OK let the Chorlton Arts Festival begin …….*

Last night saw the launch of our own arts festival.

It has been a feature of Chorlton’s cultural life for 24 years and yesterday evening’s event was a mix of speeches, music and lots of fun.

The speeches were short, the music from the choir was uplifting and artists, poets, musicians and writers celebrated together the start of another community-based arts festival.

And much fun was had.

To be followed by even more fun with over 200 events across Chorlton from May 8th to May 21st, in pubs, cafes, church halls and schools.

All of which will mean there will be something for everyone and as ever they celebrate our own community talent.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Celebrating our own arts festival, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Arts Festival, https://chorltonartsfestival.org/

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe” ......... May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day and “the end of the German War”

Homecoming, Bellville, autumn 1945

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe.”

Even now that one line entry in a diary has a profound effect on me.

It was written in the late evening of May 8th 1945, at the end of the first day of peace in Europe.*

For some it had been a riotous night of fun, dancing and abandonment, for others a time of quiet reflection on the cost of six years of a hard war.

I don’t know what my parents and grandparents did on that night.  Nana I expect spent some of it thinking of her son who was buried in a cemetery in Thailand and must also have wondered what her native Germany would be like.

She had been born in Cologne a city which like so many was now a desert of rubble, wrecked streets and shattered lives.

Granddad no doubt was in a pub while mum and dad would have been celebrating in their different ways.

It is of course an event fast fading from living memory and will soon join the experiences of those who lived through the Great War as a piece of history only now visited through the films, books, memorials and personal accounts of that earlier conflict.

Celebration, Hallstead Avenue, Chorlton, May 1945

And so here are just a few images of the days following the end of the conflict in Europe.

During the spring of 1945 it was clear that the war was drawing to a close.

In March the Western Allies had crossed the Rhine in to Germany and in April the Red Army was in Berlin.

The death of Hitler on April 30th moved things on and on May 7th in the early hours of the morning the German army in the west surrendered.

Despite no immediate official announcement the news spread that the war was over and later in the day the Government confirmed that Germany had surrendered and that May 8th would be a national holiday and designated it Victory in Europe Day.

The Manchester Guardian reported that here in the city,

“At ten o'clock Albert Square had become a great dancing floor, upon which partnerships were formed on a free and easy plan. Music came from the town hall and reached the crowd through loudspeakers. 

Homecoming, Belleville, 1945

A popular prank was to climb on to the roofs of the air-raid shelters to dance - probably it was the men of the navy who began it. 

But whoever set the example found abundant followers, and presently the girls of the WAAF and the ATS showed a readiness to participate. Without ceremony dozens of them were hauled to the top amid a good deal of cheering. 

Fireworks were occasionally thrown into the air, and there was an unexpected supply of paper hats, streamers, confetti and other carnival accessories which, after years of a paper famine, would have been thought to be unobtainable.” *

And across the country and beyond celebrations were planned and carried out.

I am not sure that our own celebrations happened on that night.

Reunion, Belleville, 1945

These were spontaneous events and what was clearly a formal sit down affair needed planning.

I have every confidence that someone will have recorded the evening in their diary and we will learn the date and perhaps something of the mood in the school hall.

The Government had already said that

“Bonfires will be allowed, but the government trusts that only material with no salvage value will be used.” 

And that “until the end of May you may buy cotton bunting without coupons, as long as it is red, white or blue, and does not cost more than one shilling and three pence a square yard.” 

Strangely for such a momentous event the expressions on the faces of the group seem sombre.

A party, School Hall, Chorlton Green, May 1945

There are a few who are smiling and some who look slightly baffled but the rest just stare back at the camera.

Perhaps the time lag between the victory news and the celebration party was enough for the euphoria to wear off, or maybe uppermost in many people’s minds was the sacrifice in treasure, lives and lost time.

I remember an old friend from Ashton-Under-Lyne  saying to me that her abiding memory of the war was how it "had robbed her of a good six years of  my life.

Instead "of just growing up and having the sort of fun a teenager should have there was always anxiety. 

You were worried about your own safety and that of your family and the knowledge that any boy you grew fond of might be killed.”

And that is perhaps the moment to close.

Pictures; Chorlton in 1945 from the Lloyd collection and homecoming of the Prince Edward Hasting Regiment, Belleville Ontario, autumn 1945 from the collection of Mike Dufresne.

*Manchester Gurdian May 9 1945

In Jubilee Cottages behind the High Street in the spring of 1851

The High Street, with Fry's Buildings 1858-73

Jubilee Cottages were one of those places I wish I had been able to visit but I missed them by just seven years.

They were built in 1833 and demolished in 1957 to make way for an extension to Hinds and the playground of the old village school.*

In the 1830s they were owned by John Fry and appear on official maps as Fry’s Buildings but have always been known as Jubilee Cottages because they were built in the year that the Reverend Shaw Brooke celebrated his fiftieth year as vicar of Eltham.

Now I have haven’t seen a picture of them but they were five roomed cottages with “three up and two down”** and were occupied by a mix of families most of whom earned their living as tradesmen or labourers, including a butcher, dressmaker, two cordwainers, a baker, three carpenters and eight labourers.

Ram Alley, 1909

As such they were typical of the inhabitants of smaller properties tucked away off the High Street, and like those of Ram Alley and Sun Yard disappeared in the early years of the 20th century.

Those in Sun Yard were a row of cottages lying at the rear of the Sun Inn and approached by an archway formed by the inn’s buildings.

They were condemned as unfit and demolished by the time that the historian R.R.C, Gregory came to write about them.

Of course what makes all of them fascinating is that through the census returns, the tithe schedule and rate books we know who lived in them.

Like Thomas and Caroline Evans who are listed as living in one of the middle houses of Jubilee Cottages in 1844 and were still there in the spring of 1851.

He described himself as a gardener and in that spring of 1851 they had three children, all born in the property.

Thomas himself was born in Eltham and baptized in St John’s in 1813, and in 1891 he and Caroline are still in Eltham in one of the alms houses.

Baptismal record of Thomas Evans, 1813, St John's

And more about both of them and the other residents of Jubilee Cottages, Sun Yard, and Ram Alley another time.

*Hinds was the departmental store built in 1934, and the village school was the new National School opened in 1868 and now called Eltham Church of England School on Roper Street.

**1911 census

Location; Eltham, London

Pictures, detail of Eltham High Street from the OS map of Kent, 1858-73 First Edition, and Ram Alley, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm,

Mr. Taylor’s very old cottage ……….. on the edge of the meadows

Now I am back with a familiar picture which has appeared before on the blog.

Mr. Taylor's cottage, date unknown

The caption just says, “old cottage near the meadows, Chorlton-cum-Hardy”, and to add to the lack of detail the image is undated.  

I might be able to track down when the image was first used by the Reaud picture postcard company, because we do have a catalogue number.

Trying to locate exactly where it was continues to be a challenge, but I think we are on what is now Brookburn Road, with the Bowling Green Hotel roughly behind us on what is now a new build, but was once the United Servicemen’s Club.*

The footprint of the cottage conforms to a property shown on the OS map for 1894, and is similar to ones which show up on earlier maps from 1854, back to 1818.

The cottage opposite the Bowling Green Inn

During the 1840s, it was home to a John Taylor who had been born in Chorlton in 1784, and gave his occupation as an agricultural labourer.  

The cottage was owned by the executors of John Renshaw who had an extensive property portfolio across the township, including Renshaw’s Buildings which were on the site now occupied by the Royal Oak Hotel.

By 1851 Mr. Taylor was still in a Renshaw property but had moved to a house in Martledge.

Judging by the census return from that year he was still working, although does appear to being sharing the home with a Mary Taylor who was six years younger and described herself as a “laundress”.

In time it will be possible to track some of the other residents, and determine when the house was demolished which I think may be the mid 1920s.

I have always been fascinated by this picture, particularly because it offers up an image of cottages which had once been typical of the properties in the township and may date back to the late 18th century.**

It looks to be larger than some labourer’s homes, which were one up one down, and it has space for a cottage garden.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; “old cottage near the meadows, Chorlton-cum-Hardy”, undated, from the Lloyd Collection, and its location from the Tithe map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1845

* That club on Brookburn Road in Chorlton ....... and a fascinating find  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/08/that-club-on-brookburn-road-in-chorlton.html

**A property roughly in the right place shows up on Yate’s map of 1786.

So this is 1968 and we are looking up towards St Peter’s Square

I have to admit it is a scene which is very familiar and like all good pictures from the past I seem to remember it as monochrome.

Of course that doesn’t make sense but as hard as I try I can’t picture it in colour.

It is just one of those things.

And there will be plenty of others who instantly recognise the scene, even down to the fashionable dress and hairstyle of the young woman on the right.

The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".*

And almost a century later I was pretty much on the same spot and chose to replicate the shot.

Of course at the time I had no idea that someone back in 1968 had stood where I was and taken a picture.

I bet even then the photographer would have had to be careful of the traffic while I had a clear run given that back in 2016 the road was closed as the finishing touches were being made to the tram line in readiness for the Second City Crossing.

Today I wouldn't dream of standing in the middle of the road, taking my time and then taking a picture.

The trams pass that spot with a frequency that means at best I might just get a shot in but I doubt it and that as they say is progress.

Still at least I can turn in a bright colour image.

And that just leaves you to record the differences.

Location Manchester

Picture; of looking towards St peter’s Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and almost the same spot in 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542

Stories from Middle Europe in the 1920s & 30s ........ Joseph Roth ....... on the wireless

Joseph Roth was a a journalist and author and to my shame someone who I knew nothing about.

Joseph Roth, 1926

All of which meant that today's edition of In Our Time is a fascinating introduction to the man.

“Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the great writers on Central Europe after the first world war and on the dying of the old orders with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire.

As a German speaking Jew from Brody in the north-eastern edge of that Empire, which was then in Galicia, next in Poland and is now in Ukraine, Roth (1894 - 1939) was to spend his short life moving first to Lviv then to Vienna and finally to Paris via Berlin without ever finding a settled home.

Roth explored the loss of homeland and anticipated the dangers of the new nationalism through his journalism and in his novels including Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion and Flight Without End, and his books were among the first the Nazis burned.

With Helen Chambers, Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St Andrews, Deborah Holmes Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg, and Jon Hughes Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson”

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; Joseph Roth, 1926, source, http://cambridgeforecast.wordpress.com/2006/09/, posted in Joseph Roth, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Roth

*Joseph Roth, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002vyjt

That lost magical Chorlton playground ... a man called Gabbott .... and the Curnon Steam Meter

 For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated by a patch of land just a little to the north of Chorlton Brook.

That assemblage of old buildings, circa 1990s

Long after the Barlow Moor Road side had been developed with the cinema, a factory and a row of houses it stubbornly refused to be developed.

Instead, it remained a collection of wooden buildings which by the 1970s had become overgrown and were a mecca for kids who were drawn to the isolated spot as much as for the potential for adventures by the brook.

And as if to signal its presence there was at the entrance an old petrol pump.

Even more odd was that it was reached by walking up Claude Road and was positioned at that point where the road does a right turn, heading west, and then south into the Ville.

Claude Road, 1969

Over the years I picked up the stories from people who played there and wondered with the occupants of 45 or 47 Claude Road which stan either side of the entrance had any knowledge of its history, its use or its owner.

And then sometime in the 1990s the site was cleared, and a row of town houses were built with the un Chorlton name of Rainbow Close.

I always assumed they had been workshops but never pursued the story until this week when Doreen and Rob Lizar lent me a series of pictures they had taken of the buildings, before and during their demolition along with the name of the man who owned the land.  This was a Mr. Gabbot who owned and rented out no. 45 Claude Road which ran along the north site of plot.

Rainbow Close, circa 1990s

The pictures are of course a fascinating piece of our history for a set of buildings which will soon fade from living memory.

But added to the photographs was a trade card for Curnon Engineering Co, at Claude Road Works Chorlton cum Hardy, featuring the Curnon Steam Meter.

And a search of the record brought up that “Curnon Engineering was started by Edgar Parr Gabbott and his grandson is still about. Chas Cook made the steam meter for Curnon while Mr Gabbott was away in France during the First World War but the arrangement seems to have continued until the 1940s”.*

To which that go to guide for all things industrial and machine, Graces Guide to British Industrial History offers up pictures of the machine, a poster, and two addresses for what I assume were the offices of the company. In 1911 these were at 5 John Dalton Street and in 1913 185 Princess Street.**

Curnon Steam Meter, undated

And from the two sites I now know that a Curnon Steam Meter, recorded “accurately the flow of steam in any size of pipe, under any conditions of working, at any degree of superheat, without causing any throttling or necessitating any disturbance of the pipe-line” and was proudly advertised as a British Made Steam Meter”.***

Curnon trade directory, undated

Their offices at 5 John Dalton Street were in the impressive Queens Chambers on the corner of Deansgate.  

It is still there and back in 1911 housed 38 companies and societies over 4 floors, including solicitors, estate agents, accountants and industrial businesses, with the Manchester Sunday School Union, the Manchester & Salford Women’s Trade and Labour Council one of whose secretaries was Miss. Eva Gore-Booth and the National Industrial and Professional Women’s Suffrage Society.

Oddly Curnon are not listed in the trade directory for 1911, and so may have moved in during the course of the year.

This makes sense given that they were according to the trade card established in 1910.

As yet despite a search of company records, I can’t find a clue to when they closed down although thee is a suggestion of 1940s. 

But Rob and Doreen remembered Mr. Gabbott who on a whim would take out his red sports car and drive around Chorlton.

Tracking him down proved relatively easy.  He was born in 1886, and in 1911 described himself as an “Engineering Agent, Scientific Apparatus” and was self-employed.  Having lived in Withington by 1921 he was living with his aged parents at 45 Claude Road, listing his occupation as “Inventor and Maker of Stream Meters and Recording Instrument”.

That pump, 1972

Now sometime in the 1920s the offices for Curnon Engineering are listed at 45 Claude Road, with the earliest date I can find as 1925.

And I can also date the house to sometime between 1900 and 1903 which I think means he will have established the Claude Road Works no earlier than 1903 and no later than the early 1920s.

He died in Sale in 1970 at 16 Beaufort Avenue, leaving £12629, although it is unclear who to.

I wonder if his “Small General Engineering Business” which he described the firm on the 1939 Register was turned over to war essential work but that may be a search too far.

By the 1960s my friend Ann was sketching the site and recorded that at least one of the buildings had been taken over by the Park Motor Company offering up another line of research.

And there may even be people out there who can help with when Mr. Gabbot’s firm closed down.

We shall see.

The Park Motor Co, 1960

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; before, during and after the demolition of the former Curnon Engineering Company’s buildings, circa 1900 and the trade card for Curnon Engineering Co, undated, from the collection of Rob and Doreen Lizar, Claude Road, 1969,  Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY , street furniture on Claude Road, 1972, m58833, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pas and Park Motor Company, circa 1960 courtesy of Ann Love

* Curnon Engineering Co, https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/people/cp147507/curnon-engineering-company

**Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Curnon_Steam_Meter_Co

*** Poster for the Curnon Steam Meter, 1913, Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History from Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History