Not unusually, whilst on my way somewhere else, quite by chance, I came upon The Clean Scene.
Sadly soon to be CLOSSING DOWN.
Pleas such as: Are you open Christmas Eve I need the dryers
– will from hereon in remained unanswered.
Having almost abandoned the wet and dry world of the laundrette, following the publication of the era-defining, runaway success of my eight laundrettes, I almost walked on by.
For just one brief moment I hesitated, then walked right on in.
Above the current market office is an impressive painted mural by art students from Dresden commissioned especially for the market in the 1950s in a Socialist Realist manner, depicting farming and industrial scenes.
The Gordon Cullen tiles have been renovated and re-sited within the exit corridor.
Still in clear view the stone relief work of John Skelton November 1956. Three of the eight column have incised Hornston stone works, depicting the activities of the CWS.
Get yourself there pronto – current restrictions considered of course.
Walking the stairwells, ramps and interlocking tiers, the curious pedestrian becomes aware of the ambition and complexity of the scheme. Often identified on local social media groups as an anachronistic eyesore, I feel that it is a thing of rare and precious beauty.
Knock most of the precinct down, free the river, but keep this wall and what is within.
Anon
Some are slaughtering imaginary white elephants, whilst others are riding white swans.
Currently under the ownership of Stockport Borough Council, changes are afoot.
Work to redevelop Adlington Walk in Stockport starts this week, as the first stage in the regeneration of the 55-year-old Merseyway shopping centre.
As of today work is still in Covid induced abeyance, it is still possible to walk the old revamped Adlington Walk. The future of retail in particular and town centres in general is in the balance, the best of the past and the finest of the new should be the watchword.
The scheme and car park redevelopment, is managed by CBRE of Manchester.
The future shopper is looking for more than just a simple buying transaction, they want an experience, entertainment and excitement.
This is where Merseyway Shopping Centre’s future lies.
CBRE Group Inc. is an American commercial real estate services and investment firm. The abbreviation CBRE stands for Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis. It is the largest commercial real estate services company in the world.
Their net worth as of January 28th 2021 is $21.18 Billion.
It is to be hoped that these dreams of entertainment and excitement, may be realised in the not too distant future.
In the meanest of mean times, in the mean time let’s have a look around.
The future moocher is looking for more than just a simple buying transaction, they want an experience, entertainment and excitement.
One of the great glories of cinema is that it has the power to take the mundane and make it magical. To most of us, car parks signify a world of pain, where fearsome red-and-white crash barriers dictate our fate and where finding a space is often like finding meaning in the collective works of Martin Lawrence. To others, they meant lost Saturday afternoons spent waiting for your mum to finally come out of Woolworths so you could rush home to catch Terrahawks.
Either way, car parks are grey and dull. In the movies, however, they are fantastic places, filled with high-level espionage, and high-octane chases.
I beg to differ, the cinema and TV has helped to define our perception and misconception of the car park.
The modern day pedestrian may reclaim, redefine and realise, that far from mundane each actual exemplar is different, in so many ways. The time of day, weather, light, usage, abusage, condition, personal demeanour and mood all shape our experience of this particular, modern urban space.
To walk the wide open spaces of the upper tier, almost touching the sky.
Is a far cry from the constrained space of the lower levels.
To walk the ramps with a degree of trepidation, visceral and fun.
This is an inversion of the car-centric culture, walking the concrete kingdom with a carbon-free footprint.
I was inspired by a recent viewing of All The Presidents Men to revisit my local multi-storey on Heaton Lane Stockport.
Cinematographer Gordon Hugh Willis Jr constructs a shadow world where informer and informed meet to exchange deep secrets, ever watchful, moving in and out of artificial light, tense and alert.
Look over your shoulder- there’s nobody there, and they’re watching you.
But they have been here.
To party.
To tag.
To live.
Pay here, your time is time limited, your presence measured.
Let’s explore this demimonde together, wet underfoot, lit laterally by limited daylight, walking through the interspersed pools of glacial artificial glow.
Time’s up, check out and move on – tomorrow is another day, another car park; in a different town.
Cinema and car parks wedded forever in the collective popular cultural unconscious.
The BT Hunters – They came in search of paradise and found BT.
Many thanks to my partner in victimless crime – Mr Ryan Lloyd.
This is an atypical single storey building, with a raised central hall and butterfly roof, quite something.
Lots of utilitarian detail, mixing brick, glass and concrete, with pragmatic infrastructure grills and grids.
The upper glazed area an extended asymmetric, external delight.
To set the pulse racing a series of gorgeous Rose Carmine panels.
The angular porch displayed the BT Logo of 1991:
On 2 April 1991, the company unveiled a new trading name: BT accompanied by a new corporate identity designed by Wolff Olins and organisational structure focused on specific market sectors, reflecting the needs of different customers – the individual, the small business or the multinational corporation. The reorganisation was named ‘Project Sovereign’ to reflect the company’s commitment to meetings customers’ needs – ‘The Customer Is King’. Together with a succession of strategic alliances with telecommunications companies worldwide, these changes gave BT the ability to expand overseas.
Which prompted a brief yet uninformed discussion concerning the history of Telecom’s Corporate Identity.
So here’s a brief rundown logo lovers:
Previously the GPO was the umbrella grouping for both telephone and mail.
Sketch for the redesign of the GPO logo by MacDonald Gill in 1934 . The first approved version had two concentric circles but this was soon reduced to one. The annotations also mentions the typeface used as “Gill Sans” which had been created by MacDonald Gills’ brother Eric.
This is my first visit to a match day at the Etihad – having last watched City at Maine Road, from that uncovered corner enclave, the Kippax Paddock – the so called Gene Kelly Stand
To the other side of the city and rebranded Eastlands, occupying the former Commonwealth Games Stadium.
Owners John Wardle and Thaksin Shinawatra came and went.
Since 4 August 2008, the club has been owned by Sheikh Mansour, one of football’s wealthiest owners, with an estimated individual net worth of at least £17 billion and a family fortune of at least $1 trillion.
A far cry from Peter Swales and his TV Repair shop on Washway Road.
The game has changed, money is in motion, fans travel from every corner of the globe, fuelled by the Murdoch Dollar and the insatiable thirst for televised football.
So it’s the 22nd September 2013 – I though I’d take a look around town first.
Kits and colours in abundance – though some of these colours can and will run.
Off then to the Etihad and its the Pellegrini squad versus Moyes’ boys.
This is a world within a world as the Middle East seeks to lighten its carbon footprint, and put its size nines all over east Manchester.
Corporate greeting on Joe Mercer Way, executive sweeteners, in the form of earthbound airline hostesses.
Groups from the Antipodes happy to embrace the jumbo blue letters – no boots, no hustling, no barging through swelling crowds, no menacing looks from beneath feather cut fringes.
No none of that any more.
I made my excuses and left.
Manchester City ensured David Moyes’ first derby as Manchester United manager ended in abject humiliation with a crushing victory at the Etihad Stadium.
In contrast to the despair of his opposite number, it was a day of delight for new City boss Manuel Pellegrini as he watched the rampant Blues make a powerful statement about their Premier League ambitions.
Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure gave City a commanding half-time lead and any slim hopes of a United recovery were snuffed out by further goals from Aguero and Samir Nasri within five minutes of the restart.
I passed by almost every day, cycling back and to, to work.
One day I stopped, popped in, asked to chat and snap – Tony obliged.
Cypriot George in the city centre had already give me salon time.
These photographs were taken in March 2104 – Tony’s still there, cutting hair.
Since 1971, presiding over his empire of mainly masculine ephemera, rival football clubs fight it out for space on the crowded walls. Motorcycles race around the dado rail, stood stock still, gathering another dusting of dust. A slow accretion of memories and memorabilia, tracing a lengthy short back and sides life, of short back and sides, as stylists’ style snaps come in and out of style and back again.
Let’s take a look.
Thanks again Tony a privilege to spend some time in your world.
I came here on February 25th 2014, arrived early the shop was still closed, I’ll pop back.
Walked around the block and found that true to his word, he had re-opened.
I explained my intentions, asking to spend some time in the salon, chat and take some snaps as he worked away.
He was more than happy to accommodate my needs, he worked, we chatted, I snapped. This was some seven years ago now, typically, I forgot to make any written notes. Suffice to say he had been there some 48 years finally retiring on Christmas Eve 2014.
As city centre Manchester changes for good or for bad, the likelihood of a neighbourhood barber appearing is negligible. It was a privilege to spend some time with George, one of many Cypriot immigrants who found work here between and after the wars, we were more than happy to welcome him here.
Abbey Stadium Goredale Avenue Gorton Manchester M18 7HD.
Abbey Hey FC was formed in 1902 in the Abbey Hey district of Gorton, some three miles away from the centre of Manchester. During their formative years and through the two World Wars, the club was disbanded and reformed on a number of occasions. Starting in the Church Sunday Leagues, they progressed through the Manchester Amateur Leagues during the intervening years but the club really came into it’s own in the 1960s after it took in the players of the Admiralty Gunning Engineering Department following it’s closure.
In 1978 with the club decided to apply for a position in the Manchester League, this meant that the club had to find an enclosed ground suitable for playing their home games. The nearest ground available at the time was in Chorlton at Werburghs Road.
In 1984 the club at last had their own home,improvements to the ground could only have been achieved by the hard work and dedication of the committee, who not only raised the money to carry out the improvements but also carried out 90% of the work themselves.
Promotion to the 1st Division meant that the club had to install floodlights. True to form, they designed, ordered, erected and wired them within a couple of months. The biggest job during the ground improvements was the building of the new clubhouse and dressing rooms. Planning permission was given with the majority of work once again being carried out by the club’s own members.
This is a story of persistence and commitment from members, managers and players – keeping a viable non-league football team alive at the centre of a Community.
I have cycled by here for years, along the Fallowfield Loop – and worked down here in the Seventies when the rail link was still extant.
Photo – Neil Ferguson-Lee via Robert Todd and Levy Boy.
So today seeing the gates open, I decided to take a look around the ground – many thanks to groundsman Simon for taking the time to stop and chat.
Everything is spick and span, the playing surface in excellent nick, and all the stands seat and fences standing smartly to attention, having had a fresh coat of paint.
So let’s take a look around:
I’ll be back to watch a match, just as soon as the rules and regulations allow!
Mimmo RotellaBest known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters. He was associated to the Ultra-Lettrists an offshoot of Lettrism and later was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme, founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany.
Inspiration to all lovers of the torn poster, The Society of the Spectacle reduced to the exasperating Esperanto of the inexplicable.
Working towards the demise of the – autocratic reign of the market economy.
I wish to blur the firm boundaries which we self-certain people tend to delineate around all we can achieve.
My name is Kurt Schwitters – I am an artist and I nail my pictures together.
New things had to be made out of fragments.
Together they begin to define the realm of cut and paste collage technology, the chance encounter, the hastily arranged marriage and the jarring clash of culture and counter-culture.
They are my guiding lights – by which to live, look and learn, to loop the Möbius loop into an expanding geometry of new meanings.
The lines curve toward each other and intersect.
JCDecaux was founded in 1964 in Lyonby Jean-Claude Decaux. Over the years it has expanded aggressively, partly through acquisitions of smaller advertising companies in several countries. They currently employ more than 13,030 people worldwide and maintain a presence in over 75 countries.
Outdoor advertising, reaches more than 410 million people on the planet every day.
We are here are again – you Bonny Street bobbies, it seems, are not.
Departed for pastures new – to Marton near to the big Tesco.
As well as a front counter, the new headquarters provides a base for some of the local policing and immediate response teams, an investigations hub and 42 custody cells.
On my previous visit I was in fact apprehended by a uniformed officer, perturbed by my super-snappy happy behaviour. Following a protracted discussion, I convinced the eager young boy in blue, that my intentions were entirely honourable.
Themed bar and event restaurant concept with roller coaster service, hourly special effects shows and exploration tours.
The £300m Blackpool Central development will bring world-class visitor attractions to a landmark site on the famous Golden Mile. Along with new hotels, restaurants, food market, event square, residential apartments and multi-storey parking.
Chariots of the Gods inspires the masterplan for the long-awaited redevelopment. It’s the global publishing phenomenon, written by Swiss author Erich Von Däniken. Exploring alien encounters and unsolved mysteries of ancient civilisations.
Chariots Of The Gods will be the main theme for Blackpool Central. Including the anchor attraction – the UK’s first flying theatre.
A fully-immersive thrill ride that will create the incredible sensation of human flight.
Time it seems changes everything, stranger than fiction.
The Bonny Street Beast’s days are numbered – your local Brutalist pal is no more, wither Wilko’s?
Your piazza planters are waterlogged.
Your lower portals tinned up.
Your curious sculptural infrastructure sunken garden neglected and forlorn.
Your low lying out-rigger stares blankly yet ominously into space.
Likewise your tinted windows.
Your subterranean car park access aromatic and alienating.
So farewell old pal, who knows what fate awaits you, I only know you must be strong.
Not until we have taken a look into the future shall we be strong and bold enough to investigate our past honestly and impartially.
How often the pillars of our wisdom have crumbled into dust!
Here we are again, having posted a post way back when – on Seaside Moderne.
Where the whole tale is told – the tale of Borough Architect John Charles Robinson‘s inter-war Deco dream tempered by Municipal Classicism. A stretch of Pulhamite artificial rock cliffs 100ft high between the new gardens and the lower promenade constructed in 1923. The lower promenade at sea level was remodelled during 1923–5 with a colonnaded middle walk.
So here we are again September 2020, a country in Covid crisis bereft of crowds.
I took a short walk along its length – to the lift and back.
The Cabin Lift is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a nationally rare type of seaside structure that is of interest as part of the history and development of certain seaside resorts * It is of a well-executed design and uses good-quality material to good effect that can be particularly appreciated from the upper promenade * It is a conspicuous and eye-catching structure especially when viewed to maximum effect from the lower promenade * The Cabin Lift’s architectural merit contributes significantly to Blackpool’s importance as a holiday resort of national and international renown.
Named for local lad pugilist Richard Dunn, the ambitious imagining of architect Gordon Elliott – the sports centre opened in 1978.
The Richard Dunn Sports Centre, originally Odsal Sports Centre, was designed by myself Trevor Skempton, as part of a team in the office of Owen Perry, Bradford City Architect until 1974.
Gordon Elliot then took over; as Chief Architect for the Met District, after the construction contract had been let.
Comprising pools, sports hall, dance studio, sauna, gym and ancillary facilities the centre was certainly state of the art.
Sweeping interlocking arcs of concrete, were at the heart of the structure.
Topped out with a suspended canopy.
Attracting huge crowds on the occasion of its opening.
It’s remarkable – here are my photographs from February 2020.
I advise you to get along and take a look, just as soon as humanly possible.
Recently John Mann was granted permission to snap the deserted interior.
The ghostly gasps of the exercising public exorcised forever.
Eileen Ayres, who has worked at Richard Dunns from before it even opened to the public said:
When I came here this place was super, super modern – state of the art. Now we’re moving to Sedbergh it is great to be in a state of the art facility again. The younger staff are so excited about the move to a new, modern sports centre.
I have a lot of memories of here, a lot of staff I’ve met and become friends with over the years. We’ve had a lot of events here, international events that have taken place here over the years. When Richard Dunn was new a lot of people wanted to hold these events here. Now we have a new leisure centre I hope some of these events come back to Bradford.
I started at 23, I said I was just coming for a year. Here we are 41 years later.
When asked if she thinks it is right to be closing down Richard Dunn she said:
In my heart no, but realistically it has to go. It is run down – it would be way too expensive to run or refurbish. You can’t keep putting money into old things.
There comes a time in very life when you finally go where you have never been before – even though you have walked by that very same place almost every day.
It is bounded by the former Burton’s store, the long gone BHS now home to Poundland, a later extension to the precinct and a Nineteenth century building. Illustrating the mongrel nature of many English towns, the result of world wars, speculative development and town planning.
It’s a self contained world of loading, unloading unloved and overused.
Home to the pirate parker, carelessly avoiding the imposition of the municipal surcharges.
Shops and goods come and go part of the merry retail gavotte.
The trams once clang, clang, clanged along and the Picture House opened 2nd June 1913, later The Palladium, finally closing in 1956 – now occupied by a huge Charity Shop – Highway Hope.
The Merseyway construction is a modern amalgam of mosaic, brick and cast concrete.
The older brick building now almost rendered and coated in off white exterior emulsion.
There are signs of life and former lives.
This is a nether world that never really was a world at all.
The place where the sun almost doesn’t shine.
And the blue sky seems like an unwelcome intrusion.
So as the retail sector contracts and the virus remains viral – wither Serveway Five?
The Council purchased the development at no cost to taxpayers via the current income stream. The rationale for purchase was to create a sustainable future for the centre via a series of targeted redevelopments. Key aspirations for the centre will be to fully integrate it into the town centre. We also want it to complement our exciting ownerships such as Debenhams, Redrock and Market Place and Underbanks.
The investment will seek to change perceptions of not only the retail offer but also Stockport as a whole. It will ultimately create a town centre that will benefit the local business community and Stockport residents.
Around the corner to West View Court – also commissioned by Manchester Borough Council, built by Direct Works and contractors Holst, currently managed by Parkway Green.
Nine storeys in height containing seventy three homes.
The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.
Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities
Paul Dobraszczyk posted this Shirley Baker photograph, he was puzzled by its exact location, it puzzled me too.
For nearly all that is depicted here, is now no longer extant, save one hopes, for the group of playmates.
All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
Shirley Baker was a renowned documentary photographer, who worked extensively in Greater Manchester.
I love the immediacy of unposed, spontaneous photographs and the ability of the camera to capture the serious, the funny, the sublime and the ridiculous. Despite the many wonderful pictures of the great and famous, I feel that less formal, quotidian images can often convey more of the life and spirit of the time.
I am grateful to Stephen Bann who has identified the monument as the Bann Family vault:
Stephen Bann and his younger brother – many thanks for the text and photograph Stephen.
Her photograph was taken in Stockport 1967 – I first assumed it was taken from St Mary’s Church, looking toward the former power station.
I was mistaken.
Using the Stockport Image Archive, I found the possible site, in this photograph of Tiviot Dale Station.
There on the eastern edge of Lancashire Hill – Hanover Chapel.
Seen here on the maps of 1917 and 1936.
An area of intense activity, road, rail, housing and infrastructure.
Hanover Chapel closed 1962 – though we may assume from Shirley Baker’s photograph, that following its demolition the graveyard remained intact but untended.
The chapel is thought be seen in the 1954 film Hobson’s Choice, directed by David Lean and starring John Mills, here awaiting his bride to be – the parish church of St Mary’s on the skyline.
Though closer examination reveals that this is not Hanover Chapel – where did those pillars come from?
Where are we, in a labyrinth of invention with a superimposed Stockport backdrop?
My thanks to Robert Collister for these observations.
Improbably out of time, the cooling towers are yet to be built, or blown up.
Here John is joined by Salford born Brenda Doreen Mignon de Banzie, playing Maggie.
The demolished chapel rubble appears in the foreground of Albert Finney’s gold Roller CB 1E in Charlie Bubbles.
The film’s screenplay was the work of Shelagh Delaney, whose previous work A Taste of Honey also used local locations.
Where Finney has pulled up, feeling proper poorly.
As a serendipitous symmetry, Charlie Bubbles co-star Liza Minelli plays a photographer recording Salford’s disappearing streets.
Bit by bit everything disappears, Tiviot Dale Station closed completely on January 2nd 1967.
Where once there was a continuous run from the chapel to the town centre, the motorway has since intervened.
The Tiviot Dale pub on the right is no more, closed in 2013.
We had people from all parts of the country turn up on our final day,some of them brought their children who wanted to come because they remember the pub so fondly from their childhood. It was really humbling to see that our pub had touched so many lives.
I remember this pub as a Boddingtons house in the 1970’s. Excellent bitter served by handpump from small vault at the front and a larger “best room” behind, both very narrow given the width of the pub. The landlord employed an unusual method of ensuring everyone got a full pint; a half pint glass of beer was kept between the pumps and your pint was topped up from the half which was constantly replenished to keep it fresh. I have not seen this practice in any other pub.
Phil Moran
When’s the next tram due?
Millgate Power Station operated until 1976.
At the adjacent gas works – gas holder number three was dismantled in 1988, gas holders one and two were removed in 2019.
The nature of infrastructure, housing and industry has changed radically.
Lancashire Hill flats were built in the 60s, designed by City Architect JS Rank, two seven storey blocks containing 150 dwellings; two six storey blocks containing 120 dwellings.
Replacing tight rows of terraced housing.
They themselves clad and revamped.
The Nicholson’s Arms built to serve the flats closed and currently empty, signs say to let – replaced an earlier pub, sited on the corner of long gone Nicholson Street.
Today from the road there’s simply no trace of the site’s past purpose.
At the centre of what is now a compact civic grassed area – a trough.
Incongruously in memory of Elizabeth Hyde of Tufnell Park Road London.
The dense stand of trees is impenetrable – no longer a view of the non existent power station and beyond.
And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.
Isiah 58:12
As a footnote I did meet brothers Stephen, Derek and Peter who appeared in this Shirley Baker photograph 55 years ago – she promised them an ice cream each – they never ever received an ice cream.
They are seen in Sunnyside Street Ordsall – long since demolished.
A commemorative plaque from the Chapel still exists, sited now on the wall of Wycliffe Congregational Church Georges Road Stockport.
Ferguson Pailin Electrical Engineering are established in 1913 on Fairfield Road/Edge Lane.
By 1939 the factory is fully formed and the area a dense warren of industry and terraced housing.
Makers of heavy duty electrical switchgear and general electrical engineers, of Higher Openshaw, Manchester.
1913 Ferranti Ltd sold its switchgear patents and stock to Ferguson, Pailin Ltd. Samuel Ferguson and George Pailin had worked for Ferranti as switchgear engineers. They left in 1913 to set up their own switchgear business at a factory in Higher Openshaw, Manchester.
The company was acquired by Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) in 1928. Following the restructuring of AEI in 1960, Ferguson, Pailin & Co ceased to be a separate subsidiary and was merged into AEI switchgear. Following the takeover of AEI by GEC in 1967, the Higher Openshaw works became part of GEC Switchgear. In 1989, GEC merged its electrical engineering interests with those of Alsthom to form GEC Alsthom. The factory was later closed by Alstom in 2003, with most of the employees finishing on 22 November 2002.
The company has a Facebook page which shares former employees memories – from which these archive photographs were taken.
Notably the firm provided extensive leisure facilities for their employees.
The company acquired Mottram Hall to give employees an opportunity to go on affordable holidays during World War II. The company bought three properties in 1939/40 in order to provide holidays for staff and workers during the war. Mottram Hall was bought for the works, a small hotel in Llandudno for the middle level staff and a property in Criccieth for senior staff. Mottram Hall was sold as surplus to requirements by GEC in 1968 and is now a luxury country house hotel.
Sadly the days when benevolent employers thought to take care of their employees in such a manner, are largely a thing of the past.
For business guests, our sleek and sophisticated conference rooms feature the latest technology to get your agenda off to a prompt and professional start. Plus, catering facilities and a plush break out space for comfortable downtime between meetings.
Last time I passed through many of the factory buildings were still extant though underused. A portion of the site lost to the development of the Lime Square Shopping Centre.
Lime Square is a shopping destination which is helping to put the heart back into Openshaw district centre here in east Manchester. Lime Square is home to the stunning Steamhammer sculpture and a host of great High Street names.
By and large replacing the plethora of busy local businesses which once thrived in the area.
Part of the site became the site of a car park for B&M Bargains.
Empty car parking and to let signs in superabundance.
So there we are the end of an era – the decline in manufacturing, the structure ending life as an empty warehouse.
But wait, what’s all this?
Your Housing Group, the Warrington-based affordable housing provider, wants to build a residential scheme on the site of a former warehouse on Edge Lane, with work starting this summer subject to consent.
The project in Openshaw comprises 216 homes available on a mix of tenures, according to a planning application submitted to Manchester City Council. A total of 72 will be for sale as shared ownership schemes, another 72 will be for private rent, and 72 will be for affordable rent.
So there we are another phase of development for one small area of Manchester, should you change to pass, just spare a moment to recall those thousands of souls that laboured their whole working lives – right here on Fairfield Road and Edge Lane.
This is not the first time that I have crossed the threshold of a hair salon – having done so first in Failsworth, keeping company with Sheila Gregory and her chatty clientele.
Both Sheila and Marilyn preserve something of the past, not just in fixtures and fittings, but also in something of an old world charm. A land of shampoos and sets, lacquer and curlers, conviviality and coffee cups.
On the day of our chance encounter here in East Didsbury, we are all experiencing the first week of Covid lockdown – the salon is ostensibly closed, yet Marilyn was kind enough to allow us a few socially distanced moments to stop, snap and chat.
She has been here since 1963, nothing and everything has changed. She had intended to retire some time ago, but on the death of her husband she decided to continue cutting and curling, three days a week, living above the shop, doing just enough.
The interior is largely as was, mirrored, Formica topped and charming – with a delightful reception seating area.
All so lovingly cared for – Marilyn was using the current closure to keep up with the upkeep, washing towels and sweeping up.
I worked as quickly as possible not wishing to compromise anyone’s well-being. As ever on these occasions it is a privilege to be permitted to spend time in someone else’s world, thanks ever so Marilyn.
Modern Mooch 