Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out of the Pireaus,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate was simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small ,the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives is replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of l cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes.  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Buying your meat from Mr Unsworth of 2 Chorlton Green in 1909 .... Chorlton's corner shop nu 10

The caption on the picture just says “James Unsworth’s butcher shop on the corner of the Green Albermarle Road.  This shop later became and still is a barbers shop. Private photograph, origin unknown.”

Now I remember it as a barber’s shop, regularly visiting it during the 70s and 80s and even taking my eldest.

Bob who had the business when I went there had been born in Chorlton and had plenty of stories about the place.

I can date the picture from sometime after 1903 and before 1911.

This I can be certain of because back in 1903 the terrace of three shops and houses had yet to be built and from at least 1911 this butcher’s shop was run by Mr Mark Glazerbrook who was recorded in the directories from the start of 1911 at no 2 Chorlton Green.

A decade earlier he had been helping his father run the family butcher’s shop in Railway Street in Ardwick, and in 1910 he married Lillian Carr.

So just perhaps this was their first married home.

That said within another ten years he was trading in Reddish all of which points to the high turnover of some of these small family businesses.

Mr Unsworth was at number 2 in 1909 when his neighbours were Ernest Bugler, cycle maker at number 4 and Stanley Moss, grocer at number 6.

Two years later both James and Mr Moss had moved on.

I don’t suppose we should be surprised for back in the early 20th century there were plenty of butchers, grocers and green grocers in close proximity in Chorlton and competition must have been fierce.

Just opposite was Whittaker’s the grocers and up along Beech Road there were more grocery and butchers shops with even more across the green and behind.

And that is about it except to say I got through the story without commenting on the meat on display in the open air, the sand on the shop floor or  Mr Unsworth’s long knife.

On the other hand, here is the shop in 1979, when those of us who wanted a haircut and a good natter would call in at Bob's.

And that really is it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; of Mr Unsworths' shop circa 1909 from the Lloyd collection and Bobs's in 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Eltham High Street ......... looking for Mr Brown

Now, it is so easy to get lost in an old picture of Eltham.

Eltham Village, date unknown

This is one that my friend Tricia found and posted recently.

The caption says Eltham Village and the post mark on the back is 1904.

That said I think the photograph maybe much older, given that the picture has been heavily retouched.

It is a familiar one showing the old brewery and the High Street.

And as you do I went looking for clues, and there on the corner of the wall on the southern side is a shop sign for Thomas Brown.

The shop of Mr Thomas Brown

This usually offers up a way of anchoring the scene in a time, because Mr Brown should show up on a census return and a street directory.

But he doesn’t.

There is a Thomas Brown and this one lives on Eltham High Street but in the 1880s and 90s he was residing in Sun Yard and gave his occupation variously as a road labourer and gardener.

Nor did he appear to have a son called Thomas.

The earliest street directories I can access are from 1914 and no shop keeper called Thomas Brown appears on the list.

That said I did discover that four doors up from the old Chequers pub were the “dining rooms” run by a Mr Charles Wollard who was still there four years later.

His near businesses included a cycle manufacturer, a watch maker, two confectioners, an oilman, a linen draper, and Mrs Alice Brotherton’s refreshment rooms.

Eltham Brewery

I will in due course go looking for Mr Wollard’s dining rooms which may have been a cut above his rival.  Mrs Alice’s premise were a modest affair and no doubt consisted just of the front room of her five roomed house.

She was there from 1911 and it may well have been a way of making an income after her husband who was a parish road builder had died.

They had lived just over the road in Jubilee Cottages and it would be nice to think that some of her neighbours might have dropped in or that she had a small order delivered from the brewery opposite

Of course that is just fanciful tosh and gets me no nearer a date for the picture postcard, which does not even provide the name of the manufacturer of the card.

Still it is a nice picture and I thank Tricia for finding it.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Village, circa 1904 from the collection of Tricia Leslie

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 20 ............. Market Place

New Cathedral Street, 2016

Now I like the way that history has a habit of repeating itself.

So here is New Cathedral Street which runs from Market Street to Exchange Square.

Like me there will be many who remember it being cut in the 1990s following the IRA bomb.

But I had totally forgotten that less than a century ago there was a similar thoroughfare that pretty much followed the same route from Market Street towards the Cathedral.

Market Place, 1900

Back then it was called Market Place and continued as Old Millgate before joining Cateaton Street at Cathedral Gates.

In the 1850s a stroll down the two streets would have taken you past the Wellington Inn, the Black Boy and the Falstaff Taverns, as well as offering up the Fish Market, Fruit Market and the Poultry and Meat Market.

A full fifty years later and while some of the buildings and their usage might have changed the route was still as narrow and twisty leading to the Old Shambles.

And for those of a more adventurous or careless approach  running parallel was a short stretch of Corporation Street which gave access to a string of tiny streets and courts with names like Bull’s Head Yard, Blue Boar Court Sun Entry and Paradise Court.

Market Place, 1851

Now none of those have been recreated, they sit under the new Marks and Spencer and Selfridge stores.

But armed with a few old maps and with a bit of imagination you can at least walk along New Cathedral Street and the ghost of Market Place.

And of course at certain times of the year when the outdoor Markets have come to town there is that added bit of interest from the stalls which might just give up a flavour of the area as it was in the past.

Location; Manchester

Picture, New Cathedral Street, 2016, & Market Place, 1900, from Goad’s Fire Insurance Maps, and in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 16 down along Scotland by the Irk

Now I wonder how many people who live in the high rise blocks of flats on Scotland have much knowledge of its past.

Scotland, 2016

It is one of those odd streets in Manchester which run down from Red Bank following the bend in the river Irk.

I first came across it in the late 1970s when the old slums that had once dominated Red Bank had vanished leaving just a vast expanse of empty space waiting for something to happen.

Once the area had been a dense warren of streets home to part of the Jewish Community who had settled here and across in Strangeways.

To the west just over Ducie Street was the Workhouse and to the south the river and the railway lines of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

Scotland, 1851

In the 1890s looking out from the row of back to back houses that ran along Scotland its residents were just a short walk from a tannery, the Red Bank Spring and Axel Works and a shed load of small workshops.

Go back just fifty years and you could have added a piggery, lime pits, timber yard and a rope works to the industrial scene.

In time I shall go looking for the inhabitants of Scotland, trawling the census returns for the details of their lives, although I doubt that any will appear in the directories.   In 1911 Salter’s Directory never bothered to include it in the list of streets which says a lot of the level of poverty of the area.

All of which will be in direct contrast today.

Pictures; Scotland, 2016 from the collection of Antony Mills, and Scotland, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Will those responsible ……… return the drinking fountain to the Rec on Beech Road

It is one of those silly stories which started with a couple of pictures of the Rec in the early morning.

Early morning on the Rec, 2021

And progressed through to a newspaper report from September 1897 of an ordinary meeting of the Withington Urban District Council at which Mr. Burgess “intimated that a gentleman in Manchester, whose name he would not at present mention, had offered to give a drinking fountain to be placed in Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.*

I had been looking for information about the early years of the Recreation Ground on Beech Road.**

It had been opened in the May of 1896, and was gift form Lord Egerton of a strip of land which had for centuries been known as Row Acre.***

And here I went very  wrong, because so engrossed was I in the research that the fountain and the Rec came together and for a brief while I went searching for just where the drinking fountain might have been located on what is now called Beech Road Park.

Waiting for something to happen, 2021

All of which will allow Mr. Pedantic of Provis Road to mumble that the story is a nonsense, and artificially connects pictures of the Rec on a Tuesday morning with the real drinking fountain which was on Chorlton Green.

And he would be right, leaving me to reflect on that earlier bit of public open space which is surrounded by two pubs, the old parish burial ground, the village school along with two former farm houses.

Today most of us think of Chorlton green as an open space of grass ringed by trees but this was not how it has always been.

Before the turn of the 19th century it may have been much bigger and indeed for most of that century was not even open to the people of the village, having been enclosed by Samuel Wilton and not returned to public use until the 1890s.

And then for a great stretch of time remained without grass but did have a pretty neat water fountain.

The Green, circa 1900

The picture dates from 1906 when the Horse and Jockey was still just a set of beer rooms on either side of the main door, Miss Wilton’s outhouse still jutted out from the building and the space between the main entrance and the sweet shop was still a private residence.

I have always liked the lamp which stands on the green, with its hint of Narnia.

And back in the May of 1986 I can remember walking past it in the early evening and coming across a string quartet playing around its base.  Today people would just take it in their stride mutter something about it being typically Chorlton, but back then it struck me as the promise of things to come.

Which later that night with the defeat of the Conservative candidate and the election of the first Labour Councillor it  indeed seem to herald something new.

But being a historian I have to own up to the fact that the following year the Conservatives were back but they were on borrowed time, and 1987 marked the final year that a Conservative would be elected from Chorlton to the Town Hall.

The year before may have been the first string quartet on the green but it has not been the last.

The drinking fountain, circa 190o

I have to say I prefer the grass but lament the loss of the fountain.  

First it lost its cups and then vanished sometime in the 1920s or 30s.  To my mind that was a loss.  Public fountains are wonderful places to meet people, spend time chatting and just having a drink on a hot day.

Once it would have been the village pump which offered all three and which on hot summer days had the added bonus of a place the kids could play.

Now there is a lot more history to explore in the photograph of the fountain but I rather think I will leave that for another time.

To which Michael Wood has added, "My recollection is that the fountain on the rec was located centrally outside the shelter, as on the attached snip from the georeferenced maps website showing OS 25” 1892-1914 series.  

It was the same design as was used in Chorlton Park near the tennis courts, a perfunctory iron structure with domed hoods over the outlets, operated by a button on top -  nothing like the elaborate ornamental feature on the Green.  Can’t find an image at the moment, but I could draw one!  

The Rec, 1914

They must have been a common municipal feature in their time, but by the mid-sixties they were semi-functioning or defunct. "

And I hope he does, as it is I never knew about the bandstand.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Rec very early on a Tuesday morning from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the drinking fountain on the green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection

*District Councils, Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1897

**Public Recreation Grounds at Withington, Manchester Guardian, May 18th, 1896

***Breaking News ……….. the Rec on Beech Road is officially opened, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/breaking-news-rec-on-beech-road-is.html

Shopping on Well Hall Road in the summer of 1907

Well Hall Parade in 1907

Now I am back with two more from Greenwich’s collection of old photographs.

They are both of Well Hall Road and are separated by just eight years.

Of the two the first offers up much more detail of what this row of shops looked like just over a century ago.

And it is a world away from today.

It starts with those ornate lamps protruding from the shop fronts which may have been lit by oil but I suspect will have been gas.

The chemist,  the fancy draper and the watchmaker, 1907

Then there are the large windows  with their iron frames which have just a hint of ornate decoration, which are topped by the names of the owners some of which will have been painted but others might have been etched on glass.

And finally there are the shop displays some of which adhere to that old Edwardian maxim of pile them high and sell them cheap.

Now I rather think it must either be a Sunday or early one morning as most of the shops have their blinds down, even though some have opened their large canopies.

On balance I would go for a Sunday afternoon sometime in the summer judging by the number of  pedestrians and the way the light is falling.

And for those with an even keener eye for detail there are no tram lines and of course a total absence of traffic bar the solitary horse and cart.

The caption says 1907 and assuming that there hasn’t ben a rapid turn over of shop keepers the shop on the corner with Greenvale Road opposite the Co-op was Mr William’s who was a cycle maker and seems to have left his shop signs propped up outside.

Little change in 1915 on Well Hall Road

And using the same street directory for 1908 it is possible to identify all the shops and their owners up to the chemists run by the London Drug Company.

Nor has much changed in the eight years that takes us up to the second picture taken in 1915.

By then the tram has arrived, there is a little more traffic which might just be explained by the fact that the shops are open and there are a fair few people about.

It is easy to forget that our parade of shops would have been as colourful as those of today and each would have displayed their names on the awnings which on this sunny day were pretty much all down.

Picture; Well Hall Road in 1907, GRW 378, and 1915, GWR380 http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php