Monday, July 30, 2012

Major Emporiums 1959

M&S Co-operative Emporiums
The illustration shews the Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-op major stores, that is they sold clothes and household goods besides food. It dates from 1959, the centenary of the Society. Hardy Lane doesn't feature for it is only a food store.

All this has now gone. The Co-Operative still has food stores in some of those locations, some in different buildings - Burnage, Knutsford, Stretford Gorse Hill, and Didsbury Village. The headquarters is now an industrial estate. The mobile shops long ceased travelling the south Manchester estates, the milk deliveries stopped possibly as late as the 1990's. The railway line running north-south to the left is now a successful metro tram service. The other railway line north-south right side now takes you to Manchester Airport.

I was checking an old telephone directory from 1959 and it listed seven M&SE shops with a Chorlton number. The prefix was CHO, nearby Stretford was LON presumably for Longford as in the big park in the that town. It could have been used in London but wasn't.

Here is the list :
Funerals 347 Barlow Moor Road CHO 4138, still trading next to Hardy Lane store.
Coal Sidings, Albany Road CHO 4947 - now a car park for Morrisons
Grocery & Drapery, 442 Barlow Moor Road - now a computer games shop and a bookmakers
Grocery, 14 Milton Grove CHO 1052 - now a driving test centre
Grocery & Butchers, 66 Beech Road CHO 1053 - now a gift shop and a restaurant
Grocery, 90 Warwick Road South CHO 1809 - now an independent convenience store
Grocery & Butchers, 349-351 Barlow Moor Road CHO 2115 - the Hardy Lane store

I always thought the coal sidings were private coal merchants but the local co-op had coal delivered there too. The picture of those sidings is from 1960 and is being used for other goods too. What was delivered in all those drums? Courtesy of Manchester City Libraries (number M18314) and their brilliant collection of archive online images. The illustration is from Manchester & Salford Co-operative Herald Jubilee Souvenir 1959.

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