Barlow Moor Road, Mrs Helen Burt and the postcard makers of Chorlton

It all began with this picture postcard and ended with a chance discovery.

The picture is remarkable enough but not an uncommon one of Barlow Moor Road some time in the first years of the 20th century or maybe even earlier.

To our right is the church and on the left what were still private residences.

The appearance of a photographer is still a bit of novelty judging by the way the three workmen are staring back at him.

Two have paused from pulling the hand cart while the third stands behind his ladders. In the distance is a policeman and even further away a tradesman’s cart.

Like many of these early pictures it has been taken on a summer’s morning when the light was good and there were fewer people about.

All of which makes it a magic moment captured when Barlow Moor Road was still a quiet and elegant place to live.

And that really might have been all there was to say.

A photograph which captures one of those moments taking us back to 1904 when the card was sent or perhaps even earlier.

But of course that isn’t all there is.  On the reverse is an enigmatic message which leaves the romantic and the detective in me wandering down countless avenues of speculation.  Chris had “arrived here safely.  Mr and Mrs W [were] here [she] was having a good time and Joe was married on Fri to Mrs P.  Don’t say anything.”

Now how could you not ponder on that, and in the fullness of time weave all sorts of stories?  But the historian in me stops short of such unhistorical thinking after all as Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times reflecting on teaching children reminds me “Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service ...... This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.”

And yes there is one fact and it is that the card was published or perhaps taken by H Burt of Chorlton.  I checked the directories for a photographer by the name of Burt and even pondered on whether he might have been a newsagent or stationer.  After all the Lloyd family who ran the post office on Upper Chorlton Road sold their own postcards. But it led nowhere.

The only Burt was Harry Trevethhan Burt who opened his family business in Chorlton in 1895 and traded from the shop on Wilbraham Road until 2011.  His is fascinating story not least because he was a farmer’s son from Sussex who’s farther farmed 130 acres of land.  Harry trained at Kendal and Milne’s in Manchester before opening his own shop here in Chorlton.  There will be many who have fond memories of that shop.

But it is the fact that the Burt name appears on the postcard which interests me and looking through the collection I discovered a number which variously had “Published by Mrs H. Burt, Chorlton-cum-Hardy” or “H Burt Stationers.”

Helen Burt was the wife of Harry and described herself as a “Stationers shopkeeper” on the 1901 census.

So while Harry was building a family business which would last a century Helen was marketing postcards from just across the road from 1903 and most likely 1901.

All of which makes perfect sense but was something I had never clocked and in turn led me to look more closely at the small print on the back of the cards.

And here alongside the big companies were other names like the Lloyd family and Baylis, photographers of 49 Wilbraham Road and 26 Edge Lane as well as  W. A. Cooper of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Harold Clarke of 83 Clarence Road.

Now a part from Harold Clarke who was working in the 1920s and 30s all the others come from that early pioneering period of photography. And there is really something exciting in discovering just how many people were engaged capturing the images and selling them on.

All of which leads me to conclude that a whole new avenue of research has opened up all thanks to Helen Burt and her postcard of Barlow Moor Road.  And that is not all because Helen I now discover was another of those traders who offered a private lending library and that opens up even more Chorlton history.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Picture; from the Lloyd collection and St Clements Bazaar Handbook for 1928

A little bit of retail history ………. in the Arndale

Now I have never lost my liking for this bit of early 21st century retail technology.

It is in part the quirky shape, and the bold colours which I know someone will point out was less silly and more the demands of  logical technical design.

But I liked it, and now its gone.

Location; the Arndale, Manchester

Picture; Retail furniture, Manchester, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 1, reflections

Well Hall Road and our house 2014

The story of one house over a century and a bit.*

2015 was the birthday of the house we lived in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

So this will be the start of a series of stories about the house which next year will celebrate its centenary.

Now despite spending most days digging deep into the past and uncovering the lives of those who interest me I have to confess that the people who occupied our house for the first forty-nine years are unknown to me.

But their lives will span the two world wars, along with the uncertain years that followed the end of the first war and the growing prosperity that came in the decades after 1945.

In the garden 1964

And more than anything it will be about the house and how it changed from a fairly basic but well built early 20th century property to one which was adapted to the growth in consumer products, central heating and the revolution in leisure.

So when we moved in in 1964, there was still a water heater which had been run off a solid fuel stove, the kitchen possessed just two power points and the windows were the originals that had come with the house in 1915.

The first residents would have gone off to work on the tram, and no doubt welcomed the new Well Hall Odeon which offered up evenings of excitement and was far closer than the first picture house up along the High Street.

And on those fine warm summer evenings there would still have been plenty of open spaces to enjoy.

The real discoveries will also be in just how their lives in the late 1920s and 30s matched and contrasted with those of the people I so often deal with who lived in the north  in the more challenged old industries of textiles, coal mining and ship building.

So it is all there to search out, and on the way I am well aware that George, Jean and Chrissie will be on hand to offer up their memories of their bit of Well Hall and Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1964  and Chrissie Rose 2015

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

When me and Leonardo da Vinci walked the same way

Yep ….. it is a little-known fact that me and that Italian master of all things were vegetarians. *

Roast peppers

That said some clever traveller of obscure knowledge will correct me with arguing he merely advocated it.

Either way it got me reflecting on my choice which I took over four decades ago.

There wasn’t one burning reason for giving up meat it just happened and I have never missed meat or fish nor regretted the decision.

And in so doing I have discovered those great meatless cuisines of the world which have their roots in an abhorrence to eating living things and the more basic one that in most peasant communities’ meat was a very expensive item, and almost out of reach of many.

I can’t say I have been a vociferous advocate but when challenged I have stepped up to the mark.

And of challenges there have been many.  Most are cheap jibes thrown out in expectation that they are witty and clever comments but are in fact banal uttered by people who would be better employed cataloguing their collection of dried worms.

Moreover, they miss the rich variety of dishes that are out there.

Pasta, garlic and chilli

My favourites are invariably those from southern Italy an area which as late as the 1960s was far poorer than the northern regions of the country.

Pasta and beans

Roasted peppers, aubergines cooked in a heap of different ways and those old staples of pasta, beans and chickpeas.

Of all these my go to choice is simply pasta and olive oil with perhaps a bit of garlic and chilli thrown in and sometimes some homemade tomato sauce.

And what I find amusing is that it is often the deriding meat eaters who fall on these dishes.  Which takes me back to an event many years ago.  

We were in the Sangam in Didsbury and sharing our table were a mix of meat eaters and vegetarians, and by bad luck the vegetarian starters came first, which everyone fell upon and all pronounced excellent.  

Sadly, the arrival of the meat starters left some of us with nothing more to eat and reduced to watching.  The added insult was the comment from one meat eater that she was finding it difficult to finish her starters because of the number of our dishes she had already consumed.

                                                             Green beans

At which point I should really launch into a description of the history of vegetarianism but it is out there for all to read.*

Instead, I will venture into that dark area of convenience foods and share my own non animal convenience.  I don’t eat many but will when lazy fall on those alternative sausage and burgers.  It’s not that I am wanting pretend meat it’s just simply that they are quick.

It was as George who ran Sunflowers on Beech Road once said to me, “why should meat eaters have all the convenience foods”.

Tivall convenience

Location; where ever there are vegetarians

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*History of vegetarianism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

The lost canal ….Bert’s Café …. and the Coach and Horses ….. views across Minishull Street fifty years ago

This was one of my familiar views of the Manchester I knew in the 1970s.

Looking towards Minishull Street, 1979

To my left was the tower block of the College of Commerce which some of us affectionately called The College of Knowledge but which had just joined the Art School and John Dalton to become Manchester Polytechnic.

Over to the right was the Fire Station and Police Station on Whitworth Street West. Leaving just the tall buildings of the British Rail office block and the swirling S bend pile which was more glass than wall.

Lost view of Minishull Street, 1979

And for those really in the know hidden behind the hoardings in the first picture was Bert’s café and Placemate that night club which had once been home to the Twisted Wheel.

To which there was the Coach and Horses on London Road which my Pubs of Manchester Past and Present tells me "was originally an artisan's house with a workshop on the top floor.  It ended its life as a Tetley house at the bottom of Piccadilly Approach on the corner of Upton Street".*

We would sometimes cross the car park from the college and spend an evening in there, ostensibly discussing the next essay but quicky ending up on the football machine drinking from those old-fashioned straight glasses.

Go back to 1850, and the spot from which the pictures were taken and this was Coal Yard of the Bridgewater Canal Company, supplied by an arm of the Rochdale Canal.  The canal still exits running beside Canal Street and running  eventually in one direction to the Dale Street Basin and  Castlefield in the other.

That canal arm, 1850

But the arm which also nudged Little Davis Street has long gone.  It was still there in 1950 and may well have been filled in when the College of Knowledge was built in the 1960s.

Leaving me just to reflect that for a while the Poly occupied the warehouse which once abutted the arm of the canal while I have written about Little David Street and some of the people who lived there.*

The Rochdale Canal with the vanished arm to the right, 1980

I could again explore that history from the 1850s but instead will settle on Bert’s Café which remains with me over 50 years after we frequented the place, eating Bert’s sausage sandwiches and swapping stories of the night before.

Given that it was just a few minutes’ walk from the College and we were the archetype students, we would put a morning breakfast over the first lecture of the day. 

The place consisted of just one room with a serving hatch from which Bert delivered the orders which mainly consisted of chips with egg, or bacon or sausage with a variation of these in sandwiches.  The bread was white, the spread marg and the coffee was hot milk with a hint of the brown stuff.

In the winter the windows were always steamed up and in the summer the door was permanently open but had those plastic-coloured strips which rustled in the wind and were a concession to privacy.

The view, 2025

Location Minishull Street

Pictures, looking towards Minishull Street, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the arm of the Rochdale Canal,  1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the view in 2025, courtesy of Google Maps

*Pubs of Manchester Past and Present, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/01/coach-horses-london-road.html

** Little David Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Little+David+

Chorlton’s mysterious eight ………. and an insight into our past

Now the history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy just keeps giving.

“Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H”

So I am back looking again at eight paintings which were loaned to me by Julie Gaskell.

Each is of a time before now and range across Chorlton, from the small hamlet of Hardy across to the southern end of the old village and back along what is now Beech Road and east toward Hough End Hall.

And they include wattle and daub cottages, the smithy, as well as the old Bowling Green pub, and Barlow Hall.

The artist is unnamed, but I think they are by J Montgomery who painted a huge number of Chorlton scenes from sometime in the 1940s through to the mid-1960s.  

He remains a bit of a mystery with no one owning up to have known him.  Manchester Libraries who hold a collection of his paintings have no biographical information on him.

“Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy”

But with the help of Andy Robertson, I am fairly confident he lived in Chorlton, and pretty much only painted scenes of the township.

The quality of his work is erratic, but together they offer up images of what Chorlton was like in the 19th century.

Some look to be imaginative reconstruction loosely based on photographs while most seem to be a faithful reproduction taken from picture postcards.

So the painting “Ale House in 1618 at Hough End Hall before Hough End Hall was built” drifts into pure speculation and is historically inaccurate given that our Hough End Hall was built in the 1590s.

In the same way “Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H” is quite clearly based on at least one photograph from the late 19th century. 

As is “Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy” which is Sutton’s Cottages which stood on the present site of the Launderette bar and restaurant.  The cottage dates from sometime in the 18th century and was demolished in the early 1890s.

"Barlow Hall, view from the meadows"

Others “Hough End Hall Old Hall or Manor House of Manchester” resemble photographs I have seen to suggest they are fairly accurate.

An even “Pitts Brow Edge Lane where new church and Stockton Range now stand” for which there will be no photographic evidence might be a mix of the artist’s imagination and descriptions which appeared in T Ellwood’s History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy which appeared over 26 weeks in the South Manchester Gazette between the winter of 1885 and the spring of the following year.

So there you have it ….. eight mystery paintings most of which look to be based on old photographs, some of which have themselves been lost, and take us back to that rural Chorlton of the mid 19th century.

"Behind the Smithy, Beech Road C c H"

In some cases, it is difficult to guarantee their accuracy, but using maps, and written records I think we can be confident that we are almost back to the Chorlton cum Hardy of the 1850s.

Leaving me just to say the eight look to be reproductions of originals, have been laminated and framed.

So thank you Julie who spotted them in a shop and had to buy all eight.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, eight paintings, by an unknown artist, courtesy of Julie Gaskell.

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

A token issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141