One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979

A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

Back then the canal was still in a shabby state and despite the work of restoration there was still an air of decay, which was added to by the state of the buildings which stood along its path.

Many had seen better days, a few were derelict waiting for something to happen, and since I walked the walk some have been demolished and some have been renovated.

And, so have the half sunken vessels which lay where they had sunk slowly rotting away.

It always amazed me that long after the restoration of the canal the three were still there, although as befitting the new tidied up canal they have finally gone.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

Miss Caroline Kane ..... a dress, a cake and a steam ship....... Chorlton in the 1900s

Now I came across Miss Caroline Kane while looking for a relative of someone who lives in Chorlton.

Miss Kane's shop,trading in 1960 as Meadow's

The brief was that the Kane’s had lived in Chorlton and had a shop.

Finding Miss Kane who ran a dress making business from 24 Wilbraham Road proved relatively easy except that my Miss Kane didn’t belong to the family I was researching.

And that of course is how it often goes.  At which point anyone who has gone looking for their family will know that out there, there are the desperate who will hoover up anyone who vaguely seems connected which might tick a box but is pretty pointless.

So back to Miss Kane, who’s life like everyone’s is fascinating and offers up an interesting take on how a single woman in the early 20th century made her living.

She was born in Shropshire in 1874 and was one of eight children born to Mary and Arthur Kane who was a French polisher.

Sometime between 1879 and 1880, they settled in Pendleton in Salford and by 1901 Miss Kane describes her occupation as “Confectionary Bakery” adding “on her own account” which suggests she was working for herself.

But to what degree is unclear, because she is not listed in the business directory before 1907 when she has changed direction and is selling dresses on Wilbraham Road.

And in 1979 as Budget Wallpapers.

The change may have been connected with her sister Martha who six years earlier is listed a “Tailoress” and who in 1911 is working in the Wilbraham Road business as a “shop assistant”.

The devil will now be in the detail because to track her after 1911 will mean visiting Central Ref and trawling through the hard copies of the street and business directories.

I know that in 1930 she returned from New York aboard the Cunard steam ship Scythia having visited Boston, and her address is listed as Cranbourne Road which where she is still living nine years later in the company of a Louise Keogh.

By 1939 Miss Kane describes her occupation as “unpaid domestic duties” while Ms Keogh was a retired accounts clerk.

And there for now the trail goes cold, although I do know she died in 1967 in Manchester leaving me to ponder on when her shop became Meadows which then became Kyle’s the wallpaper shop and changed its name to Budget Wallpapers.

Leaving me just to thank Luisse who set me off on the search for the Kane's and led me to Miss Caroline

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Wilbraham Road, 1960, A E Landers, m18302, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and in 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Back on Court Yard in 1910

Court Yard in 1910

Now you can never have enough of a good picture so I make no apologies for returning to this one of Court Yard which dates from around 1910 and is from the collection of Kristina Bedford.*

Most of what you see has long past out of living memory.

The Congregational Church away in the distance had been opened in 1868 and was demolished in 1936 and the site was redeveloped by Burton’s where I bought my first suit and later still my first grown up overcoat.

The house next to the church was swept away in 1905, demolished when the southern end of Well Hall Road was cut thereby making the route north towards Well Hall and Shooters Hill a tad quicker and more direct.

But the consequence was that the peace of the church was invaded by the noise of trams, carts and later motor vehicles all of which led to the relocation of the church and in its place the still very impressive building which has now become a McDonald’s.

And on the rare occasions I have ventured in there I still miss the wooden cabinets full of shirts and ties, the racks of ready made jackets  and trousers and the catalogues offering all manner of fashionable made to measure suits.

Still someone will mutter such is progress and I guess that also sums up the developments to the left of our picture, which saw the properties pulled down for the Grove Market.

I wish I could remember these for they would still have been standing when we first came to Eltham but they have passed from my memory and I guess in time I will be hard pressed even to remember the site as it was from the mid 60s until recently.

Annie Morris, early 20th century

So I will fall back on the historical record and stories of that row to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.

And it was here that Annie Morris lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.

In her time she had lived at numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

Hers is a fascinating story which takes us back to an Eltham that even more than our picture has vanished.

And yes that is a trailer for more rural Eltham stories along with a few more about Annie.

Picture; Court Yard in 1910 courtesy of Kristina Bedford, from Eltham Through Time,  and  of Annie Morris outside her house in Court Yard from the collection of Jean Gammons.

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013,

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 159 .... the wireless makes a reappearance

The continuing story   of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”**

And that pretty much is what I think when I use the word wireless which has always meant the radio.

My Wikipedia tells me that “wireless is the transfer of information (telecommunication) between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most common wireless technologies use radio waves”.***

But me, Joe and Mary Ann Scott will always associate it with the box in the corner which offered up a window on the world, via the news, music and talking programmes.  

In the first house I can remember in Peckham in the 1950s dad, or someone had installed a system where each of the radios across the place were tuned into the three channels from the Home Service, The Light Programme and the Third Programme.

It's an old memory which has resurfaced with the discovery that you can now recharge your mobile phone using “wireless”, the very same “wireless” that allows us to pick up the internet from any where in the house and send messages, and receive pictures, TV and YouTube from a heap of different devices.

At which point I am beginning to sound like one of those aged relatives from my youth who marvelled at the automatic washing machine, and the presence of a television in the front room.

And I fully accept that my wireless in the corner and the router in the kitchen are essentially just the same thing … things designed to receive “the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer”.

If I stop to think about it, it still strikes me as a bit like magic, but a sort of magic I take for granted along with the telly and the phone.

And this house has over the century, and a bit embraced a lot of that magic.  

Joe chose to light the house with electricity back in 1915 when some homes were still using gas, never installed a range in the kitchen but went for a gas cooker and by the early 1920s had a telephone followed a few decades later by a TV.

So I suppose the reappearance of the word wireless shouldn’t surprise me given that essentially it is really just a “doing” word for something that makes life a little easier and a bit more fun.

The wireless cradle, 2025

To which I can add an Amazon Alexa which was one of our Christmas presents.

It is as everyone knows “a virtual assistant technology marketed by Amazon and implemented in software applications for smart phones, tablets, wireless smart speakers, and other electronic appliances.

Alexa was largely developed from a Polish speech synthesizer named Ivona, acquired by Amazon on January 24, 2013”.****

I will never know what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of Alexa but given their acceptance of new technology I bet they would have had one, leaving me just to ponder on whether it would have been known as Alexa, the wireless or something else

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; advert for radios, 1949, from the collection of Graham Gill, and a wireless cradle, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/12/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in_27.html

**“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

 “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.” Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass

***Wireless,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless

****Amazon Alexa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa

Cleaning, polishing and answering the door ........... domestic service in Chorlton in 1927

I have long been interested in domestic service, ever since I researched the working conditions in rural Chorlton in the first half of the 19th century.*

By the end of that century even the most humble of families sought the prestige of at least one domestic servant.

And in many households there was just the one, who often went under the title of maid of all work and that was exactly what her job entailed.

So in a large house hold where there might gradations of servants from butlers, and housekeepers to kitchen staff and many more in the more modest homes there was but one and she did it all.

Now I have come across descriptions of the work of such servants from the 19th century but here courtesy of Bob Jones is one from 1927.

In that year his mum came across from Yorkshire and began work in the big house on Alexandra Road.

In the fullness of time I will go looking for that house and the family that lived there but for now I shall just leave you with her job description.

I could reflect on the many tasks that had to be undertaken or the degree to which new home appliances like the "vac" and the telephone would change the working day, but perhaps I will just point out that missing day which was the Wednesday, her day off.

Pictures; job description for a maid, 19267, courtesy of Bob Jones

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979

A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

Back then the canal was still in a shabby state and despite the work of restoration there was still an air of decay, which was added to by the state of the buildings which stood along its path.

Many had seen better days, a few were derelict waiting for something to happen, and since I walked the walk some have been demolished and some have been renovated.

The real surprise was the conversion of the railway arches into Deansgate Locks which are described as the “Trendy nightspot for those who want to party the night away. You'll find establishments such as The Comedy Store, Revolution and Baa Bar. This canal side location is perfect for those who want to stay in one area, find DJ's playing all night and plenty of cocktails".**

All a bit brighter than 40 years ago when the best you could hope for was a passingboat.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

**Deansgate Locks, https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/deansgate-locks-p37991

A little souvenir of Woolwich from the Great War?

Now here is the challenge.

HMS Manchester, 1914-18

Has anyone got a similar piece of crested porcelain?

It might have the coat of arms of Woolwich Borough Council or the title Eltham.

This one is an example of those porcelain souvenir ones which were made and sold in huge quantities during the Great War.

It made perfect sense for the ceramic industry to switch from porcelain models of Blackpool Tower and Ann Hathaway’s cottage to war time themes.

The actual figures were pretty standard but wither it was a tank, or an ambulance, or even a battleship they could be marketed in towns and cities across the country with just the addition of a transfer coat of arms.

Manchester Tank, circa 1917-18

These ones come from the collection of David Harrop and feature in my new book, but I would love to find similar ones from where I grew up.

The closest so far is a replica of the Cenotaph with coat of arms of the City of London.

And there must be others.

But what would be really exciting is one from Woolwich and better still of Eltham.

It is just possible that some where carefully stored away is an ambulance with a local name or badge

Cenotaph, 1920

Now that would be something!

Location; Manchester

Picture; crested souvenirs,  1914-1918, from the collection of David Harrop

Manchester Remembering 1914-18 by Andrew Simpson was published by the History Press in February 2017

A new book on Manchester and the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War