On the turn of a sixpence, the continuing story of Manley Hall and Sam Mendel

The Hall in 1879

Yesterday I was pondering a visit to Manley Hall in the June of 1879.*

This had been the grand home of Samuel Mendel popularly known at the time as the “merchant prince”

It was a magnificent house of fifty rooms set in 80 acres of grounds which included a greenhouse, an orangery, deer park, fountains and ornamental lakes.**

The estate extended east from Upper Chorlton Road as far as the Independent College, and south to Clarendon Road.  Today Manley Park is all that is left of those extensive grounds and the rest is a mix of houses.

Manley Hall 1888-93

But back in the 1860s and 70s Sam Mendel’s home was reckoned to be everything a wealthy self made man could desire and the inside of the house was as impressive as the grounds.

Here were paintings by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner along with fine furniture, silver plate and old Chelsea porcelain.

So much that when in the spring of 1875 the contents of the house were put up for sale, the auction lasted for five days.

Not that Mr Mendel stayed around to watch for after more than a decade at Manley Hall he moved south to London and on to Hastings coming to terms with his dramatic fall from prosperity.

He had made his wealth transporting textiles to India and Australia around the Cape of Good Hope faster than any of his rivals, and from his offices in Cooper Street and a succession of warehouses around the city he was recognised as a successful entrepreneur who was never out of the papers.


But a too ambitious desire to add to his vast collection of art  left him in serious debt to an art dealer. 

Samuel Mendel

For a while the general public were able for a charge to wander the gardens and enjoy both the floral displays as well as performances by a variety of brass bands.

There were also various schemes floated to turn the estate into a “great pleasure resort.  A winter palace was to be erected which should contain an art gallery, concert hall, promenade, library, assembly room, skating rinks, baths, and refreshment rooms.  Shareholders were to be allowed to use the park for promenade purposes on Sundays, and the hall was to be converted into a club, membership of which should be limited to holders of one hundred or more shares in the company.”***

But these and other plans came to nothing and it was pretty much death by a succession of small building plots as bits of the estate were sold off for development or turned into a golf course for the Manchester Golf Club.

The Hall still attracted the curious, and so it was in the June of 1904 that this couple wandered into the grounds and had their picture taken at the rear of the grand old house.  By then its years of neglect were only all too clear to see from the overgrown kitchen garden and bricked up rear windows and was demolished in 1905.

The rear of the Hall in June 1904

But like all such stories there is still more.  Back in 1875 the house had been bought by the coal merchant Ellis Lever for £120,000 and according to the historian Cliff Hayes Mr Ellis never paid up.****

This in itself is intriguing but made more so by a letter from Mr Ellis in the Times from June 1887 in which he deplored the abandonment of the plan to transform the estate into pleasure resort.

“There is not in the United Kingdom a town that has greater need than Manchester of healthy and refining influences, and there is not a more attractive and charming property than Manley-park.  

But while the people of Manchester and Salford are perishing for lack of pure and healthy surroundings this magnificent property is being allowed to go to decay or become absorbed  by the builder.

The Hall soon after the sale in 1875

Manley-park is thoroughly well wooded, and all the trees being vigorous and healthy.  That there should fall to the axe man to be replaced by rows of houses I look upon as a misfortune to the city.”*****

Which raises all sorts of questions about the involvement of Mr Ellis in the estate but those are for another time.

As for Samuel Mendel he died in 1884.

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection and map of Manley Hall from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-93, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and  picture of Sam Mendel, from a photograph by Franz Baum, 22 St Ann’s Square, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

*"the frown of fortune"...... the story of Sam Mendel and Manley Hall in Whalley Range,

** The land had cost £250,000 and the house another £50,000 to build.

*** City News on October 8, 1904, quoted in Manley Hall, http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/manleyhall.html

****Hayes. Cliff, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1999
.***** The Times, June 11 1887

Scholes Square ….. fifty-one of its residents …. and a bit of Manchester’s past

 You won’t find Scholes Square today.

Scholes Square, 1908

I only came across it by accident when looking for pictures of London Road on Manchester’s digital archive.

It was a tiny court off Scholes Street which in turn was off Store Street.

The square survived into the last century, but only just and now the site is covered by a modern warehouse which itself is empty and looking for an occupant.

And added to the difficulty of locating it comes the name change which saw Scholes Street become Stand Street.

All a tad confusing.

To which I can add that as, yet I am unclear when it was built.

It doesn’t appear on Johnson’s map of Manchester for 1818 but is shown on the OS for 1844, and judging by the maps and the picture it didn’t have much going for it.

It backed on to a smithy and was totally enclosed on three sides.

You entered from Store Street by a flight of stairs and were confronted by eight one up one down properties, which just seven years later had been reduced to six.

Scholes Square, 1851

In 1851 the court was home to fifty-one people with most of the residents working for the railways or in the cotton factories. 

And the textile jobs ranged from piecers, to power loom weavers and interestingly one who gave her occupation as “Silk weaver by hand”.

This left a blacksmith, a joiner a servant and charwoman.

All of which made sense for this part of Manchester which was dominated by London Road Railway Station, accompanying railway warehouses and a series of cotton mills.

Nor am I surprised that in 1851 of the fifty-one inhabitants, 37% had been born in Ireland, 47 % from Manchester and the rest from Salford, Wigan and other parts of the northwest.

And there is evidence of serious over crowding with two families living at no. 2 and two at no.6.  

At no. 2 Mr. and Mrs Dowling shared with Hannah Wild who sublet her space to two lodgers, while Daniel and Sarah Finn and there two children shared with the Cass family which consisted of two adults and five children.

In time I will go looking for how the lives of some of these residents panned out, but for now it is enough to know that the picture I found by chance opens up a bit of Manchester’s story.

Location; Scholes Square

Pictures; Stand Street, off Store Street, 1908, m04569, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Scholes Square in 1851, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

The not so different bits of where we live, part 2 ............. Greenwich

Now I am always intrigued at those more recent photographs of where we live.

So while pictures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are fascinating often everything is so different that it is almost looking at a different landscape.

But those from say the 1960s onwards are often almost the same but not quite, and with this in mind here over the next few days are some from the camera of Jean Gammons all taken in the late 1970s.

And that is all I shall say,

Picture; looking down Greenwich, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Greenwich Park, the moment a full 53 years ago .......... nu 1 the walk

It will be a full 55 years ago but the memory of that walk through Greenwich Park on a Saturday in September 1971 has never left me.

I was in my second year at Manchester Poly and the pull of Well Hall and the family were still strong and so I found myself back home with three friends.

Lois was from Weston and Mike and John from Leeds and we travelled down from Manchester in John’s van on the Friday night.

Even now I have to say I haven’t forgotten the kindness of David Hatch who agreed to put Lois, Mike and John up on his floor.

It was a brief stay and most of it is a blur except for the walk from the gates on the Blackheath side through the park to Wolf’s statue, the observatory and that view down to the river.

At any time of the year that short stroll is pretty good but in late autumn it is magic.  The leaves are on the turn and the bright sunlight can still surprise you with its degree of warmth and the way it brings out the colours all around you.

The rest of the day and the weekend is lost to me but that hour and a bit were and remain special, more so because I was showing off my home.

All of which just leaves me to reflect on the postcard which was marketed in the USA and carried the imprint of the American YMCA of which there must be a story, but not for now.

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Greenwich Park, 1905 from the series Greenwich, marketed in 1911-12 by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

A Chorlton ghost sign ……

Not all ghost signs have to be very old.

They are the remnants of businesses and products which long ago vanished, but whose faded signs still appear above doorways, shops fronts and on gable ends.

Many belong to the 19th or early 20th centuries, but here is one that many here in Chorlton will remember and like me used for building jobs.

They were B W Gray and Sons Ltd and were situated on Oswald Road tradeding there until the firm was dissolved in May 2016.

I can’t be sure when the business started up but I know it was incorporated in 1994.

But being Chorlton there will be some who will remember when it started trading.

Location; Oswald Road

Picture; the ghost sign, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One camera ….. 1965 ….. and a collection of lost scenes

It is 61 years ago that this collection of images was taken.

"Clearance in Hulme", 1965

They cover Manchester, Stretford and out to Chorlton and Wythenshawe and are a mix of industrial scenes, some old historic buildings and more than a few of well-known city centre sites.

What they have in common was the year they were taken and that originally they were colour slides.

The collection was donated to me by the daughter of the photographer, but somewhere along the line their identity was lost, although I am still looking for the letter, email or Facebook message which alerted me to the names of the woman who donated them and the photographer.

"Old Shambles' 1965

I hope by posting them the donor will come forward and I can change the credit from the 1965 collection to a name.

The first two are both of lost Manchester.

I have no idea where in Hulme the clearance area was, and I only have vague memories of the old Shambles.

But they are a unique record of how the City was in 1965 and just how it was about to change.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, “Clearance in Hulme” and “The Old Shambles showing Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar,” 1965, from the 1965 Collection

"the frown of fortune"...... the story of Sam Mendel and Manley Hall in Whalley Range

Now I don’t usually do stately homes, but back in 1879 I might just have made the effort to visit Manley Hall which had once been the home of the 'merchant prince' Sam Mendel.

It was an impressive place built in the Italianate style with fifty rooms in 80 acres of grounds which included a greenhouse, an orangery, deer park fountains and ornamental lakes.

Added to this was a fine collection of paintings including works by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner.

All of which reflected the vast wealth of Sam Mendel who had made that wealth by being able to ship textiles to India and Australia around the Cape of Good Hope  faster than his competitors.

“He was the son of a rope manufacturer who started business off Blackfriars Street, succeeding to the business of Mr. Robert Gardiner, a Levant merchant [and] built a warehouse in Dickenson Street, removing thrice to Booth Street, to Portland Street, and finally to his splendid warehouse in Chepstow Street.  

It is said of him he was never known to do a shabby act, but in the end he felt the frown as well as the smile of fortune.  

In 1875 his magnificent estate – Manley House- was the scene of a memorable sale, and it has ever since been but the ghost of its former self, in spite of effort after effort to galvanise it into life. The estate was cut up into building lots, and the tenantless hall survives only to witness the short-lived greatness of its builder.”*

And the frown of fortune was no less than a too ambitious desire to add to his vast collection of art which left him in serious debt to an art dealer. 

The house and its contents along with the 80 acres were put up for sale in the spring of 1875 and the auction of the contents stretched out over five days.

Not that I would have been wealthier enough to consider biding for the fine furniture, paintings, silver plate and old Chelsea porcelain.

Nope, for me it would have a walk around the gardens when they were opened to the public later in 1875.

And I rather suspect it would have been the piece in the Manchester Guardian of May 30 1879 which pushed me out of Chorlton and in to Whalley Range to walk the gardens, because the “announcement of yesterday with regard to the coming sale of this fine estate ... [means] that in all probability Manley Hall will not much longer remain open to inspection.”**

So despite the poor weather which had done little for “the great floral display which might very properly have been expected at the Whitsun Holiday” there was still “much to admire in the greenhouses and ferneries.”  

Along with “the Clown cricketers who were to play in the park on Monday, Thursday and Saturday and the Latelle ‘aerial bicyclists’ who have lately completed a successful engagement at the Westminster Aquarium [and] Mr. J.A. Whelan of Huddersfield who will make an ascent in his balloon ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’ on Thursday and Friday as well as a variety of amusements for visitors.”

But I rather think it would have been the “bands of music” which would have attracted me, one of which may well have been our own Chorlton Brass Band.  They had been formed in the 1820s and while I do not have a complete list of where they performed, there are records of them at Bell Vue, Lytham, Blackpool and Stalybridge as well as closer to home in Chorlton and up at Barlow Hall.

Now Samuel had sponsored the band during the 1860s and it would be nice to think that they were there at Manley Hall in the June of 1879.

And that perhaps is an appropriate point to close, for Samuel’s eclipse appears to have been a loss for Chorlton.

For not only did he sponsor the band but was a very active patron of the old parish church and in that great schism over the building of a new church and ist location on Edge Lane he remained with the group championing the existing building.

Next; the fate of the Hall and something more on Sam.

Location; Whalley Range, Manchester

Pictures; of Manley Hall circa 1878 from the Lloyd Collection, and picture of Sam Mendel, from a photograph by Franz Baum, 22 St Ann’s Square, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

* Shaw, William Arthur, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

** Manchester Guardian May 30 1879