Now here is a detective story for which someone will have an ending.
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Ron sent me this picture which he had come “across in a collection of old postcards that were given to me in the mid seventies. They came from a dustbin! It was in the Blakeley/Harpurhey area of Manchester.
There is nothing on the back of it and using a glass I can make out Threlfall's Grey Horse Hotel.
Must have been a big hotel as it has its own garage. I'd be interested if you could find out the location and an approximate date.”
Now the first port of call is always the directories but mine only go up to 1911 and there is no reference to a Grey Horse Hotel under either pubs or hotels.
That said the landlord of the Horse and Jockey on Chorlton Green chose to list his still very modest beer shop under hotels nestling with the biggest and finest establishments in the city.
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This marked him out as even those pubs with Hotel in their title knew their place and stayed with the more humble listings under pubs.
But I digress. The cars I think will put the date sometime in the 1930s as does the reference to a garage rather than stables. This could stretch I suppose into the next decade but during the war with petrol rationing
I doubt that there would have been that many out and about.
At which point someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of cars will tell us that one of the models dates from the 1950 and offer up more which will be perfect.
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For now that just leaves the buildings themselves. Those with the timbered detail could be from any time from the late 19th century, so perhaps the clue will be small shop and the building in the distance.
Added to which there may be another clue in the juxtaposition of those terraced houses the small shop and the two bigger buildings.
Well we shall see. In the meantime until I can get down to Central Ref I shall ask Andy Robertson’s to look at his copy of the 1969 directory for a reference to the Grey Horse Hotel.
Of course there is just that niggling thought that we might not be in Manchester at all, and that the postcard comes from somewhere else.
But I shall discount that awkward though but then the blog is read pretty much everywhere so perhaps we might still come up with an answer.
And a little over an hour after I posted the story Sue suggested that I'm pretty sure that this is the Greyhound Hotel in Flixton on Church Road. It is now a Thai restaurant called the Village Inn" and left a picture and a link to the site Urmston Manchester.com which looks to fit the bill.
Location; I have no idea
Picture; the Grey Horse Hotel, date and location unknown from the collection of Ron Stubley
*Urmston Manchester.com, http://www.urmstonmanchester.com/Pubs/The-Village-Inn.html
There is nothing on the back of it and using a glass I can make out Threlfall's Grey Horse Hotel.
Must have been a big hotel as it has its own garage. I'd be interested if you could find out the location and an approximate date.”
Now the first port of call is always the directories but mine only go up to 1911 and there is no reference to a Grey Horse Hotel under either pubs or hotels.
That said the landlord of the Horse and Jockey on Chorlton Green chose to list his still very modest beer shop under hotels nestling with the biggest and finest establishments in the city.
But I digress. The cars I think will put the date sometime in the 1930s as does the reference to a garage rather than stables. This could stretch I suppose into the next decade but during the war with petrol rationing
I doubt that there would have been that many out and about.
At which point someone with an encyclopaedic knowledge of cars will tell us that one of the models dates from the 1950 and offer up more which will be perfect.
Added to which there may be another clue in the juxtaposition of those terraced houses the small shop and the two bigger buildings.
Well we shall see. In the meantime until I can get down to Central Ref I shall ask Andy Robertson’s to look at his copy of the 1969 directory for a reference to the Grey Horse Hotel.
Of course there is just that niggling thought that we might not be in Manchester at all, and that the postcard comes from somewhere else.
But I shall discount that awkward though but then the blog is read pretty much everywhere so perhaps we might still come up with an answer.
And a little over an hour after I posted the story Sue suggested that I'm pretty sure that this is the Greyhound Hotel in Flixton on Church Road. It is now a Thai restaurant called the Village Inn" and left a picture and a link to the site Urmston Manchester.com which looks to fit the bill.
Location; I have no idea
Picture; the Grey Horse Hotel, date and location unknown from the collection of Ron Stubley
*Urmston Manchester.com, http://www.urmstonmanchester.com/Pubs/The-Village-Inn.html