The lives behind the doors ….. numbers 2-14 St Andrew’s Square

Now, it has become quite popular to take a house and tell its story over time.

St Andrew's Square, 1849

Long before a certain television series did just that with a property in Liverpool, I had done the same for our house in Chorlton, along with the two I grew up in, in south east London, and the home of our Josh and Polly who live in Leicester.

And over the years I have dipped into the history of heaps of houses, including Homer Street and Coronation Square, both of which were in Ancoats and which were developed in the late 1830s.

Back then the area was just beginning to change from what one account described as a place “of fields [where] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” *

Within a generation the fields had been covered with mills, factories, foundries and dye works along with mean terraced housing and the Medlock began its long association with filth and pollution.

The area, 1819

And so to the challenge laid down by Bob and Del Amato to find out about what was there on the site of what is now their business. **

The warehouse of Amato Food Products stands on what was once a row of fourteen terraced houses which faced St Andrew’s Church. 

I can’t be exactly sure when the square was developed, but the church was opened in 1831 but by 1839 the properties show up in the rate books.

Eighteen years earlier according to Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

St Andrew's Square, no 2 at the bottom, 2021

But the 14 properties along the southern side of the square were a cut above their neighbours .

The houses consisted of five rooms and they commanded a weekly rent of just over 5 shillings, which is higher than the surrounding streets.

And many of the residents were drawn from the skilled working class, including a railway clerk, a tailor, a dressmaker and a bookkeeper, along with a salesmen, painter and book keeper.

Their origins were as varied as their occupations with a fair few having come from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Lakes, with others from Cheshire as well as Salford.

I could have picked any of the 14 homes but ended choosing no. 2 St Andrew’s Square for no other reason than it was the first in the row as entered the square from St Andrew’s Street.

Today it is the western end of the Amato warehouse, but in 1851 it was home to Mr. and Mrs. Cruickshank, and their five children, Elizabeth, May, Emma William and James.

Mr. Cruickshank was 43 years old, had been born in Manchester and gave his occupation as a Miller.  His wife Hannah was three years younger and was from Salford.  Three of the children were born in Chorlton on Medlock and the youngest in Oldham, and despite the fact that they ranged in age from 20 down to 13, only William who 15 is listed as working.

Looking east along the square, 2021

I doubt that any of them had attended the school at the other end of the square but certainly some of the children from the other houses will have done.  

The school appeared in an earlier blog story but deserves to be revisited.***

What is interesting is that the square does not appear in the street directories until the beginning of this century, by which time our house was occupied by Samuel Boole who was a labourer for Manchester Corporation, his wife Ethel, their five children and Ethel’s mother.  

Like many families of the period, they appear to have moved across the city, and we can track their movement by where their children were born. The eldest of the children was born in Chorlton-on Medlock and the rest in Ancoats.

In time I shall dig deeper into the stories of both the Boole family and the Cruickshank’s, as well  the occupants of the other thirteen houses.

Inside the warehouse, 2021

All of which just leaves me to ponder on what remains may lie below the warehouse.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s Square, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, and St Andrew’s Square in 1849, OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49,  and the area in 1919 from Johnson's map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/

***Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/looking-for-lost-one-street-over-time_7.html

Touching home ……… two buses and heaps of Well Hall memories

Sometimes you need nothing more than a picture to create a flood of warm memories.

So here are two from my friend Chrissy Rose who like me grew up in Well Hall.

Both the 161 and the 122 passed outside our house, and all of us used them.

They were the workhorses of our childhood. 

The 161 took us south to the High Street, while the 122 whizzed us down to the Yorkshire Grey and on to Lewisham.

And both went north to Woolwich, offering up views across the Common and then down into the town.

That said it was always the return trip, passing the old Police Station on Shooters Hill and then the descent to the stop just beyond 294 which we called home for 30 years.

So thank you Chrissy, and I invite all of you to share your memories.

To which Chrissy has added "They were so special those old buses my uncle was a conductor at Catford garage , I bet he had a few stories to tell. Imagine now all that smoke on the top deck. I wonder if it's possible to date them by the registration numbers".

Location: somewhere with the 161 and 122.

Pictures; Two Eltham buses, date unknown, from the collection of Chrissy Rose

The photograph, a house on South Meade, and a mystery

I am looking at a picture of a group or workmen outside a house on South Meade and at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about what I am looking at.

The men represent a cross section of skills, ages and experience, and may well have posed for similar photographs across Chorltonville.

But I know exactly which house this was and have already begun to discover its history which starts with the simple fact that it has been occupied by only two families in the century and a bit since it was built.

And so, while we will never know the identity of the men staring back at us, we do have the deeds, as well as a collection of documents relating to its construction, which will help tell the story of this particular house.

The first family to move in was Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  In 1939 he described himself as a “Commercial Traveller in the Gas Industry”.

Everyone will find something interesting in the picture, with some focusing on the appearance of the men, the presence of the apprentice boy, and the flat caps and pipes.

The building contractor was Thomas Whiteley and a search might turn up something about the building firm, but I doubt that will extend to a list of employees.

For now, until Laura passes over its history for me to look over, we are left with the photograph of the workmen and the image of the house.

But for now, it is exciting that we are able to pin a group of craftsmen to one house sometime in 1911.

Leaving me just to ponder on Mr. and Mrs. Jones and a mystery which might be answered by those documents.

We shall see.

Location; Chorltonville

Picture; workmen outside South Meade, 1911, courtesy of Laura Hopkins

Special thanks to Laura, who kindly showed me the picture and has promised to lend me the house documents and to Jude who lives next door, and first told me about the picture.

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 5 “debris and desolation”

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

Ancoats residents, 1920

Now I am a little closer to being able to date the end of Homer Street.

It went in the big slum clearance push in the 1930s when a large chunk of the area around St Andrew’s Church in Ancoats went in matter of a few years.

Homer Street dated from 1837 and so just missed its hundredth birthday

And while some may have mourned its passing I doubt that there were many.

According to the Corporation there were 1,045 properties in the area around St Andrew’s Church of which “990 were occupied dwellings and 47 business premises leaving eight properties either derelict or unoccupied.”**

They were in the words of the Manchester Medical Officer of Health both unfit and “dangerous or injurious to health [and in his opinion were] a clearance area.”

Homer Street, 1894

He added that “in general the dwelling houses were of a similar type throughout the area, all fronting directly on to the streets, which generally speaking were somewhat narrow.  

These were conditions one generally found in the area of this type of small houses; narrow passages and high back yard walls. 

Of the houses 872 fronted into streets 39 feet or less in width, 469 on to streets of 24 feet or less.  The yards in the majority of cases were small and the property in the majority of cases was old.

There were 154 houses over 100 years old, 109 over 90, and 723 over 60 years old.  The density was 79 houses to the acre on net area and 52 to the acre on the gross area.”

Now like many I lived in a small two up two down terraced house in the 1970s and such properties can still be found across the country are still doing the business of keeping people warm, and comfortable and will still have a long life ahead of them.

But these were built at the end of the 19th century and by and large had been well maintained.

Those like the one my grandparents occupied in Hope Street, dated back to the beginning of the 19th century and were past their sell by date by the 1930s, but lingered on into the 60s.

Not so Homer Street or it neighbours, Andrew’s Square, Gees Place, Dryden Street and Marsden Square, all of which had all gone by 1938. The Corporation judged that many were worth less than £50 and “719 in the area were verminous.”

Of course there were objections, ranging from the landlords of some of the properties to those who thought that the replacement homes in Smedley were not suitable, leading one witness to at the inquiry on the clearance plans to describe them as “barracks” adding it was not acceptable to “make the British workman, after he has done his work climb six flights of stairs.”

Back of the demolished school, 1966

Some also questioned the policy of not rebuilding new homes in the area, pointing out that for some the cost of travelling from the new estates in places like Wythenshawe was very expensive.

But the Corporation “had zoned the whole of the area for light industrial purposes” and this was pretty much how it turned out.

The old school on the corner of Homer Street which had been opened in 1836 went, and the site became a sheet metal works while the rest of Homer Street was left as open land finally becoming a bus depot in the 1960s.

That industrial development was slow to come and in the August of 1939 the Reverend A. R. Denn of St Andrew’s wrote to the Manchester Guardian that the cleared area as “a scene of debris and desolation” with “the remains of houses in various stages of demolition.  Some buildings remain standing with broken windows and derelict doors.  

All around one may see the foundations of houses and the remains of door steps and yards, brick bats and odd pieces of stone are strewn about on all sides, whist here and there nature tries to cover up this hideousness with weary looking grass.”***

Adding that it “reminds one of the pictures of Flanders during the last war, and resembles nothing so much as the after-effects of an air raid.”

And while his observations may well have been accurate and echoed many who felt “it was not a square deal for those who have to live and work amid it”, it is worth pausing to reflect on what the Corporation was trying to do.

According to Alderman Jackson that was nothing less than a programme “to tackle about 30,000 houses in Manchester” at a time when the City was still recovering in many ways from the Depression.

There is nothing now to see of Homer Street.

For a while the plan of the streets continues to appear on maps but by 1960 even these have gone.

But nature and commerce abhor a vacuum and the site had undergone new development with the empty and derelict bus depot replaced by a large modern food warehouse.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; Mothers' Outing, St Andrew’s Church,1920,  m70137, and Sheffield Street back of St Andrew's Church,  Revill and Son Ltd, 1966 Brooks T, m12041 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Homer Street, 1894, from the OS South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Homer Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Homer%20Street

**Ancoats Clearance Order, Manchester Guardian, September 26, 1934

***Debris and Desolation, A.R. Denn, letter to the Manchester Guardian, August 4, 1939

****Amato Food Products, http://www.amatoproducts.co.uk/

Lost scenes of Well Hall

Now this will be the last for a while of pictures of Eltham trams taken from that wonderful book on Eltham and Woolwich Tramways.*

But that said given that there are equally fascinating pictures of Woolwich, Charlton and Lee Green I reckon I will be back.

And one of the reasons is that each of the pictures reveals a lot about how we lived back nearly three quarters of a century ago.

So here is one that will be familiar to many.
We are on the platform of the old Well Hall Station looking down on the parade of shops and taking in the that climb up to the Woods.

It’s a scene I remember very well.

Of course by the time I was making that journey up from the station to 294 Well Hall the trams had long gone but I think the bakery was still there and the scene is not so different today.

That said the last time I looked 24 HOUR MINICABS were now operating from the shop but you can still make out on the side of the building the ghost sign for “Fyson’s Bakery Makers of Daren Bread” which has fared better than the chemist which once occupied the site.**

Or for that matter Daren bread which was a brown loaf popular in the 1930s and 40s which may also have been sold in the old Co-op which is just visible behind the tram.

I missed that Co-op building by a matter of months.  It had opened in 1906 and was demolished in 1964 just as we arrived.

It may still have been there but if so I don’t remember it or its successor being built,

And that is the value of the picture for despite the bits that seem familiar it is a scene which has vanished.

The tram went in the early 50s, the co-op in the 1960s and sadly for me at least the old station two decades later.

Pictures; looking down from Well Hall Station, date unknown, from the collection of E. Course and reproduced from Eltham & Woolwich Tramways, 1996

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

**Ghost signs in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/ghost-signs-in-well-hall.html

The case of the missing Domestic Servants ……………..

Now it is one of those received pieces of historical truth, that the age of the domestic servant peeked in the early years of the 20th century.

South Drive, circa, 1900s

Before that date, even the most modest of homes might boast a servant.

After the Great War, the rising cost of living, the advance of labour saving devices, and the growing expectations of “the servant class” combined to shrink what had once been a source of employment for many young people.

All of which I knew from trawling the census returns for Chorlton and many other places.

But I had never gone looking for the hard evidence, and then yesterday rising out of a discussion on a blog story about Chorltonville, I decided to test the idea, and to test it through the records of the estate.

A number of people had questioned whether the residents would have employed servants, given the size of the houses and occupations of those who lived in the properties.

As a project it had much going for it, because there are a limited number of households and they are grouped in a compact and defined area.

Chorltonville from the air, circa 1930s

In the April of 1911 eighteen households on South Drive returned the census form.*

The occupations listed were pretty much what you would expect for the estate, consisting of a high proportion who described themselves as “Commercial Travellers”, a couple of clerical workers, two employers, along with an actor, one manager, and one on “private means”.

Of these eighteen households, six employed a domestic servant, who lived in the home.  Not surprisingly two worked for the two employers, another for the one householder on “private means”, but the remaining there were employed who commercial travelers and a clerk.

It is of course a very limited survey, but what is interesting is that when compared to the 1939 Register which required every householder to supply basic biographical details for all the occupants, none of the six households employed a servant.

In their place comes that familiar term “unpaid domestic duties” or “housekeeper” which in each case refers to a wife,  which of course raises an interesting debate about the role married women.

Other than that, of the full eighteen, only one household listed an individual who was described as a “housekeeper”.

Which just leaves me to report that none of the original six who employed a servant in 1911 were still living in their house by 1939.

So, that is it, other than to say in a quiet time I shall go back to the historical record to push forward our knowledge of servants in the Ville.

Location; Chorltonville

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection, circa 1900s-30s.

* 1911 census, Enu 11, Didsbury, South Manchester & 1939 Register

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the west.

The houses date from 1837 and just six years after the church was built.

Back in 1831 St Andrew's  Church was in “the midst of fields [when] the waters of the River Medlock which are  close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” **

At the time “the congregation of St Andrew’s was in its early years a fairly comfortable middle-class body, [with] most of the pews in the church being privately rented by people of substance. But by the middle of the century it was surrounded by rising Lancashire industry and black slums filled the parish.***

Five years later the church opened a Sunday school on the corner of Homer Street and Arundel Street which in 1846 became a day school.

The school records show that teaching there was to use that modern description “challenging.”

In 1850 there was an average attendance at the day school of about 200 and four of five hundred boys and girls attended irregularly at the Sunday school.

And in 1866 the authorities went looking for forty boys who were absent one morning  concluding  that “the parents are sadly to blame for keeping their children at home” and on another occasion observed that “130 present at a time and the teacher ill, make it rather hard work to keep things straight.”

Given all of that I can sympathise with the comment made in 1864 that the school master was “glad that the week has closed so that one might have a little rest.”

But even by the 1860s the population of St Andrew’s parish was in decline and in 1891 the school reported that "the number of children on the books was gradually diminishing owing to properties being condemned as uninhabitable", although the final clearances  only got  underway in the late 1930s.

So that by 1936 the population had fallen from 16,000 a century earlier about to 3,000 with many families having been moved out to Gorton and Clayton.

That said the school still had about 230 students on roll and their attendance was very good winning them the Entwistle Memorial Shield for the best school attendance in the city’s elementary schools which seems a nice positive point to close on.

The site is now part of the warehouse of Amato Food Products.****

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Homer Street

**Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

***A Centenary in Ancoats, St Andrew’s School, Manchester Guardian, June 13 1936