The mystery of that parade of shops on Barlow Moor Road

Now not that long ago I wrote about Audrey’s which sold everything from the best new frocks to all sorts of fine haberdasheries.*

Barlow Moor Road circa 1950s-60s

It was on the corner of Barlow  Moor Road and Needham Avenue and one of the two shops is now Duffy’s.

The story set off a whole shed load of memories and so when I came across this picture post card from Mark Fynn’s excellent site I knew I had to ask permission to use it.**

Mark has some fascinating picture postcards covering pretty much everywhere.

So with that out of the way its back to that picture of Barlow Moor Road sometime in the 1950s or 60s, and my interest is drawn to that last parade of shops which runs from Needham up to Maple Avenue.

The parade showing circa 1950s

Look closely and the parade of five shops turns out to be two distinct buildings which have been transformed by the addition of a new brick frontage which in the 1950s still carried a terracotta name tablet above the shops.

And here it gets even more complicated, because in 1903 there was just one property on the corner of Needham and Barlow Moor and four years later there is still a gap between that house and the one at the start of Maple Avenue.

By 1911 the row was fully developed but that still does not answer the question of when that yellow brick frontage was added and for that I suspect we will have to wait till someone with a set of deeds comes forward.

I know that in 1911 number 67 which is now numbered 392 was J T & Sons Ltd, dyers and cleaners and if you count along from Needham Avenue in our picture the fourth shop is still a dry cleaners..

The parade sometime after 1911

And that transformation might well have been soon after 1911 because in a detail from another of Mark's postcards which can not be much later  the conversion has been carried through and  the first house on Maple Avenue has been incorporated into
the parade and the uniform brick frontage added.

So for those who want to help me out and fasten the date they will have to trawl through the directories from 1911 till that conversion is listed.

And at some point that launderette will appear.

It must have been relatively new in the 1950s and there will be those who remember it.

 I am trying to think whether I am one of them, which if I am places its demise to sometime after 1976.

But that was a long way away from that sunny day when a commercial photographer snapped this bit of Barlow Moor Road.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, date unknown

Picture; Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station, date unknown, courtesy of Mark Fynn

*Down at Duffy's thinking about Audrey's and the man who sold a nit comb, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/down-at-duffys-thinking-about-audreys.html

**Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html