That other Piccadilly Gardens …………….. and the mystery of the postcard

Now, for anyone born  before 1980 this scene will be very familiar.

There will be countless picture postcards of the gardens in their heyday knocking about, and when you post one it creates a flurry of comments.

Some of these are nostalgic, while others reflect on what has replaced the sunken gardens with their flower beds, benches and the memory of warm summer days passing the time during a break from work, or after a round of shopping.

But today it is the picture postcard itself that interests me, because when Tony Goulding sent it over, he thought it might be a Valentine card.

The company was started by James Valentine who had added portrait photography to his already well-established engraving and printing business in Dundee.

And of course, what exercises my interest is the date the picture was taken, and when it was marketed.

Looking at it I would have thought the original was taken in the 1950s or 1960s, and then will have just been reproduced over the years.

But a search of Valentine’s catalogue does not reveal a match with that serial number of ET. 344.

So perhaps we have to look elsewhere for the company who sold it.

We shall.

Location; Manchester Piccadilly Gardens

Picture; Manchester Piccadilly Gardens, circa 1950, courtesy of Tony Goulding

Chorlton’s history ……. The Irish Centre

A place with so many happy memories for so many ……….

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Irish Centre, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Stories from Beech Road …….

Now, it is stating the obvious to say that Beech Road has changed a lot.

All that is modern, 2020, in the grounds of Mr. Sharpe's house, circa 1830

In the 44 years that I have lived in Joe and Mary Ann’s house facing the Rec, the road has gone from one which supported a range of traditional shops to a strip of cafes, bars, and restaurants.

Beech Road, circa 1980s

During the 1980s it hit the doldrums, with some businesses closing and little likelihood that they would be replaced with more of the same.

But with the opening of Café on the Green, the deli Buonissimo, followed by Primavera and the Lead, the future was set.

And for anyone living in the last quarter of the 19th century, the transformation of Beech Road must have been equally striking.

Until the 1850s, it was a narrow twisty lane, fronted by a few farmhouses, some wattle and daub cottages, and three homes of the gentry, with great stretches of it given over to fields.*

So, the buildings which are now the shops and bars, pretty much date from the 1870s onwards.

Beech Road, circa 1880s, with Mr. Clarke's smithy

Only those at the Chorlton Green end are there a few buildings which date from the 1830s and of these only the two shops beside the Beech Inn have survived, and they can claim to being the oldest two commercial properties still trading.

Here too could be found the blacksmith, and the road’s only drinking establishment which by the 1840s was run by Samuel and Elizabeth Nixon.  Mr. Nixon’s father was the landlord of  the pub over the water, which today is Jackson’s Boat but in its long history has had other names, of which the Greyhound was but one.  One of their son’s occupied the stationer’s and post office, and his son was the first occupant of the newsagent’s which now belongs to the Etchell’s family.

The Launderette, 2020

Sadly, all three of the fine houses of the gentry have gone.

Beech House which stood in its own substantial grounds at the Barlow Moor Road end of Beech Road went in 1908, while the remaining two were lost this century.

But already the very name of the road had gone.  Originally it was called Chorlton Row, and the name of the fields that stretched from what is now Cross Road down to Acres Road had been known as Row Acre.

And some time in the late 1870s it became Beech Road.

I bet there will have been those in the Traveler’s Rest which was the name of the beer shop run by the Nixon family who muttered into their beer about the unwarranted changes which started with rows of shops and ran on with the change from Chorlton Row and the slow loss of Row Acre to new houses.

Bar San Juan, 2020

I still lament the loss of Mr. Sharpe’s fine house which was demolished in favour of a Co-op, but am reconciled to the closure of the launderette, and pleased that after a long time of sitting empty what was the Parlour has been taken over by Bar San Juan.

Change is in the air, and I shall close with the thought that launderette’s helped do for the traditional laundry, one of which operated from Crossland Road, and while our own launderette is no more we have a new one on Wilbraham Road, in the old Gregg’s.

And that is it.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Beech Road, 2020 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, The History Press, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html 

**Beech Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Beech%20Road

For all those who left Didsbury a long time ago ………

I am not a great fan of the now and then sets of pictures.

Kings Lynn Close, 2020

But I have to be careful, because I did collaborate on a then and now book on Didsbury’s past, so I shall push on with these two.*

We are on Kings Lynn Close on a bright day in February.

And for those that remember the day, it was pretty much the only dry day for weeks.

So as the rain wasn’t coming down like stair rods and the clouds were not scrapping the tops of buildings I set off into the township.

By the time I got back on the tram and headed into town the weather had turned, but that’s another story.

For now it is Kings Lynn Close and the view up towards Wilmlsow Road.

Kings Lynn Close, 1967

For some the value of the image will be in the snap shot of shops on the main road, which will stir a few memories.

But I am equally interested in the clutch of buildings to the left.

There is much the same, including those large metal trolleys and the simple observation finding a parking spot back in 1967 was like today, a reward in itself.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; looking out from Kings Lynn Close, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1967, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

*Didsbury Through Time, Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2013, A new book for Didsbury, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Didsbury

The eyes have it …........

Early morning walk on a Saturday on Barlow Moor Road

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The Eyes Have It, Image, Barlow Moor Road, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When science meets history ….....Alice Roberts on bones, ….. today at 9 am on the wireless

So here is one I shall be listening to. ……Alice Roberts on bones, from the radio series, The Life Scientific.

Neanderthal skull, France, 50,000 years ago

“It’s amazing what we can learn from a pile of old bones. 

Having worked as a paediatric surgeon for several years (often doing the ward round on roller blades), Alice Roberts spent a decade teaching anatomy to medical students and studying human remains. 

A niche interest in the collar bone and how it has changed since we evolved from the common ancestor we share with other apes 6 million years ago, led her to some of the biggest questions in science. 

Who are we? And where do we come from? She is the presenter of several landmark TV series on human evolution and archaeology, such as The Incredible Human Journey and Digging for Britain. 

And in 2019 she became President of the British Science Association. In conversation with Jim Al Khalili, Alice shares her passion for the bones of our ancient ancestors and of the freshly dead, and describes her own incredible journey from a basement full of medieval bones to an eminent science communicator and public figure.

Producer: Anna Buckley"

Location; Radio 4

Picture; Picture; Homo neanderthalensis. Skull discovered in 1908 at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France,October 2005, Author Luna04, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

* Alice Roberts on bones, The Life Scientific, Radio 4, at 9 am today, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000lghd

Suppose no one turned up .......... no. 11 ...... from The Goldsmith Collection

Now I am sure that someone will have braved the day and taken to sitting on a bench and wondering where everyone else was.

Location; Brighton

Picture; Brighton, 2017, from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith