

I can date the hall back to 1929 and may be able to push that back into the 1920s.

Just when it closed its doors is as yet unclear, but in 1929 it belonged to W.R. Bridgens and Co.

And a William Roy Bridgen and his wife Winnie were living at 163 Barlow Moor Road rom at least 1927 through to 1931, and there are references to him in various newspapers in the early 1830s competing in golf competitions.

Alas so far that is it except for an obituary recording the death of Winnie in 1955.

But it’s early days I am confident he and Winnie will come out of the shadows with more research.

And already I know that in 1931 he was renting and paying rates for rooms at 64 Oxford Street, three doors up from St Mary’s Hospital.

Acropolis Restaurant and the  Palace Snack Bar and Continental Club, 1974

Now by 1964 numbers 66 and 64 were the Acropolis Restaurant and the  Palace Snack Bar and Continental Club.

And the name the Continental Club or “Conti” will immediately chime a chord with anyone of a certain age who liked late night drinking with a bit of dancing and questionable food.

Sadly, I missed going there, because it closed before I arrived in Manchester, but like Lazarus the club rose again in the basement of an old building in Harter Street, taking the name of the “New Conti” and so was born a place I inhabited for a great chunk of the 1970s.

A friend we introduced to the place could only mutter “a bus shelter with beer”, but it was more than that, and a favourite dive of doctors, nurses, teachers and plenty more.

It must be 40 more years since I last went and it has gone, although just when I have no idea.

Acropolis Restaurant, 1974

But there are plenty of stories out there of both clubs and a slight dispute about whether the old closed before the new opened.  I have no idea, but trying to answer that question falls into that comment about the 1960s, “if you can remember the 60s you weren’t there”.

But there will be more, because my friend Antony whose aunt owned the Acropolis Restaurant is digging deeper into the story as I write.

So, there will be more linking one social club in Chorlton those far more memorable venues which were the Old and New Cont.

Location, Chorlton and Town

Pictures, the front of our old billiard Hall, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson  the Old Conti Club, 1974, Acc No. 113181 and a similar shot, 1974,  Acc No. 113181. and the hall in 1959 by A.H. Downes, m17486, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass*

 The Billiard hall in 1959 

*And here there seems a possible hiccup, because both images have the same accession 

Looking down Oxford Street

I doubt that there will be anyone who now recognises this scene.

We are looking down Oxford Street from St Peter’s Square and I think it must be sometime between 1912 and 1924.

Now I can’t be certain but St Peter’s Church which stood on the site was demolished in 1907 and the Refuge Assurance Building with its huge tower which is just visible in the distance was built in 1912.

Nor can it be any later than 1924 when the Cenotaph which dominates this end of the square was erected.

And I rather think that time slot fits with the detail in the picture and the other photographs from the collection.

Virtually all the buildings have long since vanished and as I write the area to the left of the photograph is again being redeveloped.

A few like the tall office block beyond Hall Street on our right has survived even if it is only the facade, while away at the top of the picture is the tall chimney of the Bloom Street power station opened in 1901 which was built beside the Rochadale Canal and was designed so that coal could be off-loaded from barges directly into the bunkers.

It not only provided electricity to the city and the nearby suburbs but as late as the 1970s also supplied steam which ran in great lagged pipes along the side of the canal to nearby buildings.

I can still remember the sound of the escaping steam from one particular pipe just beyond Oxford Road even now.

So I am drawn back to this collection because it was not the work of a professional but of an amateur snapper who took what ever caught his attention, which in a way makes them more of an insight into the daily life of the city than the carefully crafted images of the professional.

Picture; from the collection of Sandra Hapgood.

Oxford Street 1910

This is one of those pictures which continues to draw me in and offers so many little surprises which on the way says much about the period it was taken.

We are on Oxford Street sometime in the first decade of the last century.  The postcard was sent in the summer of 1911 but the photograph will be older.

And it is instantly recognizable as the point where Oxford Street crosses Whitworth Street and Whitworth Street West.  To our right is the Palace Theatre and beyond the Refuge building.

But you will have to be a certain age to remember the buildings on the right.  They were still there in 1969 when I first came to Manchester and were much the worse for wear and did not survive into the new century.

I wish I could remember the name of the cafe close to the junction with Whitworth Street West.  I think it was the Continental whose 60s’ decor was beginning to look a little tired but the other premises have faded from my memory.

Back in 1911 and starting from the canal bridge and working down to Whitworth Street West was the Oxford Road Hotel and South Junction Inn, a tobacconists, a confectioner and the cocoa rooms of Lockhart Brothers Ltd, Dingley’s Ltd fruiterers and the side entrance of St Mary’s Hospital for Women and Children.

This was a time when many things as well as people still got round by horse, so on either side of the trams were two heavy waggons which look like they are full of coal, while heading up the road is light cart and down underneath the railway bridge are more horse drawn vehicles.

All of which begs the question of what the two unaccompanied horses outside the theatre are doing.  They are connected by leather straps but appear to be walking on their own.

But they are framed by that wonderful glass and iron canopy which add another level of elegance to the Palace.

And the more I study the theatres and later the cinemas of the period the more I wish these canopies have survived.

Once many of our theatres and picture houses had them and I have often wondered if they were painted black or brightly coloured.

In the same way I would love to know more about the tiled surrounds to the shops which included the Oxford Road Hotel and South Junction Inn.

I guess they have been similar to the frontage on the Sawyers Arms on Deansgate.

What I guess we will never know is what has caught the attention of the group of men who are staring to the left and just above the camera.

It is just one of those things which the picture will never reveal.

Pictures; from the postcard of Oxford Street in the collection of Rita Bishop, courtesy of David Bishop.