Chorlton

“Chorlton-cum-Hardy is a wonderful place, like a smile on a battered and bruised childs face…”
(Mike Garry)

“I think that I’m surrounded, this hideous lifestyle has caught on, give me bacon and eggs, sausage, fried bread and get me the fuck out of chorlton!!” (Rev Porl)

“Get out of the road, you ovulant oaf” (Mark E Smith)

Nestled in the armpit of central south Manchester is the suburb described by one of Chimps predecessors as “The Crouch End of the north”. I used to visit Crouch End quite a bit at one point, around the time Mr Trebus was holding out against the march of council planning and safety and hygiene in general, and was featured on the BBC’s “Life of grime” programme.. Septegenarian punk legend Charlie Harper lived above the electrical shop, Sean Hughes headed the quiz team in my friends local, where he was frequently heckled by Captain Sensible, and the Eurythmics Dave Stewart held forth from a large converted Church. Crouch End was one of those places where eccentric celebrities rubbed shoulders with even more eccentric locals, creating a mildly bohemian chaos among the leafy streets and genteel properties. Surely what London does first, Manchester eventually does better, but the “New Crouch End” is a pretty fat hat to wear….

The name Chorlton likely derives from 'tún' (meaning farm, settlement or homestead) and 'ceorl' (meaning a freeman of the lowest class), giving us a full title similar to 'settlement of the peasants', which couldn’t be further from the kind of image it would like to present to the world. This is the land of the lefty middle class writ large, one of the newsagents on Beech Road has the largest sales of liberal lifestyle magazine”The Guardian” than any other outlet outside of London. The main occupation in Chorlton, throughout the day at least, appears to be competitive parenting, where overqualified and underemployed women in Crocs and EAT YOUR GREENS rafia bags march the next generation of neurotics around in buggies larger than the average family car, and spend the afternoons in one of the many coffeeshops breastfeeding and comparing feats of potty training. You can easily imagine the race for school places involving poison, kidnap and bulldozers round here, and if the good Burghers of Chorlton tried to impose a lottery system like the one introduced in Brighton, there’d be carnage the like of which not seen since the crusades. It’s a shame that this overwhelming air of snobbery (and nappies) permuates the atmosphere, as Chorlton does have it’s charms and quirks and a character of it’s own free of the clonetown vibe of, say Sale or Urmston.

Chorlton is home to an array of independent retailers in food, booze, fashion, cheap shoes, keys, mirrors, records and pure tat. Some of it clearly aimed at those with far more money than taste, but there’s bargins and weirdness aplenty as well. When the people from the papers write about Chorlton, it’s always this Boutique or that Brasserie, they always ignore my favourite part, Chorlton precinct, a magnificent if petit work of 70’s archeitecture, like a Bonsai version of Stockport preicinct where I spent my own youth eating spare ribs and leering at girls. I can’t begin to describe the joys of Quality Save and the Red Cross shop and the place that sells odd shoes by weight. Add in the ??? butchers and two notable grocers and you’ve as much Chorlton as you really need to see, and the exposed benches in the only uncovered bit of it are the best places to see it from in the rain…

There’s plenty of treasures to be found in the Oxfam book shop on Wilbraham Road, and Chorlton also has a fairly good (if very twee) independent bookshop a little down the road as well as one of the better libraries in the city.
Although Morrisons and Somerfield both have branches in Chorlton centre, Chorlton is better known for independent food suppliers, most notable the Barbican Bakery, Unicorn, and more recently Out of the blue fishmongers and Sushi specialists. It’s the latter that appeals to me, as a Japanese guy (I assume) dressed like an extra in a Jackie Chan film prepares Sushi with a succesion of fine poses and flourishes. Who cares if he’s just dicing a trout, it all looks proper oriental and mysterious (even if it’s a bloke from Irlam in his pyjamas).. The barbican Bakery sells a wider range of breadstuff cakeproduct than I ever thought exsisted, as well as (lovely) sandwiches soup and coffee for the lunchtime trade. One downside is their archaic manual reckoning up and queuing system which overlooks one giant flaw given the location, the good people of Chorlton have no idea how to queue patiently, and the atmosphere in Barbican always seems to crackle with the threat of bourgeois violence, the pram wheel over the foot, the “Dirty Carrots” umbrella to the ribs…
I have no idea what goes on inside the Unicorn, there’s a forcefield of pure smugness which always prevents me passing the threshold of the place although it has to be said that for a grocery which advocates local produce to cut down on food miles, the Unicorn carpark is always full to bursting, as the hoards of the self-righteous, from all over the north west, pollute the local air in the crush for untampered vegetables.

The most aspirant area of Chorlton is that just off Chorlton Green, which itself is next to Chorlton waterpark conservation area (where I was once accused by the local Stazi of being a flasher as I tried to learn how to ride a bicycle aged 34), and most of the retailers here are based on Beech Road, and consist of sub Kings Street fashion retailers and sub Habitat household tat shops, and art galleries that look like they’ve been stocked from a degree show (in chemistry). Whenever I’m there I thank the pubs, the petshop and the pieshop for giving it some semblence of normality. That and the coach trips from Wythenshawe.

Even more than as a spawning ground for the aspirational, Chorlton is famed for its nightlife and pubs, as born out by the hoards who make their way here and ram the pubs and bars way beyond capacity overy weekend. Manchesters fantastic Marble Brewery has both of its suburban outlets here (something about pearls and swine springs to mind) , the Bar and The Marble which both serve, at various times the full range of Marble beers (all Vegan and Organic, if that matters) as well as plenty of guest beers. Also notable are the cosy Beech pub and the Royal Oak, which seems to exist only to provide some kind of karmic balance to the rest of the local nightlife. Most of the bars in Chorlton are of the “Wine and Pine” variety, aiming to provide some kind of sophisticated ambience amongst the minimalist furniture, ambience quickly ruined by the collective squeal of students from the Shires who constitute the majority of the customers in these places. The overiding problem with all of these bars is the sameness of them, Bar 38, Revise and Abode all blur into one over the span of a night on the tiles, with not a grain of character to differentiate one from the other. You can replicate a Chorlton Bar crawl by sitting in almost any bar in Chorlton and changing seats every hour or so. The pick of the bunch is the Iguana, for its regular (and extremely eclectic) blend of comedy, music and spoken word night held thoughout the week, unfortunately come the weekend, it’s much the same as anywhere else. A fairly recent addition is Dulcimer, notable for its mead, lutes and hobbit like patrons which seems completely out of place (although quite lovely) on the outskirts of a city like Manchester.
On the whole, as in Sale or Didsbury, mediocre establishments are oversubscribed by nature of their convenience for people who live nearby, when everyone would be much better off heading to one of the quieter bars in the city centre, if for a night out you require so much as a chair to sit on and the ability to hear the person next to you.

If you come here looking for some kind of Bohemian haven, Chorlton will be some disappointment to you. Unlike similar areas of London, there’s no more than the most z-list of Manchesters artistic and musical community knocking around here, most of the residents are either the posher students (for whom Fallowfield will just not do, darling!) or extremely stern, though well intentioned middle class families, who, to this hacks jaded eyes, have chased the liberal dream so hard, they’ve gone right round in a circle and ended up slightly to the right of Mussolini. The overpowering, conspicuous “ethical” consumption eventually sticks in the craw as much as the 4x4 consumerism of the sunbed armies of Hale or Altrincham, who at least don’t pretend to temper their blatent greed with a waft of manure from the moral high ground.
With a selection of independent stores, and good charity shops, its quite a nice alternative to Market street of a Saturday morning if you fancy a bit of retail therapy, especially for foodies, but as a place to live it’ll only appeal to a very select demographic. For anyone over ten years old or under 30k a year, there really isn’t much for you here, just intolerance and snobbery with a new-age smile like a David Cameron wet dream. If this is the new Crouch end, then dear Mr Trebus is spinning in his grave.

First published in Chimp Magazine Issue 1