Snaps of Manchester number 5 ... in Albert Square with trams and horses

Of all of the snaps of Manchester I have featured this is one of my favourites.

We are in Albert Square sometime between the late 1920s and early 30s and we are at that cross over moment when horse drawn vehicles were about to become just that little less common.

In another decade they would be confined to milk floats and the rag and bone man.

But here they are still in use pulling a cart and a covered wagon.

In other respects it is a scene which I recognise from when I first arrived in the September of 1969.  In fact apart from the trams and their overhead cables and rails it is pretty much as I remember it.

Picture; courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

Shopping on Market Street sometime in the 1920s

This is Market Street sometime between the two world wars. 

We are looking down towards St Mary’s Gate and away in the distance on our left is the Royal Exchange.

Now I can’t be sure of the date but it will be after 1911.

In that year Lockhart’s cocoa rooms were trading from number 70a Market Street while at number 72a was Linscott the jewellers, but by the time our fashionable shoppers were idling up Market Street the jewellers had gone to be replaced by the Ladies Shopping Mart.

Now I fully aware that this is a tad lazy and were I serious about dating our picture I would be trawling the directories from 1911 through to 1939, but as most know the Local History Library will close soon till February to manage the move back into Central Ref and there are other calls on the time left.

So I shall return to the photograph and reflect on how much has changed on Market Street some of which was the product of enemy action in the last war but most by the developers of the late 1960s and 70s.

The buildings on the corner of New Brown Street were destroyed along with some of Market Place during the bombing, but  that great swathe of properties on our right stretching down towards Corporation Street went so that we can now wander in the enclosed world of the Arndale.

And they went within living memory, although I have to say most of us will be hard pressed to remember this stretch of Market Street when traffic flowed freely from Piccadilly down to St Mary’s Gate.

I have to say I am fond of this picture which comes from the collection of Sandra Hapgood because it captures perfectly a little of that world we have now lost.

Picture; from the collection of Sandra Hapgood

Snaps of Manchester number 4 Piccadilly in the late 1920s

Now I can’t be sure but I think we are looking at Piccadilly sometime before 1932.

It is difficult to be sure but I don’t think that the Ryland’s Building which is now Debenhams’s is there near the centre of our picture and if that is the case then this can be no later than 1932 and possibly sometime in the 1920s.

Like all the images in this collection owned by Sandra Hapgood there is much in the clothes and the vehicles to suggest this is the time frame.

Of course I might have missed some vital clue which can pin point the date and prove me wrong.

Either way it is one of those snaps of Manchester that I have been featuring.  Each of them is not by a professional and all of them were I think taken quickly while on the move and as with so  many snaps they are very personal, meant as a reminder of a day out or to share with family and friends.

And that is both their charm and their value because all of them are not the usual scenes of the city.  Instead they are shot from odd angles or concentrate on places seldom visited by the professional.

Picture; from the collection of Sandra Hapgood.

St Ann's Square, Snaps of Manchester nu 6

I have to say that there often seems to be building work on the corner where Old Bank Street runs into St Ann’s Square.

And so it as when this snap was taken sometime I think in the 1930s.

Back then the Royal Exchange was an exchange trading in cotton and after the completion of its extension between 1914 and ’31 was the largest trading hall in the country.

Now I might be slightly out with the date, the cars suggest the 1920s and it all hangs on whether what we see is the finished exchange.

Happily someone will have an opinion and provide an answer.

Either way it is another of those wonderful snaps from the collection of Sandra Hapgood, and as I have said before they are a valuable record of what the city looked like.

For unlike the carefully posed professional images these were instant pictures, taken by someone who just liked what they saw.

And so often are ones that no one else has taken.

Picture; St Ann’s Square, date unknown courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

On Deansgate where it joins Blackfriars Street in the 1920s

The corner of Blackfriars Street and Deansgate has never been a popular one for photographers.

Now I know this because I have counted just three on the digital archive of the City and can think of just a few others I have seen in various collections.*

So I was pretty pleased when I came across this one which I think must date from the 1920s.

It did present a little challenge at first to identify exactly where it was because the caption just refers to Deansgate.

But the clue was Stewart and Stewart who were tailors, trading at 46 Deansgate which was on the corner with Blackfriars Street.  Theirs was a large enough business to extend from Deansgate along Blackfriars Street.

They were trading there in 1911 and with a bit of research it should be possible to follow them back and forwards through the 20th century.

As for the building I cannot remember when it came down and was replaced with the present red brick one.
I know it survived the Manchester Blitz so I guess it was just one of those that fell to the developers.

This was not the case with the building opposite which went on the night of December 24th along with the entire block stretching up St Mary’s Gate to St Ann’s Square and also included the Royal Exchange.

Happily some of the near neighbours of 46 Deansgate have survived including the building which once housed T. Hayward & Co. Glass & China.

All of which is a lesson in keeping an eye on the buildings we pass and so often take for granted.

Locatiion; Manchester

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Picture; Deansgate and Blackfriars Street, circa 1920s, courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

Snaps of Manchester number 7 ....... the Town Hall and the Cathedral in the 1920s

Now if you live in Manchester or like me claim it as your adopted city the chances are that you will have taken a picture of the Town Hall.

It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and finished in 1877, and it remains a splendid building.

 I spent many years from the 1970s in the various state rooms and when meetings ground to tedious repetition and sloganising there was always the paintings, the wallpaper and the ceilings to marvel at.

The outside is no less impressive, but I have never found a good angle at which the to take a picture, and the result is that you  end up somewhere on Cross Street or South Mill Street trying to get all of the building in the frame.

Now I know it is possible to stand directly opposite on Brazenose Street but all too ofteh you have to wait for a clear moment when a bus a taxi or a lorry aren’t passing.

So I am always pleased when someone pulls it off.  In this case the picture comes from the collection of Sandra Hapgood and dates from the early decades of the last century.

It is another of those Snaps of Manchester which are often just as valuable as the carefully composed images taken by a professional.  And although they are often undated and their significance is lost they can be just as interesting.

More so because they are often of places which are unrecorded by the professional or commercial photographer.

Having said that I would like a £ for every image I have seen of the Cathedral.  This one comes from the same collection and will date from the same time.

It was taken from Exchange Station, now long gone, although bits of its railway past are still littered around what is now a car park.

Today the stretch of Victoria Street is closed to traffic which seemed a good idea but I rather think the temporary building in front of the Cathedral however worthy its use detracts from the Cathedral.

Pictures; from the collection of Sandra Hapgood

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.

On King Street, dodging the cars

Most of the images we see of Manchester in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the work of professional photographers. 

They focused on the popular bits and sold them on to the postcard companies.

Then there were the serious amateurs who were often as good as the professionals.

King Street in the 1930s

But there are also the snappers, who captured whatever took their fancy.

Often the images are a little blurred and in many cases have a significance lost in time.

And so with this in mind here is the new series.

Snaps of Manchester is an occasional rummage through pictures most of which were never meant to be shared beyond the family.

Of course the advent of the camera phone has given this a new lease of life.

But for now I am concentrating on old fashioned images and I have my  new facebook chum Sandra to thank for many of these pictures.

Here is King Street before the city planners got rid of the traffic.  Now I don’t have a date for this one but judging from the cars I suspect it will during the 1920s or 30s.

To our right is the old bank which has undergone many conversions and was at one time a music store.

What I like is the way the image captures a quiet day, and while I alluded to dodging cars there is of course little danger of that.

There are few of them and the noise they made would have alerted most people to their passing.

Once we have a date it should be possible to identify some of the shops, particularly those on the left of our photograph.

And with the way these things work there will be someone who can supply a possible date, and others who will remember the shops.

All of which makes for great history.

Now I think I can just remember King Street with cars but like so much of our recent history it is easy to forget the detail.

And that is what makes such snaps all the more useful because they wander off the beaten well trod path and provide us with scenes which the professional did not think as interesting.

So over the next few weeks with Sandra’s permission I shall bring that Manchester back for all to see.

Picture; King Street from the collection of Sandra Hapgood.