A Beech Road that has now passed out of living memory

Now I have a soft spot for Beech Road, it is after all where I have lived since 1976. 

And for years I wondered why the pavement widens briefly almost opposite Reeves Road which was of course to accommodate the big tree.

What I also like about the photograph is that it is a view that has long since passed out of living memory and part at least had not changed in perhaps 80 years.

I can be fairly sure that it dates from 1907 when the houses on the left were built and no later than 1909 when the estate of Beech House on the right was sold and the big house demolished.

Beech House had been the home of the Holt family from the 1830s until the last of the family died in 1907. By 1909 the eastern side of the garden running along Barlow Moor Road had been acquired by the Corporation, its wall demolished and a stretch of it was about to become the tram terminus.

The remaining stretch would in time be developed to include Malton Avenue the Palais de Luxe cinema opened in 1915 and the parade of shops.

But now on that winter day it was still possible to see the outline of Beech House and beyond the row of terraced houses to the south were the Bowling Green Farm and the village.

Picture; Beech Road circa 1907-1909 from the Lloyd collection

Well Hall in the 1920s nu 1 ........... catching the train and watching out for the cows

A short occasional series on Well Hall in the 1920s.

Now I washed up in Eltham in the spring of 1964 and for two and half years made the daily  train journey back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys School which continued until I switched to Crown Woods.

I didn’t like Samuel Pepys over much and the trip from Well Hall to New Cross and back was pretty much the best bit of the day.

Even now I have fond memories of seeing the woods above out house come into view ast thetrain took that final bend and came into the station.

The trains were always packed but there was something about knowing you were coming home to Well Hall.

And I suspect Mr Jefferson may have shared that feeling, so here are some of his memories of the same station just 40 or so years before I used the station.

They are taken from the book he published in 1970.

“The railway station was called simply ‘Well Hall’ when we came and the platforms were not so long as they are now.  

A workman’s ticket cost 8d return to London and early workers making their way past the tumbledown ‘Well Hall’ which is now the Pleasaunce would frequently be hindered by cows coming up hawthorn-hedged Kidbrooke Lane and turning in at the wide gate in Well Hall Road.”*

Location; Well Hall

Picture; the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose

*The Woolwich Story, E.F.E. Jefferson, 1970 page 202

When they took my railway station ...........

Now, as a rule I don’t object to change and even I could see the logic of building a new railway station yards from the old one and calling it Eltham.

That old familiar entrance, circa 1960s

In the great scheme of things the coming of the motorway and the loss of the bus terminus beside the station made perfect sense.

But a little of my youth vanished when Well Hall Railway Station was demolished.
More than that, no one told me.

I had left from that wooden platform in the September of 1969 for a new life in Manchester, and while I regularly returned home during the following two decades I was not prepared for the day I alighted from what I thought was the wrong station, with the wrong name, on the wrong side of the road.

The new bridge, 2013

I should of course have been warned by the conversation at the ticket office in Charing Cross when my  request for a single to Eltham Well Hall was met with a stony look and a sarcastic comment about not keeping up with news, which was a tad unfair given that my subscription to Railway News had lapsed the month before.

Only the intervention of the nice lady buying a season ticket for Welling saved the day.

Off on a jolly, 1966

Even now on those occasions I go home I never feel quite right walking through the brick and concrete building and yearn with a bit of silly nostalgia for the wooden railway station of my youth.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Eltham Well Hall Railway Station & the High Street circa 1960s courtesy of Steve Bardrick, the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose and off from Well Hall, 1966, from the collection of Anne Davey

Barlow Hall, a court case and the promise of a park for Chorlton and Didsbury on the banks of the Mersey

It was one of those stories that you uncover by accident and will require lots more research but that won’t stop me beginning the tale.

Now I had been crawling over the Manchester Guardian looking for references to the opening months of the Great War and amongst other things there was a series of articles about the Corporation’s intention to buy the Barlow Hall estate and turn it into a park.

Lord Egerton had signalled his wish in the April of 1914 to sell the land for £50,000, which the Manchester Guardian reported “works out at more than a £150 an acre [and which] at present brings in an income of about £900 a year.  

The Parks Committee, in addition to inspecting the property, have had it valued at £30,800, or about £95 an acre.  

Their advisor in arriving at this figure took into consideration the fact that nearly 300 acres of the land is low lying, which raises difficulties in the matter of drainage and limits its usefulness, except of course, for such purposes as farming, recreation, and sewage treatment.”*

Added to which the Egerton estate reserved “the rights of drainage for the adjoin high land at present draining into the lower levels; provision for a quarter of the cost of maintain the river banks and certain restrictions affecting the use of the land for building, advertising and sewage purposes.  On the other hand, 

Lord Egerton would provide an entrance road, 80ft wide from Barlow Moor Road to Barlow Hall; a right of way, 50ft wide from Hardy Lane, Chorlton and an entrance to the land from Darley Avenue, in West Didsbury.”

Now there was opposition with letters to the Manchester Guardian, but at a small meeting of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ratepayers Association a decision approved the purchase but the members present were concerned about the impact on the Golf Club whose links was owned by the Egerton estate and would be part of the purchase.

Despite the cost the Parks Committee decided to recommend the purchase to the Council in the September with Alderman Harrop arguing that this was a good deal particularly as it meant the acquisition of Barlow Hall for £25,000.

And that is as far as I have got although thee are also some fascinating glimpses into the life of the Hall when it was still the residence of Cunliffe Brooks which came from a high profile court case in 1900-01 which centred around the attempt of his widow and daughter to prove that his main domicile was Scotland, but that is for another time.

Pictures; Bluebell Wood, Barlow Ley, circa 1900, and west front of Barlow Hall, circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

*The Proposed South Manchester Park, Manchester Guardian, April 30, 1914

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 3 on coming across Stamford Park and the Sycamore

Now it is all a bit different when you don’t grow up in a place, so when we discovered Stamford Park one Sunday it was special.

And given the size of our house on Raynham Street the open spaces just fitted the bill.

Now “the original park, south of Darnton Road, was opened in 1873 on land purchased for £15,000. 

The money was raised by public subscription together with a gift of 30 acres from the Earl of Stamford. The park was enlarged in 1891 by acquisition of Chadwick's Dam reservoir, the southern part of which was made into a boating lake and the northern part into a feeder lake and fishing lake. 

The last major addition was in 1929 with the donation of 4 acres which was devoted to a children's playground. The park was run by a joint committee from Ashton and Stalybridge until 1974, when it passed to Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council.”*

Now I knew none of this at the time and in fact only came across its story recently.
Back then, the walk in the park was a prelude for an evening in the Sycamore which became a favourite haunt of ours.

All of which just leaves me with the postcard which was produced by Tuck & Sons around 1909.

It was part of a set of six published by Whittaker & Sons of Stalybridge.

Sadly the card does not have a message on the back but other’s in the collection do and I rather think I shall return to these if only to report more fully on young Pattie who sent a card of Stalybridge to Miss Mary Jameson in the USA on April 25th 1909.

Pictures; Stamford Park, from the series Stalybridge, by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

*Ashton-Under-Lyne, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Ashton-Under-Lyne

**Parks and gardens UK, http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/site/3045

“Do They Know It’s Christmas”, ……… a VHS tape .... and that famine

Somewhere in the collection we still have “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, which I guess hasn’t been played for decades.

And while it is that time of year, I doubt normally it would get on to the turntable.

There will be a mix of reasons, not least because since 1984, there have been countless other famines, near famines and disasters which I am remain convinced were preventable.

The story of that song and its subsequent re-recordings in 1989, 2004 and 2014, is out there to be read.*

And I don’t intend to repeat what someone else has said and said better.

Instead I am intrigued by this VHS recording of the making of the song, which was acquired by my old friend David Harrop.

The copy was signed by Midge Ure and looks to be in a good state.

But it is a VHS recording which is a technology pretty much now consigned to history, although in it’s day for a full two decades it was what you used to watch films, and home TV recordings.

It saw off Betamax but was done for by the CD and now few would have a VHS machine to watch a tape like this.

And how ever much they were the bees knees in the 1970s through to the 90s, they were prone to faults and as often  happened would end up unravelling.

So, I thank David for sharing this one with me, although our machine was consigned to the dustbin long ago, and the few tapes that survived the cull have since ended up in charity shops.

Location; Manchester

Picture;  “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, VHS box, courtesy of David Harrop

*“Do They Know It’s Christmas”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_They_Know_It%27s_Christmas%3F

The story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries ...... part 4 Samuel and Sarah Nixon, Mr Hayes, Mrs Lothian and the Bone Man

Number 70 2013

The continuing story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries*

Number 70 Beech Road has been home to many businesses since it opened as a beer shop in 1832 and of all the people who lived there it is the Nixon’s who we know most about.

Now this is all the remarkable given that they occupied the house from the 1840s but that is often how historical research pans out.

Sadly closer to our own time much that would reveal the lives of people are locked away and subject to that 100 year rule.

But the records offer up much about the Nixon’s.

Samuel was born in Staffordshire in 1817 and by the 1830s his father was running that pub across the river by Jackson’s boat.

Mr and Mrs Nixon

In 1842 Samuel married Sarah Ann Mason whose father and grandfather ran the Bowling Green during the first three decades of the 19th century and also described themselves as Land Surveyors.

Given that both came from the pub trade it is not surprising that they took over the tenancy of the beer shop sometime around 1842 and continued running it till their deaths.

Samuel died in 1877 and Sarah Ann in 1886 and were buried in the parish church year where their gravestone can still be seen.

Their eldest son went on to run the stationer’s and post office next door and his son established the newsagents on the corner of Beech and Chequers Road.  Lionel the grandson married Hilda Brownlow whose family had made and mended wheels from their business at Lane End.

The Travellers Rest, circa 1901

Number 70 continued a beer shop until the early years of the 20th century and we can track a number of tenants, including a Mr Valentine and Mr Hayes of which the second presents one of those intriguing little mysteries.

For in 1891 Mr Hayes was selling his beer at number 70 Beech Road which had changed its name from the Travellers Rest to the Trevor Arms not that this lasted for long for when Mr Hayes moved across the road to run a rival beer shop he took the name with him and the old and familiar name of the Travellers Rest reappeared.

And after Mr Hayes and Mr Valentine we enter one of those periods where the building  was pretty much all things to all people.

Mr Riddle ran his upholstery business there from around 1909 onwards and two decades later the widow
Mrs Lothian was offering up prime fish for sale and continued to do into 1936.

Now she had lived at one time or another on Brundrettes, Chequers,  and Wilbraham Road before settling down on Whitelow and I am intrigued by the hint that she may have run two shops, for along with number 70 she is listed at various addresses along Wilbraham Road  during the same period.

She died in 1953 leaving £1074 to her daughters.

Bob Jones circa 1950s

By then our building had for a while become a pet shop run by Mr Jones and it is to his son Bob that I owe the story of the bone man.

Unlike pet shops today Mr Jones offered an extra service which was the humane disposal of loved animals.

Mr Jones would put them in a specially designed box and fed in a lethal dose leaving his son Bob to hand over the remains to the Bone Man who made regular calls.

Now over its long 183 years there will have been plenty of others who made this place their home and I guess their stories will be rediscovered in the course of time.

Pictures, number 70, 2013 and gravestone of Mr and Mrs Nixon, 2010, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, in 1958, as the Travellers Rest circa 1901 in 1979 from the collection of Tony Walker, taken R.E. Stanley, m17658, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass   and Bob Jones outside Mr Neil’s shop sometime in the 1950s,opposite number 70 from the collection of Bob Jones.

*The continuing story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-story-of-one-building-in-chorlton_16.html