P.Loftus & Son

The Story of The Beginnings of P.Loftus & Son of Manchester, Family Funeral Directors

Well, it actually all began after the River Medlock in Manchester flooded! There’s a cemetery – Phillips Park Cemetery – which is now opposite Man City’s new football ground, and the river runs close by to it. My great-great-grandfather was a coffin maker for a firm of funeral directors at the time, and when the river flooded, the water disturbed the earth and the bodies in the graves rose up and were washed all along the river.

My grandfather volunteered to help with the removal of these bodies, and because many of them were Roman Catholic priests, they had to be re-interred in a Local Catholic cemetery after being collected. He stayed on to help with this part of the process as well, and got to thinking: ‘If I can move bodies from a river, I may as well give the whole business a go on my own!’

He opened up his shop, originally, in the Hulme area, Moss Side, which is a massive conurbation of houses, and the business remained there until the mid sixties until the regeneration of Manchester began. During the initial phase of the slum clearances, his shop location kept getting moved on from one place to another due to council compulsory purchases, so this caused him to eventually shut the business, meaning that, for a year or two thereafter, there was actually no existing P. Loftus & Son!

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