A long time ago when I first started this blog, I did an
entry about growing up the 1970s in Cheetham Hill. Whilst I regularly pass
through Cheetham Hill in the car, I thought it was about time I actually
stopped off and had a wander round.
Cheetham Hill is the first suburb you hit when driving north
out of Manchester city centre. It has always
been a multicultural area due to its close proximity to Victoria Station, where
all the Liverpool trains came when it was an international port and before air
travel was the norm. Anyway it remains a
very multicultural place and is apparently the most diverse stretch of road in
the UK.
We parked up by the Worldwide Food Store just behind
Cheetham Hill Road, by Crescent Road. It
was free which is always good. There is
also a nearby Tesco, which is also good for parking.
It was a bright Saturday afternoon and we were surprised at how
quiet it was. Then I realised we were at
the north end of Cheetham Hill, which is close to the Jewish area and obviously
Saturday is their Sabbath. Further down
the road towards the centre of Cheetham Hill it was busier as that’s where most
of the Asian shops are. Every day of the
week it’s a nightmare to drive through that part of Cheetham Hill as it’s always
busy and there is often double parking going on.
So has Cheetham Hill changed much over the years? Yes and no.
Architecturally nothing much has changed, apart from the precinct being
rebuilt and a few new buildings have popped up too. Further outside of the centre of the shopping
area new housing has been built and Manchester Fort Retail Park has been
developed on the border of Cheetham Hill and Manchester, which I think has
taken some trade out of the original shopping area. OK, so the shop signs have
changed, many in garish colours jostling for attention – although my favourite was
the spray painted one. The Council have spent much regeneration money on doing
up the pavements and street lamps. However
it has always been a rough and ready type of place. It has always been full of independent shops
that span the globe – the only difference between the 1970s and now is that
more countries are represented. Cheetham
Hill remains a fundamentally down to earth place where people are trying to
earn a bit of cash to keep their heads above water.
Whilst the main road is full of independent shops catering for
a multitude of cultures, we visited the new precinct. I remember Lindy Lou’s children’s clothes
shop and the stationery shop where we had bought the nativity set for Christmas
in the 1970s. All of this has gone in
the rebuild and the place is unrecognisable.
Weirdly, in comparison to Cheetham Hill Road, there are quite a few
empty shops here. Maybe the rent is too
high and Manchester Fort is more appealing to retailers with all the parking.
It was sad to see the old library, which had always been a
landmark in Cheetham Hill, was boarded up and for sale. When I looked through the broken windows I
realised the roof was coming in too.
It’s probably a listed building and whoever owns it is waiting for it to
fall down so they can build new shops on the site. Opposite to the library the Robin Hood pub
was boarded up too. When I spoke to a
friend and my Dad, they both confirmed this was always a scary pub and no matter
what the owners did to it to go upmarket, it always attracted the local
nutters.
Speaking of nutters, there were some rather scary looking
people hovering around Cheetham Hill. It
has a history of drugs and gangs, and you can see on some people’s faces they
have lived hard lives here. I was
surprised to find one guy sporting a permed mullet, which gave me flashbacks to
the 1980s when that haircut was the fashion for footballers.
We did go the local charity shops and to be honest there
wasn’t much to find. I think they are
very busy throughout the week with the locals and doing a fine social
service. In one charity shop a couple of
ladies were debating whether to go to Heaton Park up the road for a fair. An honourable mention has to go to British
Heart Foundation, which took over the local Woolworths to become one of its
furniture outlets. It was jammed full of
some good pieces of furniture and electrical items and typical of Cheetham
Hill’s multicultural past it had an old Russian typewriter for sale complete
with Cyrillic alphabet.
In all honesty I never get nostalgic for Cheetham Hill as a
place, only the people that used to live there.
Cheetham Hill does what it has always done, which is provide cheap homes
for people who have just arrived in this country - often providing a relatively
safe haven for people who have experienced unimaginable circumstances in their
home countries. It is a melting pot of
countries, people and colours – a bit crazy, a bit full-on, but for many it’s a
place they can call home.
