The History of Eighth Day

As the Sixties rushed to a psychedelic close with a blaze of love and chemicals heralding the dawn of a New Age, a right-on group of friends had their stab at creating a new order. They wanted to establish a way of trading goods that broke away from the ideas of money commerce and to that end founded On The Eighth Day.

Located above a boutique on the now demolished New Brown Street, it opened as a craft exchange and alternative centre. "On the seventh day God rested, on the eighth day He (She or It) created something better" was the idea of the moment in 1970 when trade commenced. It was a great place to tune in and drop out, but as an attempt to escape the clutches of capitalism it was less successful and in order to survive soon had to become a shop in the more conventional sense.

The involvement with the community did not die however and the charity Lifeline was founded as a result of a collaboration with On The Eighth Day, the Bishop of Middleton and Dr. Eugenie Cheesmond.

Meanwhile the business was going through a tough time when the boutique burnt down and brought things to a halt. This crisis seemed to redirect the energies of the partners, the insurance money certainly did, and in 1972 they reopened in 111 Oxford Road. We have since found the cause of the fire, faulty wiring installed by an apprentice electrician but he is paying us too much for us ever to reveal his name. Once established, here we stayed until October 2001, changing from a clothes shop to a wholefood shop with clothes, as the interests of the workers in a vegetarian wholefood diet grew. A corner of the shop became a vegetarian café which eventually moved next door into 109, and in 1994 into 107 as well.

In August 2000 we opened another branch of our café in Hulme, about a mile from our Oxford Road site. Sadly, it never quite managed to take off, though it was popular with local office workers, and we were forced to close it in July 2002.

After several years of considering various redevelopment options, we decided that we'd have to knock the old place down and start again. So in October 2001 we left our Oxford Road site to move forty yards away to temporary premises on a corner of the Sugden Sports Centre car park. We settled in well to our temporary home, the shop was even better than before and the cafe had a retro staff canteen feel to it - we hope you didn't miss your chance to experience something of the Seventies Eighth Day Café ambience, close-quarter seating and the opportunity to bump knees with new faces over elevenses, lunch or tea!

A new chapter began with the move back to our Oxford Road site at the end of June 2003.

During the first six years the business was run as a co-operative but was in fact legally a partnership. In 1976 On the Eighth Day Co-operative Limited registered as a workers' co-operative under the Provident Societies Act. This means that most of the full time workers in the business become members of the co-operative, currently twelve, and both work and manage the business. These days we have to be business-like to survive but still have a place for ethics. Our food is still vegetarian, we try to be as 'green' as possible, we are still involved in striving towards a better world and our wages are still unfortunately crap.

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