Longford Hall … The Parsonage and that Didsbury pub ….. three pictures from that remarkable artist Derrick Lea ….. and their stories

I have become a great fan of the artist Derrick Lea who during the 1950s and into the 60s drew and painted many of our iconic buildings across Manchester.

Longford Hall and Park circa 1950s

And given that he lived in Chorlton it is not surprising that some of his work records places around the Township.  

But he also produced images of Manchester, and its suburbs.

All of which is an introduction to three in the collection from Stretford and Didsbury.

The first is Longford Hall which was in the grounds of Longford Park and was commissioned by John Rylands that extremely wealthy industrialist whose commercial interests were global and who was a prime financial backer of the Manchester Ship Canal.

Alas the hall was demolished in 1995, having been acquired by Stretford Council in 1911 and used variously as accommodation for Belgian refugees, a Red Cross hospital, a museum and art gallery.  Added to which in 1977 it hosted the only Royal garden party to be held outside London.

And if that were not enough of a claim to fame it stood on the site of Longford House which at one point was inhabited by Thomas Walker that distinguished 18th century businessman who was the boroughreeve of Manchester, prominent in the campaign to abolish the Slave Trade, and supported the French Revolution which resulted in him being wrongfully  accused of sedition.

Like most people I assumed that Mr. Walker’s house had been torn down to make way for Longford Hall in 1857, but a paper in the bulletin of the John Rylands Library  by Richard Bond argues for a later date.*

It is a compelling argument and along the way offers much detail about the Hall and the architect Philip Nunn.

The Old Parsonage, circa 1950s

Now I know from Mr. Lea’s son that the family lived close to the hall and visited it regularly with Jon telling me that  “we used to go there with Dad for milk shakes, and in cold weather it was hot Vimto.”

In contrast to the grand home of John Rylands Derrick Lea was at home with more modest buildings like The Old Parsonage in Didsbury which he drew sometime in the 1950s.

It is “a Grade II listed building, next to the original village green of Didsbury. The building and gardens were left to the citizens of Manchester by Alderman Fletcher Moss in 1919. The Didsbury Parsonage Trust has provided a thriving community hub for the people of Didsbury and beyond, in a significant and picturesque setting. This historic and much-loved building has been lovingly restored, and the Trust aims to preserve it for future generations”.**

Added to which it is set in a fine and lovingly kept garden with views across to the parish church.

Ye Old Cock, circa 1950s

And after a spell in the gardens there is the Old Cock which I would like to think Mr. Lea could have visited after taking in the Parsonage which backs onto the pub.

It was a place we escaped to during my time on a post grad course at Didsbury College over half a century ago.  At the time and looking back now there was no competition between a couple of pints and an hour and bit listening to a lecture on the Philosophy of Education.

The pub looks old and in 1825 hosted a three day Wakes event which the Stockport Advertiser reported  included “ass-racing for purses of gold, playing and grinning through collars of ale [as well] bag racing for hats; foot racing for sums of money; maiden plates for ladies under twenty years of age for gown pieces and shawls, treacle -loaf eating, wheel barrow racing and bell-racing with balls each evening”.***

I have to say I bet that event would have made a fine picture for Mr. Lea.

Leaving me just to mention  Juliette Tomlinson and her debut novel, "Longford", which charts the lives of John Rylands and his third wife, Enriqueta 

It is the first of a trilogy which will span the decades from 1864 into the twentieth century and on the way offers up glimpses into the lives of the two, set against provincial France and Manchester, with of course sideways looks at Longford Hall, Stretford and other bits of south Manchester.

The second novel called Sunnyside is due out in April of 2026.

Location; Stretford, and Didsbury

Pictures; Longford Hall, The Parsonage and the Old Cock, circa 1950s, courtesy of Jon and Hazel Lea

 *Bond, Richard, Longford Hall Revisited: A New Building Date, and an Architect, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol 100, No. 1 Spring, Manchester University Press  

**Didsbury Parsonage Charity https://www.didsburyparsonagetrust.org.uk/

***Didsbury Wakes, Stockport Advertiser, August 5th, 1825

When torture came with a plastic rain mac …… memories of the 1950s

My Pakamac was ideal for summer showers. 

 "Lewis’s say … Take a cape, circa 1950s

But they were a cruel invention. Despite being light and flexible enough to be squeezed into a small bag they smelt awful and were a nightmare to wear.

It didn’t take long before the warmth of the body trapped in a sheet of clinging plastic made you sweat and the more you walked the hotter and more uncomfortable you became. Which meant you had a choice, wear it and suffer or take it off, get wet and suffer later when my grandmother discovered that this act of rebellion had got me soaked.

"Light and in four colours"

They were a product of the Plastic Age when heaps of things made of traditional materials were junked in favour of light bright products, from cups, plates, cutlery to the Pakamac.

I had all but forgotten this cheap protection from the rain, but in the collection of the Chorlton artist, Derrick Lea I came across this advert.

I have no idea why he included it in his pictures and paintings but perhaps like me he wasn’t a fan.

Nor I think I am alone.  Anyone born in the middle decades of the last century, who remembers watching Ivanhoe on a tiny black and white TV, and who was allowed to roam free at weekends and holidays with no demand to check in will at some point have endured a variation of the Pakamac.

True they were less cumbersome than those belted gaberdine raincoats, but they were no less a chore to carry and got in the way of climbing trees.

Unless of course you had bought one of those surplus army canvas bags which could store all manner of treasures, from a bottle of lemonade to a half-eaten bread roll.

Mine was army green had once been an ammunition bag and cost just one shilling. They were the “must to have” item in 1958 and at a push would take the mac, if you hadn’t already discarded it in full knowledge that mother would not be best pleased.

And that is it.

Location; wet days in the 1950s

Picture; "Lewis’s say … Take a cape, circa 1950s, courtesy of John and Hazel Lea" 

A 1930s cinema and a church from Woolwich, more walks in Well Hall

From Kidbrook Lane to the Well Hall roundabout

Continuing a walk through Eltham in the footsteps of Darrell Sprurgeon.  

This is part two of the guided walk in Well Hall taken from Discover Eltham by Mr Spurgeon.

We left the walk at the Tudor Barn and today have wandered up to the Well Hall roundabout.

In the thirteen years the Guide book was republished the changes at this end of Well Hall have continued a pace, and so the description of the cinema is as much a piece of history as the story of Well Hall House.

The Well Hall Odeon

The Former Coronet Cinema, 70, 

The former Odeon cinema of 1936 designed by Andrew Mather has some interesting art deco features – note- the projecting glass staircase tower and the central canopy over the entrance.  

The interior of the foyer is also circular, with a wooden ticket booth and the word Odeon in green and red mosaic set in the floor.  

Unfortunately, the cinema has closed and it may be difficult to find a future use for the building.

Church of St Barnabus, 71, Rochester Way.  A Victorian Gothic church in red brick, designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott. It was originally built in 1859 as the chapel of the Royal Naval Dockyard at Woolwich; it was dismantled and re-erected, brick by brick, on this site in 1933.  

The exterior is rather stark, with a bold apse, quirky turret and many lancet windows, along the side are four gables, each covering twin lancets.

The Well Hall Odeon

The interior was transformed by Thomas Ford in 1957 after war damage.  

It is light and spacious with a wagon roof and large flowering mural by Hans  Feibusch on the apse ceiling; but is very strange (‘sickly wedding cake’ Pevsner) with 16 angels perched on the beams above the column in the square arcades.  

Note the anthemium motifs in the arcades.  The Stations of the Cross are of some interest, by Stan Boundy circa 1994.  

The vicarage next door is a striking red brick house with a graceful ground floor bow.  Adjacent ids the church hall, of 1938, renamed the Frankie Howerd Community Centre in 1988.

Next, the Progress Estate.

Pictures; courtesy of Eltham, https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eltham/210661675617589?fref=ts

* Discover Eltham and its Environ, Darrell Spurgeon, Greenwich Guide Books, 2nd edition 2000

For the Friends of Oxford Road .......... part 2 ...... Studios One to a Million

Now, this is one of the pictures I took of a demonstration in the 1980s.

We are on Oxford Road heading towards the railway station, and bits of what you see have gone forever.

Ahead of us, the cream tiled building is now a 21st century hotel, while Studios One to a Million is a Dance Studio.

I say Studios One to a Million, but that does slightly over do the number of cinema screens but it  was a nick name we came to use for the place.

There will be many who remember the cinema as Studios 1 & 2, before its makeover and expansion into five screens.

It hosted late night movies, which began after the pubs closed and which therefore had an atmosphere a little different from matinees.

We saw Easy Rider there and more memorably, the cult horror film ..... Scream, Scream and Scream Again, which involved the harvesting of body parts from an  unwilling donor, and which every so often showed the said man minus another limb.

I doubt that today I would find it as riveting as I did back in 1971, but then I had had a large number of pints in the Red Lion before we paid our money over.

All of which just leaves me to point out that today opposite the former cinema is brand new building which has risen from what had once been the site of the BBC building, which was under construction when we did our late night picture visits. 

In between those two points, the site had become the BBC Building but that is a tale for another time.

Manchester Guardian, September 12 1930

At which point I have to confess to making a mistake which was pointed out by Gordon Howe.  I wrongly assumed the cinema had started with just one screen.  But Gordon commented, "I always believed that the cinema was originally built with two screens, because my Mum (who lived in Manchester from the 1920s to the late 1940s) always referred to it as the Regal Twins".

And a quick look at the wonderful site cinema Treasures revealed that it was "originally opened as the Twin Regal Kinemas on 20th September 1930. The cinemas, which had separate entrances and foyers, were on the second floor and shared a single projection room. Neither had a balcony and each seated 800.

Although it’s common place now, these two cinemas often presented the same film albeit at different times. Each had a barrel vaulted ceiling and elaborate Art Deco plasterwork down the side walls depicting folds of cloth.

In 1960, they were bought by the Star Cinemas group and renamed Romulus and Remus which lasted just two years before they became known as Studios 1 & 2.*

Never let a mistake get in the way of accuracy, so thank you Gordon and keep checking my stories!

Location; Oxford Road, sometime in the 1980s

Picture; Oxford Road, sometime in the 1980s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson.

*cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2679

Dangerous times and peaceful protests

“the dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion.”

That was Abraham Lincoln speaking to the US Congress in 1862 on the eve of the Civil War, and it aptly sums up the response of many to the international scene during the 1980s.

This was a time when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place. Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

I remember travelling across France with a young American back packer from the Mid West who remarked how he had come to see the European perspective to this arms race which from the comfort of middle America had never occurred to him.

Here in Britain the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament saw its membership increase dramatically, there were growing numbers of demonstrations across the country and the woman’s peace movement focused on Greenham Common which was one of the sites of the deployment of US missiles.

Here in Chorlton there were attempts to set up a women’s peace camp on the Rec on Beech Road and on a hot summers day in 1984 hundreds attended a peace festival in the park while the City Council declared Manchester a nuclear free zone.

There were those who derided such actions and  some who  still  scorn this popular response. They point to the demise of the Soviet Union and the other Communist Governments of Eastern Europe for a relaxation in those tensions.

But this is to ignore the genuine belief by countless millions that something had to be done.

Picture; badges from the collection of Andrew Simpson, photograph of the peace festival on the Rec from the collection of Tony Walker

When Mr. Lea drew Chorlton-cum-Hardy …………..

I have Jon and Hazel to thank for reigniting my interest in our local artist Derrick Lea who I first came across a decade and a bit ago.

Seven in one place, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, in the 1950s

Back then I knew nothing of Mr. Lea other than that during the 1950s he produced a collection of fine pictures of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

They were drawn in a style which will be familiar to anyone who grew up in that decade and are now unique in being a record of the township over 70 years ago.

They include some of our iconic buildings from the Horse and Jockey, and the Con Club, as well as the Lloyds, Barlow Hall, Hough End Hall and Jackson’s Boat along with Longford Hall.

Now I know some purists will sniffly point out that neither Hough End Hall nor Longford Hall are in Chorlton, but as Mr. Lea made an exception in his calendar of Chorlton sites, I am not going to quibble.

The Lloyd Hotel and Con Club, 1955

As for Hough End Hall it is true it was in Withington for centuries but with a slip of the municipal pen has now come over to us.  As for Longford Hall, yep, there is no denying it is in Stretford, but than Mr. Lea lived on Ryebank Road which is as close as you can get to the hall.

He was a commercial artist, and his son Jon tells me that he produced the Chorlton selection for picture postcards and that calendar.

All date from the 1950s and some I can pinpoint to a specific year. So, the images of the Lloyds, the former Conservative Club and Jackson’s Boat date from 1955 and that of Longford Hall was drawn two years later.

And that makes them an important addition to our understanding of what the area was once like and in particular how some of the buildings have changed over seven decades.

Hough End Hall, circa 1950s

When he drew Hough End Hall it was still part of a working farm and so while its glory days were over when it was at the centre of an estate comprising 250 acres its pond and fields were still home to chickens, pigs, geese and horses. 

Moreover, the last real tenant had only died a few years earlier which resulted in it being taken over by the Bailey family who first began farming in Chorlton in the mid 18th century round about the time the Hall passed out of the Mosley’s possessions who built it and into the hands of the Egerton’s who owned almost all of Chorlton.

Likewise, two images of the Horse and Jockey show that the western end of the pub was still a separate residential property.  

The Horse and Jockey, 1955

That said Mr. Lea was not above introducing a few flights from historical accuracy. In one of the Jockey pictures he includes a pond on the village green which fronts the Jockey. Sadly, there is no evidence for a pond and during a big chunk of the 19th century the green was the private garden of Samuel Wilton who lived in the eastern side of what is now the pub.

But that is a minor quibble when set against the bigger picture which is of a collection of images drawn during the 1950s by Mr. Lea, and which are fast fading from living memory.

And that is it.

Location; Chorlton

Derrick Lea, date unknown

Pictures; The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Mr. Lea drew in the 1950s, courtesy of Jon and Hazel Lea

Next; Longford Hall, Didsbury and out beyond into Cheadle and beyond

The case of Mrs Crowfoot's plum pudding ......... dark deeds at Well Hall in January 1870

I don’t often go looking at the Proceedings of the Old Bailey which are now online and cover the period 1674-1913 which is my loss.*



Well Hall Cottages, 1909

They are “a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.”*

So I am indebted to Colin Benford who drew my attention to the case of George Pritchett who broke into the home of Robert and Ann Crowfoot in January 1870.

Mr and Mrs Crowfoot lived in one of the cottages in Well Hall.

Now I have long been fascinated by these houses and have  written about them, and so was intrigued when Colin wrote that the Crowfoot’s were residents in 1851 and were still there in 1870 when George Pritchett broke in.

And that seems an appropriate point to quote from the records.

232. GEORGE PRITCHETT (27) , Burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling-house of Robert Crawfoot and stealing therein 4 lbs. of beef and a plum pudding, his property.

MR. PATER conducted the Prosecution.

ANN CRAWFOOT . I am the wife of Robert Crawfoot, of Well Hall Cottages, Eltham—on 3rd January, at 8 a.m., I went down stairs and found the pantry window open, which was shut and fastened when I went to bed at 9 o'clock—I missed from the larder a piece of beef and a very large plum pudding with a little piece cut out of it—I found the pudding in the shed, and saw a portion of the beef taken out of the prisoner's pocket.

ROBERT FAIRWEATHER (Policeman R 320). On Sunday night, 2nd January, about 10 o'clock, I saw the prisoner going down a path at the back of some houses, within 200 yards of Mr. Grawfoot's—I saw him again about 11.15 or 11.30 in a shed, covered up with horse litter—I searched him and found a piece of plum pudding, some suet pudding, and a quantity of beef—I asked what he had been doing; he gave no answer—I asked where he got the beef and pudding—he said, "From a servant girl"—I asked him who she was—he declined to tell me.

The original records 1870

JAMES PIPER (Policeman R 37). On the morning of 3rd January I went to the prosecutor's house, and saw footmarks there, which I compared with the prisoner's left boot and the impression was the exact model of the sole—half the heel was worn off, and half on top was left, and there was every nail, nail for nail—I did not make an impression by the side, I was satisfied without.

Prisoner. How can you swear to the footmarks when there had been three hour's rain? Witness. 

There was no rain from the time you were in custody till 10.30 or 11 o'clock.

GUILTY — Three Months' Imprisonment.***

In the great sweep of history it may not even count as a full stop but it offers up one of those opportunities to touch the past and bring you closer to the people who lived in Well Hall.
And as you do I went looking for the three of them.  Not unsurprisingly George Pritchett pretty much drew a blank.  The records are full of George Pritchett’s but none offered up a clue as to which might have been our man.

Robert and Ann Crowfoot were easier to trace. They were living in the cottage at Well Hall in 1851 and were from Suffolk, at the time of the burglary he was fifty eight and Ann a year younger and given that he was an agricultural labourer and she a laundress the loss of that food must have been serious.

In time I shall find out more if only to sort out the misspelling of their name which appears on the census record as Crowfoot and in the court documents as Crawfoot.

Pictures; Well Hall from the OS map of Kent, showing Eltham, 1858-73, Well Hall Cottages from The story of Royal Eltham,  R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm and the original court document from The Proceedings of the Old Bailey

A thank you to Colin Benford who researched the story

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

* The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/index.jsp

** A map a photograph and some old records, Well Hall cottages in the spring of 1844, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/a-map-photograph-and-some-old-records.html

*** GEORGE PRITCHETT, Theft > burglary, 31st January 1870. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18700131-232&div=t18700131-232&terms=Well%20hall#highlight