Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 25 Ashley Lane ............. now even the name is lost

Now Richard’s picture of Aspin Lane as it runs under the railway viaduct is as atmospheric as you could get.

Aspin Lane, 2016

The wet stone setts, the lonely lane framed by that viaduct takes you back a century or more to another age when this bit of Angel Meadow was one of those places where “poverty busied itself.”

Like Richard I have spent many years wandering the streets around the old St Michael’s Rec and burial ground.  In my case it came after meeting the historian Jacqueline Roberts, reading her book on the area and using some of her material in classes I taught on working class housing in the 19th century.*

And it was she who first introduced me to the idea of using census material to engage students in exploring social history.  The unit focused on the streets around Irk Street, John Street and Back Ashley Lane in the 1851.

Ashley Lane, 1849

Here in just 16 houses lived 120 people, making their living from a variety of occupations from factory work, to cap makers, porters and that lowest of jobs, a brush maker.

Some like Mr and Mrs Shaw and their three children lived in the cellar of number 3 Back Irk Street, while round the corner at nu 3 John Street the eight members of the Riley family were squeezed into one of its two rooms.

So Richard’s photograph drew me in but as hard as I looked there was no Aspin Lane on the old maps, but that was simply because Aspin Lane was indeed Ashley Lane and an unknown photographer had got there before us and in 1910 took a picture from almost the same spot.

Ashley Lane, 1910

But all stories deserve a second look.

And after my old facebook friend Bill questioned me on my comment on the status of brushmakers I went looking for more on them. 

And the Working Class Movement Library offered some interesting detail, leading me to correct my assumption this was a precarious and low status occupation.**

Location; Angel Meadow

Pictures; Aspin Lane, 2016 from the collection of Richard Hector- Jones, and in 1910, m00218, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 142-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Roberts, Jacqueline, Working Class Housing in Nineteenth-century Manchester: The Example of John Street, Irk Town, 1826-1936 1983

***Brushmakers, Working Class Movement Library, https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/brushmakers/

The shop …………. Beech Road on the cusp of change

I liked the plant shop on Beech Road. 

I can’t remember when it opened up or for that matter when it closed.

It predated the full Beech Road revolution, so while we had Buonissimo, Primavera, and The Lead, we still had a Post Office, Muriel and Richard’s and an old fashioned offi.

More than that the shop did not offer up a sleek, ultra-stylish approach.

Instead it was a jumble of treasures, where plants rubbed up against porcelain figures of cats, garden statues, along with packets of incense and bits of furniture.

It was magic place and quite eccentric.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; the shop, Beech Road, 2002, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking for Dad at Eltham Fire Station in 1908

We will never know whether Lizzie’s aunt appreciated this picture postcard of our Fire Station.

But as she had been receiving regular such pictures of Eltham, I rather hope she did.

The added bonus was that there in the photograph was Lizzie’s Dad, which prompted Lizzie to ask “Do you recognise dad?

There is lots more detail but I rather think I will leave that up to you to search out.

Location; Eltham Fire Station











Picture; Eltham Fire Station,1908, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

When the sky is the thing …….

Take a boat, heaps of Norfolk water and our Jill with a camera and you get some stunning pictures which double as a bit of a history story.

History because it was a while ago, water because it was the Norfolk Broads and lots of sky because our Jill likes sky pictures.

And that really is it, other than to say amongst the stunning landscapes there is the picture that mixes the skyline with the bottle of orange juice, notes of the route and the wallet.

Location; Norfolk Broads

Pictures: When the sky is the thing, 2025, from the collection of Jill Goldsmith

Mottingham Railway Station ….. the place with three names …….

When you lived in Well Hall your chosen railway station was always going to be Well Hall which today might be described as an Interchange, given that along with the trains there were heaps of buses which terminated next door.

But today it is Mottingham which has caught my attention.  It is a destination I have only visited once but can’t remember why.  

But it may have been to visit our Jill who lived and still lives off Middle Park Avenue and it is her pictures that made me reflect on the railway station with three names.

According to my Wikipedia,  “the station was first opened by the South Eastern Railway on 1 September 1866 as Eltham for Mottingham. 

In 1892 it was renamed Eltham & Mottingham. 

In 1927 it became Mottingham”.*

And it’s a station of many parts, having acquired a goods yard around 1900 it lost it in 1968 , along with its station box the following year.

But the upside ticket office has a mixture of structures,  with “the white clapboard dating from the original station of 1866, [a] brown brick construction of 1957 and sliding doors installed in 1988”.

And to follow up on the interchange link there are a series of buses close by one of which will have taken me back to Well Hall.

Doesn’t quite answer why I would have taken the train to Mottingham to see our Jill but I will let that hang in the air, although I am happy to receive suggestions on a used railway ticket, circa 1990.

All of that said I think I will wander across the network and explore some of the other railway stations I will have known.  

Already located on the blog are some stories of Well Hall Railway Station and its neighbour Eltham Park both of which are babies compared to Mottingham which has outlasted them both.

So with Jill’s help and her camera I will soon be back with more railway stations from Eltham.

Location; Mottingham

Pictures; sunny wet days on Mottingham Railway Station, 2026, from the collection of Jill Goldsmith

*Mottingham railway station, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottingham_railway_station

On finding Mr Hanburys forgotten shopping bag ...... tales from a Chorlton supermarket

Now a little bit of our collective past bounced across my screen in the form of an old shopping bag from Hanburys.

A treasure from Hanburys, date unknown

It was sent over by Catherine Brownhill who found it in the attic, adding, “Look what turned up amongst a pile of old photos whilst having a COVID-19 loft clear out”.

For those who don’t know, Hanburys was the supermarket which occupied what until recently was the Co-op store on Barlow Moor Road.

Now, I liked Hannburys.

It was a no-nonsense place, which dispensed with elegance, and panache for branded goods sold a little cheaper than elsewhere.

At Christmas its loyalty card was just that ……. a tiny piece of card which was stamped every time you shopped there during the months of December.

And like Kingy across the road it was viewed with affection by those who shopped there, and on a busy day there might be a few who remembered when the building had been our first purpose-built cinema.

The cinema, 1928

It opened in the May of  1914, as the  Palais de Luxe, changing its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed in 1957.

After which the building was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.

This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.*

Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.

Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.**

There will be those who are sniffy at featuring a shopping bag from a lost supermarket, but it is history, and what is more it may have been one of those bags which Hanburys started giving away in that short period when we were profligate with plastic bags.

And here I need some help, because I am trying to remember whether Hanburys followed the practice of Safeway and offered you big brown paper bags, which were sturdy but came without handles.

The empty building, 2019

And now the site is just an empty bit of cleared land.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Hanburys shopping bag, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill, the closed Co-op store, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives 

*Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZZZZBCXT638&activeTab=summary

**List of supermarket chains in the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ........ nu 91 .........Higher Temple Street

You won’t find Higher Temple Street.

It went in the clearance of 19th century houses which also did for the surrounding network of streets in this bit of  Chorlton on Medlock.

But I have found it on the old maps, and so know it ran south from Rusholme Road down to Brunswick Street.

Back at the beginning of the last century there were 86 properties on Higher Temple Street, ranging from shops to houses, the odd industrial site and the HQ of the local Conservative Association.

By 1959, when the picture was taken some of those buildings had gone, and judging by the boarded-up shop, these properties would also soon be gone.

That said, despite the grand plan, the newsagents clings on, still no doubt dispensing, newspapers, cigarettes and ice cream to any one left to buy them.






Location; Chorlton-on-Medlock

Picture; Higher Temple Street, 1959, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk