Stockport Plaza - An Interwar Night Out

To The Stockport Plaza Friday evening to see Miss Potter, the story of Beatrix, of Peter Rabbit fame. The Plaza was built, in striking art deco style, in 1932, to help Stockportians take their minds off the depression, so the notes say on the display in the faded (though once sumptuous) lounge where we sipped our aperitifs before taking our seats in the circle. We are told the cinema drew in crowds from miles around to enjoy the comfort of this up-market facility together with its Compton theatre organ but sometime in the seventies takings fell so low it degenerated into a bingo hall. Eventually a charitable trust stepped in and with a half million pounds grant from the council and the help of a body of dedicated volunteers it was restored and now offers selected films, sometimes musicals from the thirties, sometimes more modern fare.

But the purpose of the present day Plaza is as much to offer a step back in time as anything else. We just missed the Compton emerging up through its hatch in the floor in front of the screen but were happy to be serenaded by hit songs from musicals from the thirties’, forties and fifties. After many crescendos and flourishes the bald pate of the organ player sunk back into the bowels of the cinema to warm applause, and the intermission began. This was the occasion for the usherettes, in period attire, to offer us Lyons Maids and tubs of ice-cream. Just as in days gone by, no doubt, the queues stretched back to the projector box.

Then came the Pathe News films, from 1951 and another from the early ‘sixties, complete with Bob Danvers Walker’s strident tones, making every item sound like a wartime triumph and causing every attempt at humour to fall resoundingly flat. We saw Vera Allen, a petit, long forgotten Hollywood starlet pouting at the camera in a publicity shoot and an item on George who had been bottling wine out of oak barrels for 30 years (‘what a lucky fellow!’) Then the main film arrived- a not especially memorable piece of family fare starring Renee Zellwegger and Ewan McGregor (no relation to Peter Rabbit’s infamous adversary). But, with nostalgia the prescribed mood, everyone basked in its inoffensive charm, period detail and gorgeous footage of the Lake District.

We stayed on as the credits rolled up expecting to join everyone in the traditional stand-up for the national anthem. But credits for the mini-bus driver for the Isle of Man film unit and Miss Zellwegger’s catering assistant(an acting coach might have been preferable) came and went and still those familiar quavering yet elephantine tones failed to issue forth. But we refused to be disappointed and departed this temple to interwar entertainment, well satisfied with our brief journey into the past. The same could be said, I’d wager, for the goodish crowd of fellow nostalgia seekers, mostly of an age to have savoured the experience in the original, but leavened by more than a few teenagers and younger ones to suggest such evenings will not surrender to bingo or its equivalent for a while at least.

Does Heaton Moor really exist?

If you drive along the A6 and turn into Heaton Moor Road, you are still in Heaton Chapel. That's the address of the Royal Bank of Scotland, on the corner. Continue, and you pass the local benighted railway station - called Heaton Chapel so far as British Rail is concerned. Carry on, and you pass another bank on the right - Natwest, Heaton Chapel branch. In fact you can continue as far as the Reform Club and still be alongside somewhere with Heaton Chapel in its title.

By the time you reach Moorside Road, you have gone too far. You're in Heaton Mersey - or is it Heaton Norris? And if you took a left into Green Lane, it's not long before you hit the border in that direction too.

Maybe you would have better luck heading off down Mauldeth Road - one of the many local roads which is confusingly twinned with roads of the same name just across Kingsway? But no - afore too long you are back in Heaton Mersey, despite the grandeur of the properties. And of course unless you slam the brakes on, you'll soon be cross the real border and end up in the badlands of Burnage.

So where does Heaton Moor begin and end? I think a local historian with strong topographical leanings is required. Any offers?

Local Rubbish

I’m now of an age when many, many things annoy me - but I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling that Stockport is one of the dirtiest towns in the UK.

I am constantly appalled by Wellington Rd as I walk into the town. The litter starts by the church spire and gets worse so that the area just before Debenhams is chockablock with fast food wrappers, plastic containers, and sundry items.

On a Sunday morning the bus shelters at the bottom of the hill are awash with detritus, but at least there are some bins to overflow whilst further up the hill there are not.

Just how bad the problem is can be seen when one goes abroad to Germany, France or Spain. The latter two countries have been traditionally perceived by Brits as on the dirty side. Not any more. Both Spain and France provide a model for how litter can be kept under control even in a very built up area. The streets are not just tidied up, they are also washed down with water. It’s embarrassing to show guests around from other countries. I try to avoid the ‘grot spots’ which disfigure our otherwise quite nice northern town.

So I was a little surprised to see in The Civic Review, the regular news sheet from the council, that the number one priority of the ‘Cleaner, Greener, Safer, Stronger’ council is a ‘Cleaner Stockport’.

I have lobbied my councilors - nice public spirited people - to put pressure on the council for months now. But the ‘grot spots’ persist and offer a reproach to the stated aims of our elected officials. What does one have to do to poke them into some kind of action?

The Looney Council

One of the things that sends me into a civic rage is the visual pollution of our streets and highways by the absurd decisions of local council planning departments. Number one is meaningless road markings - such as those politically correct but completely useless cycle paths which go nowhere and no sane cyclist would use. Or how about those huge white stripes to indicate bus lanes which are only operational for a short while in the rush hour. [And since almost all bus companies are now completely commercial, why should they be given any priorities?] Another which I am going to start photographing is the sprouting of income-generating commercial advertising on roundabouts, adding to the visual clutter the motorist has to decipher.

In Heaton Moor I boggle and fume each morning when I walk across the completely meaningless red ochre box painted onto the road just before the Savoy (outside the electricity sub-station). It includes inward-facing chevrons, now rapidly fading with abrasion. Do you know what it is for? No - and neither did the contractors who painted it there - because I asked them.