Now …… you can wait for a bit of the past .... then two turn up at the same time …….. outside Manchester Cathedral

So, here are two bits of how we lived.

Both have now long vanished.

The last Manchester Corporation tram completed its last journey in January 1949, months before I was born.

As for the public urinal, I have no idea when it closed, but like the tram it is now just a memory, which I may have used, but have no idea when it ceased.

The statue of Oliver Cromwell went in the 1980s so maybe it went then.

Location; Manchester Cathedral

Picture; Two trams and a urinal, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

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

Who stole Alton Towers?

Today I was reminded by my old Facebook chum Bill Summers of that house on Edge Lane called Alton Towers.

Alton Towers, 1907

Like him I have often come across it on maps and set to the challenge he laid down today, when he posted the 1911 OS map showing the property adding, “We all know roughly where Alton Towers is or have heard of its pleasure grounds but might be surprised to discover there was another- in Chorlton cum Hardy back in the day. 

Just wondering if Andrew Simpson can tell us anything of it. 

It stood for a while at the side of St Clements Church on High Lane, so maybe there is a photo out there somewhere". 

It was a challenge I couldn’t turn down.

Today the site is open land and was gifted to St Clement's for the use of young people and is now part of the school, and that is pretty much how I remember it from when I washed up in Chorlton in 1976.

The site of Alton Towers, 1933

The last recorded reference to the house is on the 1911 census  but interestingly it is not listed in the street directory for that year and the OS map for 1933 shows it as open land with a tennis court in one corner.

So sometime between 1911 and 1933 it disappears.

I can track it back from 1911 to 1879, and I am fairly sure that 1879 marks the date when it was built.  

It was owned throughout by John Richardson who rented it out to just five tenants over those thirty years.

It had been a grand house with ten rooms, set back from the main road in a large garden and commanded an annual rent of £100 and a rateable value of £68.

And not to be short changed had a series of green houses arranged amongst the trees in the garden.

In 1911 it was occupied by an Edward and Christina Wright, their four children and two servants.  Mr. Wright described himself as a “Paper merchant" with his offices at 62A Fountain Street. 

The site in 2023

What happened after 1911 is yet to be discovered but I do know that one of his son’s was living at 22 Whitelow Road in 1917, because his Attestation papers say so.

It may be that the family moved from Edge Lane to Whitelow Road.

There is no reference to Alton Towers in the 1921 census, and sadly so far the only images we have are of a gate post on pictures dated in 1930 and 1959.

Sad looking gate post, Alton Towers, Edge Lane, 1930

Not that I am finished.

I shall explore the life of John Richardson, and talk to St Clement's Church about their acquisition of the land and follow up the story of a fire.

so heaps to find out.

We shall see.

Location; Edge Lane

Picture, Alton Towers, 1909, OS map for Manchester and Salford, 1909, site of Alton Towers, 2023, courtesy of Google Maps and Only a sad looking gate post, Alton Towers, Edge Lane, 1930, m17809, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Looking for the lost 32 cottages and 15 cellars, home to 208 people

Looking down Commercial Street, 2015

Now I first wandered down Commercial Street sometime in the 1980s looking for Omega Street, and its neighbours Alpha Street and Fogg’s Place.

And I must have missed them by just a few years.

That said I don’t think they would have featured in any glossy guide to comfortable inner city living.

In 1853 they had formed a complex of back to back housing consisting of 32 cottages and fifteen cellars inhabited by 208 people.*

Commercial  Omega Street, 1849

Directly opposite was the Egerton Mill, while behind them there were two more and the surrounding area was dominated by more textile mills, a handful of iron works and the Hulme Brewery.

And I doubt even the most optimistic estate agent could gloss over the noise from the nearby railway or the smell from the river Medlock which flowed in a curve close by.

Back in the 1980s you could still see the outline of the house walls in what at the time was a temporary car park but when I returned some 20 years later these had vanished under new tarmac and there was nothing left to show what had once been there.

Looking across to Omega Street from Commercial Street, 2002

Now another eighteen years on and the surrounding buildings had either been demolished or made genteel and the worst I suspect in the form of pollution comes from the noise of loud music in the flats opposite or the conversation of the office workers making their way home.

And even that car park is now boarded up which may soon mean even space inhabited by those three streets and 32 cottages will be lost for ever.

Location, Manchester

Pictures; Commercial Street, 2014 courtesy of Andy Robertson, Omega Street, 2003 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and area in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Report of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association 1853

When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012

So were you in the Eltham Hill Gaumont on Sunday September 12 1965?

Now you pretty much know it’s time to get a life when you go looking for the date for a film listing for the Eltham Hill Gaumont.

Eltham Hill Gaumont, 1998

The listing was posted recently by Kath May and advertised the four films showing for the week beginning September 12.

For those with time on their hands on that Sunday the cinema was showing for just the one day The Unknown with Dean Jagger and Teenage Frankenstein with Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway.

With titles like that they were of course X rated under the old Board of Censorship classification and if there was anyone still unsure the listing carried the warning Adults only.

Now I have never really given it much thought but I suppose Sunday in the cinema in the 1950s and 60s would be a slow day.

The cinema , circa 1938

Most people would have gone on a Friday or Saturday night and the week would be given over to a more discerning audience, leaving Sunday for those just over 18 with money left in their pockets and with a taste for the macabre.

For the rest of the week starting on the Monday and running for a full six days there was Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn in Last Train from Gun Hill which was an A and Yul Brynner in Escape from Zahrain.

I went looking for the plots of the four films and wish I hadn’t bothered.  Suffice to say that today I doubt that even the most desperate of TV executives would look to showing them on even the graveyard slot.

So as a reward and in answer to Kath’s musings of when this week was I went off and roamed the records.  

Film poster, 1957

Now the films themselves were no clue.  The Unknown dated from 1956, Teenage Frankenstein from the following year and Last Train from 1959 which left Escape from Zahrain which was made in 1962.

But given that you can on the internet find a day if you have the month and the year with just a little bit of fiddling it was possible to place Sunday September 12 in 1965.

Which just leaves me to record that the Gaumont had opened on April 14 1938 showing Queen Victoria with Anna Neagle and closed on June 19 1967 with David Niven in Happy Go Lovely and Dana Andrews in Duel in the Jungle.*

It reopened as a Mecca Bingo Club and the rest as they say is a down to two fat ladies and a joyful shout of Bingo.

But I wouldn't have done the job properly if I didn't also try to date the second picture of the cinema.

It was showing Will Hay's film Oh Mr Porter which was released in 1937 and so I am guessing it will be the late 1930s.

And that's all I am going to say except to thank Kath for finding and posting the film listing leaving me to go off and watch the paint dry on the back door.

Picture; the old cinema November 1998 courtesy of David Simpson and sometime before 1952, cousinadnab taken from Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991 and film poster for Teenage Frankenstein, 1957 which is in the public domain

* Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991

The 1893 Brass Band ............ lives revealed.

There has been a brass band in Chorlton since the 1820s which must make it one of the earliest.

 During the first half of the 19th century Chorlton was still a rural community and many of those who played in the band earned their living from the land and had been born in the township.

But as Chorlton grew and attracted new people who made their living from other trades so the composition of the band changed.

 And it was the chance discovery of a photograph of the band dated 1893 which has revealed the story of this band. It has been possible to track almost all of the men from that picture. Most had not been born here and some still lived elsewhere.

They were clerks and warehouseman, with just a few still working on the farms and market gardens.

Like many bands ours was a close knit group with a few families supplying many of those who played, and again like other brass bands these men lived close together, concentrated off Crossland Road and Beech Road.

Picture; from  the collection of Alan Brown,1893