Going to school in Eltham in 1840

Now the National School  was opened in 1814 by the Reverend J.K. Shaw Brooke.

These were church schools and provided elementary education for the children of the poor.

They were the product of the National Society which had begun in 1811 and aimed to establish a national school in every parish delivering a curriculum based on the teaching of the church.

According to a report of the Charity Commissioners from 1819 the annual salary of the school master was to be £20 and by one of those wonderful chance survivals the first register was preserved which the historian R.R.C.Gregory published in his of Eltham.*

“Amongst the “batch of boys admitted were many bearing names that are still familiar in Eltham,
James Shearing, aged 7
John Scriven, aged 11
Thomas Foster, aged 6
Edward Hand, aged 10, 
William Stevens, aged 6
Charles Russell, aged 9
James Kingston, aged 7
I. Wakeman, aged 6
T.Wakeman, aged 8.”

And just like these names were familiar to Mr Gregory and his readers in 1909, some have stepped out of the shadows again today.

Thomas Foster was the son of the blacksmith who helped run the smithy on the High Street and the Wakeman boys were I think related to Peter Wakeman who had been invited to the Jubilee celebrations to mark the Reverend J.K. Shaw Brooke’s fifty years as vicar of Eltham.

This first school was at the end of Pound Place where it joined Back Lane and 1840 the infants’ school was added.

Now given that I have already mentioned Richard White who taught at the school in 1841, and lived on Pound Place I reckon there are a few more stories to come on the National School, its teachers and students.

Location; Eltham, London



Pictures; The National Infants School 1909,  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

Mrs Crump of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and a piece of broadcasting history

Now this is another of those stories which has much more to offer.

Back on January 1 1947 Mrs Elsie May Crump appeared on Woman’s Hour which had first aired three months earlier in October 1946.

According to the synopsis of that day’s edition which was described as
“a daily programme of information, entertainment, and music for the woman at home “  and sandwiched between  James Laver on ' Why do men dress like that'; Ruth Drew , Jeanne Heal , and Guilfoyle Williams on ' Answering Your Household Problems'; there was” Mrs. Elsie May Crump on What I think of Woman's Hour after three months ' “

And of course the participation of Mrs Elise Crump was something that just had to be followed up.

She described herself as a working woman who worked in her husband’s butcher’s shop.

Now that shop was nu 24 Oswald Road on the corner with Nicholas and according to the directories the business is listed under her name from 1935 to 1969.

The shop is no longer a butcher’s shop but was still selling meat in 1980 under the name of Arnold's, and that of course is an invite to anyone who knows more about Mrs Crump and that shop to send in their memories and perhaps even a picture.

I do have one picture of her taken during the January programme but copyright prevents me from publishing it until I have asked the BBC so for now all I can offer up is an entry in the 1946 telephone directory.and one of Andy Robertson's pictures.who when I asked if he had a photograph of the place went out an hour ago and took this one in the rain.

Now that is a pretty good example of updating a story.

So there you have it a bit of Chorlton’s history along with a big bit of broadcasting history.

Picture; extract from telephone directory, 1946, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the shop from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2014

Additional research by Andy Robertson

Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster

Now I had quite forgotten the exhibition ……… Jewish Women in Britain, which ran from May 1992 through till the January of the following year.

But then it was a full 32 years ago and so I think I can be excused.

The poster hung for years in the kitchen until steam and age made me take it down with the intention of having it professionally mounted.

But as often happens the plan never happened, and it shuffled around the cellar until I came across it recently.

So for no other reason than I like it, here it is, scanned in two sections, waiting to be skilfully re-joined.

Location; The Manchester Jewish Museum















Picture; Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster, 1992

“In Britain and in Germany it is 12 noon" .... One song ….. Two Way Family Favourites ….. and a different way of saying hello

Two Way Family Favourites was one of those radio programmes that was always on in our house on a Sunday during the 1950s.

Most of the time it sat in the background as an accessory to preparing the midday meal and doing heaps of other things.

But even as background you absorbed the family messages sent to servicemen and women abroad, the choice of music and the exchanges between the broadcasters, one here in Britain and the other in Germany.

And it began with that signature tune “With a Song in My Heart” followed by “In Britain and in Germany it is 12 noon so at home and away it is time for Two Way Family Favourites”.

It is perhaps easy to forget that there was a time within living memory that communicating with a loved one was pretty much limited to letters and post cards.

Our first phone arrived only in the 1950s, and the line was shared with another family, but we were lucky because for most people making a telephone call meant a trip to the nearest public phone box while phoning from abroad might involve booking a call-in advance.

And set against this was that in the immediate post war period into the 1950s and 60s, Britain maintained a large standing army, supported by conscription and stationed across the world.

A substantial element of that force was in Germany and so every Sunday the BBC hosted a two-way radio programme of messages and music.

It is of course a bit of my past but for younger generations it will sit with the Age of the Dinosaurs and the Stone Age.

But in that time before  the internet, social media and mobile phones, it was all we had.

And I am always reminded of this little bit of my past when the song Sailor is played with that chorus

Barlow Moor Road, circa 1950s

“As you sail across the sea

All my love is there beside you

In Capri or Amsterdam

Honolulu or Siam To the harbour of my heart

I will send my love to guide you”.

From memory it was a popular choice and the programme played both the Petula Clark and Ann Shelton versions which both came out in 1961, and were a variation on an earlier German song Seemann (Deine Heimat ist das Meer)" "Sailor (Your Home is the Sea)".

I have listened to both and I like them both, but the English version is perhaps a tad more sentimental and so chimed in with Two Way Family Favourites.

Family life, 1953

And that is it.

Location; Britain and Germany,

Pictures; 1950s elegance, News of the World's Household Guide and Almanac, courtesy of Debbie Cameron ,Barlow Moor Road, circa 1950s and Family life from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Sailor, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k8fzE7UHu8

***Seemann, deine Heimat ist das Meer, https://lyricstranslate.com/en/seemann-deine-heimat-ist-das-meer-sailor-your-home-sea.html

Salford Histories Festival 2025 …….today

So, the poster says it all ….. 

Today at St Thomas’s Church, Ford Lane, Salford, M6 6PE.

10am till 5pm.

N'uff said.

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 5........ a street fire alarm 1958

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

In an age before we all had telephones it was necessary to be able to call the fire brigade.  Back in the 1880s there was a dedicated phone in the Lloyds Hotel.  Later still we got these.  This was one outside the Gaumont/Savoy cinema on Manchester Road.  There was another on the corner of Manchester Road and High Lane outside Oban House.

Picture; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, A H Downes, November 1st 1958, M17988, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Melting tar …… a busy butterfly ….. and a long lost adventure

Now the thing about getting old is that there seems to be heaps more time for the memories of the past to invade the doings of a busy day.

Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 

And once that flight of nostalgic fancy starts to run its course it is easy to reflect on how your experiences of 60 odd years ago diverge from those of your kids or grandchildren.

I say that, but much of what our sons did when they were younger are only now being revealed as in their own bouts of nostalgia, they share stories of daring dos which they wouldn’t dare to have admitted to when they were 10.

Some of those stories do resonate.  Their adventures on the meadows on long summer days, chime in with my own, when armed with just a warm bottle of lemonade and a day stretching ahead of us, we wandered off in search of adventures in some faraway park, or along a stretch of the Thames.

Often it was at the end of a train journey or the limit of a Red Rover bus pass, and it usually involved a quiet suburban spot, unhindered by other people. 

One such place was at the end of a railway line, and rather than explore we just sat on the platform.  

There were no trains, no passengers and the only sound was that of a lazy insect collecting pollen, mixed with that distinctive smell of mown grass, which competed with the equally powerful smell of the oil-soaked wooden railway sleepers cooking in the sun.

We must have sat there for hours before boredom and the empty bottle of lemonade prompted us to move on.

The spot where we played  with the hot street tar in 1958

These of course can be replicated by our kids, but those of exploring bombsites have gone as is the simple pastime of watching the tar slowly melt on a hot summer’s day sitting on the side of the road and carefully making patterns of the black oozy stuff with a discarded lolly stick.  

Today the street surface doesn’t melt, and the lolly sticks are no longer there in abundance.

And in the same way those Clean Air Acts of the 1960s have happily done away with the heaps of polluted air which in turn gave us the smog’s which meant we got sent home early from school making our way along roads devoid of landmarks.

Nor today are there those thick sooty deposits on trees which when you climbed them left your hands and clothes grubby and grimy.

But enough of such nostalgic tosh.

Smog's and fogs, 1953

Our grandchildren I hope will never have to use bomb sites as playgrounds or come home with soot smeared clothes.

These they can leave to their imagination fed by granddad’s tales of aimless adventures on long ago summer holidays in that place called the 1950s.

I might try and pretend this is all about the historical context, but perhaps it is just a nostalgic wallow.

Location; nostalgia land

Pictures; Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the spot where me and Jimmy O' Donnel played in with the hot street tar in 1958, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, 2015, and Nelson’s Column during the Great Smog of 1952, N T Stobbs, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.