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

A camera ..... a day in 1979 ..... and a lost destination

 I think l was was on one of the roads running parallel to Portland Street, and l thought the building was the former Bank of England close to Piccadilly.

But now l can't be sure.

Alternatively l could be looking towards King Street with what was that other tall black tower which was another bank.

On balance l favour King Street.

Location; Manchester

Picture; the lost location, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The train now arriving is the 13.20 from 1979

I am well aware it isn’t the most original of titles but it pretty much sums up where we are.

At the back of the 1970s I bought a new camera and later added a dark room.

The pictures were all a bit hit and miss because I was a tad lazy with timings for both the developing and printing.

So while some might stand against anyone’s, others are hazy, lack definition and can either be too light or too dark.

That said they are a record of just what things were like as the 1970s pulled to a close.

And so here I was on Piccadilly Railway Station watching a rain arrive.

I have no idea what type of locomotive it is or even where the train had come from.

During the early part of the decade I had regularly travelled south with British Rail but by 1979 this was less frequent.

More recently I was back on the station and was transfixed by the smooth looking locos of today, so in celebration of what we had and what we've got now, here is one I took over 30 years after the first.

Same station, possibly same platform just separated by the decades.

And thirteen years on from that picture of two Virgin trains ...... taking  the strain from Manchester to London it is now as much a part of the past as the train from 1979.

Location; Piccadilly Railway Station

Pictures; Piccadilly Railway Station, 1979, 2013, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking for cows, farm buildings and a milkman on Brookburn Road in 1927

Now I am the first to admit that you would be hard put to fit this wooden door into the history of a farm in Chorlton.

Outside the stables circa 1920s

But this is the stables of Brook Farm which dates back to at least the late 18th century and was still a farm of sorts in the 1920s.

The farm stood on Brookburn Road opposite the school, and the stables was sited on what is now the playground beside the new bit of the school.

I can’t be sure exactly when it was demolished but it may have lingered on into the very early 1970s finally being knocked down to make way for the school which of course means there will be people who remember it.

I missed it by just a handful of years but Peter Mcloughlin has vivid memories of the stables and the farm which for a big chunk of the last two centuries was also a dairy.

Peter’s father worked there for twenty or so years from the early 1920s and as you would expect amassed some fascinating pictures of the place.

I had already been interested in the farm and have begun to track the tenants who ran it from Mrs Lydia Brown who was there in the 1840s, through to the Holland family and Mr and Mrs Cookson who were still there in 1911.

After that the chronology gets a bit hazy but by the 1920s the diary belonged to Mr Charles Boden and later became Dobson’s  before becoming Express Dairies.

At which point we have reached that moment in time when my own sons will be able to talk confidently of the milk yard across from their school.

Letterhead from the 1920s

During its time under the Boden’s the business expanded to include branches in Eccles and Stockport and after the last world war Peter’s father became manager at the Daisy Bank Dairy on Brinnington Road successfully expanded the number of rounds.

This is a bit of the history of the farm I knew nothing about which is all the more remarkable given that it is recent history.

Bits of the farm’s story from the 19th century are fairly easily accessible, so I know how much land Mrs Brown was farming in the 1840s, where it was located and its usage.

Added to that I can track the families who ran the farm for the rest of that century using the census records and street directories and it will be possible to crawl over the old rate books and get an idea of the value of the farm.

I even know that in the October of 1865 Mr Holland reported a case of cattle disease on his farm which
turned out to be “the only case in this division of the county.”*

And we do have the odd photograph of the farmhouse which had nine rooms making it a substantial building.

At Brook Farm, 1920s

But the evidence trail for the period after 1911 is more difficult to find and so Peter’s pictures and memories are important.

At which point I could become pompous and slide into a series of observations of how much of our collective past we let slip away.

But I won’t, instead I shall just thank Peter, promise more stories from his collection and just make the appeal for any more photographs or stories of the farm.

Which just leaves me to offer up a hostage to fortune and ponder on the building in the background of this picture of Peter's dad and Mr Boden at the farm.

I think it is the rear of the Bowling Green which when our photograph was taken was still relatively new having replaced the old one which dated back to the 18th century.

So there I have said it and await the comments.

Pictures; from the collection of Peter McLoughlin

*Manchester Times Saturday October 28, 1865

In Blackheath in the summer of 1977

Now there is a story here about the history of the postal service.

But that is for another day.  For now I shall ponder on what Tranquil Vale in Blackheath looked like in the summer of 1977.

Just a decade before I had whiled away many happy hours in the bookshop opposite the Crown, and a bit before that as a very junior member of the Charlton Park Rugby Club had spent my fair share of money in that pub on a Saturday after the game.

Not that my sporting career was either very long or distinguished.  It had started when a PE teacher at Samuel Pepys suggested that some of us might like to progress from school rugby to club rugby.

I think I lasted half a season having spent most of the games pummeled by the opposition which was the lot of a 15 year old turning out against men in their 40s.

And all of which is a diversion from our picture, which  is not so different from today.

Of course in the intervening forty-nine years, the House of Tranquility and Two Steps have gone, but the pub is still there, although I do have to confess that I was a tad disappointed when we visited the Crown a year or so ago.

It had gone the way of so many and become open plan and had lost something of the intimacy I remember when you could wander off into small rooms and hide from the curious.

Nor to my mind does the outside seating do much for me.

But then it is easy to judge a place from the high ground of nostalgia, so I shall shut up and ponder on the story of Blackheath’s postal history which with the help of my friend Jean I shall return to later.

Picture; from the collection of Jean Gammons

When Mr. Bradshaw ignored All Saints Church on Blackheath

You would have to be pretty mean spirited to ignore that church on the heath.

It stands on the southern edge of Blackheath, was described by Pevsner as looking like a model, surrounded on all sides by grass* and has links to Sir Arthur Sullivan and Gustav Holst.

Not that Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building. **

For those who don’t know, Mr. Bradshaw compiled railway timetables and guides to Britain and beyond, the first of which came out just eight years after the first passenger railway company had started conveying people and goods from Manchester to Liverpool.  And before that he had published his “Maps of Inland Navigation” which described the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

And despite dying in 1852 Bradshaw’s Guides continued to be an essential part of many traveller’s possessions well into the 20th century.

I have dug out my London Guide book for 1862 and as you do turned to the five chapters devoted to south of the river, and in particular that one on Greenwich.**

Many of my childhood haunts are here, from Eltham where I grew up to Greenwich, Woolwich and Shooter’s Hill, including a reference to the Sun in the Sands.

But Blackheath is relegated to one sentence which leaves out 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 out of Greenwich Park and presented with just “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”. 

Perhaps Bradshaw’s researchers reckoned that All Saints Church was still too new to be worthy of a mention.  After all it had been opened just four years before the London guidebook became available, and construction work continued until 1867.

Still these pictures by Chrissy go a long way to correct Bradshaw’s omission.  They were posted last week on her excellent Facebook site devoted to photography. ****.

Location; Blackheath

Pictures; All Saints Church, Blackheath, London, 2023, from the collection of Chrissy Rose.

 *"Puginian … already old fashioned, ........ Remarkable for the way in which it is placed right into the heath. Surrounded on all sides by grass, it stands as if it were a model." Pevsner, Nikolaus 1983. The Buildings of England: London 2: South. pp. 412–413.

** Bradshaw’s Illustrated Hand Book to London And Its Environs even bothered to comment on the building, 1862

***Bradshaw’s Guides, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Bradshaw%27s%20Guides

**** The Photographic Gazette, https://www.facebook.com/groups/973270840174059