A happy Christmas from the 1950s

It's not often you get a Christmas card from the 1950s dropping through the letter box.

Anyone who regularly read the Eagle comic will recognise the rocket ship and the names Digby and the Meakon.*

At which point l shall not say any more about the two or the Christmas decorated ship hurtling through space.

Instead l will just confess that the card was no time travelling bit of Christmas cheer, instead it came from The Eagle Society that society of like minded happy bunch dedicated to keeping the memory of the Eagle alive.**

It was this years contribution.

And of course l have been one of those happy members for four decades and an "Eagler" since 1957.

Picture; Christmas card from the Eagle Society, from the front page of the Eagle comic, December 22, 1950, No. 37

*The Eagle, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Eagle

**The Eagle Society, https://eagle-times.blogspot.com/

The Eltham we have lost, part 1 ........ The Chestnuts

Now there will be those who accuse me of being lazy this week and not doing my homework, but sometimes it is nice just to let the image say it all.

So here from today and stretching out for the next few days are some scenes of Eltham from the first decade of the last century.

All are taken from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, published in 1909 and represented by Roy Ayers.*

This one is the Ivy Cottage, which stood where ‘the Chestnuts,’ Court Road now stands.  The figure in the foreground is ‘Bishop’ Sharpe, the old schoolmaster, sketching.” R.R.C. Gregory




Picture; The Chestnuts, 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

* 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

The lost Manchester Collection ..... no.1 ....... August 4 1980 in Castlefield

They were a series of photographs I took during the late 1970s into the ‘80s and have sat in our cellar for over thirty years.

They were taken in the old days of film, and were developed and printed in a dark room using smelly chemicals.

That said most never got beyond the stage of being negatives, and when I finally gave up on the hobby they were a neglected piece of history made all the more redundant because the enlarger, chemicals and all the other bits of chemical photography were thrown away.

But now with a new Christmas present which scans the negatives I am back in business.

The images are not always the best quality but they are a bit of our collective past

So here are the first of the hundreds, chosen at random,  and are of the Steam Exposition at Castlefield on Saturday August 4 1980.

The old railway deport on Liverpool Road had closed and the Science and industry Museum had yet to move from Grosvenor Street and take over the site, and so on a Saturday in August lots of people came to enjoy the steam.

There was a band. lots of steam locomotives, a handful of vintage cars and buses and this old lady who had wandered into see what all the fus was about carrying her shopping bag and wearinger her slippers.

Location; Castlefield, 1980

Pictures; the Steam Exposition, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 7. ......... snow across the meadows

The meadows are a special place for me.

During the time the lads were growing up it was a place we went to a lot, often with the dog and always looking for adventures.

More recently it became a subject for research, because long before it became a nature reserve, a place to tip household rubbish or even before the sewage works, it was farmed as meadowland.

This was a particular form of farming which involved the flooding draining and flooding again of the open land in a specific way and designed to grow “early grass” for feeding to the cattle.

Sometime in the winter of 1978 or '79 I wandered across the stretch from Brookburn Road to the Mersey.

It was a bitterly cold day, more cold than we get these days and the snow stubbornly refused to melt.

I suppose if I checked back using the weather records I could pinpoint the exact year but I won’t.

Location; Chorlton






Picture; the meadows,1978-79 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Back with the Eagle in the 1950s

Now if you were born sometime between the early 1940s and the mid ‘50s, the chances are you were a fan of the Eagle comic.

It is a topic I keep coming back to and the reason is that back then it amounted to the best of British comics.

Its appeal crossed class lines as well gender and if my father was anything to go by attracted an older generation as well.

It came out each week and like other comics of the period had its own Christmas annual which was supplemented by books on some of the other leading characters.

But for me the Eagle Annual which first appeared in December 1950 was a must under the tree and it kept me going through the year, because here as well as comic strips were extended stories articles on sport , history science  and nature.

In between there were practical information on how to make a Kite-released parachute, sending secret messages using invisible ink and making your own printing set.

Never being particularly practical most of these DIY projects rated little more than a second glance.

For me it was the sections dealing with history and the stories which drew me in.

And of the stories it was Dan Dare Pilot of the Future who always was my first choice.

At this point I have to say this is no nostalgic trip. Instead is an exploration of how a popular comic managed at the same to introduce a whole pile of educational information which never led you to think you were back at school.

Nor were the books or comics aimed at the middle class, for there was enough here for any lad like me whose highest aspirations seemed to be a secondary modern school and a future mapped out in one of any one of a number of practical occupations.

The activities were all rooted in things any nine year could do and the stories were  in a world I understood.

And when they were based in space the Wild West or North Africa they were believable.

What is more the science of the future was our everyday life just a little different.

So Dan Dare’s spaceship used dial and buttons and levers, the command structure of Space Fleet including the uniforms which  mimicked the armed forces and of course many of the expressions used were rooted in the language of the 1950s.

None of which should surprise us but allowed every nine year old to feel that this imaginary world was not so far off from their own everyday life.

Of course the Eagle was ruthless in its use of its name which was marketed for all sorts of types and products, but again there is nothing new there.

So that said I shall this evening retreat into that world of the Eagle Annual leaving the cares of the 21st century behind.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Eagle, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Eagle

Stories of Hough End Hall in the 1970s

Now I am intrigued by these three images of Hough End Hall.

They are some of the last from those in the digital collection and date from 1970.

It is a period in the hall’s long history that I know very little about.

From the 1920s it had been in danger of demolition when the new road to the south was being planned and later still there were suggestions to retain the facade while knocking down the rest.

During the next decade there were counter calls for its restoration along with proposals to give it a community use but nothing happened and it remained in agricultural use up to the mid 1960s when it was sold to a development company who after two unsuccessful attempts managed to get panning permission “for the restoration of the hall with two small office blocks.”*

 The original plan had included a filling station which the Corporation opposed as “damaging to the character of this old Historic Building.”

The final deal involved the developers “signing an agreement with the corporation which would ensure the restoration of the hall” and additional conditions  “about tree protection and landscaping.”

And “stipulating that restoration should retain the original character and that  all external material must be similar to or in keeping with those originally used” with the further proviso  that there “was to be no additions or alterations.”

It was a stipulation which failed to be kept for despite the Corporation’s denials there were accusations from the Ancient Monuments Society that the restoration had been “botched including reconstituted stone for the window mullions, sills and heads and that the inside had been gutted.”

Meanwhile the office development according to the letting agents, Dunlop Heywood changed hands “so many times that nobody knew what was happening,”

Finally International Colloids sold out to Burns Anderson in association with Norwich Union and at this point the hall structure was strengthed to allow the building of Mauldeth House  which might have threatened the foundations of the old building.

And it is here that our three pictures come into play, for the first two clearly show the extent to which the exterior was “restored.”

Then and now that works stands out and hits you in the face.

But that said the Hall is now tucked away and dwarfed by the two office builds.

The first was completed in 1970 and was named Crown House and its four storeys accounted for 25,000 square feet of office space.

Three years later it was joined by the even bigger Mauldeth House with 50,000 square feet spread over seven floors.

I am not sure that it is one of those stories which has turned out well.

*Hall or nothing at all, Robert Waterhouse, Manchester Guardian, April 21 1973

Pictures; Hough End Hall in 1970 by H Milligan, m48587, m47856 and m47854, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Mrs Nellie Davison at Well Hall .......... stories behind the book nu 27 making the connection

An occasional series on the stories behind the book on Manchester and the Great War*

Places Nellie would have visited, the parish church, 1915

By now I shouldn’t be surprised at how what seem random bits of history have a habit of becoming entangled and by degree draw me into the story.

Of course I know that theory that you are only seven handshakes away from  the great and the famous but I was not prepared for just how close I came to a couple who lived in Manchester during the Great War.

They were George and Nellie Davison who were married in 1908 and settled in Romiley after living here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and in Hulme.

George Davison enlisted in 1914, spent time in Woolwich and Ireland and died on the Western Front in 1918.

Duncan and Nellie Davison circa 1916

Over the last three years I have slowly worked my way through the letters he sent and a collection of his photographs, papers and medals.

Nellie spent time with him both in Woolwich and in Ireland which I thought must have been unusual but perhaps not.

And then yesterday I came across a comment from George that a Mrs Drinkal missed Nellie commenting that “she was lost" without the presence of his wife.  Now that letter was sent from Woolwich which offered up a tantalizing clue as to where Mrs Davison stayed and perhaps where George was billited.

Well Hall Road, 1915

And with the help of my friend Tricia from Bexleyheath we think we know where that house was.

Having found one link to a Mr Drinkal I passed the task over to Tricia who came up with the goods

He was she told me “living at 7a Elmbrook Street which appears to be hutments on the site of where the Well Hall Odeon later stood.

William Henry Drinkal and Hilda May Garrod were married in 1916 at Dunmow in Essex and had their first child in 1917.”

All of which fits because a W H Drinkhall witnessed George’s will in March 1918.

Now I know the spelling is different but the coincidences are too close and so I can now place our Nellie in Eltham in 1916 on Well Hall Road.

And the real prize for me is that the Drinkal home was just minutes from 294 Well Hall where our family lived from 1964.

294 Well Hall Road, 2015

So there you have it.......  half a century may separate me from George and Nellie but there is the link.

It would be easy get a bit silly about the connection but for someone who has spent the last few years getting to know Mr and Mrs Davison, sharing their ups and downs and his final fate there is something powerful in knowing that we share the same place.

All of which just leaves me to thank Tricia, and remind  those who live in Manchester that the George Davison collection will be part of the exhibition in July to commemorate the Battle of the Somme in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

Research by Tricia Leslie

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collections of David Harrop and Andrew Simpson

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War