The shop …………. Beech Road on the cusp of change

I liked the plant shop on Beech Road. 

I can’t remember when it opened up or for that matter when it closed.

It predated the full Beech Road revolution, so while we had Buonissimo, Primavera, and The Lead, we still had a Post Office, Muriel and Richard’s and an old fashioned offi.

More than that the shop did not offer up a sleek, ultra-stylish approach.

Instead it was a jumble of treasures, where plants rubbed up against porcelain figures of cats, garden statues, along with packets of incense and bits of furniture.

It was magic place and quite eccentric.



Location; Beech Road


Picture; the shop, Beech Road, 2002, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

"We shall be pleased to see you” ……. stories and mysteries from Lewisham

Now I know I will find answers to the mysteries behind this picture post card, but not just yet.

It was sent in the June of 1916 to Miss E. Hibberd who was a nurse at Lewisham Military Hospital.

And by the time it was sent it was already a historical anachronism, because some of the faces of those “Commanders of the Allied Armies, 1914" will have changed by the time it was posted.

Finding their identity will be easy, less easy has been the search for Miss E. Hibbert who has proved illusory in the census record.

Equally the Charity I. S. & S. H. S., at 122 Brompton Road, still sits in the shadows, but it’s success in helping over 200,000 deserving cases as witnessed by its record posted on the reverse of the card should make it easy to track down.

The one certainty is the Lewisham Military Hospital which provided 24 beds for officers and 838 for service men including 190 for prisoners of war.  Before the war this had been the Lewisham Union Workhouse and was situated at 390 High Street in Lewisham.

In 1929 the building became the Lewisham Hospital.  The hospital has been largely rebuilt, though some original buildings are still in use”. *

And despite living my entire childhood close to Lewisham, I never knew of its existence.  But given that Peckham where I spent the early years, and Well Hall where we moved to, were both served by excellent hospitals, there is no reason why I should.

Added to which the hospital is not in that bit of Lewisham I would pass through on the bus from Eltham.

Its existence as a war time hospital is a reminder of just how many official buildings along with church halls and private residences were handed over to the war effort.

The card was been acquired by my old friend David Harrop who has managed to source a wartime picture of the hospital, which will be a nice contrast to its appearance today, leaving me just to appeal for any contemporary copyright free image of the building today, along with any photographs of a memorial to its time caring for the servicemen of the Great War.

Location; Lewisham

Picture; postcard, 1916, from the collection of David Harrop

*Wartime Memories Project, Lewisham Military
Hospital,  https://wartimememoriesproject.com/greatwar/hospitals/hospital.php?pid=13732

A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects ... number 17 ……. always beware the Mersey

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph or more.

The Mersey has been both a gift to Didsbury and at times a threat.

On the upside it has provided a natural barrier in more unsettled times, driven the mills along its banks, and provided water.

But it remains a powerful and at times a dangerous force, that can breach the defences and flood large parts of the neighbouring land.

Location Didsbury February 1930

Picture; Didsbury February 1930

Beech Road in the summer of 1932

We are on Beech Road in the summer of 1932.  

Judging by the shadows and the activity it must be sometime in the

morning.

The manager of John Williams and Sons looks on as his assistant sweeps the pavement in front of the shop and beyond him other shop keepers are laying out their produce.

As yet there are few people about and most of those are on bikes are more than likely out on their first delivery rounds.

Most seem oblivious to the camera, except that is for the two by the lampspost who have stopped their conversation to gaze back at the photographer.

The picture perfectly captures Beech Road in the early years of the 1930s.  The stone setts on Wilton Road have yet to be covered and the old railings around the Rec are still in place, otherwise it is not so different from today.

Of course the absence of cars is quite striking as are the shop fronts with their tall windows,  and painted signs.

What is all the more remarkable is that it is a scene which is more familiar to us than to those who walked the road before 1930.

I had always assumed that the row of shops which included John Williams & Sons had been built sometime soon after the beginning of the 20th century.

The site had originally been occupied by Sutton’s Cottage which was a wattle and daub dwelling and may well have been built in the early 1800s and was demolished in 1891.*

So it was reasonable enough to assume that the plot was built over soon afterwards but not so.

The other surprise was that John Williams and Sons were not local traders but in fact owned a chain of grocer shops across the city and beyond which in 1931 accounted for 41 shops of which there were three in Chorlton**, six in Didsbury and

another four in Rusholme.

Now I rather think there is a story here.  Back in 1895 they are listed as John & Sons with five shops in Didsbury abd Fallowfield which by 1911 had become 11 with John Williams described as managing director and the head office at 400 Dickinson Road.

Later still although I can’t date it is a wonderful advert for the company which advertises their ‘“Dainty, Delightful Delicious Tea, [from] John Williams & Sons limited, “The Suburban Grocers”, [at] 28 Victoria Street Manchester Stockport & Branches’.

And looking at the interior of one of their shops sometime in the early 20th century there is more than an element of “class” about the place.

So while the shelves groan with tinned produce and between the potted plants are the familiar posters advertising Californian Apricots at 6½d, and Coffee and other things, it is less cluttered, less in your face and far more discreet.

All of which makes me wonder at what our own shop on Beech Road would have been like, but that like the full story of John Williams and Sons will just have to wait.

Location; Beech Road, Chorlton


Picture; from the Lloyd Collection, 1932

*Sarah Sutton http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/sarah-sutton-life-lived-out-on-row.html

**32 Beech Road, Wilbraham Road, 211 Upper Chorlton Road.

Another side of Eltham Palace …….. the Courtauld rooms

Now, I grew up with Eltham Palace, and delighted in that walk over the bridge and into the grounds.

Virginia Courtauld's bedroom

And for me, steeped in medieval and Tudor history, the attraction was always the Great Hall, which my imagination filled with the good and the great doing what the good and great always do.

Later I wondered about the more important people who toiled in the kitchens, washed the huge amounts of bed linen and attended to all the needs of the powerful.

But the buildings where all the work was done have long gone, and history did not see fit to record the lives of the servants and agricultural workers.

In the same way I chose to ignore the later years of the Palace when the monarchs and their advisors and friends had moved on, and the building was reduced to near ruin, fit only for storing hay and livestock.

Virginia Courtauld's bathroom

Nor did I really take much interest in the Courtauld’s who acquired the lease of the Palace in 1933, restoring the Great Hall and adding a new building which became their home for eleven years.

And that was my loss, because the Art Deco interior is stunning.

So, I am indebted to Jeremy Harrison who sent me a selection of photographs of some of the rooms, including Virginia Courtauld’s bedroom and bathroom.

There will be many who like me left Eltham a long time ago and may have missed the Courtauld contribution to our Palace, and so with that in mind I intend to return to the 1930s Art Deco building, courtesy of Jeremy.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; the Courtauld Rooms of Eltham Palace, 2018, from the collection of Jeremy Harrison

Looking for pictures of Didbury’s oldest cinema

The cinema on Elm Grove was Didsbury’s oldest picture house and it saw out all its rivals.

The Tudor in 1959

In its time it had many names from the Didsbury Picture House, and the Didsbury Theatre through to the Tudor which it adopted in 1951 and retained till its closure in 1967.

And there will be many in Didsbury who will remember it as the Tudor and may even recall that they were there on the last night on August 12 when it showed Julie Christie in Fahrenheit 451.

By then it had outlived the bigger and more showy Capitol on School Lane which had opened in 1931 with a blaze of publicity as the Union and was partially destroyed by a fire the following year, reopening in 1933.*

Advert 1914

The Tudor was always the smaller neighbour.

It was open for business by 1913 when it was called the Bijou Electric Theatre, seating 350 and run by H Merryweather.**

Looking at the picture from 1959 it may be that the cinema went through either an extension or rebuild.

And that just leaves me to make an appeal for pictures if the Tudor cinema or better still when it was the Bijou.

Location Didsbury

Picture; Elm Grove, 1959, J F Harris, m2333, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and advert, from The Kinematograph Year Book, 1914

*The Golden Years of Manchester Picture Houses Derek J Southall, 2010

** The Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory 1914

Narnia on the Green …….. with a bit of Gas

Now my Ellwood tells me that “Towards the close of the year 1861, many of the inhabitants strongly felt the need of gas and a requisition signed by the principal ratepayers, was forwarded to the Stretford Gas Company, with a request that they would extend their main along Edge Lane to Chorlton”.*

Narnia on the Green, 2022

In the winter of 1885 through to the summer of the following year Thomas Ellwood wrote 26 articles on the history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.  They appeared in the South Manchester Gazette, and took the story of the township from its earliest beginnings to the point when what had once been a small rural community was fast becoming a suburb of Manchester.  

He drew from his own extensive memory but also on the memories of those who had been born in the early part of the 19th century and in turn pulled on the recollections of residents and their grandparents in an unbroken line back to when the old King George lost the American colonies.

The gas lamp on the green, 1979

And in a trice we are walking the lanes and fields of Chorlton-cum-Hardy picking up on traditional rural customs which were already old when Henry V111 chose to marry Ann Boleyn, along with the names of men and women who were buried in the graveyard by the green across the centuries.

And mixed up with these stories are those of “modern" Chorlton, including the arrival of gas, mains water, sanitation and modern transport.

Which leads me back to his comments on the arrival of gas.

“The company granted the request and in the following year gas was supplied to a few of the principal householders.

The Manchester Corporation also extended the main from Seymour Grove shortly afterwards.

The roads in the township were first lighted with gas by the Urban Sanitary Authority in the year 1875.  

They would have been lighted earlier, but for the strenuous opposition of the farmers, who would not agree to any increase in the highway rate.  

The gas lamp on the Green circa 1900

The first lamp was lighted by Mrs. Wild, wife of Dr. Wild, and is the one situated in the centre of the village green”.

So there you are  ….. a little less Narnia and more thank you to the Gas Board.

And I suppose also to Emily Wild who was the wife of Thomas Wild.  

In 1891 they were living at 5 St Clements Road, and a decade earlier in Devon.

Just when they arrived in Chorlton is as yet unclear but by 1891 he had retired.

And by 1901 they had retired to Southport.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; The Narnia lamp on the Green, 2022, & 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

*Elwood, Thomas, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy Chapter XX11, South Manchester Gazette, April 13th, 1886