Page 205 - The_story_of_the_C._W._S._The_jubilee_history_of_the_cooperative_wholesale_society,_limited._1863-1913_(IA_storyofcwsjubill00redf) (1)_Neat

Clock Alley.

the ruins of the Union Land and Building Company—one of the
disastrous failures of the late seventies. The company had
contracted for C.W.S. work, and the debris of the venture, coming
to the federation as creditors, was used to equip a small department
for repairing and jobbing work. Unostentatiously the latter had
grown, developed, and become able to execute work of this
magnitude.
With extensions to the drapery departments at Dantzic Street,
completed by the end of 1891, the C.W.S. headquarters began to
assume something like their modern aspect. At the same time a
bold and wise purchase of land, in 1888, at the corner of Balloon
Street and Corporation Street, had extended C.W.S. property so as
to provide for a future that was coming much more quickly than
the average co-operator supposed. Incidentally to these changes
a memorial of old Manchester vanished. When the site of Balloon
Street was a field. Clock Alley lay on its town side, with gardens
running into the field. It was the home of fustian cutters and
smallware weavers, the latter being makers of " clock lace " for
mihtary facings. By 1885 it had degenerated into a slum, to all
appearance dirty and drunken. Nevertheless, the inhabitants
included ancient residents of from sixty to ninety-nine years, and
sickness was said to be " scarcely ever heard of." The demohtion
of the old double-walled, oak-raftered cottages brought some
interesting particulars into the Manchester City News, and a
contribution by Ben Brierley, the Lancashire author, sent hundreds
to visit and revisit the old Alley. In the Co-operative News the
C.W.S. rent collector explained that actually the cottage interiors
had been kept very clean by the dwellers, who made free use of
the limewash abundantly supplied. Home is home, and residents
in the Alley for fifty yea-rs departed only with the greatest
reluctance.
In Newcastle, following the erection of the drapery warehouse,
in 1884, a steady extension of the Waterloo and Thornton Street
buildings went forward. Successive pm'chases gave possession to
the C.W.S. of land along both streets, and further buildings eventu-
ally rounded off the block. Even before £4,000 was spent on the
last plot of land in Thornton Street, an expenditure of £15,000 was
sanctioned (September, 1890) for adjacent but not adjoining land in
West Blandford Street. When the Newcastle Branch, under the
chairmanship of Mr. T. Tweddell, celebrated its " coming-of-age,"
as a Northern event, in 1892, with Messrs. Bm^t and Fenwick,
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