One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 99......... the Sunday visitors

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now I wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of the Sunday visitors.

They arrive in their cars, park up for a few hours, and saunter down to one of the bars and restaurants taking in the clothes shops, the pottery place, and art gallery, along with the deli and gift shops.

And on a very busy day they straddle both sides, and in an acknowledgement of just how narrow the road is they place their cars on the pavement, which is fine for the passing traffic but makes it difficult to walk the walk pushing a pram.

Not that this should ever be taken as a gentle side swipe at the Friends of Beech Road [occasional and Sunday division], just a reflection on how the road has changed in the time we have lived in Joe and Mary Ann’s house.

Its transformation from traditional retail into all that it is today is well documented and there are plenty, like us who remember its early incarnation along with that unhappy time when shops were closing with no indication of what would replace them before the beginning of the flowering of the restaurants, bars and all things quirky.

And that brings me to the picture, which is undated and belongs to a very different Beech Road.

If pushed I think we are on the road sometime in the late 1940s or early 50s.

The Rec has yet to have a new set of iron railings to replace those taken during the war, and the Morris Minor I think makes the picture no earlier than 1948, because that was the year the car went into full production.

There will of course be someone who can date it exactly, but given that it looks to be a two door version I think that does place it earlier rather than later.  The two door car went into production in 1948 followed by the four door in 1952.

So it is a scene very familiar to Joe and Mary Ann.

That said they would also have been familiar with that other moment when the weekend visitors fell upon Beech Road.  It started on a Saturday night and lasted through till Sunday evening.

What attracted them was the Irish Club, and in that time before the drink/drive legislation they came and parked up, spilling out of the car park along Cross Road and Beaumont and down Beech Road.

I don’t know when it started but suddenly in the 1980s it tailed away, partly I guess because of the legislation and maybe too because of other counter attractions.

You could tell the responsible drivers because they were the ones whose cars were still there in the morning, although some no doubt drove off having stayed on mineral water, coke or orange juice all night.

In the case of our new visitors, most are here for just a short time, taking in all that Beech Road has to offer, leaving some of us wondering about where they all come from.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Beech Road, date unknown from the Lloyd Collection 

*The story of a house,   https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Lost and forgotten streets of Salford nu 18 ........ compare and contrast

Now I am the first to admit I have become fixated by Greengate.

Greengate, 1980

And that is all the more ironic given that I wasn’t born in Salford and until a couple of decades ago was only vaguely aware of its existence.

But with that out of the way I can turn to one of those themes much loved by some which is a then and now set of pictures.

Just a couple of weeks ago I wandered across to Greengate and recorded the new development, featured it in a story and today came across an image taken almost exactly from the same spot in 1980.

Greengate, 2016

We are used to those contrasting pictures of a spot which show the changes over a century but it is quite sobering to realize that just thirty-six years separate the two scenes.

And for those in the know the buildings to the right vanished even more recently.

So that is it, for once no detailed search for the people who lived, and worked here just the two images with of course that golden rule always take a camera with you just in case the present is about to become history.

Location; Salford

Pictures; down by Greengate, 1980, m66776, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council  http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and from almost the same spot, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A little bit of the history of Wilbraham Road shops revealed

Somewhere in the collection I have a picture of this corner of Albany and Wilbraham before the shops were built.

As Andy’s pictures shows they were additions to the earlier properties which had longish front gardens which compensated for the small area at the back.

I guess the architects and builder were keen to set the houses back from the main road clearly aware that even by the 1890s Wilbraham Road had the potential to become very busy.

It had been cut in the 1860s and was already an important link between the township and Fallowfield, although that said its full potential as a site for new housing was slow to take off.

Albany and Wilbraham in 1911

And the commercial opportunities of this stretch of the road proved too attractive to allow our block to remain private residences.

The same financial incentive led to the conversion of the houses opposite of which one became the Post Office and sadly Mr Hitler did for the others during the Manchester Blitz.

And just at the other end of Chorlton at the corner of Wilbraham and Manchester Roads the same happened to that other row of tall properties.

The clues are all there to see.  The shops jut out filling what were once the gardens, and some of the interiors still retain the steps up from the ground level to what had once been the front rooms.

Shopping at the chemist circa 1910

So while you wait for that prescription the staff are constantly going up and the down from the shop to the pharmacy area and the same design is there at the hair stylists.

I shall close with one of those observations about the continuity of history because the corner shop on Albany has pretty much been a chemist from the moment the conversion happened.

And my next task will be to track down the owner of that building at the turn of the 19th century which will reveal more on the properties.

But that’s it for now.

Pictures; the corner of Wilbraham and Albany Road, 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, Wilbraham Road, from the series Chorlton-cum-Hardy, issued by Tuck & Sons, November 1913 courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history, and detail of the same spot from the Lloyd Collection

City Road School ........... the one I knew nothing about.

Now, I only attended three schools and then worked at one other during forty-five five years and in all that time just one changed its name.

So I am always fascinated by schools that have had multiple name changes and have adapted to different educational needs.

And one of these was City Road School in Hulme.

It “opened on August 15, 1910 with boys from the recently closed St. Stephen's School, Hulme, Lloyd Street Infants Department and St. Mark's School, Hulme. 
Girls were transferred from Duke Street School. 

The Infants Department closed for admissions and the school became City Road Senior School on August 26th 1935. 

From the 1920s until the 1950s there were two Handicraft Centres on the site. 

The school was renamed North Hulme Secondary School 23rd July 1953. 

On December 19th 1962 the girls were transferred to South Hulme Secondary School for Girls and on January 7th 1963, the school re-opened as North Hulme Secondary School for Boys, also taking boys from South Hulme Secondary School. It closed July 20 1967 and all the boys were transferred to the new South Hulme High School”.*

I know that back in 1911Mr H Salt was the master, Miss E Fairbrother, the mistress, and Miss M Thornton was the infant’s mistress.

And that is as they say all I do know.

Andy, who took the picture, commented "that as a school building it is nothing special apart from the fact it is in Hulme. It is now flats and I am not sure what it was called. 

It was on the corner of City Road, and Bradshaw Street and once our two friends get their caps they might well pay a visit”.

Now that is a challenge I can’t resist and I have to disagree with his about the building.  I have always thought there was something very special about the municipal schools and the Board schools that predated them.
They were built, and have stood the test of time, being warm in winter and cool in summer.

Location; Hulme

Pictures; City School, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Manchester Schools, Manchester Central Library

When are you going to write about the Creameries on Wilbraham Road?

2014

The question arose during a conversation last week.

As it turned out I had  already done so, first in 2012 and then again in the new book the Quirks of Chorlton -cum-Hardy which was published at the end of last year.*

Added to which in the intervening years I have revisited the creameries of Chorlton and Whalley Range from time to time.

In an age before fridges milk had an even shorter life span and in made more sense to buy smaller amounts, more often and do it from locally sourced places.

2018

Once when we were a rural community that place was one of the local farms, and even now the stories of being sent for milk, cream or cheeses from the nearby farmer are only just fading from memory.

Later in the early decades of the 20th century there were plenty of businesses engaged in the trade, and just a quick glance at the street directories will show that there were plenty of them around Chorlton.

I suspect I wouldn’t have returned so quickly to the subject after the publication of Quirks, had it not been for a series of pictures Andy took last week of the The Creamery on Wilbraham Road.

1928

The building is being transformed and as ever Andy was there to record the changes since his last visit four years earlier.

And the rest as they say can be summed up in a short writing exercise entitled, the Creameries on Wilbraham Road ...... compare and contrast.

Not to be out done I have included in advert dated 1928.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2014-18 and St John's Parish magazine 1928

*The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, is available from Chorlton Bookshop or from www.pubbooks.co.uk/ or 07521557888

The new Manchester ....... Owen Street ....... scenes from a development no. 9

It would be cheap journalism to adapt that phrase about waiting for a bus and then two come along at the same time.

But there does seem a bit of that today with these photographs of the Owen Street development.

As many know, Andy has been recording the build since the very beginning and his collection has become an impressive chronicle of the development.

And now where ever you go they follow you.

So when Andy was wandering the borders of Hulme he couldn’t resist taking our first image which offers up both towers, along with the Beetham in the middle and another development off to the east.

Not content, and I suspect unintended he also caught them again in this picture of the old Board School which will be story for another day.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the Owen Street development, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

A bit of our industrial past ....... walking towards Collyhurst

Now if like me you were born in the first half of the last century, grew up with free school milk, thrilled to the sound of She Loves You, and thought the light had gone out of the world at hearing of the death of Ottis Reading and Dr King, then the de-industrialization of great chunks of east and north Manchester will be familiar.

When I lived off Grey Mare Lane in the early 1970s, there were still plenty of steel and engineering works, and if Bradford Colliery had closed there was still Clayton Aniline and a host of small workshops, garages and yards within walking distance of our house.

But in the following two decades pretty much all of it has gone.

All of which makes Andy’s picture of one of the gates posts at the Oldham Road Goods Yard both sad and a reminder of what we have lost.

Not that this is nostalgic trip aimed to call back a golden age.  Working down the mine or in a foundry could he hard and at times dangerous and the rewards were not always that good, but it was how many of us derived a living.

Location; Manchester

Picture; gate post, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson