What's in a name? Pound Place by Eltham High Street in the summer of 1909

Looking south into Pound Place, 1905

“Pound Place is the name of the street on the side of the High Street opposite the Public Library.  

It derives its name from the fact that the old Pound occupied the spot where Mr Cook’s shop now stands at the corner near the High-street.  

The latest Pound was at Eltham Green.”*

Most villages had a pound or pinfold.  Any animal left to wander could do a lot of damage and so strays were confined in the pound and the fine to release it matched the seriousness of the offence.

This amounted to 1s [5p] which was paid to the parish constable.   The owner would also be expected to pay for any damage the animal had incurred.

If the animal was not collected in three days it was sold to defray expenses.   Anyone attempting to release the animal without paying was liable to either a fine or imprisonment.

Some of the cottages

All of which is a reminder that names do not come from the minds of city planners or rich landowners intent on lasting posterity but from the experiences of ordinary people.

In the village I now live in the junction of the four main roads was once known as Kemp’s Corner because Harry Kemp set up a chemist shop on one side.

It remained the unofficial name for over half a century and was a recognised meeting place.

And today long after Mr Kemp has all but been forgotten it is now referred to as the Four Banks or Four Banks Corner which is a practical name for a place which does indeed have a bank on each corner and pretty much pushed the official Corporation name of Chorlton Cross into the long grass.

I like this picture which shows Pound Place looking south from the Library.  It is one of two in the collection and dates from before 1909. Judging from the leaves on the trees and the shadows this was taken on a summers afternoon and already a small crowd has gathered to witness the photographer capture the moment.

And as ever amongst the adults there are the curious children drawn by the camera.

Sadly we can not make out the detail on the newspaper posters which would pin down the day and confirm that we are sometime in the summer or early autumn.

The houses were there well before the middle of the 19th century and there was quite a large community living there including Richard White and his family.  Mr White is someone I have featured already.**  He was the village school master and responsible for the collection of the census returns for part of Eltham in 1841.

Mr Cook's shop, 1905

Now I am no romantic and rarely indulge in idle speculation, but I rather think he would have known these cottages and may even have lived in one.

And that is about it although I will go off and hunt down Mr Cook who sold papers from his shop on the corner of Pound Place.

Well almost because Matt K Minch commented, "I have a slightly clearer version of this which says it is 1905, I think the right hand billboard says 'Lord Kitchener' at the top".

And with that kindness that comes from a love of all things Eltham, Matt sent over his image which is far superior to mine and deserves to the centre piece f the story.

But given that the piece has already been written I will add it at the end because as my mother always said ...."leave the best to the last Andrew" and that I have done.

Matt's superior picture, 1905

Picture; Pound Place, 1909,   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
and Pound Place courtesy of Matt K Minch

*R.R.C. Gregory, the Story of Royal Eltham, 1909

**http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/sherard-house-and-church-row-in-eltham.html

Buying a TV from Park Wireless in the August of 1951

I am looking at an advert for Park Wireless a company which sold electrical goods across south Manchester including Chorlton.*  

The year is 1951 and therein is the first hint that the advert will reveal much about life in the early 1950s.

The war had been over just six years and the consumer boom was yet to take off.  There were still rationing, as well as shortages and plenty of those ugly bomb sites which added to the gloom.

And the distance we have travelled from then to now is summed up by the word wireless.  It was what my parents and grandparents called the radio and it would have been the word I used as well.

When the wireless became the radio I am not quite sure, but within a decade of this advert I rather think radio had taken over and later for a brief moment it was superseded  by the transistor and for a few by the tranny.

So Park Wireless anchors us in those early years of the 1950s with the Home Service, the Light Programme and the Third Programme each with their own distinctive output.

The Home Service focused on the serious stuff ranging from news to drama and talks.  The Light Programme as its name suggests offered up light entrainment and music and was really the continuation of the wartime BBC Forces Programme which had been renamed the General Forces Programme. The Third concentrated on the Arts; commissioned musical works as well as putting on the plays by writers such as Samuel Becket, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton and Dylan Thomas.

Not that any of these feature in the advert which is primarily about television and so pride of place goes to the PYE FBIC Consule retailing at £85.

Ours I remember was similar but had doors.  Now I have never quite understood the doors but I suppose those that suggest it was too hide the screen during the day might be right.
What strikes me first about the advert is the “TV Demonstrations every Friday at Moss Side and Timperley.” 

At a time when there were very few sets in people’s homes the pull of a demonstration must have been quite powerful, and this I think is different from a trip to a modern store where you trawl what is on offer comparing price and specification.

Back then the demonstration was as much about selling the idea of a TV as actually selling the box.

As always the prices are interesting and there will be those who will remember how much they took home and what was left for saving up for such things as a telly.

But what also intrigued me was the reference to the “Progress Report on Holme Moss” which turns out to be a TV Transmitting station.  It was launched on October 12th 1951 and covered west Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Derbyshire.

Its opening meant that “television comes within the reach of millions more potential viewers” and with recent tests promising “excellent reception in the Manchester districts” the age of the telly was about to happen.

But then there is the warning about making "sure of your set - they may become scarce" which is less I suspect about hard selling and a very real problem of supply, which of course takes us back to the shortages of the 1950s.

Nor is this quite the end for those old machine with the big valves were not so reliable and if this was to be the age of the telly it was also the age of the telly repair man.

And it was also that powerful smell they could give off, a mix of heat and dust.

But that is for another time.

Picture; from Manchester City News, August 10 1951

*There were branches at Chorlton, Didsbury, Moss Side, Northenden and Timperley.

On this day in 1911 ……….on Wilmslow Road

Now, I know exactly where we are on Wilmlsow Road, and I know exactly when we were there.

Walking the Coronation, 1911

And this is because the crowds passing in front of us were part of Didsbury’s contribution to the celebrations to mark the coronation of King George V, on June 22nd  in 1911.

The picture was part of a collection which appeared in the Souvenir of the Coronation Festivities Held at Didsbury, June 22nd, 1911, by Fletcher Moss.

As to the location, the clue is in the name of the shop keeper who was John Thomas Ashworth whose stationers’ shop was on the corner of Wilmslow Road and King Street which is now known as Kings Lynn Close.

Looking on, 1911

Like many such shops he operated  a private lending library, and with a view to advancing his business, he has chosen not to pull down the blinds, leaving the contents of the windows to be seen by all who chose to look in.

And I rather think that is him looking down at the procession.

He was fifty years old, had been married to his wife Betsy, for seven years, and had been trading from the shop since at least 1901.

We will never know where his wife was at the moment the picture was taken, but next door, the Jones family appear to have invited a heap of people.  Mr. and Mr. Jones ran a fruit and veg shop, and lived with their grownup son Percy, who was a clerk in the Manchester Shipping Warehouse.

Wimlsow Road and Kings Lynn Close, 1967

It would be tempting to speculate on who the invited guests were, but perhaps it is enough, that on that day we have identified some of the spectators.

And to those who are confused or doubt where we are, here included in roughly the same spot in 1967, which just leaves everyone to wander down to Kings Lynn Close and marvel at the transformation.

Location; Didsbury,

Pictures, Wimlsow Road, from the Souvenir of the Coronation Festivities Held at Didsbury, June 22nd 1911, Fletcher Moss, and in 1967, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

*1911 census, Enu 04 42, & 40, Didsbury,  South Manchester, Lancashire

The brick works, a forbidden place and a man called Duffy

It was one of those perfect summer days out beyond Hardy Farm.

The sun was hot and the sky a brilliant blue with just a few light clouds high up and overhead. And we were on a mission.

I forget now what had prompted us to be there and very quickly whatever it was had been  lost in the sheer pleasure of wandering through the long grass with absolutely no one else around.  There was that intense smell of the warm grass, the sound of a bird and away over the Mersey the faint noise of traffic.

We have all done it, and it’s like being seven again and on one of those carefree adventures with nothing to worry about and everything to discover.

Now I have done my own share.  I remember long solitary walks along Derbyshire country lanes and endless treks looking for new strange parks to play in or just taking my 2/6d pocket money to the local railway station and seeing where it would take us.  Sometimes you struck gold and were rewarded with open fields at the end of the line and at others a dingy industrial wasteland hard by a smelly canal.

The best was the walk to Blackheath which led on to the park and the river.  But there were also the bomb sites those lingering ugly reminders of the war we had been lucky enough to miss.  There was no danger there any more although just occasionally you might come across some hidden treasure which had somehow worked its way back to the surface.

David O’Reilly who grew up on Chorlton has similar fond memories.  In his case it was “the Clay Pits” which was
“situated to the immediate east of Longford Park, just the other side of the interrupted Rye Bank Road - it was a series of mounds and gulleys, the left over from previous workings of the old brick works factory with its tall chimney.  

It was a forbidden play place and it was guarded by an almost mythical man named "Duffy"! With another 9 year old boy, I recall daring ourselves to go into this derelict building one day and even crawling under the tunnel - through rubble to a place where I could look up inside the chimney and see the small hole of daylight at the top. 

On re emerging we continued to play until - that knowledge of being watched - made its presence felt - and we looked around to see a man who I think was called Duffy staring at us, stood on a small wall about 12 yards away. Scared witless we fled the scene, and although not chased, the memory of Duffy, the clay pits, and the old building, has played a part in several nightmares since that day!”

I have to say that when I first came across the brick works I was surprised.

But the clay and marl around the Longford Road area has been used for centuries.

The marl was used for spreading on the land while the clay became the bricks of some of our older houses .*

The pits are there on the OS map of the area for 1841 and carry names like Marl Pits and Brick Kiln Pits.  And as late the 1920s and 30’s the water filled pits proved a fatal place for some of our children.

But I want to end on a lighter note.  David and I may have been aware of the dangers in where we played but it didn’t stop us. In those long ago days parental supervision was perhaps  lighter and there may have been far more open spaces to while away the long hot summers.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Coffee…… a bag of coal ….. and a new TV channel ………. Didsbury 1967

I think this might be the last in the series of Didsbury in the 1960s.

I say that but I am sure it’s a promise I won’t keep.

This picture from 1967 is one of my favourites from the collection and features a building whose story I keep coming back to.*

For now I shall reflect that I doubt many of those sipping their coffee on Costa will know that the corner plot was once occupied by the National Coal Board, or that the distinctive ghost sign on the gable end was hidden under a layer of black paint.

What really caught mu interest was BSM Radio with its advert for BBC 2.

This was after all 1967, and until the arrival of BBC 2, we had just the two channels, which were black and white.

The first colour transmission I saw weas the following year, when in London at least BBC 2 broadcast live coverage of Wimbledon in colour.

Just how many of those passing along Wilmslow Road on that winter’s day had BBC 2 is unknown, but I doubt it will have been that many.

And in the same vein I wonder just who remembers Price’s the bakery shop, BSM Radio or Distinctive Fashions, which is now also part of Costa Coffee?

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Wilmslow Road, 1967, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.17 the Rising Sun in pale blue

A short series on the pictures of Eltham and Woolwich in 1976.

For four decades the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham, circa 1976, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking out at the allotments towards Sandy Lane sometime in the 1960s

Now here are two images of Chorlton which at first glance look familiar.  

We are on the allotments with the Park to our rear looking out towards Sandy Lane.

Back in 1903 my friend Ann’s grandfather lived at number 72 Sandy Lane.

She  grew up in Chorlton on Barlow Moor Road and has contributed a rich set of memories and pictures from the 1950s and 60s.

What I especially like about these two are the contrasts, one in full summer, the other deepest winter with snow still on the ground and of course the difference in colour.

It would be fun to find people who were working those allotments at the time and may have their own stories and pictures to add to the collection.

The painting and photograph will date from sometime in the 1960s and are a reminder that not all things change.

Pictures; of the allotments from the collection of Ann Love