The brick works, a forbidden place and a man called Duffy

It was one of those perfect summer days out beyond Hardy Farm.

The sun was hot and the sky a brilliant blue with just a few light clouds high up and overhead. And we were on a mission.

I forget now what had prompted us to be there and very quickly whatever it was had been  lost in the sheer pleasure of wandering through the long grass with absolutely no one else around.  There was that intense smell of the warm grass, the sound of a bird and away over the Mersey the faint noise of traffic.

We have all done it, and it’s like being seven again and on one of those carefree adventures with nothing to worry about and everything to discover.

Now I have done my own share.  I remember long solitary walks along Derbyshire country lanes and endless treks looking for new strange parks to play in or just taking my 2/6d pocket money to the local railway station and seeing where it would take us.  Sometimes you struck gold and were rewarded with open fields at the end of the line and at others a dingy industrial wasteland hard by a smelly canal.

The best was the walk to Blackheath which led on to the park and the river.  But there were also the bomb sites those lingering ugly reminders of the war we had been lucky enough to miss.  There was no danger there any more although just occasionally you might come across some hidden treasure which had somehow worked its way back to the surface.

David O’Reilly who grew up on Chorlton has similar fond memories.  In his case it was “the Clay Pits” which was
“situated to the immediate east of Longford Park, just the other side of the interrupted Rye Bank Road - it was a series of mounds and gulleys, the left over from previous workings of the old brick works factory with its tall chimney.  

It was a forbidden play place and it was guarded by an almost mythical man named "Duffy"! With another 9 year old boy, I recall daring ourselves to go into this derelict building one day and even crawling under the tunnel - through rubble to a place where I could look up inside the chimney and see the small hole of daylight at the top. 

On re emerging we continued to play until - that knowledge of being watched - made its presence felt - and we looked around to see a man who I think was called Duffy staring at us, stood on a small wall about 12 yards away. Scared witless we fled the scene, and although not chased, the memory of Duffy, the clay pits, and the old building, has played a part in several nightmares since that day!”

I have to say that when I first came across the brick works I was surprised.

But the clay and marl around the Longford Road area has been used for centuries.

The marl was used for spreading on the land while the clay became the bricks of some of our older houses .*

The pits are there on the OS map of the area for 1841 and carry names like Marl Pits and Brick Kiln Pits.  And as late the 1920s and 30’s the water filled pits proved a fatal place for some of our children.

But I want to end on a lighter note.  David and I may have been aware of the dangers in where we played but it didn’t stop us. In those long ago days parental supervision was perhaps  lighter and there may have been far more open spaces to while away the long hot summers.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Coffee…… a bag of coal ….. and a new TV channel ………. Didsbury 1967

I think this might be the last in the series of Didsbury in the 1960s.

I say that but I am sure it’s a promise I won’t keep.

This picture from 1967 is one of my favourites from the collection and features a building whose story I keep coming back to.*

For now I shall reflect that I doubt many of those sipping their coffee on Costa will know that the corner plot was once occupied by the National Coal Board, or that the distinctive ghost sign on the gable end was hidden under a layer of black paint.

What really caught mu interest was BSM Radio with its advert for BBC 2.

This was after all 1967, and until the arrival of BBC 2, we had just the two channels, which were black and white.

The first colour transmission I saw weas the following year, when in London at least BBC 2 broadcast live coverage of Wimbledon in colour.

Just how many of those passing along Wilmslow Road on that winter’s day had BBC 2 is unknown, but I doubt it will have been that many.

And in the same vein I wonder just who remembers Price’s the bakery shop, BSM Radio or Distinctive Fashions, which is now also part of Costa Coffee?

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Wilmslow Road, 1967, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.17 the Rising Sun in pale blue

A short series on the pictures of Eltham and Woolwich in 1976.

For four decades the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham, circa 1976, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking out at the allotments towards Sandy Lane sometime in the 1960s

Now here are two images of Chorlton which at first glance look familiar.  

We are on the allotments with the Park to our rear looking out towards Sandy Lane.

Back in 1903 my friend Ann’s grandfather lived at number 72 Sandy Lane.

She  grew up in Chorlton on Barlow Moor Road and has contributed a rich set of memories and pictures from the 1950s and 60s.

What I especially like about these two are the contrasts, one in full summer, the other deepest winter with snow still on the ground and of course the difference in colour.

It would be fun to find people who were working those allotments at the time and may have their own stories and pictures to add to the collection.

The painting and photograph will date from sometime in the 1960s and are a reminder that not all things change.

Pictures; of the allotments from the collection of Ann Love

A little bit of the High Street in the summer of 1977

There will be quite a few who remember the High Street like this.

It is the summer of 1977, the Silver Jubilee celebrations are still in full swing, and I came back for a brief holiday.

And in that summer of ’77 Eltham looked pretty much as I had left it four years earlier when I finally accepted that Manchester would be home.

Now when I left to go to College I always assumed I would be back, after all Eltham was where I grew up and where I had been very happy.

But the degree led to a job, I was already married and so seamlessly and without really giving it much thought I settled down in the North.

And on those occasions when I did return I noticed the little changes, and then after a longer period away the transformation was pretty dramatic.

The Odeon on Well Hall had closed, the station had relocated and cutting across Well Hall Road was that motorway.

Nor was this all, Willcox’s and Burtons on the corner opposite the church were no more, the Post Office was a pub and somehow a little bit of my childhood was lost.

Still that is the price you pay for moving away.

Not that this is a lament just a recognition that all things must change.

But in the meantime I shall gaze again on the High Street I remember.

Picture; the High Street in 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Admiring the simplicity of Didsbury Library ……… 1963

It’s been a while since I have been in the library and had quite forgotten the simplicity of the design.

It was built in fulfilment of a promise made when Didsbury, along with Burnage, Chorlton, and Withington, voted to join the City in 1904.

That said it would be another 11 years before Didsbury’s residents got their new Library, but when it was finished it was a brand-new Library, fit for a new century and replaced a small municipal library which had opened in 1908.

While it’s outside was in the words of its architect “'designed in the fifteenth century gothic style with tracery windows and emblems of Science, Knowledge, Literature, Music and Arts and Crafts in stone distributed over the building.” *

Internally it belonged to the 20th century with electric light which “was designed to allow the public free access to the shelves, browsing and reading areas. The walls were tiled to dado height, the floor cork carpeted and the oak furniture, fittings and partitions cost £600”.

But it wasn’t the first library, because back in the May of 1854, a more modest venture was opened in the National School.

It was the work of a group of wealthy residents and “the inauguration meeting was held in the schoolroom, which is to be used for the library and reading room and is well adapted for the purpose being lighted with gas and well ventilated.  The stock of books in the library at present is not large, but they are well selected, and there are ample funds for the purchase of more when needed”. **

The subscription had been “fixed as low as possible, - a penny a week, - in order to diffuse the benefits of the institution as widely as possible”.

And as befitted the age, more than a few speakers at the opening meeting took the moral high ground, with one asserting that the library would act as a counter to the “the public house which was the resort only of those who had no other enjoyment”.

While another “referred with regret to the fact that ‘Roderick Random’ was the most read book in the noble Free Library of Manchester and while admiring the humour of the author he feared the book was perused for its  objectionable features, and he advised them to purge their library of anything injurious to the morals of the people”.

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Didsbury Library, 1967, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk

*The Didsbury Library, Manchester Guardian May 17th, 1915

**Opening of Didsbury Library and Institution, Manchester Guardian, May 17th, 1854

By train from Chorlton into the Hope Valley in the April of 1957 for a day of rambling

Now it is Sunday April 7th 1957 and I am on Chorlton railway station waiting for the train from Central which left at 9.45 am and is due here just twelve minutes later.

The weather according to the forecast is promising, for “after frost at first, areas will have a fine, mainly sunny day, with normal or slightly higher temperature”* which will gives us about 8⁰C or a little bit more.

And that I reckon is just right for a ramble in the countryside which is what we would have been planning to do on that April morning back in 1957.

This I know from a delightful poster which British Railways published in that year**  advertising Special Excursions to Chinley, Edale, Hope, Bamford and Hathersage.

It is of course a journey that can no longer be made by rail, but back in 1957 our station still had another ten years before it was closed and there are quite a few people who remember making the trip into the Hope valley by train from Chorlton.

All of which makes the poster a valuable piece of history, for not only do we have the journey times for this long vanished service but also the cost.  So from Chorlton it cost 4/3d for a return ticket to Hope and took just 19 minutes.

These were “organised rambles, with leaders provided, details of the routes to be taken and walks for both individuals and parties.”

So having done the ramble the train back would have left Hope at two minutes past seven arriving back in Chorlton at about 8.10 in the evening.


It is a journey I would have loved to have made, not least because it was while in Hope recently that we decided to take up serious walking.  But sadly back in 1957 I was just eight years old and living in London.

Still this little poster gives a flavour to what was on offer back then and an insight into our own railway line.

*The Observer April 7th 1957

**Special Excursions to Chinley, Edale, Hope, Bamford and Hathersage, from Manchester Railway Termini, E.M.Johnson, Foxline Publishing,  1987

Picture; from Manchester Railway Termini, E.M.Johnson, Foxline Publishing,  1987