Before the Printworks ......... on Withy Grove with Withy Grove Stores

Now if you are old enough to remember when the Printworks produced newspapers then this stretch of Withy Grove will be familiar.

And of course so will Withy Grove Stores which seems always to have been on the corner with Dantzic Street.

That said there was a time when that corner plot was occupied by Joseph Pattreoiovex tobacco manufacture.

But that was way back in 1911 when Pattreoiovex’s was listed at number 39, and Withy Grove Stores traded from the property next door and was big enough to stretch down to number 33.

All of which takes me back to the picture which John Casey took in the mid 1980s and is well worth close study.

Look down Dantzic Street and the brooding back of the modern Printworks is absent and there is a clear view up to Hanover Street.

Today not only is that scene very different but the sign for the With Grove Store is still bright and fresh looking and opposite was T Stensburg & Co at number 1 Shudehill which sold in antiques and proudly boasted it had been established in 1810 and is now a fast food outlet.

Such is the passage of the decades.

And confirming that throwaway aside, Helen Beesley sent over a picture she took very recently.

"It was", she said,"taken in January 2019 from the window of Waterstones cafe", and perfectly bridges those decades.

Leaving me just to add "compare and contrast" and I hoping it will spark other pictures.

We shall see.


Location; Manchester

Pucture; Withy Grove, 1980s from the collection of John Casey, and Helen Beesley, 2019

One day ….. two coffee cups …… and a view of Withy Grove

Now, if there has been one certainty for as long as I can remember its that Withy Grove Stores continues to fascinate people.

It is on the corner of Withy Grove and Dantzig Street.  I have pictures dating from the 1980s of the store, and rather think I may have wandered around it looking for a filing cabinet, a decade earlier. *

In time I will trawl back through the directories to see just when it opened, but that said I bet someone will be able to offer up a date.

In the meantime, I have Hilary Hartigan to thank for sending over four pictures of the place and the surrounding area taken in 2016.  

I instantly recognized where she had been when she took the images, which was in the coffee section of the Arndale Waterstones.  And to confirm it , Hilary has commented, “Yes, I left the coffee cups in to place it. My interest was the buildings at the front, how much longer would they survive?”

It is a question which will hang in the air, waiting no doubt for Derek the Developer, but I hope they do.

But what also fascinated me was the building opposite which from 2020 goes under the name "Nails", but for nine years from 2011 was “Delicious ….Pizzas Kebabs Burgers Fried Chicken”, and before that "T Stensby and Co, Gunmakers, established in 1870".

Now while I am ambivalent about guns and gun ownership, it is interesting to reflect that there was a gun shop in the city centre as late as 2008.

The same street directories running back from 1969 into the 19th century will help shed light on its history.

But for now, I will leave it at that, thank Hilary for sharing her pictures, and as she said trust that others will offer up pictures and memories of this bit of town.

Location; Withy Grove

Pictures, Withy Grove from the Arndale, 2016, from the collection of Hilary Hartigan

*Withy Grove, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Withy%20Grove

Just thirty years ago on Withy Grove .......... from the new collection

Now I maintain and I maintain most strongly that some of the most fascinating images of the twin cities come from the last four decades.

The old black and white photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are a passport back into a time before now but in their way so are those taken in the last four decades.

They show a Manchester and Salford which is almost like now but not quite and so bits are familiar but others might as well be from 1900.

It is like looking through a dirty window which offers up only half a picture.

All of which is an introduction into a new collection from John Casey which he has been kindly sharing with me over the last few weeks, and as he sends them across I have been featuring them.

Here are two of Withy Grove from the 1980s which will set people going.  For some it will be spotting the buildings they remember and for others it will be a revealing insight into what has gone.

What intrigue me also are the two pubs.  The Lower Turks Head was for a while closed and only reopened recently while the Hare and Hounds had a very different colour scheme.

Many will know that these two along with another seventy six have been close to my heart over the last year as I worked with Peter Topping on the book Manchester Pubs*

I could at this stage make some quite valid links to John’s pictures of the two pubs and what the pubs look
like today as seen in the book.

But that would be outrageous self promotion.

Instead look out for the story on the Swan with Two Necks which never made the book but was caught on camera by John in the 1980s.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Withy Grove in the 1980s from the collection of John Casey

You can order the book from www.pubbooks.co.uk or Chorlton Bookshop.

*A new book on Manchester Pubs, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20Pubs

Lost pubs of Manchester ......... no 15 Swan With Two Necks at Withy Grove

Now I never visited the Swan With Two Necks on Withy Grove and now I never will.

Swan With Two Necks, 1980s

According to one source it had been doing the business of serving up beer from 1795 and certainly twenty years earlier there had been a building on the site.*

By 1821 the landlady was a Lydia Oliver who was still there in 1827 and according to the rate books owned property in the surrounding streets.

The rateable value of the pub was £100 in 1823 and this far exceeded the rates of other buildings on the road and puts the other pub just a few doors down in the shadows.  This was run by Alice Wilmott who is listed as paying just £45 for the front two rooms of no 5 Withy Grove.

Swan With Two Necks, 1851

All of which makes Ms Oliver an interesting person to research, but for now all I know is that she was dead by 1841 because her properties are recorded as being managed by Executors.

There is a reference to a Lydia Oliver who was buried in Cheetham in September 1838 and whose death was registered by the Chorlton Union a few days earlier.

If this is our Ms Oliver, she had been born in 1765 and was 73 at her death.

So I shall return to the pub which vanished only relatively recently and is now the site of a takeaway business.

Swan With Two Necks, 1959

Back in the 1820s the pub was simply known as the Swan and I shall go looking for just when it gained that extra neck but it was trading with that new name by 1844 and in 1911 was run by a the Kinaman family.

Martin Kinaman was 51, and from Ireland and had been married to Clara Ann for twenty one years.

They had five children of whom the eldest Claire Kathleen at 19 was serving as a barmaid and that April of 1911 they shred the six roomed property with Amy Gough who was 31, from Manchester and described herself as a “housekeeper.”

The Swan With Two Necks, 1970

And for those  who want to know more about the pub in more recent times that excellent site Pubs of Manchester has a good description which should be read in conjunction with the four photographs of the pub since 1959 on the local image collection.

These later pictures are themselves facinating for showing the transfoirmation from traditional exterior to one in keeping with the 1970s.




Location; Manchester

Pictures;  Swan with Two Necks, 1980s from the collection of John Casey, the pub in 1959 by H W Beaumont, m50619, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 1970 by  A Davison, m50620, and map showing the pub in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Pubs of Manchester, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/swan-with-two-necks-withy-grove.html