Back with James Bowes, on Oldham Road, Newton Heath sometime after 1883

284-286 Oldham Road, date unknown.

This is the third and last picture of the shops owned by James Bowes Ltd.

The company was established in 1880 on Oldham Road in Newton Heath and expanded during the next century with premises in Chorlton on Medlock, Moss Side and now Stockport.

James Bowes who founded the company was born in Hulme in 1839.

His father described himself variously as an engineer and a maker up.

The family were still in Hulme in 1851 but James had moved to Newton Heath by 1881 living with his wife and children above the shop at 286 Oldham Road.

I first came across them after Andy Robertson had sent me a ghost sign advertising the business on the side of a building on the corner of Alexandra Street and Raby Street.*

Detail of the shops owned by James Bowes

James Bowes Ltd  had vacated the shop at the end of the last century but I tracked them down to Stockport and the present owner was kind enough to supply me with some information and photographs of the first shop in Newton Heath and  the second on Higher Cambridge Street, in Chorlton on Medlock.

Both have now gone the result of town planning and commercial development.  I rather think I might just have missed the demolition of the shop in our picture.

The site is now an empty bit of wasteland on Oldham Road which once was packed with houses, shops and factories.

The sister shop on the corner of Higher Cambridge Street went a long time ago and is now a block of student accommodation.

Picture; from the collection of Paul Bowes

*James Bowes Ltd, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/James%20Bowes%20Ltd