Lost Woolwich .......... no 3 relaxing in the allotments 1905

Now of all the places I knew in my youth I have to say Woolwich is one of those that has  undergone some of the most radical change.

So much so that big chunks of it I have difficulty recognising.

The Arsenal, Powis Street and even the old Pie and Mash shop were as familiar to me as they were to generations of people who grew up in Woolwich and are now just distant memories.

So with that in mind I have returned to images of a time before now.

This one is dated 1905.

I doubt I will ever know who these three men were or exactly what each grew on his allotments.

But it is a fine picture taken on a sunny day over a century ago

Picture; from Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, Amberley 2014

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 47 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

Chorlton's own radical ... Thomas Walker

This is the story of Thomas Walker one time pillar of Manchester society but also a radical politician who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade, supported the French Revolution and was indicted for treason in 1794.

The family lived at Barlow Hall from the late 18th century spending the summer there before moving back for the winter to their town house on South Parade which faces what is now Parsonage Gardens.
And it was there that a mob attacked Walker who was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol in the December of 1792.

This was at the height of political debate over the issues of press freedom and the French Revolution.
“Emboldened by drink and fired on by agitators, groups hostile to the radicals began to gather around the city.  Walker was in no doubt that this was pre planned.  

‘Parties were collected in different public houses, and from thence paraded in the streets with a fiddler before them, and carrying board on which was painted with CHURCH and KING in large letters’ 

On four separate occasions a mob gathered outside South Parade, broke the windows and attempted to force their way in.  Supported by friends Thomas Walker was forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowds.

The magistrates did nothing to prevent the events and while a “regiment of dragoons was in town, booted and under arms”    and ready to disperse the rioters no order was given.

As if to add insult to injury the main concern of the magistrates when they finally met Walker was that he should not fire at the crowd again if the mob returned!  These attacks had been matched by similar ones on the home of Priestly in Birmingham and in Nottingham.”*

Walker survived both the attacks and was acquitted of treason, after which he retired to the new family home at Longford House where he died in February 1817 and was buried in the parish church on the green.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures;  Barlow Hall, circa 1890, from the Lloyd Collection, and the Walker family gravestone in the parish churchyard from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2011.

Next; Thomas Walker and the campaign to abolish the Slave Trade

* The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

The day I lost a Chorlton Chartist

Well to be more accurate, it was more the day I invented one who never was. 

It all looked so good.  In the June of 1847 Alexander Somerville had walked the lanes of Chorlton looking for evidence of potato blight and discovered a potato called the “radical.”

His autobiography recalled how he had been flogged while in the army for distributing letters arguing that the military should not be used against those groups campaigning for the Reform Bill and there he was being quoted by Engels in The Conditions of the English Working Class.  So as you do I made an assumption and I was wrong.

He did “earnestly desire to see the enfranchisement of the working people” but disagreed with those Chartists who “think they can effect that great consummation by fighting for it.”* “In the first place, there is yet not a national desire for that enfranchisement; there is on the contrary, a general aversion to it among all persons of property.”  

This led him in turn to attack the Chartist leaders because “their practice has been to excite hatred between classes [and] until there is an alliance between classes there cannot be in Britain an act of universal enfranchisement.”

This correctly harps back to the convergence of interests between the reforming elements in the middle and working classes during the campaign for the reform bill in the 1830s but misses the point that by the late 1830s that shared interest did not exist anymore.  The middles class had the vote and could see no reason to share it.

So given the worsening economic situation, and the rejection of the first Charter it is easy to see how some Chartists might be drawn to physical force.

Now despite never being a pacifist Somerville was equally unhappy about the use of violence.  He had after all been flogged for trying to stop force being used against the supporters of reform in Birmingham in 1832, and maintained that the Chartists “avowed belief that they can do physical battle with a few wretched pikes, against the regularly armed military forces, are not likely to obtain sympathy of the people, interested in the preservation of property.”

It was this same opposition to civil insurrection which had led him in 1834 to inform on a plan  to assassinate members of the Cabinet and the Royal family and seize control of Parliament and the Bank of England.  In is autobiography Somerville justifies his actions on the grounds of the strife, loss of life and damage to property which would have ensued had the plot gone ahead.

But there is that other giveaway clue in his comments on the preservation of property, which mark him out as marching on a different path. He was convinced that those Chartists who were hostile “ to the existence of private capital , moneyed or landed” were wrong.  It was this that led him to oppose the Chartist Land Plan as unfeasible.

Equally he could see that “the capitalist, merchants, master manufacturers, and master shopkeepers” by continuing to block reform would not be able to escape the consequences of heightened class conflict.

So if the opposition to widening the franchise was because they believed “the mass of the people to be dangerously ignorant .... I would say educate liberally and universally. There is no middle course; either give schools and votes, or barrack yards and bullets.  I am for schools and votes.”

Now I may be airing a prejudice when I think that class interests might have been the hidden factor in the opposition to extending the vote, but as a principle I am right behind Alexander.

So not perhaps a Chartist who passed through Chorlton but a radical none the less.

*Somerville, Alexander, The Autobiography of a Working Man, 1848, page 509 Google edition page 521

Picture; The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, April 10 1848, by William Kilburn

On discovering Woolwich

I have very fond memories of Woolwich.

Washing prawns, 1979

It was a place that I was quite late in visiting  which is a bit daft since we had moved to Well Hall in the spring of 1964 and the 122 and 161 ran by our house.

But during the week I was going back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern and the weekends were full with exploring Eltham.

So it will have been sometime in the summer of 1966 that I started going there.  At first it was to meetings in the evenings in the back room of a small pub at the bottom of the Woolwich New Road.  All very earnest political stuff, and then I just took in Woolwich on a regular basis, starting with the market, the Arsenal, and of course the river.

And later it was where I got the bus to to work at the bus stop facing the ferry.  I can't say it was always a comfortable place to stand at 6 in the morning but even on wet grey days the vew was one I liked.

But the busy sprawling market was always a draw.

And so here from 1978 or maybe 78 is the market on a busy day.  Sadly this is the only image to have survived umpteen moves and the odd disaster.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1979

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 47 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.

But as rundown as the canal was, and perhaps because it was so messy, and out of sight,  it was from time to time part of the urban playground.

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

Walking the River ......... the scenic route

A short series taken from one day when I walked along the River.

Back then the Thames was still a place to to earn a wage and watch as ships, and barges plied the way on the water.*

Location; the Thames, Greenwich





Picture; the River in 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson



*The lost Eltham and Woolwich pictures, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20lost%20Eltham%20and%20Woolwich%20pictures