Cleaning the brass and making the beds in Chorlton ........ with Miss Edith Ashworth

 I wonder what Edith Ashworth made of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

She had been born in Northenden in 1880, and lived with her father and mother and four siblings in a small cottage off Mill Lane.  Her father described himself as a labourer, while her eldest sister was employed as a milliner.

Just opposite their home was the river and the mill, while just a few minutes’ walk to the east beyond Palatine Road were open fields stretching all the way to Sale.

By contrast Chorlton-cum-Hardy was undergoing one of those revolutions which would see large parts of the township transformed into rows of modest properties, catering for the “middling people”, many of whom worked in the city but wanted to live on the edge of the countryside.

Some were professionals, while others were managers and yet more worked as clerks, and secretaries.  They rented their homes, but many still found money to employ a servant, which was always a mark of distinction.

And in the April of 1901 Edith  was working  as a general servant for Mrs. Eliza Jones, at 7 Maple Avenue.

Mrs. Jones employed only the one servant, who and these were often known as “maids of all work” because they pretty much did everything from the cooking and cleaning to turning down the beds and much more, which in the case of Maple Avenue involved looking after nine rooms along with the needs of Mrs. Jones and her two grown up children.

The family had moved into the house when it was built in 1895, and over the next century kept a unique photographic record of the house and the surrounding streets, allowing us to place Edith in the very rooms she cleaned and kept tidy.

Nor was she the only servant in the avenue.  In total there were four servants working in four of the seven occupied houses.  All were “maids of all the work”, and some catered for families much larger than at 7 Maple Avenue.

And like a century earlier when we were still a rural community, none of the four servants were local, three came from Cheshire and a fourth from Stretford.  Some people might be surprised at this, but it was that simple rule, that if servants were local they might well take stories of the household home, and those stories might well become the gossip of the township.

Only in one respect was Edith different from her fellow servants and that was her age.  She was 21, while Mary Ann Jones at number 15 was 18 years old and the remaining two were just 15.

Sadly, there is little more that I can find out about Edith, for like so many of her class, history has not been kind, and so far I have found only one other reference, but it is a tantalizing one, because on March 10th 1904 she sailed from Liverpool to Halifax in Canada on board the Tunisian.  She shared the journey with her 17-year-old sister Florence, and while I know they arrived, the rest as they say awaits further research.

As for 7 Maple Avenue, it stayed in the possession of the family until 1997, and I am indebted to Ray Jones, who is one of the descendants, for permission to reproduce photographs of the house.

Loation; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; 7 Maple Avenue, date unknown, courtesy of Ray Jones

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 10........... from bread and dripping to Museli

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I suspect pretty much every generation thinks that there’s was the one which has seen the most profound change and I am the first to accept that mine has no monopoly on the new inventions, mould breaking fashions and seminal music.

But there is no doubt that those of us born just after the last war, who started school in the early 1950s and are just beginning to enter retirement have experienced a bewildering revolution in what we eat and how we prepare that food.

I will have been four when rationing was finally abandoned, and in the succeeding decades came to take for granted a huge range of new foods sourced from all over the world and delivered within hours of being harvested.

And of course with all that came a deluge of specialist utensils, ever larger cookers and the microwave.

All of which makes me think back to our tiny kitchen at 294, which was just large enough to take an old battered Cannon gas cooker, and small fridge which nestled either side of the sink.

In their wisdom the architects had provided a largish store cupboard under the stairs and here went the bulk of our dried and tinned food.

And what couldn’t be found the cupboard or the fridge was still bought fresh and eaten on the same day.

But the fridge is the key to the change.

In the 1950s the growing reliance on frozen food would lift some of the drudgery out of preparing food.

Now I still like washing carrots, peeling potatoes and shelling peas but for sheer speed nothing beats opening the packet of frozen peas.

And sixty years ago the adverts for frozen foods focused on that simple message that they were quick to use and because of the way they had been frozen on the day they were harvested were bound to be fresher than the peas and carrots which had made their way from the field via the market to the small greengrocer, whose turn over dictated that the produce might sit for days before it was bought.

Of course few people in 1956 had a fridge let along a freezer which was why the bags of frozen vegetables came in small sizes which were bought and used on the same day.

And in much the same way out went the old fashioned breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon and toast in favour of the breakfast cereal.

Now these had been around since the 1930s, and there are ads in the collection for Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies, but the 50s offered up a new and exciting range, often marketed with a toy or other novelty and clearly aimed at the young.

Mother was quick off the mark to try the "new TV dinners  for one" which came out in the late 50s but equally died a death in our house as too expensive and not that nice.

Instead we reverted to simpler home cooked food but there was no going back on the changes that had happened.

As each of us left to set up our own homes the variety and the quantity of what we bought and ate just kept on growing.

But Dad preferred his tins, and on one memorable evening after I had cooked a pasta dish he smiled and said quietly that "it was good but  didn't really like  food messed about."

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London


Pictures;  adverts for Birds Eye Foods and Sugar Puffs, from Woman’s Own, January 12 1956

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

The night watchman............ out on the streets of Manchester in 1896

Once the night watchman would have been a familiar sight sitting beside his hut keeping warm at the brazier and maintaining a solitary vigil over the road works or building site.

They feature in much literature during the last two centuries and only disappeared sometime in the 1960s.

Back in 1896 Henry Tidmarsh recorded this one somewhere in the centre of Manchester.

In all he produced over 300 illustrations for the book Manchester Old and New which  was published in 1894 by Cassell with a text by William Arthur Shaw.

In three big volumes it told the history of the city but the real value of the book was in Tidmarsh's vivid depictions of Manchester, with streets and buildings animated with people.

Pictures; The night watchman, 1896, Henry Tidmarsh, from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1896

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 9........... bold new designs and a bit of Formica

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

I often wonder what  those who lived in our house in the 1950swould have made of the new household designs which were featured in Woman’s Own for January 12 1956.

Of course they may never have taken the magazine but they would not have escaped the exciting new ideas for transforming their early 20th century house into one which fitted with the 1950s.

Looking at them today they seem quite ordinary and just a little old fashioned but back then they were at the cutting edge of all that was new and innovative.

The basic designs were all there two decades earlier but were way out of reach of most working people.

But by the mid 50s that was changing.

It was partly as a result of the growing prosperity, along with new mass produced materials like plastic and Formica and the ever present offer of hire purchase, which meant for a “few pounds down and the rest over easy instalments” bits of the new life could be pretty much within the reach of every one.

All of which marks the 1950s off as more of a mould breaker than perhaps “the swinging 60s.”

Here were bold new colours, exciting fabrics and designs which relegated the old heavy furniture many peoples’ dreams to a place in a museum along with the odd dinosaur and other ancient relics.

And along with all these were those sheets of hardboard, which were cheap and could be applied to everything from period doors to the space in front of ripped out fireplaces.

For a few bob you could obliterate the beautiful features around doors create flat level spaces and add wonders to the fitted kitchens.

In 294 the master bedroom had lost its fire place and in its place a gigantic headboard with drop down drawers and a reddish swirly affect which I thought was the pinnacle of modern design.

But then I was only 14.

Sadly the DIYers responsible had also managed to take out the other upstairs fire places leaving just one small fine cast iron one downstairs.

Now it is pointless to rail against this vandalism.

At the time it seemed new and different and after six years of a bitter and hard war along with the preceding period of grim austerity all this was what we deserved.

And I have to admit I mounted similar attacks in the 1970s on good taste pulling out old features which gave the house its authentic feel and covering the walls with wood chip.

All of which means that I would have been no better in 1956, but just maybe now I might have cherished what was already there and just added the odd new idea.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from Woman's Own, January 12 1956

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Secrets from a Chorlton grave yard ……

I am looking at the remains of a clay pipe dating from around 1831.

King William lV pipe 1831-37

I can be fairly confident of that date because 1831 was the year of the coronation of William lV and our pipe carries a reference to that coronation.

The mystery is how it got to be in the graveyard.  Eric of Needham Avenue will be quick to advance outlandish explanations, but I suspect it was just lost or thrown away, but could of course belong to one of our gravediggers.

It was found along with a selection of coins, tokens, buttons  and a ring during a series of archaeological digs, not long before the graveyard was landscaped.

The dig in 1981

Now the trouble with archaeological digs is that for most of us they look just like a jumble of unconnected holes in the ground with a few bits of stone poking up out of the earth.

Which pretty much seems to be the case from this picture taken in 1981 of the old parish church during the dig conducted by Angus Bateman

He began “some exploratory and very amateurish digs, at weekends, intermittently between October 1970 and August 1972” * and concluded he needed to gain more experience in running a dig and to this end enrolled in a course in archaeology at Manchester University.  

The subsequent 1977 dig formed the project for that certificate and led on to further digs culminating in the 1980-81 season which was carried out with South Trafford Archaeological Group.

The graveyard, 2012

The excavations and the subsequent research undertaken by Angus have helped with an understanding of the two churches which stood on the site from about 1512 till 1949 and a possible dating sequence for the extension of the graveyard in the early nineteenth century.  

The fragments from the later church were carefully analysed and recorded and in some cases Angus was able to track the manufacturers, some of whom were still trading in the 1970s.  He also undertook a very detailed record of all the gravestones, including an analysis of the style and composition of the inscriptions and some work on the light they threw on life expectancy amongst the young in the township.

Location; Chorlton Graveyard

Pictures; the fragment of the King William lV pipe from the collection of Angus Bateman, the dig in 1981 from the Lloyd Collection and the graveyard in 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Bateman, Angus J., Excavations and Other Investigations at Old St Clements Church Yard Chorlton Manchester 1977, Report of work done in part fulfilment of the Certificate Course in Methods of Archaeology, Extra-mural Department, University of Manchester, held by South Trafford Archaeological Group

On the streets of Manchester, polishing shoes, selling food and offering up fun balloons

It is one of those things about city life that there is always someone who will sell you almost anything.

Just over a hundred years ago down by the Cathedral walls, the artist H.Tidmarsh recorded the old man selling newspapers, a woman selling potatoes and a boy polishing shoes, while up by the Infirmary at the top of Market Street he painted another street vendor selling food.

Not far away by Hunts Bank late at night young children plied the streets selling newspapers in the early hours of the morning.

And a century and a bit later, out on Market Street the crowd surged past the burger van, negotiated the balloon man, and stopped to buy a political paper.

Pictures; Manchester street sellers by H.E. Tidmarsh from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1894 and from the collection of Andrew Simpson, June 2013

And over the next few weeks I shall focus on more of the street vendors who plied the streets of Manchester  in the late 19th century and their counterparts who still do the same business today.

Goodbye you came too late …. the sad story of the Bank of England

 I never drank in the Bank of England.

The Bank of England .... clinging on, 2025

It was in that space between New Islington and Holt Town.

I encountered it as a sad looking building whose customers had long gone and was hanging on for something to happen.

"See better days and do better things", 2025

That said it did have history.  

I know it was serving beer and cheer from at least 1841and I suspect will prove to be much older. 

In that year it was run by Nathan Wilson who was from Yorkshire and was 48 years old. A decade later he shared the pub with his wife, Margaret, their daughter and two bar staff.

Its estimated annual rent was £35 which put it a head of the nearby properties.

And I suppose it does rather prove the point that pubs do hang on while everything around them changes.

The area had experienced great changes, which had begun with the arrival of the Ashton and Rochdale Canals and the fast industrialization of Holt Town and then New Islington, followed by a decline in fortunes during the second half of the last century

Heading towards New Islington and the city centre, 2025

New Islington was redeveloped in the 1970s into the Cardroom Estate and then again in this century into the mix of private and social housing and apartments which today grace the area around the arms of the Ashton Canal.

Holt Town has not fared so well.

Mills, pubs and new aprtments, 2025

According to that excellent site “Modern Mooch”, Holt Town was established in 1785 “by David Holt and was “described as the only known example of a factory colony in Manchester, that is, an isolated mill complex with housing for the workers”*.

Which didn’t quite go the way Mr. Holt expected as he went bankrupt nine years later and his mill went up for sale, but the dye was set for Holt Town and to quote Modern Mooch again “The area has seen a transition, in some two hundred years or more, from a leafy rural idyll, to smoke choked industrial hell and back again".

The Bank of England out lasted its industrial neighbours as well as the Liverpool and Manchester Bank just back up Merrill Street and was still in business when the estates of publicly owned houses were being demolished.

As for now its continued presence offers a backdrop for the less than skilled art of the spray can.

The Ancoats Mill, Pollard Street, 2025

But some of that social housing which was relatively new has gone and the City Council after a period of consultation has announced  a major regeneration opportunity for Holt Town "to develop a new mixed use neighbourhood, highly sustainable with thousands of new homes of different types and tenures – from family housing through to age friendly and key worker apartments - incorporating high quality green spaces surrounding a 1km play street spine, provision of new local services, cultural opportunities, and significant affordable workspace. 

Situated along the Medlock Valley between the bustling areas of Ancoats and New Islington and the dynamic zones of Sports City and the Etihad Campus, investment in Holt Town will unlock a missing link".**

All that is left of the Bank of England, 2026

And all of that led me to assume that if the pub didn’t fall down and could avoid the eye of a developer it might just hang on till the Holt Town Renaissance and could then do what it used to do ….. offer up beer and maybe interesting plates of food to a new clientele.

But alas no.  

It has gone as Steve Marland’s picture posted today on social media testifies. ***

I remember writing back in April of last year that it might survive, which was not to be.

Location on the borders of New Islington and Holt Town

Pictures, The Bank of Englad and surrounding area, 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson all that is left, 2026, courtesy of Steve Marland

*Holt Town Manchester – Part One, February 9, 2017, Modern Mooch, https://modernmooch.com/2017/02/09/holt-town-manchester-part-one/

And

Part Two, May 1st, 2020, https://modernmooch.com/2020/05/01/holt-town-part-two/

**Major Holt Town regeneration programme proceeds following public consultation January 25th, 2025, https://www.manchester.gov.uk/news/article/9623/major_holt_town_regeneration

***On encountering Holt Town, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/04/on-encountering-holt-town.html