Recreating the lost Well Hall House with Edith Nesbit

Well Hall House from Well Hall Road, 1909

Well Hall House has passed out of living memory.

It was built in 1733, was home to some Eltham notables and was demolished in 1930.

It stood between Well Hall Road and the moat and replaced the Tudor manor house which Sir Gregory Page knocked down to build his fine 18th century house.

But a building which dominated Well Hall, and was known by many seems to have left little trace.  There are a few photographs a handful of maps and the land records of the tithe schedule.

Well Hall, 1874

Together these show a tall building which ran to three floors, had a wing on each side and was set in an estate of about 33 acres including a front garden, a walled garden to the south, the moat , three ponds, a stream and much meadow and pasture land along with the farm buildings which included the present Tudor Barn.

A little to the north were Well Hall Cottages which in the 1840s had been a complex of six properties but by 1911 seem to have become a farm house and one cottage.

But Well Hall house was sufficiently enclosed that I doubt the cottages proved much of an intrusion, and so within its grounds the occupants of the big house got on with their favoured lives wandering the fourteen rooms and looking out east across the fields and west across their gardens.

Judging by the photographs I am not sure it was a place that would have caught my fancy.  It was tall and the design fitted that classical style of balance so that what you saw on one side was replicated on the other.

All of which is not much for a house which stood for just under two hundred years, but as these things work there is one other source of information, and that comes from Edith Nesbit, the novelist who lived in the house from the late 19th century into the twentieth.

Contained in some of her books are references to Eltham, Well Hall and the house itself.  And of these it is The Red House written in 1902 which provides some wonderful insights into the place.

The back of Well Hall House from the Paddock and moat, 1909

The book itself is a light account of the lives of a newly married couple who inherit the Red House and choose to live there.

In the course of the year that follows Ms Nesbit describes in some detail the house, its gardens, the nearby cottages with references to the village the parish church and offers up walk on parts for both Woolwich and Blackheath.

But it is the house which draws you in, with its panelled rooms, great hall, vaulted cellars and kitchen still with the equipment which would have been in use through the 18th and 19th centuries.

Added to this there are observations about the rooms which had been much messed about by changing fashion.

The front of Well Hall House, date unknown

Now like all such descriptions I suspect there will be points when the Red House departs from the actuality of the original, but I am confident that there is more that will have been the same than less.

This in turn stretched to her descriptions of the gardens, including the walled one, the presence of the railway with its station and embankment and the parish church.

Edith and her husband Hubert had taken on the house and 7 acres of the land.

Of course there may be more sources of information sitting in the Greenwich Heritage Centre and in the letters of the people who visited Edith and her husband at Well Hall which included the Webb’s, H.G.Wells and Bernard Shaw but in the meantime the Red House seems to have done the old place proud.

Location; Well Hall, London


Pictures; Well Hall House circa 1909,  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Rob Ayers, http://gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm and Well Hall House, from The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ map of Well Hall from the OS Map of Kent 1858-74

The humble outside lavatory ….. here in Chorlton ….. wondering how many have survived

Now for anyone who grew up or lived in a 2 up two down property, this brick structure will be familiar.

Declan's brick structure, 2021

And for those who  wonder what I mean by a two up two down property, they were the basic model for many working class homes in the 19th century, and consisted of two downstairs rooms, one of which would be the kitchen with two upstairs room.

You can still find them across the country in our towns, cities,  and villages and with a bit of tender care and attention still do the business.

You entered directly off the street into the front room, although at the posher end of the market, there would be a small glass vestibule which took up a little of the space in the front room but did afford a bit of privacy.

New Gates, typical Manchester Court, 1908

At the rear was a small yard complete with an outside lavatory, which before mains sewage were supplied with a pail which would be collected by the night soil man.

Ours in Ashton Under Lyne still retained an aperture in the back wall where the pail could be left for collection.

And that is where Declan Maguire comes into the story, because yesterday he sent over this picture, adding, “Hi Andrew, after your article on the few air raid shelters still surviving in back yards, here’s a photo of another backyard survivor from Victorian times. 

I wonder how many houses in this area still have one of these? 

I can think of times when I was sharing my home with teenager ‘bathroom blockers’ when it could have been useful for me.

I wonder how would they be referred to in estate agent pitches; “many original Victorian features”? “bathroom and second separate toilet?

It would  be interesting to find out if many have survived locally, whether in working order, or as tool/storage sheds. 

I’m old enough, (born in 1960 in Belfast, another red brick Victorian city), to have used these during family visits to grandparents and other relatives. I can remember the new WC being installed inside my maternal grandparent’s 3 storey terraced home around 1970. The photo was taken in one of the side streets off Sandy Lane, the house is currently up for sale & unoccupied”.

Whiteman's Yard Derby, 1882-83

And being a tad older, I remember visiting my grandparent home in Derby which was a conversion from two one up and one down properties into a single home.  The rear of the house had opened up to a small shared courtyard where there were several of these little brick privies.

Manchester Corporation had been in the forefront of eliminating the one up one down as early as the 1850s, along with cellar dwellings.  Other cities like Leeds tolerated the one up and one down into the 20th century.

As for our humble brick lavatory it would be the coming of mains water that would banish the weekly visit of the night soil man.

That said in 1894 in Manchester,  “there were 24,300 water closets,  78,486 pail closets, and 35, 700 midden privies, and even by 1927 there were 230,046 water closets, and still 1,108 pail closets and thirty-five privies”.*

All of which beings us back to Declan’s brick “outhouse”, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy.  By the time his old house and most of two up two down stock were built in Chorlton in the late 19th century, the township had mains sewage.

But this was a new thing.  The first pipe bringing in mains water arrived in 1962 at the request of 16 ratepayers living on Edge Lane, while the local sewage works was only developed in the 1870s.  Before then people used privies, and obtained their drinking water from wells, or surface water.  

So when Stockton Range was built on Edge Lane, they were built with interior wells.

But the great housing boom which started in the early 1860s, and the much bigger provision of houses from the 1880s was only possible because of the arrival of piped drinking water and an effective sewage system.

Some historians have pointed to the arrival of the railway in 1880 and the corporation tram two decades later, but without the basics of water and sewage it is difficult to see how that housing boom could have taken off.

Pictures; A little brick outhouse, 2021, from the collection of Declan Maguire, Whiteman's Yard, detail of the OS Map of Derby 1882-83, supplied by Derby Local Studies Library http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/leisure/local_studies/  and New Gates, 1908, m8316,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*E. M. Brockbank, The Book of Manchester & Salford, 1929, quoted by John J Parkinson- Bailey, Manchester An Archetctural History, 2000, page 40

Walking the city of Manchester in 1841 .......... courtesy of Mr B Love

Now I bet the Handbook of Manchester would have caused a stir amongst the elegant tea rooms and learned libraries of London back in 1842 when it was published.* 

After all our city was as Asa Briggs said “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution" and as such was on the itinerary of both British and foreign commentators keen to know what was going in the North.

And it is worth giving the full title of the book because it lays out just what it is about  The Handbook of Manchester, containing statistical general information on the trade, social condition, and institutions of the Metropolis of Manufactures: was published in 1842.

It was according the Preface a “new and it is presumed, a greatly improved edition of ‘Manchester As It Is,’ – published in 1839.  

Considerable pains have been taken to render this volume one of the most complete of its kind.”

And here are chapters on all the major manufacturing industries, descriptions of the population of the city and surrounding towns and townships and much on the conditions of those who lived here.

It is in short a wonderful bit of history and sits alongside those others by Dr Kay, Mr Engels and many more.

It praises the beauty of many of the new buildings and the industrious nature of its residents but has a keen social eye, commenting that the river Medlock and the river Irk “are made extensively available for manufacturing purposes; hence their waters are thick, black and filthy.”

And for me it will be when Mr Love explores the lives of the cotton workers, along with chapters on the charities, the social scene and crime when the book becomes fascinating.

So there you have it and I am thinking there will be plenty more to come.  The Female Penitentiary and the information on aspects of the city's population were drawn from random and just caught my eye.

Location; Manchester 1841

Picture; Female Penitentiary Emdben–place, Greenheys, 1841, and data from the 1841 Census represented in The Manchester, Handbook, 1842 

*The Handbook of Manchester containing statistical general information on the trade, social condition, and institutions of the Metropolis of Manufactures: being a second edition of Manchester as it is, by B. Love, member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, 1842   And is available as a download from Goggle Books

*Victorian Cities, Asa Briggs, 1963

Five pictures …… one road …… and a heap of Chorlton’s story

This is Brook Lane in 1909 on the cusp of a change.

1909

For centuries it had led out of the village past the old Bowling Green Hotel, crossed Chorlton Brook, past Brook Farm, and petered out in several footpaths, one of  which twisted off towards Hardy Lane.

But in the spring of 1909 the eastern side of the lane was being developed by a row of new houses, which faced the entrance to the sewage works, and the home of Charles Hall the manager of the works.

In the distance there is still open land which within a year and bit will be filled with the new Chorltonville estate, while the new brick sides of the bridge over the brook have yet to replace the low stone wall and to the right the scene is dominated by the farm buildings of Charles Cookson who lived in Brook Farm.

1911

The new row of houses bears closer inspection, because the first is being constructed to accommodate a shop, and later photographs show that it was occupied by Mrs. Harrier Forster whose window announced that it was a confectioners, and given that it was the only shop in the row of ten properties I guess she sold a few other “essential” items.

And at the beginning of 1910, Mrs. Forster’s neighbours included a joiner, two engineers, a waiter, and a designer along with two clerks and an architect. 

In time I will trawl the census returns to find out more about these residents and the lives of Charles Cookson and Charles Ball.

1910

For now I will just add the remaining three images , one looking back towards the new Bowling Green Hotel showing the club house, and two looking up the lane.

What makes these two interesting is that they qualify as then and now pictures.  

The first, as the shop is still yet to be finished, and before the ville was built, and the other with Mrs. Foster in residence and the new estate in place.

Together they offer up a series of images of where we live as the township continued on its journey from a small rural community to a large urban settlement on the edge of Manchester.

1910

Just six years before our first picture, Chorlton  rate payers had voted to join the city along with Burnage, Didsbury, and Withington, while at the turn of the century Manchester City Corporation trams had arrived, predated by arrival of the railway.

And the second major housing boom which began in 1880 had transformed the nort side of the township, eliminating the historic hamlet of Marledge and in the minds of many, dividing Chorlton into Old and New Chorlton and creating the two villages of Old and New Chorlton.

Location; Brook Lane

1912

Pictures; of Brook Lane, 1909, J. Jackson, m17679, 1911, B.F., m17684, J. Jackson, 1910, m17681, J. Jackson 1910, m17680, J. Jackson, 1912, m17685, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Rescuing five Manchester Radicals ……………"from the enormous condescension of posterity”

How easy it is to lose our history, and once lost how much more difficult to retrieve.

Alexander Somerville, 1848

This I know is not an original idea but is one that I have been wrestling with today, as I seek to uncover the lives of five radical working men all of whom were born in the 18th century and died long before Parliament extended the vote to include a section of the male working class.

They were, Peter Rothwell, George Hadfield, George Exley, Henry Parry Bennet, and James Wheeler.

I doubt I would ever have come across any of them, were it not that all five were buried beside the monument to Henry “Orator” Hunt, which stood in the burial ground of the Round Chapel on Every Street.

They were part of the committee responsible for that monument, and I suspect had been at Peterloo along with Mr. Hunt.

As yet, I don’t know what they looked like, the position they took on the reform of Parliament and where they stood on the broad spectrum of opinion within the Chartist movement.

To be honest I don’t even know if they were all Chartists, but I suspect they were.

Off Oldham Road, home to some of the "five", 1851

They may appear in the autobiographies of other radicals like Samuel Bamford and Mr. Hunt, and if I am very lucky, I might turn up a reference to the memorial committee.

I have trawled the database of the Working-Class Museum in Salford and gone looking for any reference in the newspapers to the five, but so far have only found them in the census returns, directories and registers of births deaths and marriages.

But I am confident that I have found all five in the official records, which list their occupations as cotton weaver, tailor, and baker, in fact three of the five were bakers.

Back Prussia Street, 1851

All lived in the northern part of the city in an area which was densely packed with rows of terraced houses which in turn were surrounded by textile mills, iron works and timber yards, bounded by the Ashton and the Rochdale Canals.

In the absence of anything on their politics, and their activities I am forced back on exploring just where they lived.

Henry Parry Bennet who was one of the three bakers lived with his wife on Bradford Street, throughout the 1840s and into the next decade, and died there in 1851.  And as you do, I wondered on the fate of his wife, who was 62.  But like so many working people of the period, she is lost from the records with nothing listed as yet after the date of her husband’s death.

Conversely in the case of Peter Rothwell there is bewildering choice of candidates, one of whom lived in a property which commanded an annual rent of £20 and would have entitled him to a vote in the reformed Parliament and another Mr. Rothwell, who in 1841 described himself as a cotton weaver and lived with his family and assorted others in Back Prussia Street.

Prussia Street, 1904

In all there were ten people sharing the house, four of whom along with Mr. Rothwell and his wife Ann were well past retirement age, but I suspect were still hard at it working in the nearby cotton mills.

Back Prussia Street was, as its name suggests directly behind Prussia Street, which ran from Oldham Road down to Jersey Street, and like the rest of this part of town was a mix of cotton mills, foundries, timber yards with the odd glass making works thrown in.

And to further complicate the picture, a Peter Rothwell in 1844 was listed in the rate books as living in the cellar of a property on Bradford Street which was close to where the Bennet’s lived.

It is all tantalizing and is a bit like looking through a dirty window, which reveals some detail but not much.

I suspect our cellar dwelling Mr. Rothwell will be the same as he that lived on Back Prussia Street and is a reminder that people moved around the city in a way that most of us don’t today.

I continue to trawl the records and might yet turn up the minutes of the committee which erected the monument to Mr. Hunt, and remain confident that there will be some reference to them, but in the meantime, they are just names.

Prussia Street, 1907

But not quite, because we know that the organization that went into the erection of the monument and the subsequent preparations for the day of its unveiling are impressive.

The committee had decided on charging a penny for admission to the event and set up platforms from which spectators could observe the speeches, for which they wee asked to pay an extra 6 pence.

And on the day the committee had to cope with an estimated crowd of 15,000 people, which would have taxed any group of marshals charged with making for a peaceful and dignified day.

So that is it, ………. Not much perhaps, but a step in uncovering the lives of five Manchester radicals who have been pretty much forgotten.

Does it matter?  Yes, I think it does.  In his ground-breaking book, The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, wrote "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity."*

And if it was good enough for him, who am I to stop digging for my five?

Pictures; cover page of Alexander Somerville's Somerville's autobiography, 1848, Back Russia Street, 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Harriet Street stables adjoining No.1 Prussia St, near Oldham Road, Bradburn ,A,  1904, m10109 and Portugal Street & No. 3 Prussia Street, near Oldham Road, Jackson, J, 1907, m10411, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class, 1963, 1968, 1980, page 12 from the 1980 revised edition.  My 1968 Pelican edition is all but falling apart and I suspect it is time for a new copy.

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

A token issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141

Walking the River ....... the Power Station

A short series taken from one day when I walked along the River.

Back then the Thames was still a place to to earn a wage and watch as ships, and barges plied the way on the water.*

Location; the Thames







Picture; the River in 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The lost Eltham and Woolwich pictures, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20lost%20Eltham%20and%20Woolwich%20pictures