Author : Paul Chrystal
ISBN : 9781840338676
Cover : paperback
Price : £10.95

Didsbury is a leafy suburb of Manchester developed in the late 19th century bu that city’s industrialists and businessmen to escape from the pollution their own enterprises was making and have somewhere nice to live just for themselves. It’s more of an area than a place to the extent that, referring to the welcoming sounding ‘Gates to Hell’ and the Old Cock Inn the author states ‘If Didsbury has a centre then possibly this is it.’ And there is a gentle quality to so many of the photos in this book, creating the illusion that the Edwardian period was characterised by an unhurried approach to life. Well maybe in Didsbury that was true. As time went by there was some excitement though – Louis Paulhan landing his Farman biplane in Baricroft Fields, Lawn Hurst becoming a military hospital in the Great War and the Capitol cinema opening in 1931. These are just a few of the themes explored in Paul Chrystal’s illustrated history of Didsbury.