Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 3 Homer Street when the developer came knocking

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.

North of the river, 1819

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the west.

A short walk in pretty much any direction would offer a mix of cotton mills, dye works and timber yards all of which provided work for the residents of our street.

I can’t be exactly sure when it was built, but St Andrews which is just one street away was opened in 1831 and by 1837 the properties show up in the rate books owned by a Mr Price.

And just eighteen years earlier on Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

The area, 1966

Homer Street seems a cut above some of the others.

The houses consisted of four rooms and they commanded a rent of 1 shilling and 9d a week.

This was at a time when the best wages paid in the cotton factories in 1833, for a man in his 30s might earn 22 shillings and 8d.

Sometime between 1934 and 1988 the properties were demolished and the site is given over to a sheet metal works which continued to occupy the site until the 1960s when for a while the land was vacant.

During the 1970s and until quite recently the area was a bus depot which ceased operating at the beginning of this century.

It is now a food warehouse owned by Amato Food Products.*

It would be intriguing to know if anything the Homer Street properties still exist just below the surface.

Not that I would ask Mr Amato to dig a hole in his warehouse floor.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; a section of Ancoats whre Homer Street was to be built in 18i6, from the Johnson’s map of Manchester, 1819 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and  St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

From New York to Well Hall, the story of the Cooper family in the 1850s

Well Hall in the April of 1844

I am fascinated by the people who history has neglected.

The rich, the powerful and those of influence have had their lives inspected, their achievements judged and their homes open to the public gaze.

But the poor and the ordinary have not fared so well.  They have been consigned to walk on parts in the great events of the past, living out little lives in great centuries.

And this pretty much sums up all we know of George and Francis Cooper who lived in Well Hall with their five children in the April of 1851.

In total they have left just two official documents to mark their existence but they are enough to shed an interesting light into the couple.

In the spring of 1851 they appear on the census and may have lived in one of the six cottages just north of Kidbrook Lane.  Neither had been born in Eltham, George who was 42 came from Surrey while Francis who had been born in 1815 came from Hove in Sussex.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

Now this was not unusual and gives the lie to that old school book myth that few travelled far.  Just under 30% of the people here in Well Hall in 1851 had been born elsewhere.  Had you walked the lanes around Well Hall in that spring you might well have heard the accents of the Home Counties mixing with those of Yorkshire, Ireland and the far south west.

And it might just have been possible to pick up a slight North American influence in the words spoken by George and Francis’s eldest two children who had been born in New York in 1839 and 1842.

I don’t suppose we will get to know why they went to America or why they returned.
Perhaps the clue is in the fact that George described himself as a servant so perhaps they crossed the Atlantic with an employer.  Either way they were back here in Greenwich by 1844 for the birth of their third child and there they still were in 1849.

And two years later they were in Well Hall but not for long, because by 1861 they are missing from the census record.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

In fact the family disappear completely until 1891, when Francis shows up in the census return for that year living in two rooms of a six roomed house in Greenwich as a sub tenant of a Mr Read who was a Railway guard. She lived alone describing herself as a widow and “living on own means.”

I suspect there will be more, and there are tantalizing hints about the fate of the children.

But at present I shall leave Francis in her two roomed house near Ravensbourne Road determined to follow up the address on the OS Map of London for the period and to check out the Rate Books for Well Hall to pinpoint the time the family were in Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall in 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx 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, 

A little bit of our unremarkable past ...... that hut in the Rec

Now here is a little piece of our past which makes me very happy.

The picture was taken in 1980 and confirms that I wasn’t imagining that once the Rec which new comers call Beech Road Park did indeed have its own hut.

I have no idea when it was built.

I know that it doesn’t appear on photographs from the 1900s but is there by the 1940s, because it shows up in a picture of our own barrage balloon.

Nor am I quite sure when it vanished.

All of which I suppose is indicative of the state of my memory.

But there it is, and for those now in the 40s who sat on its bench on long winter’s nights passing the time till they were old enough to visit a pub, here is a memory.

And soon after the story was posted, Bruce Wemyss commented, 

"Andrew Simpson I remember it well in the sixties and would guess it was removed in the early 70s 

It was turned on by the Park Keeper each spring and back off again in the Autumn Chorlton Park and Longford park each had a couple 

They where double sided and operated by pressing a Brass button on the top of the font 

They we’re all the same design I suspect Manchester Corporation will have some pictures hidden away somewhere 

As a footnote In the sixties and early seventies we local lads played football in the Rec most weekends and summer evenings sometimes with games going on all day and well into the evening breaking off to go home for lunch and tea it was not unusual for there to be 12 to 15 on each team Great times I feel very lucky to have grown up in Chorlton back in the day"

All of which was repeated by my own kids, who did the same Bruce, and had to be called in at night
  

We even had a special box full of their friends football boots for the games, and my lads would exhaust shed loads of their friends which came and went.

Location; Chorlton.

Picture; the hut on the Rec and football games, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Court Yard in 1911 with Mrs Morris and memories of Eltham in the 19th century

I am looking at number 25 Court Yard, and there in the picture are Mrs Annie Morris and her sons David and Harold.

I don’t know the date but I reckon it will have been sometime around 1911 because in that year David would have been 33 and Harold 24 which pretty much fits with their appearance in the picture.

And there is much more that this image can help us about the history of Eltham.

Number 25 was a five roomed house just past the Crown on Court Yard and it was one of twelve houses running from the pub to a slightly grander set of houses.

The first five or so properties commanded rents of 4 shillings a week and it was here that Mr and Mrs Morris moved sometime in 1900.

This was number 17 Court Yard, but with two years they had moved to number 25 and paid 2 shillings and sixpence in rent.

Either way this was an improvement on Ram Alley where they had lived and which had been condemned as unfit for habitation in 1895, a decision which meant little given that they were still standing in 1930.

These twelve were a mix of four, five and six roomed houses which were home to a mix of occupations including a caretaker, baker, porter, a butcher and two gardeners along with house painters, a general labourer, domestic servant and retired carpenter.

On the surface just your average range of jobs, but of course they reflect the changes that were beginning to push Eltham out of its rural past into something closer to what we know today.

And so while Annie’s husband had been a carpenter one of her sons worked at the Woolwich Arsenal.

She  was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”*

She had been born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place and recalled that when she was young “Eltham was but a village and children and young people then were forbidden by their parents to be out after dark. When Mrs Morris was two years old a Mrs Miller kept the school in Back Lane. 

The old inns and taverns of Eltham are still of the same identity except for structural changes.”*

Now there is much more of Mrs Morris’s memories and in due course I will come back to them.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Eltham District Times, June 1931

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 2 Homer Street and the Ward family

Now I would like to think that one of these young people could be Ethel Ward.

Students at St Andrews School, 1920

She was living with her parents at number 9 Homer Street and it is just possible she attended St Andrew’s School which was at the end of the road.

Homer Street and in particular number 9 has over the last few days drawn me in and I want to know more.

It was just a few minutes away from Fairfield Street and on a quiet night the Ward family would have heard the distinctive clunk of railway waggons being shunted in the nearby sidings, caught the smell from the river and the dye works and worried that young Ethel might do something daft beside the canal.

Homer Street, 1894

That said I remember my old friend Norman who had been born close by telling me how he had learnt to swim by being thrown in that same canal.

I last visited number 9 in 1851 when it was home to two families.

At that time I knew little about the property but now know that it consisted of four rooms which given that there were seven of them must have made it a squeeze.

Just exactly what the condition of number 9 was like is unknown, but by 1911 it was at least 74 years old having been built as part of the swift development of the area in the early and mid 19th century.*

The class of 1920, St Andrew's School, 1920

The earliest entry in the rate books is 1837 when the block was owned by a Mr Price who is still the owner in 1851.**.

I suspect Mr and Mrs Ward counted themselves relatively lucky because many of the surrounding properties consisted of just two and three rooms and were home to large families.

He was an electrician for Manchester Corporation and as such was a skilled worker.

They had been married for eleven years and Ethel as their only child.

For Ethel there would have been little that could be said to have offered up exciting places to play.

Just a short walk down Phobe Street was a tree lined Recreational Ground which backed on to the river but it was dominated by a cotton mill off to the east and the Ancoats Goods Yard to the north delivering a fair share of noise, smells and if the wind were in the wrong direction no doubt the old cloud of smoke.

Of course there is a danger in letting your imagination over play the industrial scene and I have also to concede that by the time our school picture was taken Ethel would have been fourteen and already working, perhaps in that very textile factory that overlooked the Rec.

St Andrew's Square, 1966

Her home and the rest of the houses on Homer Street had gone by 1938 although the street and some of the surrounding ones continued to appear on maps, but by the end of the century even their imprint had vanished under a site which had various industrial uses and now is a warehouse for Armato Food Products  and it was the current owners who suggested I might be interested in the site.***

Which is almost the end, but I have to add that in wandering the neighbouring streets I did come across a Mr Simpson living with his wife and two boarders in three rooms at number 17 St Andrew’s Street.  He was no relation but I like the way a random search throws up a Simpson.****

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, and St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Homer Street in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Homer Street, Enu 12 272, Central, Manchester, 1911

**Manchester Rate Books, 1837- 1851

***Amato Food Products, http://www.amatoproducts.co.uk/

****St Andrews Street, Enu 12 188, Central, Manchester, 1911

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 15. .........

 Now I am pretty confident that this one will bring up a rich collection of memories.

It continued trading into the 1980s and was a wonderful place where the chesses were piled high and there was pretty much any cheese you wanted.

And l have been corrected by John Paul Moran who tells me it continued trading well in to the 1990s. Thanks John.

Location; Wilbraham Road










Picture; the bacon and cheese shop, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Didsbury’s own brass band …… a story waiting to be told

Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t think there is a history of Didsbury’s own brass band.

The Didsbury Brass Band, 1985-1986

Of course, like all such bold statements I wait the angry letter pointing out a title and a publication date for a long-forgotten book.

I know they existed and have trawled and have found references in the local press along with a list of some of the competitions they performed in.

But so far, I have come across only one  picture of them performing to the public.  which was at the Didsbury Show in either 1985 or 1986.

Tantalizigly there is another photograph of a band from the Coronation Procession of 1911 which snaked its way through the township as part of the festivities.  But alas it is of the Alexandra Brass Band Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Co.

That said I bet our band was there.

I am not surprised at its existence, after all many of our twinships supported brass bands.

In Chorlton there had been a band from the 1820s which only folded in 1945, and along with others the Stalybridge Brass Band had marched to Peterloo in 1819.

The Alexandra Brass Band, 1911

I suspect the Didsbury band started pretty much like Chorlton’s with a small group of likeminded men coming together and playing at religious and secular events.  

In the case of Chorlton that band was reliant on local financial help and donations from rich benefactors, although this didn’t stop James Axon making a drum for his brother John which proved too big to get out of the house.

The development of the railway network during the second half of the 19th century made it possible for bands to travel out of their villages and participate in regional and nation al competitions which were eagerly reported by the media.

So far the earliest reference I have to the Didsbury band comes in 1874 when the Didsbury and Barlow Brass Band took part in a procession with St Chad’s, of York Street which was part of the annual Procession of Roman Catholic Schools.

Parading in 1911

The band was also on hand eight years later when Daniel Adamson the “chairman of the Provisional Committee to promote the construction of Manchester Ship Canal obtained a hearty welcome from the inhabitants of Didsbury on his return from London. Triumphal arches had been erected in his honour, and others erected on the way to his residence as well as one in the carriage drive leading to his house.  

He was met at Didsbury railway station by the Didsbury brass band, which immediately struck up with ‘See the conquering hero comes”.**

And this was followed up by a repeat when Mr. Adamson returned to Didsbury in the summer of the following year after the Ship Canal Bill had been passed.

But just what they made of the failed local gathering to welcome William Gladstone to Didsbury has not been recorded.  

He was due to arrive at the railways station after a meeting in town and then proceed to Ford Bank where he was staying the night.  The newspaper reported "that the inhabitants of Didsbury gathered at Didsbury station.  The members of the local Liberal Club had made extensive preparations to escort Mr. Gladstone to Ford Bank.  A brass band was in readiness, and upwards of 100 members of the club were waiting with torches, [but] unknown to everyone Mr. Gladstone had driven by road and that he had unobserved, passed through the village about the time his special train arrived” at the station with him not aboard.***

With the Band, 1985-1986

Not that this disappointment was a setback for the band who performed at the annual celebrations of Lifeboat Saturday in 1903 and 1904, and later entertained visitors to the Didsbury Flower Show of 1908 and the Didsbury Agricultural Show in 1931.

And in between and after they are listed at 20 competitions from September 1875 to December 1986.***

At which point the references cease and the database listing their appearances concludes with “This band no longer exists”.

Didsbury music in Didsbury, 1985-1986

But I am confident that there will be more.  

There are other Brass Band sites which I have used in the past and as 1986 is not that long ago, there will be people who remember the band and those who played in that band.

We shall see.

Picture; The Alexandra Brass Band Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Cofrom the Souvenir of the Coronation Festivities Held at Didsbury, June 22nd 1911, Fletcher Moss and at the Didsbury Show, courtesy of Nobby Dicks

*Procession of the Roman Catholic Schools, Manchester Guardian, May 30th, 1874

**The Manchester Ship Canal Bill, Manchester Guardian, May 26th, 1884

***Mr. Gladstone, December 4th, 1889

****Didsbury Band Competions,  https://www.brassbandresults.co.uk/bands/didsbury