Never throw away the negatives ....... part 2 .... The Talmud Torah School ....Bent Street

Now keeping the negatives never really seems worth it, but when the original prints get lost or damaged those negatives can prove very important.

All of which just points up how pleased I was that I found the set which I took of the streets around Cheetham Hill Road in the mid 1980s.

Not only have the prints gone but so have the notes I made of the research into the area.

This is the old Talmud Torah School opened in 1880, for “the teaching of elementary education in
Hebrew, the Scriptures and the Talmud and in the principles of the Jewish faith and practise. Talmud Torah schools were traditionally for boys only. Girls were admitted in modern times. 

The School was founded in 1880 and established in purpose built premises at No. 11 Bent Street, Cheetham, Manchester. In 1958 the Bent Street school was sold and in 1959 the new headquarters of the Manchester Central Board for Hebrew Education and Talmud Torah was opened in Upper Park Road, Salford. It closed in 2005”.*

I had half expected that the building would no longer exist but it does, still in commercial use as it when I came across it, but looking a lot better.  All but two of the big signboards have gone and these are neat and discreet.

Added to which a fair amount of the school’s records have survived, including account books payments and registers of contributions and a description of the damage done to the building during the Blitz.

And now its an exciting events place.

Location; Bent Street, Manchester

Picture; The Talmud Torah School, 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

Passing Burton’s on the High Street ...... on a spring day in 1966 ............ with a thank you to Tricia

Now, there will be many people who saw this postcard of Eltham High Street and remembered the scene with fondness.

It belongs to my old friend Tricia who posted it on our “Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history” site yesterday.*

And I am one of them. 

What makes it even more special is that it is dated 1966, the year I started at Crown Woods Sixth Form.

The original postcard was undated, but that didn’t stop a few people suggesting dates for the picture.

These tended to use the vehicles as clues, and I suppose with a bit of ferocious detective work it might be possible to track the date of the advert on the side of the bus passing the church on its way down Well Hall Road.

But as it turns out there is a simpler way, because the picture postcard was produced by Judges Ltd, and it just so happens I have a full list of when each of their  cards were issued.

The list is the work of the Judges’ Postcard Study Group and was published in their September 2005 newsletter, and then reproduced in an article by SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO.**

In the case of Tricia’s postcard, the company had included the serial number which according to the list was produced in 1966.

Now, I am not quite sure if the date 1966 was the year the postcard was published or the year the photograph was added to the collection for later use.

I know in the case of the company Valentine, the date refers to when it was added to their catalogue, but I have yet to check on the list for Judges’.

And that will take me back to V & G Harris who have an extensive collection and were most helpful when I was tracking other picture postcards by the company.

But for now, I am just pleased that I can match Tricia’s card with my own trips up to the High Street, with visits to Burtons, Wilcox’s, the Library and lots more places.

Although, I am fascinated by the identity of the three young men standing at the entrance to the church.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham High Street, 1966, from the collection of Tricia Leslie

*Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history, facebook

** SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO, www.sussexpostcards.info

The bold and the new …… down on Manchester Road in 1973

Now I am not a fan of just posting an old image and leaving it at that.

Often when I come across these on social media, it is posted with no date, no indication of where it has come from and it stands alone with no additional commentary.

All of which makes it difficult to appreciate its true significance, because without a date and a source, there is no context, other than to reflect that “here is a picture which is different from now, when they did things differently back then”.

Of course, that may sound sniffy, but if you are interested in the past you should always be after finding out as much as you can.

So, having said all of that, here is a picture with little in the way of additional information.

We are on Manchester Road where it joins Upper Chorlton Road, and the year is 1973 and it comes from the City’s Local Image Collection.*

It was one  of a series taken by H Milligan in the 1970s and what I like about the picture is the way that it records, just what a collection of “modern shopfronts” looked like back then.

Today, they look dated and even a bit amateurish but in 1973 they appeared sharp, modern and at the cutting edge of what was thought stylish.

I particularly liked the use of timber cladding seen on the bookie’s and that name which seems to topple down from the top of the sign.

Today I prefer the original shop fronts which are still visible on two of the fronts.

And that is all.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Manchester Road, 1973, H Milligan, m17964, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Remembering the Spanish Civil War .... today at Central Ref .... Manchester

 

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 1 .... the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Jewish Soup Kitchen

Now long after the prints have been damaged or worse still lost, there are always the negatives.

Manchester Jewish Working Men's Club, Empire Street, 1986

Of course most of the time, these are consigned to the back of a cupboard.

And so it was with a collection I took in the mid 1980s on the streets off Cheetham Hill Road.

They were part of a research project on the Jewish Community and sadly the pictures and the notes have long gone, but the negatives have survived.

Not so the Club which was on the corner of Empire Street and Wooley Street.

I don’t know when the building was demolished but it has been replaced by a warehouse and factory.

The club was formed in 1886 and it was here in “November 1895 a meeting was convened at the Manchester Jewish Workingmen's Club to consider ways and means to alleviate suffering in the Jewish community. The creation of the Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen in 1896 was the
result of this meeting. 

The Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen, Southall Street, 1986

In December 1906 a building in Southall Street was completed, with a purpose built dining hall. 

The meals consisted of soup containing meat and vegetables, together with bread. 

Mrs Dolly Phillips (1903-) and her husband, Harry, were at the forefront of the organisation. Mrs Dolly Phillips first became involved in the Soup Kitchen in 1920 at the age of 17. As Honarary Secretary she introduced the meals on wheels service in 1942. 

The building on Southall Street was sold and the kitchen of the Manchester Jews Benevolent Society was used. In 1978 the service moved to Holy Law Synagogue in Rita Glickman House, Prestwich. In 1997 they had about 200 clients”.*

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Soup Kitchen, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

A golden childhood growing up in Well Hall in the 1960's

Lost in the woods, 1977

Now Eltham was a pretty good place to grow up in the 1960s especially when you had come from Peckham.

It was partly the opportunity to wander over large areas of open and wooded land where you could play, walk and just let your imagination out for the day.

That said I was 14 when we arrived in Well Hall which made some of the “play thing” a little old hat.

But that freedom to set off up into the woods on a warm summer’s morning with no real idea of where you would end up was magic.

Of course the first few times you took off up there it really was discovering new places, and then later it was equally special as you shared it with a girlfriend.

What started out at Well Hall could by degree take you off to Welling via the castle and offer up some stunning views.

And when you tired of trees, solitude and aimless meanderings there was always the Palace and the pleasure of walking along King John’s Walk towards Mottingham.

King John's Walk, towards Mottingham, 1977

Looking back all that didn’t last long, partly I guess because the summers were all too short and soon there were widening horizons and counter attractions.

Never underestimate just how a sixteen your old starting out a fresh at Crown Woods with a whole new set of friends can be drawn away from the simple pleasures of a walk in the woods.

But they never quite went away, after all when you live on Well Hall Road the woods dominated the view from the back window and on those storming summer nights when the sky was lit up with the jagged flashes of lightening it was hard not to be drawn up there.

Not that anyone with any sense would venture there in such a storm.

A much better attraction was the Welcome from where you could sit out the storm with a pint although all too often I was less lucky.  Those storms seemed to pick me out as I was walking back from a Friday night in Woolwich, and later still falling out of the King’s Arms in the High Street.

And now the woods and Well Hall are a long way from where I live and separated by a gulf of time but they still exert a pull and bring back a pretty perfect childhood.

Pictures; the woods and King Jon's Walk, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

A Chorlton revolution ……….. the self service shop

Now we are so familiar with the supermarket and the convenience store, that it takes a moment to  appreciate just how much self service shopping was a revolution in how we bought our groceries.

I am of that generation, who was part of that revolution, and I can remember just how liberating it felt at the time to wander the isles, and touch and choose which apples, tins of vegetables and packets of biscuits to buy.

Today we can be cynical about it all, not least the way it allowed shops to cut costs, and set the customer doing some of the work, but it was I maintain quite liberating.

Here in Chorlton, there is still a book to write about the arrival of those first self service shops, including which were the first and just what people thought about them.

The Co-op  was the first to embrace the new way of shopping, turning a department of its store in Romford over to self service in 1943 and five years later fully converting its premise in Portsea to selfservice.*

And in 1949, The Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-op  began altering its existing stores the following year, with our own Hardy Lane opening in 1959.

Until this week, I didn’t know that the shop on the corner of Manchester and Ransfield roads, was offering its customers, “Self Service” in 1961 and a quick trawl of the directories should pinpoint when the Mark Down began its new venture.
Leaving that aside, it is the shop window which is equally fascinating, offering up a range of products which are still familiar, but at prices which at first glance appear astonishing.

But those prices must be set against most people’s incomes which were of course much lower than today.
The more pertinent question would be to explore and then compare the average food bill in 1961 with today and its percentage of all house hold bills.

All of which is getting too serious and so instead I shall just leave you pondering on the prices, which are expressed in shillings and pennies, which I suspect will be a mystery to any one born just before we went decimal in 1971.

Our own kids look back at me with sheer bewilderment when I explain that 12 pennies made a shilling, that 20 shillings made a pound and that 240 pennies made a pound.  Added to which there was a coins called a threepenny bit, a sixpence, and a half crown, all of which competed with the farthing and the ha’penny.

Added to which the price of posh objects often came as guineas and not pounds.

And that neatly brings me back to self service shopping which predated our decimal coinage by just a few decades.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Manchester Road, 1961, A H Downs, m18078 and current prices, Mark Down No. 93 Manchester Road, 1961, , A H Downs, m18080, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Spotlight on Self Service, from Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

*Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/