Electronica Powiśle …… stories of past glories …… and a solution to the question what to do with that power station?

 It’s an interesting question and makes for a lively debate about what we do with old and redundant buildings.

Industrial relic, 2026

Of course, in the past and sometimes even now the simple answer is to knock’em down and start again.

Old and new Whitworth Street, 1979

The Victorians, and Edwardians no less than their 18th century predecessors had no compulsion but to demolish the old in favour of the new.

And arriving in Manchester in the late 1960s I watched as the same policy was carried through with furious abandon, from stately office blocks, and grand warehouses to heaps of terraced properties.  

What Mr. Hitler didn’t do, a collection of speculators, investors and city planners did, culminating with the Arndale Centre and the destruction of that warren of little streets, dark alleys and closed courts, with more than a few surprises . 

It was an event that the Manchester novelist Harold Jacobson described as the elimination of an “expanse of eight city blocks, a wealth of secret alleyways, and the associations of all our lifetimes". *

Now it is easy to be sentimental about the loss of some of these buildings which were long past their sell by date but others with a bit of imagination, money and taste can be saved and given a new purpose and lease of life.  

It might be a conversion into apartments or a public venue like Tate Modern in a former London power station, or the use of the old Pump House at Spinneyfields, to house The People’s History Museum or the stunning theatre in the Royal Exchange.

The past and present, looking towards London Road, 1979

All of which brings me to the rejuvenated Electronica Powiśle in Warsaw. The clue is in the name and its original use as a power station.

As its site says, here is “a unique space where history and modernity meet in one place. Choose what you truly enjoy – enter a world of exceptional brands, be surprised by the original flavors of our restaurants, or relax in one of our Day Spa & Wellness salons”. **

The history is pretty straightforward and began in 1904 with the construction of the power plant, “which was expanded in subsequent years, becoming one of the largest and most modern power plants in Poland”. ***

During the wartime occupation it “became the backdrop for the dramatic events of the Warsaw Uprising. [where] members of the resistance movement, primarily plant employees, worked tirelessly to maintain the city's power supply”.**

Industrial legacy, 2026

It closed in 2001 and its second coming started in 2016 when plans were developed to repurpose it into a Food Hall and retail venue.

Our Saul and Julia were keen to introduce us to the place and like other outlets in the city it was clean, interesting and busy.  And as they say the quality can be judged not by the tourist trade like us, but the number of local residents who dropped in for a meal. 

Later in the week we visited the amazing vegan Peaches restaurant in the Old Town but on that Friday we were out looking for a bit of fun and novelty and Electronica Powiśle supplied it.

Eating at Electronica Powiśle, 2026

And knowing we were getting some traditional Polish food later in the evening I went for a selection of Greek inspired food and given the sheer variety of what was on offer others in the group settled for everything from noodles, chips, and burgers to fish balls and rice.

But the real attraction for me were the left-over bits of industrial hardware which had been restored and gave a sense of what had once been here.

They are randomly distributed and offer a reminder to a building with history which has been saved.

Location; Elektrownia Powiśle, Dobra 42, 00-312, Warsaw

Pictures; Electronica Powiśle, Warsaw, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Jacobson, Harold, My Manchester, The Independent, December 30th, 1999

** Electronica Powiśle, https://elektrowniapowisle.com/en/

*** Electronica Powiśle, History, https://elektrowniapowisle.com/o-elektrowni/

Looking for the ghosts amongst the parish gravestones ……..

Now, anyone who has taken a stroll through the old parish graveyard of St Clement’s will agree that it is pleasant spot.

The old parish graveyard, 2012

It is sandwiched between the village green to the north and the Bowling Green to the south and offers up a selection of benches to sit and just enjoy the moment.

Added to which there is the history of the place, which starts with the footprint of the church and continues with a collection of gravestones, which record those who were buried here.

The church yard, circa 1870-1880

The earliest dates from 1748 and the last to 1903, and in between there are many whose names are familiar to me.  

Some were at the posh end of the community, but most were from families who made their living from the land, either as tenant farmers, agricultural labourers or in trades related to farming.

What might surprise the casual visitor is that those gravestones are just a fraction of the number which once crowded into the graveyard.

In total there were 345 such monuments, from the simple headstone to elaborate structures, and many held multiple internments.

Those 345 have yet to fade from living memory and are supported by a large number of photographs dating back into the late 19th century and as late as the 1970s.

Just how many people were buried here is difficult to say, and while an estimate can be made from the inscriptions on the gravestones, that will be a conservative estimate, given that some graves were reused over the centuries.

Samuel and Sarah Nixon, 2012

The documentary evidence for this reuse is there in the newspaper reports of the “Great Burial Scandal" which first became official in 1881, when a group of Ratepayers, petitioned the Home Office with their concerns.

Chief of which was that “it is now difficult to tell where there is any land left for new graves, [and because] so many internments have taken place there is not 2ft of earth between the coffin and the surface.”*

There were also lurid tales of existing gravestones being broken up and thrown into the midden of the Bowling Green Hotel to allow new ones to be erected and worse still of bones and skulls appearing and being transported away in wheelbarrows.

The graveyard, 1976

Much more was revealed at the official Government inquiry opened by the Home Office in the November of 1881. 

One witness spoke of “human bones .... knocking about the highway. Only that morning a jawbone with teeth in had been picked up.” 

There were also past sextons who reported the difficulty in finding space to place a coffin and the ever-present danger of unearthing past burials. William Caldwell described how he regularly “disturbed human remains in digging” and once before he “could get down to any depth I smashed into another grave, and I was flooded by liquor and human remains.” **

All of which is an introduction to the Register of Grave Inscriptions of St Clement’s Old Churchyard, Chorlton Green.***

Register of Grave Inscriptions, 1975

It is a slim document running to just twenty pages but contains details of all 345 gravestones.  Alas some are illegible, but there are enough to offer up a comprehensive picture of those that lived here from the mid-18th century through to the end of the following century.

And when combined with the smaller list from the Wesleyan Chapel along with the parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials it is possible to build a picture of the township.

It is a booklet I keep coming back to and one that can still shock me, like the inscription for the Swarbrick family that records that George and his wife Harriet, buried seven of their children between 1817 and 1836.  

The youngest Elizabeth died just two months after she was born, while William was seven years old.  Their parents had been born in the late 18th century and would live on till 1871 and 1874, although by then they were no longer living here.

There is more but that is for another day.

Suffice to say that the inscriptions were collected in the 1970s, in advance of the landscaping of the former graveyard, and sadly the loss of most of the historic gravestones.

Plan showing the original headstones, 1975

The bodies had already been removed in the 1930s.

But we do have a plan of where the original headstones which will allow us to to revisit the final resting places of so many of our residents. 

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; the graveyard, 2012, and headstone of Samuel and Sarah Nixon, 2012, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the grave yard, circa 1870s-1880s, from the Lloyd Collection, in 1976 from the Journal, and cover and burial plan of Register of Grave Inscriptions of St Clement’s Old Churchyard, Chorlton Green

*The Great Burial Scandal, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-great-burial-scandal.html

 **From the Chorlton Ratepayer Association submission  to the Withington Local Board of Health January 12th 1881, and references from the Manchester Guardian 1881-86, Manchester City Council Town Clerks’ Papers Re Closed Burial Grounds 1930, reports in the dig by Angus Batemean

*** Register of Grave Inscriptions of St Clement’s Old Churchyard, Chorlton Green, RG 37/99 Archives and Local History Library, Manchester Central Reference Library

I was there …. and other stories … from The Isle of Festival …. 1970 … on the wireless

So yesterday that event I was at combined with the stories of some of the others who were there in the August of 1970.

I was there on that hill, 1970

That was the Isle of Wight Festival, and it was remembered on BBC Radio 4’s The Reunion on Sunday and available online. 

And as these things happen over twenty years later in Wythenshawe in casual conversations I discovered work colleagues who were also there and since then there have been plenty more.

“Three young brothers from the Isle of Wight - an estate agent, a publisher and an art student - turned their parochial island into the world centre of counter-culture by staging two huge music festivals in 1969 and 1970.

Bob Dylan hadn’t performed for three years after a serious motorcycle accident and yet the Foulk brothers convinced him to become the headliner for their 1969 event.

Me too, 1970

In 1970, despite ferocious local opposition, they put together a second Isle of Wight Festival with 50 acts including many of the biggest names in music – Joni Mitchell, Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix. 

The stellar line-up attracted 600,000 fans – six times the population of the island. But a militant cohort insisted that the event should be free. In the end the promoters let them have their way, and lost a fortune.

Joining Kirsty to relive those historic events are Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues, who found the size of the crowd nerve-wracking, Jacqui McShee of Pentangle, who was thrilled to see her idols Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix live, and Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, who believes the 1970 event marked the “tawdry end” of the peace and love era.

Also in the programme are Richard Williams, then writing for the Melody Maker, and Terrii Telfer, an island resident who slept in a sleeping bag with a bit of plastic underneath. 

Also joining us are two of the main organisers. Youngest brother Bill Foulk remembers five days of virtually no sleep in the run up to the 1970 festival trying to get everything ready. And Ray Foulk recalls how three of the Beatles came just to hang out with Bob Dylan and ended up playing tennis in the grounds of the farmhouse where Dylan was staying.

Producer: Karen Pirie

Series Producer: David Prest

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4”

That Poster, 1970

Location; The Isle of Wight Festival, 1970, BBC Radio 4

Pictures; Pictures; me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the poster, 1970, and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy, who granted permission to use the image under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

* The Isle of Wight Festival, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

Uncovering the story of Eltham's trams ........... and a bit more too

I have long had a fascination for trams and I have just bought Eltham and Woolwich Tramways which contains “a wealth of nostalgia with many previously unpublished photographs depicting street scenes from the past.”*

Now I don’t do nostalgia it is a shallow preoccupation which distorts the past and leads you into all sorts of pitfalls.

On the other hand there is nothing wrong in wanting to peel back your own past and match your memories with the historic record and in doing so not only relive a bit of your youth but also learn more about that time.

So it is with trams.  I was just two and bit when the last one London tram trundled into the depot at New Cross and while family legend has it that I was there I have no memory of the event.

Likewise it would be another twelve years before we moved in to Well Hall and so the story of the Eltham and Woolwich trams is all new to me.

Bits of the story I already knew but Mr Hartley’s book is as promised full of some wonderful pictures which offer up scenes of Eltham and Woolwich before I knew them and as you would expect I was more than a little thrilled at getting close to our own house on Well Hall Road.

But it is easy to get seduced by the old pictures and forget the importance of the tram.  It was a cheap and for the time efficient means of transport reflected in the fact that within a few short decades it was adopted by local authorities across the country to replace horse drawn buses and trams.

LCC Tam, 1622,  route 40 from New Cross to Westminster, 2015

And because it was cheap and fast it opened up the suburbs by allowing workers to live further away from their work place.

Now to a certain extent the railways had pioneered this development but the tram could do this better.

After all it was far cheaper to lay tram track which had the added advantage that the routes could follow the existing road network.

So when the Government settled on Well Hall for its huge housing estate for the Arsenal workers in 1915 the tram network had already been in place for five years and following the Great War the network was extended to Lee, Lewisham and London.

All of which I suppose could mean that Ruskin’s observation that "Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only a device for making the world smaller"** could equally be applied to the tram.

And on that note I shall leave off and go back to reading the book with just a thank you to Tricia Lesley who first alerted me to it and pass on a recommendation for the book which will not only delight fellow tram buffs like me but also offer up a snap shot of an Eltham which has pretty much vanished.

Sadly the book is out of print but where there is a will there is a copy and if enough people show an interest perhaps there could be a reprint.

Pictures; cover of Eltham & Woolwich Tramways, 1996, courtesy of the publishers and LCC tram 1622, 2015, Crich Tramway Village courtesy of Andy Robertson***


*Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, Robert J Harley, Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

**John Ruskin 1856

***Crich Tramway Village, http://www.tramway.co.uk/

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 46 ........ Cavell Street, Late Nightingale Street

Now on the day I wandered down Cavell Street the sun was shining and even this bleak and empty side street seemed inviting.

It connects Newton Street with Little Lever Street

Back in 1851 it was Nightingale Street and had you plunged down it  from Newton Street on a sunny day back then you would have passed a collection of properties, an entry into a courtyard and at the other end the Haunch of Venison public house which stood in direct competition with its near neighbour the Wellington which is now Mother Mac’s.

That said even in 1851 it was not deemed important enough an entry in the street directory

Location; Manchester

Pictures, looking into Piccadilly Gardens, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

It was 56 years ago ……. the music was good … the sun shone ….. and we were all happy

Today I came across this poster.

That poster, 1970

And in a trice I was back 56 years ago with friends wondering what to do on an indifferent Friday night in late August.

The usual haunts were discarded, and someone mentioned the Isle of Wight Festival, and without much thinking, other than to collect sleeping bags we were off in Tony Behan’s car, heading out of London in the late evening for the coast.

Some where on that hill was me, 1970

The rest really is a blur.

On arrival we found that a section of the festival was camped on a hill above the site, it was free and to my shame we opted to camp three.

Memories are vague with the passage of half a century, but I remember falling asleep to the sound of the Doors and marvelling at heaps of camp fires dotted across the hillside which illuminated the night sky.

Alas ours was a but a short stay, Tony had to be back in London for work on the Monday and so my one real experience of a festival and one of the legendary ones, was a day and a night.

To which when my lads ask, “What did you do at the Festival?” I can only ruefully reply I was a “Hippy for a day”.

But it was memorable and allowed me to bore friends with stories of the event as we watched the film Woodstock on a day when we should have been in lectures.

And I might say added to my image with our kids of something more than just Dad, the teller of silly stories who forgets things and always managed to ruin their best tee shirts in the washing machine.

Me, 1970

I could go on about the significance of the event, the huge collection of talent that was on display or the awful conditions down by the latrines.

But I won’t other than to say over the years I am amazed at the number of people who I have discovered were also there, two of whom I worked beside for nearly 20 years.

I thought of including their stories in the ones I have written over the years, but those belong to them.

Location; The Isle of Wight

Pictures; today’s reminder of yesterday, the poster, 1970, me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*Isle of Wight Festival, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Isle%20of%20Wight%20Festival

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ........ nu 81 Roman Entry

This is Roman Entry.

Roman Entry, 2017

It connects Church Street to what has variously been known as Roman Street and Back Alley and long ago lost even its name.

Now I must have passed Roman Entry many times over the years and not even given it a glance and even less ventured down what is a very narrow thoroughfare.

Roman Entry, 1910

But then why should I?

On any busy day taking time off to explore a dark and dismal alley might well seem a waste of time.

These days however I have the time and have also rediscovered my sense of curiosity for back alleys, narrow passages and forgotten streets which offer the promise of all sorts of history.

In the case of Roman Entry, it is there by 1793 and will in all probability be much older.  From the 1840's if not earlier part of the alley was enclosed and formed part of a building.

Looking at the records, subsequent buildings were built on the site incorporating the entry.

In 1910 the building was home to the hosiery business of F.C. Lowcock ad earlier still was listed as a Boot and Shoe warehouse and before that as various types of “manufactury” back into the 1850’s, and even was shared a linen manufacturer and an artificial flower maker.

And with a bit more research using the rate books we might be able to discover the uses for that building back into the late eighteenth century.

We shall see.

Location; Roman Entry

Pictures; Roman Entry, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1910, by J. Jackson, m01696, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass