Walking Chorlton's past .... that popular history talk with Andrew Simpson .... tomorrow

 This Sunday you can walk our past with Andrew Simpson and discover just who you might have to be polite to.

Ploughing beside Beech Road, circa 1892

Now that is not so daft a question if you lived in a small rural community on the edge of Manchester in the summer of 1848.

For a start, most people earned their living from the land, and many of these would be agricultural labourers, who worked for local farmers and in some cases rented their homes from those same farmers.

Along with these there was a sizable group of small market gardeners, growing cash crops for the Manchester markets on one to nine acres of land which they rented from a handful of landowners.

Charles Clarke blacksmith, 1913

Added to these were the tradesmen ranging from the blacksmith and wheelwright to shopkeepers, carpenters and dressmakers all of whom were dependent on both the farmers and the “people of plenty”.

And even some of the more prosperous, who after 1832 commanded a vote in General Elections, might think carefully about voting for an election candidate who was not the preferred and stated choice of the wealthy and powerful Egerton family who owned something like 67% of all the land in Chorlton.

So, the question of who you should be polite to in 1848 was a serious one which might cost your livelihood and your home.

And that will be the theme of this walk through Chorlton’s past which is part of Chorlton Book Festival, . *

Along the way there will be some tales of dark deeds, mixed with the everyday life of farmers, agricultural workers and their families, and a nod to the posh residents who must be treated with upmost politeness.

We were a small rural community of just 761 people, spread out in a number of hamlets. 

On the northern boundary was Martledge, south of Chorlton Brook was Hardy and at the centre was Chorlton itself.

St Clements by the green circa 1870s

Smaller communities in some cases just a few houses were scattered in between.  And as if to underline a dependence on the land, each of these small communities were separated by fields and orchards.

And so today we will take a walk down Chorlton Row, from Barlow Moore Lane, stopping to look at the big house, several cottages, some interesting fields and of course the smithy, the Wesleyan chapel and a beer house.

Along the way we may encounter a few people it would be prudent to be polite too, and plenty who are too busy to pass the time of day.

Having reached Chorlton Green there will be a brief stop to survey the old church, the two pubs, and three farmhouses, along with assorted wattle and daub cottages, and the village school.

Mr. Higginbotham bringing in  the harvest from the Meadows, undated

After which we will head north, visiting another 18th century farm cottage before crossing the Rough Leech Gutter at High Lane, hard by Scotch Corner and that local beauty point known as Pits Brow,  finishing at the site of the ancient Ash Tree “at the foot of which a certain man engaged in prayer each day".**

So, there will be plenty to see, and much that will tell us about what it was like to live in a small rural community, just 3½ miles from the smoke, noise and enterprise of Manchester.

Assemble at the corner of Beech Road and Barlow Moor Road at 2pm on Sunday September 20th.***

The walk will conclude after much history and a degree of fun at the Edge for refreshments.

Pictures; ploughing on Beech Road, circa 1890, and harvesting on the meadows, courtesy of Mr. Higginbotham, from the Lloyd collection, and detail from the 1854 OS map for Lancashire by kind permission of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ old St Clement’s Church circa 1870s from the collection of Tony Walker

*Chorlton Book Festival, September 17th to September 26th   https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/chorlton-book-festival-2026-4861494/

**Ellwood, Thomas Chapter 4, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, South Manchester Gazette, November 28, 1885

*** Walking Chorlton’s Past, Sunday September 20th. 

Tickets are £11  include refreshments at the Edge Theatre cafe afterwards.

Tickets available from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-down-beech-road-in-the-summer-of-1848-tickets-1996447382865?aff=odcleoeventsincollection

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton …. part 162 …. endings

The continuing story  of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Long before a distinguished historian chose to tell the story of a house and made it into a popular TV show, I embarked on the same historical journey.

Mine was located on Beech Road and what started in the December of 2011 was joined by two spin offs based on the houses I lived in London and a municipal flat in the Italian city of Varese.

And in time sat beside the story of a garage which began as Chorlton’s first cinema, another building which over three centuries had many different stories and even morphed into a series on the Nokia 3310 and our own Citroën 2CV bought brand new and the last to roll off a production line in Portugal.

What each had in common was that the house, the garage, and the car were just vehicles to tell the bigger story, which showed the transformation of Chorlton and Britain over time.

But was always the house opposite the Rec which I kept coming back to.  It was built by Joe Scott in 1915 who built many of the smaller houses and semis in Chorlton.  And it was here that he and his wife Mary Ann lived for the next 58 years.  In all it has had four owners of which we are the only ones to have had children born here.

I first washed up in the house for a brief stay in 1976 when it was owned by my dear friends, John, Mike and Lois, returning just a few years later when I bought it.

I can’t beat Joe and Mary Ann’s tenure, but I have called it home for fifty years, and even during my short break away it was always home.

To which there are many others over the years who can also have a claim to have passed through, from friends, and family to the childhood mates of my sons some of whom still speak fondly of their time here.

I opened the series in reflective mood asking "Why is it that only the rich and more especially the old, landed rich can talk of holding a great house or estate for posterity?

They tell us as if we should be grateful that they are custodians, not owners and it is their duty to maintain it and hand it on to the next generation. All of which is fine, but theirs is always the family that holds onto it and raises the question of what about the rest of us? Do we not also do the same?

Some might argue that there is no comparison between Blenheim Palace, and a 1930 semi built on the outer reaches of Manchester. Or that a post war council house has anything in common with one of the country’s national treasures. 

Such a grand place with its Adam furniture, Capability Brown landscaped gardens, priceless paintings, steeped in history is unique and therefore ranks well beyond the mass produced, often ugly and in some cases poorly maintained social housing.

But both have histories, both were built for someone to live in, and both were cherished by their inhabitants.

This is a roundabout way of writing about our house. It was built a hundred years ago, has had only four custodians, of which we are the only ones to have had children here. 

More than that this is the only home our eldest three have known and it was where one of them was born. It is also a place where countless friends have come and stayed before moving on, seen Christmas parties, a boat turning event in the back garden, and a succession of decorating fashions.

So, over the next few months I want to tell the story of this one house set against the bigger picture of what was going on here in Chorlton and the national backdrop".

The stories were meant to only last a few months but have run to over 160 stories, and far out ran the one hundred years of the title.

They often picked up on bits found in the house, from fuse boxes, the old copper in the cellar and the mystery of why the Scott’s never installed a kitchen range.  

Most then became an exploration of the changes in our social, economic and political life set against two world wars and that post-war affluence.

During that time, I came close to Joe and Mary Ann and some of the objects.

These included a broken clay pipe found in the garden and maybe dating from the 1840s, and remanets of electrical fixtures.

But things come to an end and my family’s stewardship is no different and so to mangle that wonderful final message from the dolphins in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker series of books “So Long and Thanks for all the stories ….. and the memories …. and all the friends”. 

Bettered perhaps only by "There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story." — Frank Herbert

Location, Beech Road

Pictures; random pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson and friends

*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=the+story+of+a+house

*So long and Thanks for all the Fish, the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams, 1984

In search of an adventure out of Peckham ............. foot tunnels and a strange find

Now the thing about adventures is that there should be no rules, no preplanning and just an optimistic expectation that it will all turn out alright and along the way you will have some fun.

Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1916

That said it is always best to go with someone to share the fun and when you are just ten years old it makes for a bit more safety.

After that it’s all pretty much how it turns out.

And the day we found the foot tunnel was just one of those. Now I know there are two, starting with the one at Greenwich which was finished in 1902 and the Woolwich one completed a decade later.

But it would be years before I came across Woolwich and anyway Greenwich had so much else to offer, which is how we had come across  the tunnel in the first place.

It had started with the usual exploration of the big park starting with the views from General Wolf’s statute across London and the debate about whether to take the windy path beside the Observatory or  just run down the steep hill.

That done it was a short hop and a skip to the Cutty Sark.

But the Cutty Sark cost to get in and so as you do we wandered to the river and there was the entrance to the tunnel.

None of us knew what to expect, but it was open, it was free and that spiral staircase was just an invitation not to be turned down.

Today at 73 I doubt that I would have set off along the white tiled tunnel but 63 years ago here was the adventure.

Looking down to the foot tunnel, 1977

We were not sure where it would take us, or  how long it would take but there was something quite compelling about making the journey.

It was partly the way the tunnel stretched off into the distance with no end in sight, with just the long line of lights in the ceiling and the gentle incline of the pathway which slopped ever downwards.

On that first foray we encountered just one person, whose footsteps we heard heading towards us long before we saw them.

But we did find a toy duelling pistol.  It had lost some of the bits to make it work and its plastic butt was only half intact but here was a prize which could not be ignored.

So it came home with us.

Who carried it on that long walk back from the park through Deptford and past New Cross Gate I can’t remember, or for that matter why it finished up in Lausanne Road, where it stayed as a trophy of that adventure.

I wish I still had it but it went when we left Peckham along with those adventures.

Picture; Woolwich Foot Tunnel circa 1916, courtesy of Kristina Bedford from  Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing, and Looking down to the foot tunnel, Greenwich 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Two pictures …. a memory …… and a lost landscape

 Memories fade and eventually are lost and so these two images of Manchester on August 1st, 1957, are a powerful reminder of what the city was once like.

Two for one, a panorama of destruction, 1957

Both pictures were taken from the old BBC Building in Piccadilly and look out across the Gardens towards the Town Hall and the business sector.

Looking towards Portland Street, 1957

I would arrive just twelve years later, and Manchester had already shed many of those temporary car parks which were former bomb sites, replacing them with new builds of concrete and glass.

And while I was born and grew up in London, I can remember similar scenes.  

As kids we played on bomb sites and occasionally came across lost treasures pulled from the ground. 

Those open spaces would soon be home to cars and later still towering blocks of offices.

All of which makes me think my generation will be the last to remember that time when the last war transformed our cities and towns leaving acres of prime development sites.

But also, had created those gaps between houses where a single bomb had obliterated a home. In some cases, giant timbers were still in place shoring up the properties on either side, or the remaining houses had been given a skim of cement.

And so back to the two pictures.  

Piccadilly Gardens, the bus terminus and the future  hotel site, 1957

It is fascinating now to view the sheer scale of the devastation in just one part of the City and likewise what appears to be the random nature of the bombing, and what survived.

I won’t be alone in seeing pictures published in the early 1970s of the bits of Back Piccadilly ablaze from end to end which back in 1940 the censors deemed likely to undermine morale.

Now some I know will focus on the soot clad surviving buildings or wax lyrically about the former Piccadilly Gardens which is OK but detracts from pondering on the scale of the war damage, and the relative speed of the rebuild.  Added to which there is that very personal elephant in the room which for me is that simple observation that if you can remember such scenes, you are indeed very old.

Ah well such is the dichotomy from being a baby boomer with one foot in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the exciting and changing times of the decade to come.

Location; Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, 1959

Pictures; Piccadilly from the BBC Building, August 1st, 1957, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Manchester …. ready for another international event?

 Now Manchester does its bit at hosting international events, from heaps of football matches to the Commonwealth Games and possibility the G20 annual gathering next year.

So, I wonder if there are plans to host the European Tram Driver Championship.*

This year it is in Warsaw and I have been watching live transmission of the events.  It lasts four days and judging by the pictures it is drawing big crowds.

And I have to say why not?

 Most people I talk to use our own trams and like them.

 I do and prefer them to the bus.

 Not that I don’t use the bus, I do and more so since our transport system becomes more joined up.

And the Warsaw tram network is equally neat.  And so, once our Saul who lives in Warsaw alerted me to the competition I tuned in.

The values of the promoters are all that you would want which fully endorses the motto of the European Union of "United in diversity”, and so competition stands for ... connecting people through games, entertainment and information

presenting public transport as a modern, interesting service provider

exchanging experiences and networking for drivers and managers

presenting transport companies as attractive employers

And lots of European cities have taken part and hosted the event over the last 12 years.**

Of course, Transport for Manchester may have a team out there, and I so I had better check.

Either way wouldn’t it be grand if we could have a turn at welcoming the event.

Pictures; Warsaw trams, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and logo and image of competitors courtesy of tramem

* Warsaw 2026, https://www.tramem.eu/

**Frankfurt, 2024, Oradea, 2023, Leipzig, Brussels 2019, Stutgart, 2018, Tnnerfife, 2016, Vienna, 2025, Budpest, 2013, Dresden, 2022

What were the 3rd Battalion of the Manchester Pals doing at Alex Park in the September of 1914? ........... stories behind the book nu 10

An occasional series on the stories behind the new book on Manchester and the Great War.*

The entrance to Alexandra Park, 1907

Now this is one of those stories that started off full of promise with just a chance that I would uncover a lost part of the Park’s history.

The 3rd Battalion were one of the eight Pals’ Battalions raised in the first few months of the Great War.

The authorities had not quite been prepared for the rush of recruits.

The first two battalions had been raised in a matter of days and by the time the 3rd and 4th were complete there were still no where to put them.

So while the first and second fairly quickly moved to a tent city at Heaton Park, the 3rd was accommodated at White City and the 4th were billeted at home.

And that brings me to the 3rd Battalion and Alexandra Park.

The definitive book on the Manchester Pals* describes how the battalion had been recruited in just three days between Saturday September 5 and Monday the 7th but “unlike the first two companion battalions [it was] initially trained at White City, a sports and racing stadium in the Old Trafford area, and accommodated  there in hastily  erected and draughty constructions.  Before those huts at the White City became available this battalion’s parades were undertaken in the City Hall with route marches to and from Alexandra Park.”**

Heaton Park, 1914

As late as September 26 the Manchester Guardian reported that “the recruiting authorities have in mind the undoubted convenience of being able to billet the men on themselves, in which case they would be in the same position as the men who were recently posted to reserve, though of course their full time would be required in training.”***

Which nicely brings us back to those route marches to Alexandra Park.

I have to confess I had misread the original newspaper entries and made the assumption that they had camped out in the park but no evidence has come forward to support this and so I can only assume that on arriving at the park gates and after a suitable rest they marched away to White City where they were still to be found two month later.

Pictures; entrance to Alexandra Park, circa 1907 courtesy of Ann Love, and Heaton Park, 1914 from the collection of David Harrop

*Manchester and the Great War, Andrew Simpson, was published in 2017, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

**Manchester Pals A History of the two Manchester Brigades, Michael Stedman, 1994

***ibid, page 25

****City Battalion and Winter Quarters, Manchester Guardian, September 24 1914

Your invite to a new way of telling the stories of Greater Manchester …. today

 So, today at Chorlton Library  you have the opportunity to roam over the history of Greater Manchester in a new and unique way.

Peter Topping and Andrew Simpson have come up with a different approach to exploring Greater Manchester’s past.

It is The History of Greater Manchester by Tram …. TheStories At the Stops in which the authors take all 99 Metro tram stops on all the eight routes picking out the interesting, the serious and the bizarre as well as the humours events and people at each destination which build to become a comprehensive account of the region’s past.*

At present there are four books in the series with a fifth due out later this year. 

They cover the journey into the centre from the south, crossing the city centre down to Victoria Railway Station and then east out to New Islington.

The fifth will travel from Old Trafford to Altrincham, with further books on Salford, and all the remaining towns on the network.

The talk is part of Chorlton Book Festival is free and begins at 2pm**

Location; Chorlton Library Manchester Road

Pictures; a selection from the Power Point presentation, 2026

*Chorlton Book Festival September 17th - 26th, https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/chorlton-book-festival-2026-4861494/

*A History of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram 

**Chorlton Book Festival September 17th - 26th, https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/chorlton-book-festival-2026-4861494/