Cheadle, (definitely not a part of Stockport despite the postcode) Cheshire
Created | Updated Aug 17, 2005
About Cheadle, Cheshire, and why despite the postcode it very definitely isn't a suburb of Stockport. Honestly.
Preamble:-This entry originally began as a series of random postings to the Jeremy Vine / Current Affairs messageboards in the aftermath of the by-election of Thursday 7th July, 2005. This had been provoked by the death of sitting MP Patsy Calton shortly after holding the seat for the Libs in the general election of May 2005: having met her once, I perceived her to be a genuinely likeable person with no "front", what you saw is what you got, and an MP with a genuine concern for her constituents and a willingness to serve. The political process will be diminished without her and she is genuinely missed.
It was thought that with a respected and charismatic MP having died prematurely, the Tories would be sure to win the constituency back; their former MP (deposed in May 1997)making his umpteenth attempt to win the seat back.
However, he lost again and there was something of an inquest on the Current Affairs board, to which I contributed... one regular poster to JV suggested I try to make something more permanent out of my contributions, and so, lucilladory, this is for you!
Lucilladory's tribute to my writing:- "AgProv. You should be able to get this sort of article published.
I wonder if there are any posters here who are Cheadle residents? It seems unlikely they would admit it now.
On the other hand, they do deserve praise for their voting yesterday.
The Tories must be sick as parrots".
Thank you m'dear!
And the posting to JV that kicked it all off:-
"Labour lost their deposit in Cheadle. Is that not something for them to be worried about? Could the repercussion over the bombing in London have anything to do with it? Are voters blaming Blair for the ongoing bloodbath in Iraq.
Or is it just that Cheadle people are too posh to vote Labour?"
My slightly edited remarks about Cheadle:-
As a Stockport resident (ie, the poorer next-door neighbour of Cheadle)I have to say that if people with an SK8 postcode object to their town being called "Cheadle, STOCKPORT SK8", then they're certainly too posh to vote Labour...
Cheadle people look down on Bramhall and Poynton as being slummy. They believe they are NOT an affluent suburb of Stockport, they are an affluent village in Cheshire. Despite the fact that Cheadle was probably last a village a hundred years ago, in the sense of being an independent entity with open green countryside acting as a sanitary barrier between it and grubby down-market Labour-voting Stockport.
Today the Number Eleven bus will go straight down through Edgeley and Cheadle Heath with no break from urbs and suburbs, and you are suddenly on that well-known traffic bottleneck, Cheadle High Street.
Cheadle is NOT a place that is easily passable by car, btw. If your journey involves commuting via Cheadle and its neighbour Gatley between eight and nine in the morning or between five and six in the evening - DON'T! You'll end up in standing traffic burning expensive fossil fuel and getting nowhere.
Even if you get through the internal combustion Hell that is Cheadle High Street during rush-hour, don't heave a sigh of relief too soon.... Gatley is waiting sniggering in the wings, and the traffic around Gatley Station, take it from me, is WORSE. Take the bus. Preferably the Eleven, as it annoys people. Or commute by train - nearest stops are Heald Green and Gatley.
Face up: Cheadle is, by any normally applicable standard, a suburb of Stockport.
As for the byelection result: I'm satisfied!
Labour are stuffed out of sight and the Tories fail to win what should be a walkover for them. (If they can't win Cheadle, no danger of THEM being in power again any time soon)
Cheadle people don't like the no 11 bus going through their suburb because its destination is Wythenshawe>1.
(trans: chav housing estate. Trans. for Americans, hi Evangeline: "housing project", ie, something more permanent than a trailer park, but not by very much. ).
They argue that it brings "undesirables" into the locality. They are, however, prepared to tolerate the 371 as this goes to upmarket Altrincham, and presumably has a better class of passenger. Similarly, the 157 to Bramhall? Not a problem, they're our kind of people, even if Bramhall has perhaps gone down in the world over the last few years...
They do NOT like being associated with Stockport, and barely tolerate the fact the local paper is called "The Stockport Express"
I have heard it said, by a Cheadle person, that "I haven't paid good money and earnt it at a punitive 40% rate of tax just to buy a house in STOCKPORT"
Cheadle, like Bramhall before it, is thought of as a place to go after you've made it in life, so that you can display your status with your postcode. There are other areas of Stockport that are on the social and economic "upward turn": Cheadle residents tend to discount the upmarket parts of Heald Green(around St Mary's Hospice)as they will sniffily note the presence of so many Asians who have made good in retail or catering. This is seen as no better than an overspill estate for more affluent immigrants wanting to leave Rusholme and Levenshulme behind, and "it's good they should be choosing to live with their own kind, isn't it?" (This is an established old-time Cheadle Tory attitude: Cheadle itself is about 99% white and British).
The down-market part of Cheadle Heath consists of council estates, the most notorious of which are Councillor Lane and Adswood, places for which the term "chav" could have been coined. Cheadle people are ever-vigilant for signs of erosion to property values caused by an erroneous association with the least salubrious parts of Cheadle Heath - "just because it's prefaced with Cheadle doesn't mean it's a part of Cheadle!"
(Worryingly, the part of Stockport where I live, Heaton Moor, seems to be getting "Cheadle Syndrome" these days as it rises in affluence. It was never a poor part of town: but Wife and I are uneasily aware that while we were able to get a foothold here nine years ago, property prices and rising affluence mean if we were starting out today, we'd have no chance, we'd be priced out of the area)
In short,Cheadle SK8 is snobbish, Daily Mail-reading, natural Tory turf: the fact the Tories failed to win it by several clear miles is heartening, as if they can't win here, where can they win?
Forgot to mention that Cheadle is the only place (apart from, perhaps, Didsbury) where the wife can buy seriously upmarket Italian designer gold-label clothes in the Oxfam shop (barely worn). Forget the names, let's call them Parmiggiano suits and Parma frocks.
She occassionally checks charity shops in Heaton Moor to see if our area has gentrified to this extent, and is seeing worrying upward trends...
1This possibly belongs in a seperate entry about Manchester M22/M23, but it has to be noted that the generally depressed area of Wythenshawe is bordered, on all sides, by some of the most affluent areas of South Manchester. Cheadle and Gatley in the east, Altrincham, Timperley and Hale Barns in the west, Styal to the south, Didsbury to the north... Some inhabitants of Wythenshawe think not so much in terms of "neighbours", but "targets".
