Down at Parrs Wood Parade in 1931........... pondering on that park and the litter

It is the detail in this 1930s postcard which I like. 

On a wet summer’s day the Corporation bus has just set down a group of passengers and above them the sign announces that the East Didsbury Station is still part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway.

It would be another eighteen years before the LMS became part of the new nationalized British Railways.

In the distance the small grassed park still retains its ornamental gates and underneath the glass and cast iron canopy of the Parrs Wood Arcade are adverts for Players Navy Cut and Wills Golden Flake tobacco and cigarettes, Hovis Bread and the Dispatch newspaper.

And I was drawn back to the postcard by a discussion with the artist Liz Scantlebury who like me was intrigued by those small ornamental gates.

Liz has just completed an exhibition at the Parsonage of her
paintings.*

We were both intrigued by their date and I have to admit I am not sure when the park was laid, but I guess it will be sometime around the 1920s.

I know it can be no later than 1931 when our postcard was sent and I think it will not predate the Kingsway which was cut between 1928 and 1930.

But I do now there will be some someone out there who will know and will put me right.

I  hope so.

And finally for those who lament the passing of a cleaner and tidier Britain I suggest you ignore the discarded lamp shade left under the bridge.

All of which just leaves me to fall back on a piece of outrageous self promotion and mention the book chronicle the changes over the last century and a bit mixing old images of the place with new photographs and paintings by local artist Peter Topping and concentrates also on the people who lived there.

All of which just leaves me to fall back on a piece of outrageous self promotion and mention the book Didsbury Through Time which chronicles the changes over the last century and a bit mixing old images of the place with new photographs and paintings by local artist Peter Topping and concentrates also on the people who lived there.

Many of the original pictures have been donated by local people and we would hope that there may be others who would like to become part of what we are doing by lending their photographs or even sharing their memories of what Didsbury was like for a future exhibition

Picture; Parrs Wood Parade, Didsbury, circa 1931, from the collection of Paul O’Sullivan

* Liz Scantlebury, 
http://www.lizscantlebury.com/