<blockquote> Hi! Newbie alert! Dropped onto these pages after googling "Orbro" and reading from page 104 onwards. I now have a new "lockdown" hobby, back to page 1 to take it all in, and enjoying it very much.
We lived in a bungalow on Tolworth Drive off Cardinal Street, which was my parents' first married home in the late 1960's. My younger brother was born there. I was born in Crumpsall Hospital. We moved to Whitefield/Prestwich in 1972 as there were three of us by then, with another brother arriving in 1975.
I had my tonsils out as a tot at the Jewish Hospital, I remember being given mushroom soup and ice cream afterwards by a kind black nurse. Also reading a little book about a Brahmin who swept with a brush as he walked to avoid stepping on even the tinest spider. Funny, what sticks in the memory!
The small back garden on Tolworth had a high vertical brick wall at the end, facing off the whole width, and was overlooked by the older semi-detached houses on Durley Avenue. One of my earliest memories is hiding under the bed by a floor-to-ceiling window as Aunty Lena was waving down to me from her back garden. They were great friends of my parents, and sometimes would babysit us. I remember a big white cat called Rupert on Durley Ave, and how Aunty Lena kept the cardboard trays for "the egg man". When visiting them in the 70's, we would watch "It's a Knockout" on their colour telly (we only had a black and white) with cans of coke and crisps and those little black and white foil-wrapped chocolate footballs in a net from Woolworths.
My Dad was working then at Macben handbag factory on Lord Street, down the slope from St. Chad's RC Church. He was a sewing machine mechanic and general fix it guy in a blue workcoat there till the start of the eighties. I loved it on the occasional Friday when I was allowed to go to work with him - must have been a babysitting issue somewhere, as it was hardly the place for primary school kids. Machinery and a lift with those stretchy latticework doors, all pre-health and safety era. We had many wet Sunday afternoons sitting on salvaged carseats in the back of his works van while he visited friends of friends on Cardinal St, Shirley Rd, Alms Hill Road and all around there, to fix their sewing machines, as folk were doing "piecework" at their homes. 4 kids in the back of a van, hitting seven bells out of each each - character building! On the non-rainy days we'd be let out of the van and sometimes went on the swings and roundabout playpark next to the Smedley Lane playing fields. It was high up, looking out over the housing and woods below (Woodlands Rd area).
I used to go with my Dad to car maintenance in the evening once a week at Abraham Moss, I still remember the smell of oil and dust in the big workshop. He took us swimming there as well - still remember hearing the song "If I had words" on the tannoy (quick google says that must have been 1977 then.....). We saw the Sound of Music at the Temple cinema in the early seventies?, I think that was the only time I went there. I just remember wide steps up to the doorway. Our "local" after we moved was the Mayfair in Whitefield, a 35 (135) bus ride away, now gone too.
Reason I was googling Orbro was I was wondering if any remnants were left of the building that I remember walking past in childhood. Google Streets shows that there isn't anything obvious left and housing now stands there. I am a big fan of red brick / buff sandstone buildings and offices from the turn of the last centry and through the war years. Since my teens I've liked to photograph these sort of buildings, no doubt from my young years round Cheetham and Broughton. The transport depot on Boyle Street was still, I think, doing bus repairs and servicing in the seventies, and that building is a super one. I had my driving lessons all round there in the 1980's. I managed to get photos of the Rialto on Bury New Road in Broughton before demolition just before the millenium.
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<blockquote> I've attached a couple of Temple House here, from the nineties. I'll have gone specially after hearing it was going to be demolished as I always liked it.. Pre-internet, it was only ever in the local papers if something like that was going to occur, and it's good to do before they disappear.
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