30 years ago and bit more .......... Wilbraham Road

It is over 30 years since Tom McGrath took a series of pictures of Chorlton. 

Recently he returned to the same locations and photographed them all over again and it makes for fascinating stories. 

I have often remarked that it is our more recent past which we tend to ignore.

Look at any of those old black and white pictures of a century ago and you are prepared for things to be different.

But  just over a quarter of a century seems no time at all.  It spans the life of my eldest son, is well within the range of the music I still listen to and is redolent with vivid memories.

And yet it is in some ways as unfamiliar as the age of the gas lamp and tram.

Now I am not going off on one so there will be no reference to Mrs Thatcher, or that Back to the Future was the highest grossing film at $210,609, 762.

Instead I shall just comment on what 27 years did to this corner of Wilbraham Road.

We still had a night club at this end of Chorlton or though if memory serves me it was really just an opportunity to carry on late night drinking.

The burgar bar still retained that logo which I remember from a similar out let on Burton Road and I rather think the concrete stumps which had encased the old petrol pumps were still in place.

And for those pondering on what our houses sell for here in Chorlton, I have to say that the rising spiral of prices had yet to take off.

Pictures; by kind permission of Tom McGrath

When we had a piano shop on Beech Road

Sometimes a picture captures a moment which with hindsight allows you to see that things were just about to change.

 Here is another of those photographs taken by Tom McGrath in the middle 1980s.

I don’t suppose any of us could have realized that as we walked past the old closed up off license that within a couple of years two out of these three shops would be part of the transformation of Beech Road.

For as long as I can remember Muriel and Richard had run the green grocers in the centre of the parade.  On one side had been the off license which had sold bottled beer since the early years of the 20th century, while on the other the shop had been many things, including in the 50s a grocery store and by the time I washed up here was selling pianos.

But all of that was about to change and Tom’s pictures captures that point of change.

The off license which had struggled on into the 1980s became the Italian deli while the piano shop became a cafe before becoming a series of wine bars and growing its extension.

Only Richard and Muriel’s stayed the course, but were about to have a new and very impressive sign put above the door announcing that they were the Purveyors of fine fruit and vegetables, which they were.

But back in the mid 80s such things just didn’t seem to be done in the same way.  If you wanted fruit and veg, then that is where on Beech Road you went.  Just like if you needed paraffin or the odd nail or screw you went to the ironmongers next to Wilkinson’s the butchers.  Everyone knew them and knew what they sold.

Of course within a few years the old council offices had become the Lead Station, the grocers' beside the barbers' had become Primavera and the Wool Shop was to become Truth.

All of which makes Tom’s picture such a wonderful record of the old Beech Road some of us still remember.  And as if on cue as I was standing outside one of the new shops a couple went past telling their friend about “trendy Beech Road.”

What a lot has changed.

Picture, from the collection of Tom McGrath

A lost sweet shop from Beech Road revisiting a popular story

I won’t be the only one who has memories of buying sweets at the shop which was on  the corner of Beech Road and Claude Road, and there may be others like me who bought things when it sold a mix of almost antique stuff back in the late 1980s.

Not that it was always a shop; back in 1911 soon after it had been built it was the home of Robert and Janet Connell.  They were from Scotland, had been married for 38 years and had two children one of whom was still registered as living at home despite being a ships steward.

It was then an impressive seven roomed house.  If I wanted I could no doubt discover when the property was converted into a shop.  It was certainly selling sweets in the November of 1958 when R.E. Stanley photographed it.

Nor had it changed much when Tom McGrath took his picture almost thirty years later.  And I think the old bill boards were still there in the 1980s advertising the current films showing at the cinema around the corner.

Today it has reverted to a home as have other commercial conversions along Beech Road.

Pictures; Number 1 Beech Road by R.E. Stanley, November 1958, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m17659, and from the collection of Tom McGrath

Memories of Chorlton from the 1960s

Wilbraham Road in 1985

Now somewhere between these two pictures of those shops on Wilbraham Road comes this delightful set of memories from Marion Jackson. 

What makes them all the more important is that it is the most recent past which often is not recorded.

“The picture of the shops opposite the Lloyd brought so many memories back. 

To me 1962 doesn't seem that long ago. I was just married, living in a flat in Whitelow Road. 

Ted Green the butcher with sawdust on the floor. 

Coupes with furniture we couldn't dream of buying.

Wilbraham Road in 1903

The ladies in Elizabeth's who rose early to do a little embroidery to start the day. 
Bentons the tobacconist with its wonderful interior. 

Gannons where later I would buy Matchbox cars with our children on the way home from school. 

And Ted and the green grocer who delivered my shopping almost as fast as I got home. 

The flat was followed by Hackness Road and then South Drive.. and I did get my carpets from Coupes.”

It is easy to let these descriptions slide and get lost and with that loss goes a little bit of Chorlton’s past.

I also remember the saw dust on the floor of butcher’s shops, collecting Matchbox cars and tradesmen who would still deliver to the door in the 1960s."

All pretty much now vanished so I hope Marion along with others will keep offering up their priceless memories.

Pictures; Wilbraham Road in 1985 courtesy of Tom McGrath and in 1903 from the Lloyd Collection

From furniture shop to restaurant, Coupe to Croma

I remain fascinated by the way that a place you have known and taken for granted changes and almost overnight you forget just how it had been.

For me this corner of Wilbraham and Manchester Roads was M.E.Coupe the furnishers, in the same way that Quamby’s was the toy shop and H. Burt’s was the shop you went to for a pair of braces or cuff links.

For an older generation I suppose there was Stevenson’s the hair dresser whose family firm had operated from the same shop opposite the Post Office since the early years of the last century, and continued in business into the early 1980s or Joy Seal’s the Chemist on Beech Road.

And it is this which makes Tom McGrath’s photographs of Chorlton so interesting.  They are of the near past, and so things look almost as they do today but just not quite the same.  I look at his series taken in 1985 and again in 2012 and it’s a bit like watching the Sweeney.  Everything is just that little old fashioned.

So there is the furniture shop, and for those in the know Coupe’s also had a lock up on Beech Road which had once been the old Methodist Chapel. It was a nice traditional place and I wish I has used it more often.

The pictures also hint at that huge transformation in the retailing fortunes of Chorlton.  From furniture shop to restaurant, it is a development which is mirrored across the township.  Not that this is a rant against the change, just an observation in how things have gone and a timely appeal for any one with similar pictures to share them with us all.

So I would love to see pictures of that bit of Manchester Road which is now the car park and the precinct just after it was opened.

Pictures; from the collection of Tom McGrath

Chorlton’s corner shops nu 5

Now I went looking for a picture of Kingspot today, that shop of incredible cheap bargains, plastic flowers, even cheaper kids toys and of course the picture of San Francisco Bay Bridge in the setting sun.

My kids were never out of there and the comment "off to Kingy” seemed part of their vocabulary for a decade.

Beech Road, 1985

Now the purists will of course mutter that it was not a corner shop but I don’t care it was as much a part of the shopping experience as the trip to Hanbury’s or Woolworths.

And yet despite its popularity and place in many people’s memories I have yet to come across a picture of the shop and that just points to that simple observation that we often neglect our surroundings until it is too late.

So here is one corner shop that was photographed and more than once.

My first picture comes from the camera of Tom McGrath who ventured out in 1985 to record bits of Chorlton and followed these up with a second batch 27 years later.*

In the way these things work I only have a vague memory of the place although I will have bought sweets there, after all it was the last shop before the bus station and a journey somewhere and likewise for those returning home it will have been the first they encountered before the trudge down towards the green or off into the ville.

Beech Road, 1958

The second is from 1958 and is all that I remember a corner shop to be including the packed window displays and the adverts for the cinema round the corner.

And transcending the decades there is that cigarette machine which I suspect has pretty much vanished from our streets.

So all that is left is to make the appeal for pictures and memories of Kingy.

And a promise that there will be more corner shops on the blog over the summer.**

Pictures; number 1 Beech Road 1985, from the collection of Tom McGrath and by R.E. Stanley, November 1958, m17659 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Tom McGrath, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Tom%20McGrath

**Corner shops, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Corner%20shops