Waiting on platform 12 at Piccadilly for Royal Mail Parcels ........ 1980

I know I shouldn’t be surprised at just how much of the city has changed over forty years.

Part of that is because I just don’t think four decades have whizzed past.

But then that has encompassed nine General Elections, a brace of American Presidents, the birth of our four children and my gentle passage from a man in gainful employment to one who writes and blogs.

Still I was drawn up with a jolt when I uncovered this picture of platforms, 10, 11 and 12 at Piccadilly Station.

So much so that for a brief while I was puzzled as to which station I had been on.

Logic and the other images in the strip of negatives all pointed to Piccadilly, but the scene is worlds away from that moving staircase, brightly painted columns and air of commuter bustle of today.

I even consulted that old railway buff David Harrop, and he confirmed I was where I thought, on Piccadilly Railway Station a full thirty years before its makeover.

So that pretty much is that.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station,1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Eltham Church ......”one towards your collection”

Now, I don’t for one minute think that when Lizzie sent this picture postcard to her auntie in Bridlington, that she ever thought it would reappear in Eltham a full century and a bit later.

And I am please it has courtesy of Tricia Leslie, because it offers up some interesting detail.

To the right, directly opposite the church is the wall of the Congregational Church which was later demolished to build Burton’s which is now McDonald’s.

The half timbered gateway is there but the space beyond, heading north down Well Hall Road, has yet to get the tram huts and has a second wooden gate and iron fence where today the stone seat and low wall with the word Eltham have been placed.

Add to this, that Well Hall Road looks narrower and was itself just under two years old, having been cut at this point as far as the railway bridge in 1905.

That said there is a lot that does look familiar, even though today the novelty of a camera has worn off leaving people unlikely to pose for a photographer.

Location; Eltham Church

Picture; Eltham Church,1907, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

Historians of Chorlton ............. Nora Templar

Nora Templar was a well known historian.

 She wrote a series of articles about the township which were published in the St Clements parish magazine during the 1960s.

She had been born in 1910 and spent most of her life at Dog House Farm in what is now Whalley Range. Dog House was over 300 years old when Nora moved there in 1910 and was only demolished in 1960. Her father Herbert was a talented artist and some of his paintings are in the City’s collection.

It was from Dog House that Mary Moore set out in 1838 to sell farm produce at the Manchester markets only to be murdered on her way home. Nora remembered the “large barn and coach house which was sheltered from the north and east winds” and the “cobbled yard, pump and trough close to the kitchen and the well” all of which would have been familiar to Mary Moore.

As well as writing about the history of the township she witnessed some of the key events during the 20th century, including the Royal Agricultural Show held at Hough End fields in 1916, the Royal Lancashire Shows of 1924 and 1937, and the first aircraft to land at Hough End.

Pictures; Harvest Festival October 1981, Nora Templar from the Lloyd collection and an extract from Chorlton-cum-Hardy At Work and Play, St Clements Parish Magazine, November 1961

Slavery by another name? .....Indian Indentured Labour .... on the wireless today

Now this is one I am listening to.

It is another in the series from BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss how, after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833, sugar planters recruited workers from India to replace or compete with their formerly enslaved labourers. 

Over the next 90 years, more than a million people in India travelled under five year contracts of indenture across the empire from Guyana to Trinidad to Mauritius and Fiji and colonies in between. 

These indentured labourers were to share vivid accounts of deception and abuse, especially in the early decades. 

From the outset there were critics and opposition gained pace with Gandhi and others in South Africa arguing the system was close to slavery and calling for the Indian government to stop the practice, which was to happen in 1917 with the last shipments of people in the 1920s. 

Meanwhile, rather than return after their contracts, a section of indentured labourers stayed where they were for their own reasons, negotiating their new identities alongside formerly enslaved people and the planter culture in a new Indian diaspora.

With Purba Hossain, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of York, Neha Hui, Associate Professor in Economics at the University of Reading, and, Clem Seecharan, Emeritus Professor of History at London Metropolitan University

Produced by Simon Tillotson"

Pictures; Ceylon, 1944 from the collection of Bob Ward

*Indian Indentured Labour, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002vc9m

Historians of Chorlton .......... N.Fife

One of the things I like about local history is the way it draws people in. 

People who have no historical training, possibly finished school well before their 15th birthday would fight shy of claiming that they are historians, nevertheless are driven by curiosity and a sense of belonging to research, record and write about their community in the past.

In doing so they add to our knowledge and in the opinion of my old friend Ian Meadowcroft make a vital contribution to the work of all historians.


So it is with Mr N. Fife, who in the late 1970s wrote about the history of Chorlton. It was hand written and to my knowledge has never been published.

Like other historians of the township he draws on the work of Thomas Ellwood who wrote 25 articles for the South Manchester Gazette in the mid 1880s but also brings his own deep knowledge of the place. Tucked away on one page is a description of the old water pump which served the Renshaw and Bailey families who lived in a farmhouse on Beech Road. It was still there in the 1970s but has long since gone. 

There is also an account of the archaeological digs carried out in the parish church by Angus Bateman and his team in the late 70s and early 80s. It remains one of the only descriptions of those excavations, and until the discovery of Angus’s own reports provided the only detailed picture of what was uncovered.

Picture; page from the manuscript “A Time to look back and think” by N.Fife from the collection of Tony Walker

In the parish graveyard

I wish I had spent more time exploring the parish grave yard.

But when you are growing up wandering past the monuments to the long dead is not very high on the agenda.

And yet for the historian they are a powerful insight into what a community was like in the past and Eltham’s is no different.

Here for centuries were buried the good, the wealthy and those whose rank and occupation was such that they have left few records.

But some at least of those that lived here will be recorded both in the parish records and in the grave stones.

Not that I intend to name them or for that matter to dwell on their lives but more to reflect on what can be learnt from combining the inscriptions with those held in the church books.

Once upon a time the researcher had to visit the individual parishes, or walk through the often overgrown church plots seeking a family member or just getting a sense of things like life expectancy and the pattern of
names.

Now of course most records are held on microfilm in local history libraries and increasingly are being digitalised.

All of which makes possible for the historian  to track individuals from the comfort of a kitchen table.

Now there are those who regret this development, but I am not one of them. What once took months of slow laborious work can be undertaken in a few hours and opens up parts of the country which would otherwise be a train away.

Of course there is still a thrill at holding an old document secure in the knowledge that perhaps only a handful of people have touched its pages in two centuries.

Likewise to stand in front of the gravestone of a long lost family member is to get close to them.

All of which I think has written me into a new series of stories, matching those buried in the grounds of St John’s with the stories of their lives from the census returns, rate books and casual comments of their contemporaries.

And for all those who like a bit of homework, I recommend a visit to the parish graveyard and a walk with history.

Pictures courtesy of Jean Gammons

London Road …….. January 24th 1959 …………..

This remains one of my all-time favourites from Eddie Johnson’s book on Manchester Railway Termini.*

Until recently I had not got round to asking for permission to reproduce it, but after a nice conversation with Eddie, here it is.

The caption says, "London Road, January 24th, 1959.  This view at London Road presents an almost Christmas card like scene, a splendidly pictorial effect which no doubt had the operating authorities cursing.  The overhead electric catenary reveals this to be the eastern side of the station, at the end of platform 3”.

There is more, but I will leave it at that, and instead just point out for those who do not remember, or never knew, Piccadilly Railway Station was once called London Road.

And the rest is just snow, which at 73 still delights me and makes me a kid again, which of course pictures of steam engines also have the power to do.

Location; London Road, Railway Station, 1959 

Picture; London Road, Railway Station, 1959, M.S. Welch from Manchester Railway Termini

* Manchester Railway Termini, Scenes from the Past: 3 E.M. Johnson, 1987