the area was lost. Whalley Range has had a large Polish community since the late 1940s. By the 1960s the area became synonymous with bedsit-land, the encroachment of property developers, and gained a poor reputation as a red-light district. There has been a recent return of this phenomenon. Estate agents took to describing it as 'Chorlton Borders', and the City Council made a short-lived attempt to rename it as East Chorlton. However, the area had two redoubtable female defenders: one of these was Ingeborg Tipping, the Chair of the Residents' Association, who made great efforts to ensure the area was properly policed, among many other matters. Kath Fry, the late City Councillor, was a highly pro-active champion of the area. In 1930 the Odeon cinema in Withington Road was opened as the "West End"; in 1937 it became part of the Odeon cinema chain. In 1962 it was converted into a bingo hall, but this closed in the late 1970s. It was once billed as "the largest luxury talkie theatre in Europe". After a period of dereliction it was demolished in 1986. On 24 June 2012 the Olympic Torch passed along the full length of Upper Chorlton Road on its nationwide tour. Transport Public transport was resisted until the whole area became incorporated into the City of Manchester. No railway line was allowed through: the nearest station was at the southern end of Alexandra Road South, designed to serve the Alexandra Park Aerodrome at Hough End. The aerodrome ran a scheduled service to Croydon Airport. The travel agent, Robinson's on Withington Road, would reassure nervous passengers' relatives, by sending round a messenger boy once news of a safe landing had been received telegraphically. The aerodrome, along with its ancillary landing-field at Turn Moss in Stretford, closed in 1924. The station fell to Beeching's axe, although it had a one-day reprieve as Chorltonville station, for a Granada TV showcase of Blues musicians staged at the site, on 7 May 1964. Stretford horse-drawn trams had to terminate at their stables at the corner of Cornbrook Road and Chorlton Road, until Stretford built up to Brooks's Bar, when they were allowed to terminate at the Withington Road side of the Whalley Hotel. Manchester trams ended at the Prince of Wales Hotel, at the corner of Moss Lane West and Upper Moss Lane, Moss Side. As Alexandra Road became an important shopping street, the