Mrs McMinn’s beer shop ... the Fustian man.... and the music printer ….. lost and forgotten streets of Manchester no. 98 ….. Short Street

 Short Street is very short.

Short Street, 2024

And you might be excused if you failed to notice it, which is what I guess happens with most people walking up Tib Street on their way to Afleck’s Palace.

If I am honest, I am one of them.  But on Friday on another of those wet drizzly days I stopped to take a picture, and as you do wondered about its history.

Today it is sandwiched between the side of two tall buildings and finishes at the rear of the 33 Club.

Short Street, 1850

And in the last few years it has had its moments, so in the July of 2022, part of it was occupied by a tent for Crazy Pedro’s, while a little further back in time it was home to a big green container and in 2012 the door with its steps led down a narrow dark passage directly out on Oldham Street.

Look back at the old maps of the area and it’s the same street .... short by nature and short by name.

Although at one time it was joined by a slightly longer street called Garden Street, which ran  parallel to Tib and Oldham Streets.

It’s gone now and so have the tiny houses which in the 1850s were home to Sarah McMinn a widow who ran a beer shop, George Heap a fustian manufacturer, and Mr. Woodward who described himself as a “reed manufacturer employing “two men and a woman”.

Along with these there was a waste dealer, an agent, a music printer, and a waiter.

They lived with their families in the seven houses fronting Short Street and in total amounted to twenty-five souls.

Within a few decades the houses had been demolished, and the site occupied by industrial properties.

Now in time I will work back to see when Short Street was cut and explore the stories of 1850 residence but for now that is it.

Being young and silly, 2024

Leaving me just to thank the two young people who caught my attention in the bar of the corner of Tib and Short Street.  They asked me to take their picture and as a result I lingered a little longer than planned on Short Street

Location; Short Street

Pictures; Short Street, 2024 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1850 from Adshead’s Map of Manchester, 1850, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Down at the Savoy Cinema in 1937 on Manchester Road watching Road to Glory

Now back in the summer of 1937 I could have had three cinemas to choose from here in Chorlton and of these the most impressive was the Savoy on Manchester Road which had opened in 1920 as the Picture House before being renamed the Savoy when it was leased to the Savoy Cinemas and later became the Gaumont.

And in the summer of 1937 for three days I could have gone and seen Road to Glory made the year before by Howard Hawks which told the story of trench life during the Great War through the lives of a French regiment and included as you would expect a tangled “love interest” between a nurse and two officers.

I am not sure it would have appealed but at least I know what was on offer and that is thanks to Peter McLoughlin who shared this film bill with me.

I doubt that there are many of these still knocking around.  After all they are the sort of thing which you pick and then discard but this one has survived it is a wonderful insight into a night at the “flicks.”

The obvious starting point are the films themselves and in time I will look them all up and in the process get something of an idea of what the cinema going public were being offered back then.

For modern audiences the frequency of the shows will also be a revelation.  

When I was growing up in the 1950s you got I think a week of the same show, but two decades earlier and programmes changed more regularly which I guess is both a recognition of the number of films being churned out but also that people went to the pictures more than once a week.

Not that this should be much of a surprise.  In an age before the telly the pictures offered a nights entertainment which included the film and a newsreel and was all done with style.

The old flea pits still existed but the big purpose built cinemas of the 1920s and more especially the 30’s gave you a sense of luxury which started with the uniformed doorman and continued with that plush auditorium which was light and bright and had a distinctive smell which I guess was a mix of those thick carpets and the floor polish and much later there was the smell of the hot dogs slowly cooking in a corner beyond the box office.

And the picture houses were warm which on a cold winter’s night was another attraction and on one of those dark nights they would be one of the only buildings which were lit up and acted a beacon as well as a promise of a good night ahead.

All of which brings me back to that film bill and the simple observation that you should always be careful about what you are going to throw away.

Pictures; film bill for the Savoy ABC, 1937 courtesy of Peter McLoughlin, and the Picture House later the Savoy, 1922, from the Lloyd Collection.

Travelling the Broads with a camera ….. part 2

I am a great fan of other people’s pictures.

It’s a mix of reasons from experiencing new places to seeing those places through the lens of another’s camera.

And that leads me neatly to the photographs of our Jill, who like me would never claim to be a professional photographer, never studied photography and has never had an exhibition of her work.

But to quote that old throwaway comment she knows what she likes and manages to capture some fine scenes.

These were from a boating holiday a few summers ago and perfectly offer up days and nights on the water.

With that added recognition that not everything on the tourist trail is picturesque.

Location; the Norfolk Broads

Pictures; summer days and nights on the Broads, undated, from the collection of Jill Goldsmith

Just what did Blackheath have do to get a decent mention in Bradshaw’s Guide to London?

Now if I was a resident in Blackheath in 1861, who had just gone out and bought my copy of Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London and its Environs, I might be miffed that where I lived was accorded just 79 words.*

It is there in the chapter on Greenwich which runs to eight pages and gets less of a look in than Woolwich,  or Eltham.

Not only that, but the entry ignores the fine buildings, the church on the heath or the railway station which in 1861 was just eleven years old.  

 Instead the reader is taken through the “large gateways of open ironwork , largely substituted for a small doorway in the wall at the southern extremity of the park, near the keeper’s new Gothic lodge, we pass on to Blackheath, where Wat Tyler assembled the Kentish rebels in the reign of Richard II., where Jack Cade  and his fellow insurgents are said to have held their midnight meetings in a cavern which still remains , though so chocked up as to be considered nearly in accessible”. 

And that is it.  Even Lee gets a sentence. 

But for those who still wish for more on Blackheath, our guide does offer up, a bit more as it heads along the old Dover Road crossing the Heath, on Shooters Hill taking in ‘a rustic little hostelry on our left distinguished by the peculiar title of the ‘Sun-in-the-Sands’ which was the haunt of quite a few 19th century writers who took advantage of an open balcony from which a pleasant view may be obtained of the surrounding country."

And from there we are directed up to Shooters Hill and told that it "commands an expansive prospect [from which] 'the mighty mass of brick smoke and shipping’ as Byron calls the view of London from this point, is well contrasted with the foliage of the wooded country extending towards the south beyond the vale of Eltham.”

But that is a bit of the guide I have already written about but will return to.

All of which just leaves me to compensate the tardy entry with extracts from the OS map of London for 1862 to 1872, which is a bit more than Mr. Bradshaw  gave us, starting with the heath and ending with a stretch of Shooters Hill and the old Dover Road and the Sun-in-the-Sands. what is now the British Oak.

Location Blackheath

Pictures; Blackheath in 1872, from the OS map of London, 1862-1872, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

* Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London and Its Environs, 1861

Travelling the Broads ….. part 1

 I am a great fan of other people’s pictures.

It’s a mix of reasons from experiencing new places to seeing those places through the lens of another’s camera.

And that leads me neatly to the photographs of our Jill, who like me would never claim to be a professional photographer, never studied photography and has never had an exhibition of her work.

But to quote that old throwaway comment she knows what she likes and manages to capture some fine scenes.

These were from a boating holiday a few summers ago and perfectly offer up days and nights on the water.

Location; the Norfolk Broads

Pictures; summer days and nights on the Broads, undated, from the collection of Jill Goldsmith

The picture of Annie Magee on Hawthorn Lane and that young Chorlton bandsman

Now if there is a simple lesson about old photographs it’s that you should never take them at face value.

So here is a picture from Peter McLoughlin's collection of family pictures which shows his mother Annie in 1925.

I was drawn to it the first time I saw it and it began the first of series of stories that feature those family albums.

But what I missed or more accurately ignored was the young man standing beside her.

I don’t know who he was or why he posed with young Annie and just assumed he was a young serviceman, but looking again at that uniform it seems far more elaborate and I think it is that of a bandsman and if pushed I think it might well be from our own Brass Band.

And that makes it rather special because there are very few pictures of our brass band which was at the centre of life in Chorlton from the mid 1820s till 1945.

Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

There are a few accounts of its founding in the 1820s and some more of when it reformed in 1850.

I know the names of some of the men who made up the early bands, along with the prizes they collected during the late 19th century and continue to come across newspaper reports of their activities.

The band neatly reflects the history of the township, starting as a small band whose members made some of their instruments including the drum which once made proved to big to get out of the cottage.

The early band was almost exclusively drawn from Methodists and most made their living from the land.

By the 1890s few of the members still worked the land, most worked in Manchester and most were either newcomers to the township or were first generation.

But so far I guess there are just half a dozen images of the band, some as they marched through Chorlton and one of them at Barlow Hall in 1893 but sadly that’s the lot.

All of which makes this picture of our young bandsmen so interesting and perhaps in time I will discover more about him.



Picture; Annie Magee and that unknown young man, 1925 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin and the Brass Band circa 1920 courtesy of Allan Brown

Of Eltham, Manchester and an artist from Wales

Now I like the way things have a habit of falling together in a most unexpected way.

Manchester  School of Art 1900

So recently when my friend Tricia found a painting looking down Well Hall Road with the parish church in the far distance my interest was tripped which was added to when Lesley stumbled across the fact that the artist had briefly lived in Manchester.

So given that I left Well Hall for Manchester in 1969 it was as they say “game set and match.”

Francis Dodd by the artist

The artist was Francis Dodd who had been born in Hollyhead, educated in Scotland and during the Great War was appointed as an  official war artist.

In 1895 he moved to Manchester.

I found him on the 1901 census living as a “boarder" in a house in Chorlton-on Medlock and three years later he was still there but is listed as the householder.

As yet I have no idea of what he did in Manchester other than that he “worked and taught” here.

He may have attended the prestigious School of Art as a student or even as a teacher.  Walter Crane was the Director of Design from 1893 to 1898, Adolphe Valette taught there from 1906 to 1920 and its graduates include

L.S. Lowry, Eugene Halliday, Liam Spencer and Ossie Clark.

I lost him after he left Manchester and only found him in Blackheath at the end of his life.

Entrance to  the School of Art  1972

All of which set Tricia off on a search and I have to say she found a lot.

“I have been out with my spade again doing some digging concerning the life of Mr Dodd  He was born 29.11.1874., 

He was the oldest child of parent Benjamin Dodd & Jane Francis Shaw. His siblings were Gertrude Helena Dodd bn 1876, Walter Stanley Dodd bn 1877 & Elsie Lilian Dodd bn 1881. 

He married  1911 to Mary Arabella Bouncker Ingle born 1871 Woolwich died 14.2.1947 Blackheath. Francis Dodd then went on to marry Ellen Margaret (Nell) Tanner born 1908 Chelsea. They married in January 1949 in Chelsea he was aged 74, she was 41. To my knowledge I can see no evidence of any children from either marriage.

Frances Dodd took his own life at his home in Blackheath in March 1949 two months after he married his second wife. The Daily Mail states of his death the following.

A short time after finishing an important picture Francis Edgar Dodd age 74, Royal Academican, took his own life at his home 51 Blackheath Park. It was stated at the Lewisham inquest that Mr Dodd was found by his gardener in a gas filled basement kitchen. 

Ellen Margaret Dodd

His wife out lived him by 34 years she died in 1983.

Being an old romantic I have a theory that maybe he pined for his first wife and thought by remarrying it would ease his broken heart but instead it made him miss his first wife even more. Just a notion I have with no evidence whatsoever to back it up.

The visitor at his home on the 1911 census Susan Mabel Dacre a fellow painter was also his benefactor for 14 years whilst he was living in Lancashire.

Miss Isabel Dacre born 1844 Leamington. She befriended Dodd & was his patroness for 14 year & affectionately know as Aunt Susan.”

And that of course brought me back to Manchester not only because of that house in Chorlton on Medlock but the School of Art is a place I know well.  Some of my friends  studied there, others taught there and for a while in 1972 I regularly stood in that entrance.

Odd world.  All we need now is a picture of the 9 roomed house in Blackheath.

Now that we didn't get but instead this from Michael Gorman,
"Isabel Dacre was an important artist in her own right - forming the Society of Women Artists whilst study at the Municipal School of Art and winning the Queen's prize. One of her contemporaries was Annie Swynnerton - who also attended the School - and was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Academy."

Research by Tricia Lesley

Pictures; Mr Dodd and Mrs Dodd, sourced by Tricia Lesley, Municipal School of Art, 1900, m66425, and entrance to the Art School, 1972, H Milligan, m66434,and in 1972, m66433, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass