Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 19 ........... Back College Land and the vanished Press House Steps

Back College Land, 2016

Now Back College Land looks like it should have some dark and unseemly past with more than a few dreadful tales.

Sadly if they exist I haven’t found them.  Instead there is just this very narrow street connecting Parsonage with College Land.

I think I can date it to sometime between 1793, and the following year when what looks like our street ran back from College Land towards some open land bordering Parsonage.

Just a half century on from that and it is a clearly defined place with even narrower thoroughfares leading off into closed courts on its southern side and a stables on the northern corner beside Parsonage.

I had hoped that it might have a listing on the street directories but it doesn’t which means its residents are pretty much lost to us.  Although Parsonage has offered up names which were on the 1851 census, Back College Land has as yet to offer up its people.

Back College Land and Press House Steps, 1851

Having said that the return for Parsonage did reveal the details of those who lived directly opposite our narrow street.

These were the residents of Press House Steps.  The census records that 122 people lived in just 33 properties bordering the river.*

They worked at a mix of jobs including a porter, some textile workers, and as milliner along with some hat makers and even a poultry dealer.

In the absence of our people from Back College Land I rather think those of Press House Steps will prove most interesting.

We shall see.

And if they prove to yield up some stories it will be a fitting reminder of the people and the place given that it had been swept away by 1900 when the the showrooms and work place of Orme and Sons, makers of Billiard Tables stood on the site.

Location; Manchester

*Press House Steps, Enu 1bb, 20-24, Market Street, Manchester, 1851

Pictures; Back College Land, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Press House Steps, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

The London of 1949

The Pool of London in 1909

This is the Pool of London in 1909.

Fifty years later given a few changes and a bit of bomb damage and it is pretty much as I remember it.

Fast forward another half century and I doubt that  either me or the photographer would recognise much beyond the bridge and the Tower.

All of which is not so much a trip down memory lane, but an introduction to some of the films I got for Christmas.

Of these it is Train of Events and Pool of London I want to write about.  Both were made in 1949 and are very much of the period.

The Thames, the cranes, ships and the Tower, 1909

Train of Events starred Jack Warner and was one of those disaster morality movies, where a collection of little dramas are acted out in advance of a train crash and yes the murderer and the thief do not survive the crash.

In Pool of London a fairly ordinary crime story is given bite with the exploration of one of the first inter racial relationships in a British film.

Both reveal a wonderful slice of London life on the edge of the 1950s.  Here are trams, bomb sites, the rather shabby side of a post war London and plenty of scenes now lost forever.

In that respect they are fascinating social commentaries and perfectly capture the period I grew up in.

The river was still a working river, Tower Bridge opened and closed regularly during the course of a day, the trains were all pulled by steam locomotives and there were references to rationing, shortages and the last war.

Trafalgar Square, 1955

Not that this is some rosy, cosy nostalgic trip.

The interiors of the houses remind me of how little there was in terms of affluence for most people, and there is that prevailing sense that this is still the era of make and mend.

It was also a time of blatant racial prejudice and intolerance towards “living over the brush” and one where some at least had not yet managed to forgive our former enemies.

So watching the two as I did yesterday was both a pleasure and a lesson in history.  I am too young to remember the old trams but here they were, along with some old 1949 television programmes and some fine scenes of the river, the city as well as Blackheath and Greenwich.

Now for a historian and a Londoner that can’t be bad.

Pictures; The Pool of London, 1909, from the series London, and Trafalgar Square, 1955 from the series London, both marketed by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

Who pinched a Chorlton pub?

Now when you have spent a decade and a half crawling over Chorlton’s past it is always nice to find something new, and something you didn’t know.

The mystery Holly Bush Inn, 1900

So yesterday while searching for an image of a lost pub on Market Street in town I came across two paintings of a Chorlton pub called the Holly Bush Inn.

Both were by painted our local artist J Montgomery and are dated 1900 and 1967.*

J. Montgomery is an an artist I know well and there are heaps of his paintings in Manchester Library’s Image Collectoion.  

Most were painted from picture postcards which have now been lost and so are themselves a unique record of Chorlton’s past.

Until that is this one, which does not appear in any historical record for the 19th into the 20th century.

I wondered if he had confused Chorlton cum Hardy with Chorlton on Medlock but a check of the pubs listed in The Old Pubs of Hulme and Chorlton on Medlock by Bob Potts drew a blank.**

The mystery Holly Bush Inn, 1967

And anyway Mr. Montgomery knew his Chorlton.  

It might however been mis catalogued, but I doubt that too.

So, it seems a mystery.  

It could have been one of those short lived beer shops which sprang up and vanished leaving little trace.   

One such doble fronted “superior” establishment was run by Mrs Leach which was the scene of a dreadful stabbing in 1847. 

The press coverage of the time never offered up a name for the beer shop but it was roughly on the site of the modern Cromar on Manchester Road.

But it had long gone when Montgomery painted his picture from a1900 picture postcard and certainly would have been long forgotten when he reprised the subject in 1967.

And here we do have to be careful because in labelling his paintings he sometimes wrote the date of the postcard and at other times the date of when he created the image.

That said I could be wrong and there may once have been a Holly Bush Inn, which may have been pinched or converted into any one of a number of different uses.

We shall see.

Location; sometime and place in Chorlton

Pictures; The Holly Bush Inn, 1900, m49891, and 1967, m80053, J Montgomery, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*J. Montgomery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Montgomery

**The Old Pubs of Hulme and Chorlton on Medlock by Bob Potts, 1997

All Saints Day ...... that day of remembrance

 Mine wasn’t a religious upbringing.

Remembering the dead, 2026

Father on occasion might hum an old Scottish Protestant marching song while mother came close to becoming a Catholic.

Gathering in the growing dusk, 2026

But nether sought to impose any religion on any of us and my religious knowledge was pretty much confined to school assemblies and what I picked up from doing O level RE and even that was nothing more than a nod from the teacher that it might be an easy exam to do.

And indeed, it was easy.  

I had to study a set number of texts from the New Testament which I enjoyed. 

It was essentially a test in memory and comprehension and appealed to someone who was already learning how to interrogate historical sources.  

The upshot was that I passed, and still today retain a heap of memorable lines from the Bible which can still be used to make a point.

All of which is an introduction to All Saints Day that day when many around the world remember family members who have died.  

According to Dr Michael Carter of English Heritage All Saints Day "was originally a commemoration of martyrs, people who died for their faith, but was later expanded to include all saints, as the name suggests”. 

To which was added All Souls' Day by the “The Abbott at Cluny in the late 10th/11th century [which] is very concerned indeed about souls languishing in purgatory being tormented by demons. 

The new feast becomes established on the 2nd of November and is for the faithful departed who have yet to be purged of their sins so they can go to heaven. 

Lights in the night, 2026

And it spreads throughout Europe. Once again, it has special church services, especially the saying of prayers and masses for the dead and the ringing of bells as a prompt for people to say prayers for the dead and to give comfort to souls in purgatory.”

I first came across it in Naples with the Festival of the Dead and was drawn to the idea of that special day to remember the family.

And more especially the tradition of visiting the cememetry with candles and family members brought together by the common act of rememberannce.

So I was pleased when our Julia in Warsaw  messaged me with "We had All Saints here on Sunday  and I took some pictures which I am sending over".

The collection are from the local cemetery and yesterday along with our Saul Julia lit candles at the grave of her great grandfather, grandfather and parents.

Julia's family grave, 2026

The grave is adorned with a figure of an owl and an eagle..... "Owls for wisdom, eagles for bravery".

"Owls for wisdom", 2026

"Eagles for bravery", 2026

Location; All Souls Day, Warsaw

Pictures; from the collection of Julia Czajkowska, 2026

*A brief history of Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day with Dr Michael Carter https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/halloween-saints-souls/

Location; All Souls Day, Warsaw

Pictures; from the collection of Julia Czajkowska, 2026

*A brief history of Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day with Dr Michael Carter https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/inspire-me/halloween-saints-souls/

New pubs for old and a disappointed confectioner

I rather think there must have been something in the air in the early months of 1907.

In the February there were two applications in front of the annual licensing meeting for the city of Manchester for new pubs in Chorlton.  Well I say new but in both cases they were for the demolition of existing buildings and their replacement with new ones.

The licensing records for the city are a wonderful treasure trove and I have to say I have trawled them over the years.  Sadly our own records only appear after 1904 when we were incorporated into Manchester and for the records of 19th century Chorlton you have to look elsewhere.

But for today thinking of the 1907 debate on new pub build the details are all here and it makes fascinating reading.

Now we had plenty of places.  Some like the Greyhound, the Bowling Green Hotel, Horse and Jockey, and Royal Oak could trace their history back to the beginning of the 19th century if not earlier, while  the Beech appeared at the beginning of the last century.  Others like the Travellers Rest and Black Horse along with countless unnamed ones were really just beer houses and surfaced and disappeared during the 19th century. Most had very short lives and more than likely existed as a part of a family strategy to make ends meet, opening when things were tight and closing when the family fortunes improved.

The exception is the Travellers Rest at the bottom of Beech Road which was opened in the late 1830s ran through to the early years of the 20th century and for most of that time was run by the Nixon family who could claim to be one of our well established families.  Samuel Nixon senior ran the Greyhound over the Mersey, his son and daughter in law ran the Travellers Rest and their son and grandson ran the stationers and newsagents on Beech Road.

Beer houses had come into existence with the Beer Act in 1830 and were designed to break the hold of the gin shops by permitting individuals to brew and sell beer for the price of a two guinea license.  In some cases like the Black Horse at Lane End and the beer shop run by Brownhill the wheelwright they were closed down when they continued to flout the license.

All of which brings me back to February of 1907. The Royal Oak had been selling beer since at least the 1830s and was the last beer house on the way out of the township to Manchester.  As such it was well placed to cater for farm labourers and the passing trade to and from the city and in its time had seen its fair share of unruly behaviour and worse from its customers.  But it was just a small house and I guess George Henry Kelsey could see the potential.  After all he had managed to get 800 residents to sign a petition “in favour of the new scheme.”* On top of which he was prepared to close his pub, the Sir Ralph Abercrombie in Great Ancoats-street for a newly built Royal Oak.

But the views of 800 residents were caught light in the balance when set against “several owners of property near the Royal Oak who were against the rebuilding.”  And Mr Kelsey may well have judged the wind when one of the licensing committee referred to the 800 as “the poor deluded people” who “in many cases because they were attracted by the prospect of a new building in place of a tumble down structure.”

There may have been more but it has been lost in time and the application was withdrawn but not after a sarcastic exchange where the committee man remarked that the applicant in withdrawing was “a very wise man” to which the reply was “I am sure I feel very gratified by that statement.”

And the same “tide in the affairs of men” was running equally against the tenant of the Bowling Green who wanted to reduce "from 1,335 feet to 1,126 feet the drinking area of the house and to have three rooms instead of ten” by demolishing the old building and putting up a new one.

It was a proposal which was not met with much enthusiasm, foundering on the official line that “there were too many licenses in old Chorlton already."  So I remain surprised that they decided to “visit the place and form our own conclusions on the spot.”

And equally surprised that within the year the old 18th century building was torn down and replaced by a new one.

The politics and workings of the committee remain a mystery to me and looking at previous decisions by earlier bodies the same holds true.

So back in 1893 when the responsibility for granting a license was with JPs, the session granted an application from a Mr Thomas Barrows of 46 Beech Road for an off wine and spirit license was successful while that of Charles Prince Hill confectioner of 28 Wilbraham Road was turned down.  He had wanted a license “to sell beer not to be consumed on the premises” and it was “not his intention to carry on a jug trade, but merely to serve families bottled beer.  The neighbourhood had increased largely and the license would be a great boon.”**

The opposition was limited to a local resident and another from Manchester Road who represented the British Women’s Temperance Association.  So in all “of the 4,700 persons in Chorlton-cum-Hardy only two had come forward to oppose the application.”  And the application was refused.

Perhaps it was because there were two businesses almost directly opposite selling alcohol or that it would be a change of direction for the 31 year old confectioner who had been on Wilbraham Road from at least 1891.


Now in time I might pursue Mr Hill who was still there in his confectioners in 1903 but had moved on by 1909 and it might be that he was successful elsewhere.

*Manchester Guardian February 8 1907
**Manchester Guardian August 23 1893

Pictures; from the collection of Tony Walker

So what was Southern Street in Castlefield once like?

Southern Street in 2003

This was Southern Street, off Liverpool Road during a chunk of the 1980s  and into the next two decades it was one of the stops on an annual walk and talk I did in the Castlefield area.

During the course of those years it underwent profound changes with most of what had been late 18th century houses demolished or converted into flats and offices.

Of course part of me was saddened by the loss of these old properties but the upside is that the street is once again a place where people live and work.

Looking down Southern Street 2003

And that has to be a good thing.  By the 1980s there were few businesses left and within the next twenty years even they had gone.

I remember talking to some of the men who worked in Andrew’s Garage in the centre of Southern Street along with the owners of the printing business at one end of the street and the motor bike shop at the other.

Collectively their memories spanned back into  the 1950s and in the course of the next week or so I want to look at that lost Castlefield.

But for now I shall just reproduce something I wrote back in 2003 and leave you to reflect on just how much this little bit of Castlefield has changed.

“Southern Street in 1851 shows the same pattern of housing occupation as other working class parts of the city.  

In many of the houses there is evidence of overcrowding and cellar occupation.  

So at 3 Southern Street, 15 people are recorded there in 1851, with 5 living in the cellar, 2 in one room, 4 in another and 4 in the garret.   

Numbers 3 & 5 Southern Street, 2003

Number 5 has 11 people.  Across the street number 12 &14 are now a garage.  
In 1851, 7 people are listed as living in number 14.  

It is easy to appreciate the degree of squeeze when you measure the size of these properties.  

Put more simply when you look down Southern Street, remember that the 1851 census recorded 81 people living in this small street, which was a drop from the 200 living there a decade before.

Numbers 3 & 5 Southern Street is worth looking at in detail, as they may not be there for much longer. 

The block has been bought recently and while there is some doubt about the future plans I can’t see them staying in their present state.  

They were surveyed in 1993.  The houses consisted of three floors and a cellar.  The second floor dimensions of number 3 are 22 feet 6 inches back from the front and 16 feet 4 inches from side to side. Number 5 varies slightly at 22 feet 2 inches by 17 feet.  

Numbers 12 & 14 Southern Street, 2003

Evidence for the cellar windows can still be seen but much else has undergone changes.  

Ground and first floor windows are not original and the door to number 5 has been enlarged. 

All the evidence suggests that they were built sometime around 1794.  

Houses on Southern Street, Barton Street and Worsley Street are shown on a map of that year, when Liverpool Road was still called Priestner Street and terminated at Collier Street.  

Street Directories record people living in them from 1795.  This fits in with what we know of the surrounding streets.  

Evidence from the title deeds of the White Lion Inn and the Oxnoble Inn show that that six plots of land were sold in 1782. In 1804 the Oxnoble plot was sold again on condition that it was built upon within two years.”*

Location; Manchester

*Castlefield, Andrew Simpson, 2003

Pictures, Southern Street and Liverpool Road, 2003

Round About A Pound A Week ......... London life and London Poor ..... 1913

“Take a tram from Victoria to Vauxhall Station.  

Get out under the railway arch which faces Vauxhall Bridge, and there you will find Kennington Lane.  

The railway arch roofs in a din which reduces the roar of the trains continually passing overhead to a vibrating muffled rumble.”

And with those opening lines Mrs Maud Pember Reeves plunged into a detailed account of the lives of families struggling to make ends meet in the Lambeth of 1913.*

She was a social reformer and feminist who served on the Executive Committees of the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Anti Sweating League, and the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage along with the Committee of the Fabian Society.

And it was after a lecture given to the Fabian Women’s’ Group on the Economic Disintegration of the Family in 1908 that she and other members of the group set about recording the daily budgets and lives of working class families in Lambeth.

The book details everything from the area where they lived to the daily battle to bring up a family in damp and lousy properties, while balancing a household budget and the ever present threat of unemployment.

It is a book which compliments that of Robert Roberts’s description of life in Salford at much the same time. **

So given that I will no doubt be returning to the book I shall conclude with a little more from the opening chapter

Lambeth, 1874

“From either end of the arch comes a close procession of trams, motor-buses, brewers’ drays, coal lorries, carts filled with unspeakable material for glue factory and tannery, motor cars, coster-barrows, and people. 

It is a stopping-place for tramcars and motorbuses; therefore little knots of agitated persons continually collect on both pathways, and dive between the vehicles and descending passengers in order to board the particular bus or tram they desire.

At rhythmic intervals all traffic through the arch is suspended to allow a flood of trams, buses, drays and vans, to surge and rattle and bang across the opening of the archway which faces the river.

At the opposite end there is the cross current.  The trams slide away to the right towards the Oval. In front is Kennington Lane and to the left at right angles, a narrow street connects with Vauxhall Walk leading further on into Lambeth Walk, both locally known as the Walk.

Such is the western gateway to the districts stretching north to Lambeth Road, south to Lansdowne Road, east to Walworth Road, where live the people whose lives this book is about.

They are not the poorest people of the district.  Far from it!  

They are, putting aside the tradesmen, whose shops line the big thoroughfares such as Kennington Road, or Kennington Park Road, some of the most enviable and settled inhabitants of this part of the world.  

The poorest people- the river-side casual, the workhouse in-and-out, the bar room loafer – anxiously ignored by these respectable persons whose work is permanent, as permanency goes in Lambeth and whose wages range from 18s. to 30s a week.

Picture; cover Round About A Pound A Week, , Virago ed 1979 featuring an image from the Greater London Council Photograph Library and detail of the area in the 1870s from the 1874 OS for London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Round About A Pound A Week, Maud Pember Reeves, 1913, Virago ed 1979

**The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts, 1971