Finding this thread is a great and unexpected delight!
I found Ian's post through Google, searching for Birley Street School, which was my school until the age of 6.
Home was at 30 Chatsworth Steet, and Butcher Blakeborough's shop was on the "main road" close to our house - my mum shopped there, and I remember a hint of jealousy from my dad, who always thought that the butcher fancied my mum.
Other things that come immediately to mind are the Red Wreck (possibly "Red Rec"?) referred to in this thread, Winstanly's Sweet Shop (he was a councillor?) selling vimto lollies, and the Jolly Carter pub on Ashton New Road, whose back yard and mens' urinal were just across the "entry" from my bedroom window, causing great consternation to my mum when I innocently repeated some of the language I heard late in the evening, as a 3 or 4 year old.
I'll try to recall more that might be of interest here: the screensaver on my PC is a nice picture of Chatsworth Street, so I'm attaching that.
My thanks to earlier correspondents on these pages for reviving memories and linking to startlingly clear photographs of Aden Street and its surroundings. My mum and dad moved to 20 Aden Street after the war (when dad got back from Burma in fact), there being no council houses available in the district (Withington) where my mum and I had lived in rented accommodation since 1942.
At one end of the street was a bombed and partly demolished sauce and pickle factory: the rubble was liberally sprinkled with broken bottles and strongly smelled of vinegar. At the Hillkirk St end was the newsagents and confectioners shop, run by Richard Kershaw and his wife. The oposite corner had a grocer's, which might have been a small branch of the Co-op.
Air-raid shelters were still there when we moved and were progressively demolished over the next couple of years. I recall cranes with heavy steel balls that were dropped on the reinforced concrete repeatedly until the roofs gave way. Since the end of the war, they had been been used by drinkers and young lovers and were desperately dirty - old mattresses and god-knows-what-else on the floors inside.
But signs of regeneration were around too: flats were being built at the far end of Every Street, and I watched, as a kid, while huge sewerage pipes were connected beneath the new foundation level of these buildings.
Birley Street was my school: a real culture shock after having attended the relatively tranquil little primary on Mauldeth Road, a world away from Ardwick. I recall huge brick walls, a vast playground with some very tough kids, and a "dining room" that was a daily battlefield. But I fell in love for the first time - with a girl in my class: Ann Blakeborough, daughter of a butcher on Ashton New Road.
My grandparents were in Openshaw (Ashton Hill Lane) and Audenshaw (Thrapston Avenue) and we would go to alternate homes on Sundays. In Audenshaw, Dad and I availed ourselves of the bath - a luxury unknown in Aden Street.
I tried to walk into this area some years ago, but found myself blocked - completely disoriented: no familiar land- or streetmarks to guide me back to the old roots. It was of course a huge improvement to flatten this area and start again. My parents, I know, hated their time there, with dad parodying the politicians' promise of "Homes fit for heroes". And yet . . . it was where my conscious life really began, and I still have pangs of affiliation for the post-war mix that was this part of Manchester. And maybe it gave me a resilience for which I ought to be thankful.
Ian B
Hexham
Northumberland
