Ghost stories from the Metrolink ……… 1992

 As transport features go the Mosley Street tram stop had a short life, opening in 1992 and closing on May 18th, 2013.

When Mosley Street was a tram stop, 2010

And given that it is now 12 years since it was last used there will be many who will not know of its existence and many more who have forgotten that once Timmy tram stopped there on its way south.

It stood  along side the row of shops and restaurants under Bernard House which my Wikipedia tells me “was the last unidirectional stop on the Metrolink, with a single platform serving southbound passengers travelling towards Altrincham Interchange, Eccles Interchange, MediaCityUK and St Werburgh's Road only”.*

I used it a few times, but it was not my go to stop and then it had gone. 

It always struck me as an afterthought on the network sandwiched between St Peter’s Square and Piccadilly Gardens. Added to which it only went the one way and what I had completely forgotten was that the stop “was designed with a varied height platform, partly full height with ramped lower sections. When a service was worked by two coupled T-68 vehicles, the rear vehicle extended mechanical steps to allow access at the low-platform sections - a feature absent in the newer M5000 vehicles”.*

High Street tram stop, 1990

So, there you are a little bit of our forgotten history.  Not that it was alone, because standing on High Street was another “one directional stop” which linked Market Street and Shudehill stops.

And this one I don’t remember ever using, nor for that matter do I remember that once Market Street was also one single platform, which became two in 1998 and sealed the fate of the High Street stop.

Leaving just Mosley Street as the only city centre single platform which eventually also vanished.  It did not benefit from a major upgrade and its days were numbered.

So returning to Wikipedia, “A review of the stop's future was conducted and found that the stop could cause congestion for trams at the Piccadilly delta junction when additional services are implemented. The report also noted that the tight confines around the stop location meant that rebuilding the platform to the new specifications would impact on pedestrian flows and access to adjacent retail establishments.

With two other Metrolink stops in close proximity (Piccadilly Gardens, 160 metres (520 ft), and Market Street), the expense of a platform upgrade was not considered to be economically or operationally justifiable. The decision was taken in February 2010 to close the stop".

Laying the tracks bringing a tram to Piccadilly and beyond, 1990

And so it went, leaving me to ponder as I pass the ghost of the stop how easy it is for a city landmark to be lost and pretty much forgotten.

I have Tony Goulding to thank for pulling me back to Mosely Street and its tram stop. 

He asked  “HI Andrew, I have just looked at an old Metrolink map (2008) and was reminded that there was originally a stop on Mosley Street. 

I am not sure, but I think it may have only had one (outward) platform. Has it had a mention in one of your tram books?"

The answer was no it was not in our first three tram books but it will appear in the next which takes the tram traveller from Piccadilly Gardens via Piccadilly Railway Station and onto New Islington, Holt Town and the Etihad Stadium.

The books will cover all eight routes and all 99 stops and as their titles indicate are the History of Greater Manchester By Tram, in which Peter Topping and I tell stories of the stops, and Peter paints them, with each book telling a bit of the history of Greater Manchester.**

The books are avaibale at £4.99 from Chorlton Bookshop, the shop at Central Ref, St Peter's Square, or from us at  www.pubbooks.co.uk 

Location; Mosley Street, Market Street & Market Street

Pictures; Mosley Street, David Dixon, 2010, From this image at geograph.org.uk; transferred by User:cnbrb using geograph_org2commons, Mosley Street, Manchester Looking north east to the north end towards Piccadilly Gardens where there will be a Delta junction, November 1990, Dr Neil Clifton / Mosley Street, Manchester  Mosley Street, Manchester Looking north east to the north end towards Piccadilly Gardens where there will be a Delta junction, Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0, High Street, Manchester, April 1993, From geograph.org.uk; transferred by User:Wikidwitch using geograph_org2commons

* Mosley Street tram stop, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosley_Street_tram_stop

**A new book on the History Of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram

After they have all gone …… the relic of the Hotspur Press

It is a familiar story ….. a breaking news event … be it a bombing, a flood disaster, or in this case the fire on Cambridge Street when the Hotspur Press burned down in a matter of hours.

On that June evening, the press, TV pundits, conspiracy theorists and photographers were all over the historic building which some claim to be the oldest textile mill in Manchester.

But almost before the last smouldering embers gave up their heat, the press, TV pundits, conspiracy theorists and photographers quit the stage looking for new sensational things to report and record.

Leaving the conspiracy theorists to cast the dice on who was to blame, how had the story first broken on a Chinese news station 24 hours earlier and had the building really been consumed by flames.

Meanwhile a few stalwarts went back and continue to do so with the aim of recording what happened next.

Amongst these is my old friend Andy Robertson who is  big contributor to the blog, seeking to record the whole story of a building, from it decline to its eventual demolition and its replacement.

In the process he has amassed a vast collection of images of places across the Twin Cities and beyond making it a wonderful record of the transformation of Manchester, Salford and other places across Greater Manchester.

Of these two images he told me “a bit more knocked down”.

So watch this space.

Location; Cambridge Street

Pictures; knocking down bits of the Hotspur Press, 2025, from the collection of Andy Robertson

On visiting Barlow Hall in 1887

“In rambling through Barlow Hall only a short time ago, we found a succession of tiny silent bedrooms, each opening into its neighbour, and each into a long narrow, rickety corridor.  

From the corridor we could see, through square bits of coloured glass, traces of a quaint timbered court yard and learnt that this was the oldest part of the house, and these bedrooms were probably used by the daughters of Alexander Barlow.”

For me this remains a pretty exciting if short tour of our oldest building.  Mrs Williamson had wandered through the hall sometime in 1887 by which time it had been the residences of William Cunliffe Brooks for over thirty years.

The hall had been the home of the Barlow family since the Middle Ages and there may have been a building on the site dating from that period, but the present half-timbered structure dates probably from the reign of Henry VIII. Little of the original structure was visible by 1848 when the Brooks family moved in.

Most of the timber work had been covered in plaster or hidden under ivy. The old great hall, which occupied most of the building and was open to the roof, had been divided to create two storeys, with the lower floor given over to three entertaining rooms.

But according to various observers William Cunliffe Brooks was keen not only to preserve the building but also to share his love of the hall.

This interest never appeared to have left him, and led Mrs C. Williamson to write in her Recollections of Fallowfield that his ‘love for old things is so great that every relic is sacred to him, and even mindful alterations are made in such close imitation of old, they look the real thing’.

It was a passion that  lead him to display a piece of the original timber which had been exposed after a fire in 1879, and our own Chorlton historian may well have been speaking from first-hand experience when he advised that ‘Mrs Brooks’s morning room is worthy of a visit, with its quaint old china, and the vestibule containing some fine old Furniture and an engraving of Wellington with his autograph’

Pictures; the coutyard in 1910 and the sitting room window which looks out onto the courtyard 1890-95 by S.H.Jones, from the Lloyd collection

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

When the book cover becomes the story ……

 I like the way that a story comes almost out of nowhere.

So earlier today I was wandering across social media when I came across these two delightful images from the book, “Flower Growing For UnderGardeners".

It was written in 1963 by Ehelind Fearon, and as you do, I went looking for the author.

Surprisingly Wikipedia is silent on Mrs. Fearon and I had turn to Penguin Books  who summed her busy life in just seven lines, from which I learnt that she was born in 1898, died in 1974 and wrote a heap of books “on such diverse but essential subjects as pigkeeping, pastries, how to keep pace with your daughter and how to grow herbs. She also wrote a number of children's books, including The Secret of the Chateau and The Sheep-dog Adventure”.*

After which the references to her were pretty much confined to images of her books until I came across  Ethelind Fearon: “doyenne of the lazy approach”, on The Garden History Blog.  The author like me has a fascination for bringing out of the shadows those who history has parked and refuses to return to.**

At which point I could just lift the story from the blog, but where would the fun be in that?  

Added to which I never just hoover up other people’s research and present it as mine.  

So, if you want more on and there is indeed plenty on Ehelind Fearon I suggest you follow the link and discover it for yourself.

Meanwhile I will thank Debbie Cameron who posted the images, and just say the style of artwork takes me back to when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s.

I guess that was what first attracted me, followed by  the quirky title of the book, and the rest as they say is a story. 

Pictures; courtesy of Debbie Cameron

* Ehelind Fearon, https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/235701/ethelind-fearon

**Ethelind Fearon: “doyenne of the lazy approach”

Posted on 09/04/2022 by The Garden History Blog

https://thegardenhistory.blog/2022/04/09/ethelind-fearon-doyenne-of-the-lazy-approach/

The lost woods of Chorlton …… and a mystery concerning Mrs Lydia Brown and John Holland

We are looking out on John Holland’s Wood which stretched west along Chorlton Brook towards the Bowling Green Inn.

John Holland's Wood, circa 1900, looking towards Brook Farm

Today the footpath to our left is Brookburn Road which once ran east to Barlow Moor Road and west into the village and then out again to eventually cross Turn Moss to Stretford.

John Holland's Wood, formerly the Cliffs, circa 1900

I can’t be sure exactly when it became known as John Holland’s Wood, but John Holland had taken over the family farm in 1865 on the death of his father. 

The Holland family were farming 54 acres around Chorlton from at least 1841 and their holdings were dotted about the township.

These included a strip of land on Row Acre which was the large field running along Beech Road, a stretch on the northern border beyond the Longford Brook and the delightfully named Back of the World which was located where Chorlton Brook joins the Mersey to the south of the stone bridge.

The Cliffs and Brookburn Farm, 1854

Back then, according to the 1854 OS map the stretch we can see in the picture was more heavily wooded, and was known as the Cliffs, which was rented by Lydia Brown who lived at Brook Farm, and farmed across the township, on land which she owned and land she rented from the Lloyd Estate.  

Added to which she owned the smithy on what is now Beech Road, the property used by the wheelwright, Mr. Brownhill on Sandy Lane and a portfolio of cottages.

We even have a snatch of a conversation she had with the journalist Alexander Somerville who came  to Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the summer of 1847 looking for potato blight, the disease which had ravaged Ireland, and was that summer causing concern in Derbyshire.

He stopped at Brook Farm, and reported his conversation with Mrs. Brown who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Brookburn Farm, circa 1900

Mrs. Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

And what is exciting is that we know just which fields she was referring to.  These were Rye Field and New Hey which were plots 317 and 318, and ran beside the woods and today form part of Chorltonville.

Despite not yet finding her on the census record I can track her and her husband across the Rate Books from the 1840s through to the mid 1870s.

The woods and Rye Field, 1845

And here is the mystery, because while Lydia Brown lived at Brook Farm which was roughly on the site of Brookburn School, the Holland family are also recorded at a Brook Farm which was according to the tithe record on the bit of Manchester Road which  for a century and a bit was the Conservative Club.

All of which is compounded by the census records which in 1861 place the Holland farm house  on Brookburn Road.

I will leave it to Eric, and who else cares to attempt an explanation, suggesting only that perhaps Lydia had given up farming by 1861, and was happy to live off the rents from her properties, leaving the Holland family to move closer to the woods which took their name.

Sadly, it is no longer possible to recreate the scene and reproduce an image from roughly the same spot.

The trees have vanished under what is part of Chorltonville and a new residential development which was built on the old dairy.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; John Holland’s Wood, and Brook farm from the Lloyd collection and the Cliffs in 1854 from the 1854 OS map of Lancashire showing a section of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and theTithe map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1845

What a difference half a century makes

Just 46 years and about a mile separate our first two pictures but in almost every other respect they are world apart.

In the July of 1958, A.P. Morris was out on a Saturday afternoon on Market Street and captured the pull of the ice cream man.  

What is more remarkable is that it was not raining.  

Now I say that not to feed the popular myth about Manchester and rain but because 1958 had been a wet year with “heavy and persistent rain with many severe thunderstorms through the summer months, with April, May, June, August and September with rainfall three times the normal.”*

But July was dry, and the crowds were out. And so were the Italian ice cream men.  Most of our ice cream was made by twenty or so Italian families who had begun to settle in Ancoats during the 1860s.  The core of the settlement was around Jersey Street and the area not unsurprisingly became known as Little Italy.  And those of you who want to pursue the story can either read Antony Rea’s book or visit his web site.**

And on that Saturday afternoon there were plenty of takers.

Not that there weren’t plenty of other attractions, this was after all Market Street and it was as full of crowds then as it is today but with that added dimension that traffic still flowed along it.

Look at it closely and it is the clothes that draw you in.  Our two girls on the right are wearing light fashionable skirts and blouses while an older generation have turned out complete with overcoats.

And here I think is one of those fault lines which separate us from them.  The 1950s were a period of growing prosperity.  It might all still have been relative, with the gulf between the rich and poor still a chasm, but there was more of it about.  And of course it was the young in full time employment with few serious responsibilities who could spend their money on clothes specifically designed for them.  But there are still those in the picture wearing suits not unlike their father’s.  And of course it would be totally unthinkable that that father and son would go out in jeans and casual shirts which were almost undistinguishable.  That would have to wait for the baby boomers born in the late 40s and early 50s to reach middle age and who could see nothing wrong in Denham and hoodies.

Nor can we ignore the Kardomah.  Eating here or in that range of smaller cafes was nothing like our own cafe society.

And that brings me to my second photograph, taken on Deansgate in the summer of 2009.  The contrast could not be greater.  It is early in the afternoon and while there are plenty about on the street there are plenty sitting on the street doing what might be done on the pavements of Paris, Rome, or Milan, which is just sipping coffee, casually talking to friends or just watching the crowds pass by.

Of course people in 1958 did drink coffee, and might have sat on a rickety chair pulled out of some storage cupboard and placed on the pavement as a nod to a sunny day, but I don’t think this matches our Deansgate experience.  Coffee might not have been the instant variety but it still came with lots of milk, and if you were very unlucky was that odd concoction known as Camp Coffee.  Nor sitting on your rickety chair could you expect to have been served wine, for that it was the pub and like as not a smoke filled room which would not have looked out of place in some movie from the Second World War.

Unfair?  Well perhaps a tad, but I remember the milky brown stuff, the maghony coloured walls of some city pubs and above all the UCP snack bar on Market Street.  Looking at pictures of it in the city archive I am not sure this was the one I ventured into in 1969, but a UCP restaurant on Market Street I did once eat in.

Not that I ate the tripe which in the case of beef tripe is made from the first three chambers of a cow’s stomach.  I could go into more detail but am not going to.  Suffice to say then that UCP stood for United Cattle Products and was a chain of shops and restaurants in the north of England which specialized in tripe dishes.  As the UCP supporters site records,

 “In Lancashire and other parts of the North of England in the 1950s there were 146 UCP shops and restaurants, specializing in tripe dishes and with long queues for seats. ..... UCP also provided ox tail, cow heal and other bovine extremities.”***

Now before someone writes in, tripe is also eaten across mainland Europe and no doubt where ever there are bits of a cow to dispose of.

All of which is a long way from where we started.  But then perhaps not, I doubt that tripe is on the menu at the Starbucks on Deansgate or for that matter any of the cafes, bars and new beer houses which stretch out from Beech Road, along Barlow Moor Road and out on either arm of Wilbraham Road.  Of course I might be wrong, but on this one I would prefer to remain in ignorance.

Picture; Market Street on a Saturday afternoon in July 1958, A.P. Morris Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m62093, and street living, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Sutton, J. M., Agricultural Records 1969
**Rea, Anthony, Manchester’s Little Italy, 1988, and Manchester’s Ancoats Little Italy, http://www.ancoatslittleitaly.com/index.html
***UCP Tripe, http://www.unitedcattleproducts.co.uk/index.php