Postcards and information below !
This is a strange postcard and the original looks as though it has been hand-coloured. I wish I could date ,it but, alas, there is nothing on the card to give a clue. I'm fascinated by the guy standing at the pavement edge outside the Clarendon. He could be a policeman with his tall hat! The Mechanics institute was a great landmark, also. The sheer size of it made it unmissable !
Same spot in 2007 - taken on a Sunday morning and the shops are open!
This card of Stockport Road, taken from near the junction with Rowan Street and looking towards Zion [although you can't see it] is dated 1907, but I think it's very easily recognised even today. When I was young there were still shops there on the right - Mr Dain's paint shop, who also sold lamp oil, McGowan's paper shop and then I think there was a wool shop just beyond them, although in the mid-50s Roy and Lil Kerfoot opened a very small grocery business in there. Then there was Griffiths shop on the corner of Knight Street.
Same spot in 2007.
We can't thank you enough for sharing all your great postcards and information with us !
Keep them coming, Susan. They are very much appreciated by the Blog Readers !
11 comments:
Hi Susan, Some of these photos are in the new book on Hyde "Hyde through Time" by Lee Brown. Its an excellent book, well worth the money, its so colourful aswell, and that first postcard showing Market St, policeman front of the Clarendon etc, Lee puts this picture around the 1905 mark, and I think by the way the people are dressed, he is probably spot on!
Hi Trish. When i submitted these shots for the blog my copy of Lee's book hadn't arrived, but when it did i was amazed that he'd had the same idea as me in re-photographing the locations of old postcard shots. I did it over several visits to Hyde, but just so that i could put together an album for myself to remind me of then and now. Well done to Lee for being enterprising! Actually, although Lee in a previous post admits to two glaring mistakes, I have found quite a few snippets of misinformation. Without looking at the book, I can give one example - Lee describes the sweetshop alongside the Stanney's as Harrisons, but the actual sweetshop was Hett's and was located further up Clarendon Street at the corner of the Borough Arcade. Harrison's, as shown in the picture, was a woolshop and occupied two of the single storey units between the cinema and the bus station.
Hi Susan, You both had the same idea, thats amazing. Still enjoyed your post though Susan. And you are quite right about there being one or two mistakes in Lees book, I had spotted them myself, but I suppose there are mistakes in a lot of books, didn't spoil the enjoyment of the book though. One mistake I noticed was Lee said the Queens visit to Hyde was 1967. I know for a fact it was May 1968, because I was seven months pregnant at the time, and I stood at the Grapes Hotel Gee Cross to watch her go past after she had planted trees on Werneth Low.
Isn't the large building on the first photo the PSA building on the corner of Market St and Union St? I thought the Mechanics Institute had been on Clarendon Place.
No, the PSA building was never as tall as that. The Institute towered above everything around it. I have a postcard showing it close up, which I'll scan and send to the Blog.
I wonder if you're thinking of the Reform Club, which was in Clarendon Place - that was a fairly tall building.
Thanks, Susan. As you say, I am probably confusing it with the Reform Club in some way. That's the building in the photo at the top of the blog, isn't it? Thanks for the great pictures.
Alan
Hi Alan, yes that's the Reform Club on the blog photo. I've scanned my card of the Mechanics and sent it to Nancy, so maybe you'll be able to see it in more detail. It was massive! Glad you like the pictures.
The tram on the postcard is the small single decker tram that ran from Oldham via Denton to Gee Coss, and therefore provides a date somewhere between 1898 and 1903. I would date it to about 1900.
The shop on the corner in the early part of 1901 was a butchers owned by the Ireland family, it was taken over by David Hy Shaw sometime in mid 1901. The Shaw family was from Newton, where they also ran a butchers. This would help to date the poscard between 1901 and 1903.In 1903 the electric car company began running a tram service to Stockport, these were much bigger tram cars than the trams that terminated a Gee Cross.
That's really interesting to hear. I have a model single deck tram in the blue Ashton livery, supposedly a copy of the one which ran from GX to Oldham. Thank you for solving another mystery!
Thanks to everyone who suggested dates for this postcard. Looking again at the 2007 shot of this scene, it has just occurred to me how tall the Conservative Club building is.
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