A heap of lights … a place called the Edge ….. and memories of Sunday worship

The Edge Theatre on Manchester Road is one of Chorlton’s real jewels, which has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside  productions made by [their] own wonderful in-house creatives”* since it opened in 2011.

Heaps of lights, 2025

And if you are between productions there is the Dressing Room, which is a café/bar, and meeting place which also boasts a walled garden for those days when the sun is cracking the paving stones.

Looking in at the Edge, 2023

On those occasions when I am Billy No Mates, I like sitting in the Dressing Room trying to imagine what it was like when it once accommodated 100 young Sunday School scholars, along with more young people spread out in the rooms off the main corridor.

The Wesleyan Sunday School opened in 1885, having started 80 years earlier on Beech Road in what had been the first Methodist chapel.

The present café might also have been one of the rooms used by the Red Cross who occupied the entire building during the Great War after the Wesleyans had offered it up as a voluntary hospital for serviceman recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It was staffed by a mix of volunteer nurses, cleaners, cooks and those engaged in administrative activities.  

Looking at the profile of the volunteers, they were drawn from the local communities, and mostly served for the duration of the conflict.

Over the years I have come across some fascinating items, from a silver cup presented to the Wesleyan in 1917 by a group of soldiers and a letter of thank you to a group of children who embroidered a special pillow.

At the Dressing Room, The Edge, 2025

And of course there is much more …. which is for another time.

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; the Dressing Room at the Edge, 2025, and the gardens, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

When you have the chance to explore 200 years of Chorlton’s history ……

 Today … and stretching out over the next few months I will be wandering across two centuries of Chorlton’s past.

Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone, 1885

It comes in the form of a private archive and focuses on the Wesleyan Sunday School on Manchester Road.

Today it is home to the Edge Theatre, which opened “in 2011, ….. [and] has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives”.*

The company is justifiably proud “of our beautiful venue” which dates back to 1885 and was a Sunday School for most of its existence, although during the Great War it was used by the Red Cross as an Auxiliary Hospital caring for servicemen recovering from wounds and illnesses.

I was aware of some of its long history, but the archive offers up a detailed record of how the Sunday school worked, original plans along with lists of furniture and fittings which were purchased in 1885 and heaps of memories and other memorabilia.

The Chapel and school, undated

All of which makes the archive an invaluable record of a portion of our community and takes us back beyond 1885 to the original Wesleyan School founded sixty years earlier.

For most of that earlier period the scholars met in the chapel on Beech Road and briefly in a purpose-built school on the site of the present Beech Inn. That school had been built with money raised by the congregation but for reasons which are now unclear they had not secured a claim to it, and it was lost to them.

I don’t think the archive will shed any light on that disaster but looking through the documents there is much about the new Sunday School.

It is early days, and at present the task is just scanning the many and varied records and setting up a database which will allow others to access the material.

And progress is slow, there are four full ring binders, and each item has to be copied and entered on to the data base.

At the Edge, 2024

But it’s fun and will provide heaps of detail to what is now that "beautiful venue".

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; invitation to a “Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone", 1885, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Wesleyan Chapel +New Schools And Minister Residence, John West +Architect + Surveyor Manchester, undated, and The Edge 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Edge Theatre, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/