Now …. just what is the story behind 100 Vera Lynn 78s?

The answer is several ……… and they all start with David Harrop who bought all 100 from an auction house in Heaton Mersey.

The records come from an estate in Oldham, and while I haven’t the full list, the ones I have seen include, “Goodnight Children Everywhere”, “More and More”, “Jealousy”, “There’s A New World Over the Skyline”, "Nearest Thing to Heaven”, and my favourite “C’est La Vie”.

None of which are her famous ones.  

That said I bet "We'll Meet Again", “The White Cliffs of Dover", "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and "There'll Always Be an England", are there, and David will find them.

In the meantime, it’s just the six, all of which he photographed and sent over in an email.  I don’t have a date for any of them and despite finding versions of them on You Tube sung by Dame Vera, neither these or the site devoted to the lyrics of each song have offered up a year.

All that is except for Jealousy which she recorded in 1942.

Of course, someone will know, and will direct me to the place where the songs and their dates are listed, so that at present isn’t the story.

Instead it’s the sleeve covers which have caught my interest, because each of the six comes from a different record shop.

This I know because the names and addresses of the shops are printed on the sleeve cover.

And so I have been going on a Cook’s Tour across Manchester, from the Talkeries at 213 Deansgate, to The Elite Gramophone Depot, at 115 Manchester Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and out to 653 Oldham Road in Newton Heath, where Manson’s claimed to be “The House of Music”.

There was also A Frank’s Ltd, the Gramophone Salon, with premises at 95-97 Deansgate and 46 Market Street, and E, Pennington Gramophone Specialist who sold his records from 1164-1168 Chester Road., Stretford.

Leaving me just Mazel Record Library on London Road which some will remember, and may well have visited to peruse the “40,000 records in stock”.

And when David has compiled the full list of stockists from the 100 78s, we will have a priceless record of shops from the 1940s into the following decade.

Added to which as some of them proudly display the date they were established we can begin to track the history of the gramophone shop across Manchester

All of which can be matched against the directories which contain the names of all such businesses from the late 19th century up to 1969.

What strikes me above all, are the descriptions, running from Gramophone Depot to the Gramophone Salon and the name the Talkeries, which hint at beginnings in the early 20th century and must even by the 1940s seemed outdated.

So that for now is the story …….. not Dame Vera, or the powerful songs, which evoke the war years, but the humble record shop of which there will be more stories to follow.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; sleeve notes from the records of Vera Lynn, 2020, from the collection of David Harrop

An Eltham life that ended in a modest way..........the story of Ruth Pike, nee Patterson, 1782-1857

Mrs Pike grave, 1976

This is the grave of Ruth Pike in our parish churchyard.

It is located on the east side hard up against Well Hall Road and as graves go does not appear that remarkable.

Nor would we expect it to be so for this was one of the common plots and so resting here with Ruth were those with no family connections all of which suggests a life that ended in a modest way.

She was buried by the wall just one hundred and sixty-three years ago  and I doubt that there will be any one who now visit or tend the plot, and with the passage of time her story and her place in Eltham’s history has pretty much been forgotten.

But not quite because fellow historian Jean Gammons has brought Ruth Pike back out of the shadows and it is one of those stories well worth telling.

Her maiden name was Patterson and she married James Pike in 1809.  He was a widower and was also the postmaster for Eltham when the postal service was just beginning to take on its modern shape.

Eltham in the 1830s

His is a story Jean has already told* and so I rather think I shall stick with Mrs Pike, nee Paterson.

“Ruth was James Pike’s second wife and hers was a hard life.  

Her husband died in 1837  and towards the end of his life she practically ran Eltham post office, assisted only her friend Ann Lawrence who was the widow of an Eltham baker.

Her son had been apprenticed to the Pike’s who also ran a clock making business and when James Pike died he took over the firm along with the post office.

And sometime after this Ruth became a school teacher at the local school.”

Little enough I grant you for a life that was lived out over 75 years and its lack of detail stands yet again as testimony to how the lives of the modest and humble have gone unrecorded.

And even this would not have seen the light of day but for Jean’s work.

But history moves on and with each year new lines of enquiry open up as fresh documents are made available and so it is with Ruth.

A tax record for a Ruth patterson, 1805

Only today I found a series of tax records naming a Ruth Patterson of Eltham as paying tax for the years 1804 and 1805, which follow on from a series of other records for a Richard Patterson in the 1790s and yet more for another Richard Patterson in the mid 19th century.

Now I don’t know how common a name Patterson was in Eltham during the last decades of the 18th and into the next.  That will be a laborious task matching census returns, directories and parish records but is doable.

In the meantime it raises some intriguing questions about Ruth.  The sums she pays are not much but it is the fact that she is paying them which is important and marks out one more little detail.  She rented from a Nicholas Guilliard who also appears in the tax records from the 1790s through into the next century appears on the electoral roll in 1802 and is buried in the parish church seven years later.

The burial record of Mrs Pike, 1857

But as yet it is impossible to track where he held his Eltham land which in turn would tell us a bit more about Ruth. Still I know that he paid duties on the money he obtained for an indenture for the young apprentice Henry Roffey who he took on in 1787 and I am confident that more will emerge.

As will the details of Ruth’s life and that I think is a good point to close.

Pictures, the grave of Mrs Pike, 1978, the Eltham the Pikes would have known circa 1830, courtesy of Jean Gammons, Mrs Pike’s  death entry from St John’s parish records, courtesy of ancestry.co.uk, and the City of London Corporation Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery Department, and the tax record of Ruth Patterson, courtesy of ancestry. co. uk, and London Land Tax Records. London, England: London Metropolitan Archives.

Original research By Jean Gammons

*It appeared in a series of short articles in the Eltham Society’s Journal.

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 18, a map and what we have lost since 1907

Continuing the story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

In just 40 short years much of our open land which had once been farmland and market gardens had been built over. Most of this development had happened around what was Martledge in that area stretching from the metro station west to Oswald Road and east along Barlow Moor Road. But to the south beyond Beech Road out past the Brook and onto the Mersey it was still by and large untouched, and the sight of meadowland and cows being brought back to be milked have only just   faded from living memory. Claude and Reynard Roads gave out onto fields and just a little further down Beech Road if I had a mind I could have walked the field boundaries all the way to the river.
Picture; detail from the 1907 OS map from the collection of Andrew Simpson

OK ….. Chorlton’s Lych Gate is officially reopened …..

Today on a crisp sunny day our Lych Gate was officially reopened.

Looking like new after its restoration, 2025

And I know that is a tad silly since it was built in 1887, and the scaffolding came down before Christmas after its renovation, but nevertheless today our three local councillors, along with friends of the Lych Gate and former graveyard gathered to mark the completion of the work of this much-loved local landmark.

Councillors and Friends mark the completion of the restoration work, 2025

The gate and tower have featured in countless photographs and even made an appearance on the cover of John Lloyd’s history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*

So, it was fitting that Cllr Gary Bridges, the Deputy Leader of the Council was in attendance with Cllr’s Mathew Benham, John Hacking and Tina Kirwin McGinley to mark the occasion.

Also present was Peter Topping who along with Andrew Simpson was instrumental in setting up the Friends of Chorlton Graveyard which works to raise awareness of the importance of the former parish graveyard.**

The graveyard had its own makeover in the mid-1980s and with the passage of four decades needs a little care and attention.

The former parish graveyard, 2025

The group are interested in how the area could be improved along with the more basic need of more regular clearing of fallen leaves which obscure the grave inscriptions.

But for now a thankyou to the City Council who restored the gate and tower and to our three councillors who oversaw the project.

Location; Chorlton Parish Graveyard

Pictures; celebrating Chorlton’s iconic Lych Gate, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Lloyd, John, The Township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1972

**Friends of Chorlton Graveyard, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1381914932356270

Now …… you can wait for a bit of the past .... then two turn up at the same time …….. outside Manchester Cathedral

So, here are two bits of how we lived.

Both have now long vanished.

The last Manchester Corporation tram completed its last journey in January 1949, months before I was born.

As for the public urinal, I have no idea when it closed, but like the tram it is now just a memory, which I may have used, but have no idea when it ceased.

The statue of Oliver Cromwell went in the 1980s so maybe it went then.

Location; Manchester Cathedral

Picture; Two trams and a urinal, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 17, the lockup workshop

Continuing the story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

You can find them all over Chorlton usually tucked away behind other buildings or hidden by tall walls. Some I guess were once stables or perhaps even cottages and now they serve as lock up workshops.  They are a reminder that in that crossover period when we were in transition from rural community to dormitory suburb there were still plenty of craftsmen about serving the needs of the township.  In some cases they inhabited what had once been farmyards and in others just patches of land not yet built on.  So opposite the Bowling Green Hotel where the remnants of the United Serviceman’s’ Club stands was one of the building yards of Scott the builder  and just a little closer to the green in what had been Greenwood’s farmyard was a smithy, lock up garages and where Mr Holmes carried out his carpentry business.  And much closer to now the Walker Brother’s ran their builder’s yard from what had once been the farm buildings of the Higginbotham family.  Now mostly the lock up workshops belongs to mechanics, but some are offices while others and morphed into keep fit venues.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A conversation …. the Saturday boy … and heaps of vegetables …. at Muriel and Richard’s on Beech Road

Now Muriel and Richard’s will always have be a special place for me.

Their fruit and veg was always the best, and at Christmas Muriel always did that Nativity scene where local kids were encouraged to make figures for the display.

But above that they were always very kind to me, and during a time when I was juggling work, bringing up three kids and only shopping on Beech Road they could be relied to help out.

In particular Muriel acted as my bank, advancing me cash and letting me run up a tab.

To the consternation of some I would choose the fruit and veg, Muriel would ask if I needed any money and I would leave with assorted apples, pears, potatoes and more, with cash in hand.  To which some muttered that this was not how it was done.

Shops were not supposed to hand out produce and money and wave goodbye to the customer.  But this was Muriel’s and every Saturday the tab was settled.

I shopped there regularly through the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond.

I will have to ask Muriel just when they took over the shop, because I know in 1969 it was a confectioner’s run by a F. Lyth and now it is a letting agency.

Back then at the end of the 60s their shop was flanked by Joan Newman’s hairdressers and Mr. Morgan’s off license.

And a couple of decades later, the cutting of hair would be replaced briefly by a shop selling pianos before it settled on its long and continuing relationship with serving food and alcohol, while after a time as a vacant premises Mr. Morgan’s place became the Italian deli.

And that is about it.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Muriel and Richard’s, 1979, & 2002, and Muriel, 2004, from the collection of Andrew Simpson