Don't look back ... thoughts after finding Looking at Eltham, 1970

Front cover showing the High Street

Now Eltham is a long way from Chorlton but it was where I grew up and occasionally I am drawn back.

It is in south east London and was once in Kent.

It has an old Tudor barn long since converted into a restaurant, a medieval palace and a lot of my own personal history.

And I am back here again because of a tiny booklet dating from 1970 which I had entirely forgotten I had.*

I guess I must have picked it up on one of those trips to see the family and brought it back with me.

It was produced by the Eltham Society and was designed as a mix of history and current descriptions of the place.

But it is now 51 years old and so the contemporary accounts have themselves become old and dated which in its way makes it as much of a then and now publication as any which set out to mark the passage of time.

The High Street in 1910

And that is why I have come back to it, because here is a perfect time capsule, continuing old pictures of the High Street with what were once contemporary but are now also a record of an old Eltham long gone.

All of which is interesting enough to the historian but what is really fascinating is the section on  THE FUTURE for here the writers have taken the present and with a backward glance at past developments have speculated on how Eltham will change.

The High Street in 1970

What struck me was the preoccupation with the impact of the motor car both in the form of parking and congestion and of the coming motor ways.

"The motorways are not yet with us but the process of land acquisition is well advanced and corrugated hoardings and partly wrecked houses are already blighting our streets.  

It remains to be seen whether a town can survive the devastating experience of enormous engineering works which, when completed will draw a tight noose around its heart.”**

Of course the area did survive and remains a popular place to live and for many people they will not know any different.  And those like my sisters and friends who stayed have embraced the changes and still enjoy living there.

But when you are just a visitor it is different because although I missed most of the blight and certainly all of the building work when I do return I find the transition a bit odd and more than a little disconcerting.

It is a bit like someone has taken your best toy or better still your best memory and altered them.  Not enough to totally eliminate them but just enough to make them seem out of kilter with what was.

Advert for H.C.Payne

All of which is perhaps the best reason for not going back.

As they say nostalgia is a cruel thing which messes up the present and spoils the future.

H.C.Payne at 116 Eltham High Street was where I bought my first sports jacket, skinny knitted ties.  It was a place I loved and it is now a restauraunt.

So I will stick with the Eltham of 1970, after all I know what it was like I still have the book.

Location; Eltham, London

Pictures; from Looking at Eltham, Eltham Society 1970.  I haven’t asked them for permission to use the images and quote from the book but I hope they won’t mind.

* Looking at Eltham, Eltham Society 1970.  

** ibib page 55

When Esperanto came to Manchester .... Esperanto Congress, Manchester 1936 .... another story from Lawrence Beedle

 What took my interest when I spotted this poster stamp was the exonym for Manchester. 

It’s definitely Manchester. There is the Town Hall (1877), in the centre the Central Library (1934), the Ship Canal & Docks (1894) plus a couple of 5 storey cotton mills with tall chimneys. The other buildings look like stylised interpretations of the new Sunlight House (1932) and the Midland Bank building on King Street (1935). But I maybe just be imagining that. 

The stamp is approximately 5cm x 7cm. Not an official postage stamp but what is called by philatelists a Cinderella. Stamps affixed to letters for advertisement or propaganda and numerous other reasons like charity, Christmas, fund raising, private mail delivery service, etc. 

These are collected and traded just like real stamps with prices ranging from worthless to hundreds of pounds. This one has a price tag of nearly £5. I have not found who issued them, how many, or the country of origin.

The event promoted was a six day Esperanto Congress in Manchester commencing Sunday 2nd August 1936. Not the annual world conference, that was scheduled for Vienna, but one under auspices of SAT - Sennacieca Associo Tutmonda, translated as Worldwide Non-National Association. A left-wing organisation that attracted trade unionists, workers and socialists.

It was held at the large Co-Operative Hall, Downing Street, Ardwick. That was owned by the Manchester & Salford Equitable Society, and was the venue for the first annual Labour Party Conference back in February 1900. 

Newspaper reports state 200 delegates from 16 countries attended. The whole area was redeveloped in the 1970’s but there will be people who remember the stores and the hall.

The event attracted official attention. There was a civic reception at the Town Hall, fraternal greetings from Sir Walter Citrine of the TUC, and special postmarks from the Post Office. The BBC presented a short programme on the radio ‘Say it in Esperanto’ with some of the delegates.

In these modern times Esperanto is still being studied, spoken and written. There are Apps for your smart phone including Duolingo and Google Translate. Radio China International broadcasts an hour long radio programme in Esperanto on shortwave. SAT still have an annual congress and the 94th one was scheduled for Moscow this year.

Location; Manchester, 1936

Picture; The Esperanto Stamp, 1936, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle

With Alice McIlwrick, fighting elections in the 1920s in Didsbury and Chorlton

Alice McIlwrick should be remembered.

She was the first Labour candidate to contest a local election here in Chorlton in the November of 1928 and she did very well gaining 14% of the vote.*

But beyond some brief details of her role in the election campaign there was little I could find out about her.

Not that I ever forgot Alice, and I always told myself that at some point something new would turn up and of course it did.  In this case from her grandson who posted a comment on my orginal story.

Tony McIlwrick lives in Scotland and he wrote

“Alice McIlwrick (1881-1964) was my grandmother. She married in 1919 and had two children. She was a graduate and a strong believer in the value of education - both her children went to Manchester University, her son becoming an electrical engineer and her daughter becoming a GP. 

As well as education she was also an ardent feminist and held strong left wing views. Her husband's parents had emigrated to Kansas from Manchester in the 1880's but following the premature death of his mother Frederick McIlwrick and his two young siblings were brought to Manchester and raised by a maternal aunt. Frederick, Alice and their two children lived in Parrs Wood Road in the early 1920's but in 1926 moved to Barlow Moor Road where they stayed until 1945 when they moved to Bowdon, Altrincham. 

In 1961 Frederick & Alice moved to Davenham, near Northwich to live with their daughter and it was there that she died.”

This was all I needed to reignite the search and sure enough in the course of the morning I came across a reference to their marriage and the celebration of their daughter’s coming of age in 1943 and some tantalizing hints of a concert career as a contralto in the early 1920s.

Along the way I uncovered Frederick’s 1911 census return.

And then I was drawn back to the politics.

She was the first and for many years the only Labour candidate to have fought the Didsbury ward in a municipal election which accordng to the Labour historian Rhys Davies was a real challenge “in that forsaken quarter, knowing what our fate must be.”  Neverthess “after much thought and doubt, Mrs McIlwrick, B.A., an ardent Labourite, a very forcible speaker, well versed in municipal affairs decided to don our colours, in a by-election there on May 17th 1927.”**

The result was not really in question, with the Conservative candidate gaining 55% of the vote, the Liberal 34% and Alice garnering 11%.

But this was a significant achievement for the Labour party given “that our cause was so weak that there was hardly any help forthcoming even on the day of the poll.”

And rereading the accounts of the two elections she fought here in Chorlton in the November and December of 1928 there is no doubting that she was a formidable politican.

The Manchester Guardian had reported that she was a serious candidate who would do well in the contest, a view endorsed by the Labour Party who sent its M.P., R J Davies and the Councillor Wright Robinson to speak on the same platform.

And the record shows that she gained 14% of the vote in the November election and despite a much lower turn out in the following month lost only 2% at the December by-election.

The years either side of that election saw the Labour Party strengthen it postion.  In 1923 it formed its first ever government and  became the largest party in the House of Commons six years later.

And these were the years when Alice was particularly active here in south Manchester.

The posters from the 1924 General Election at the beginning of the story would have been familiar enough to her and would have been the first Labour posters supporting a parliamentary candidate to be posted up in Chorlton.

The years after the Great War had seen unemployment increase particularly in the old traditional heavy industries and touched on that feeling that the country had not become a  place “fit for heroes.”

Nor had that basic problem of unemployment gone away.  Only once did the figure of those out of work drop below 8% during the decade and so Labour’s call for the country to turn out the Conservatives coupled with an appeal to woman to vote Labour “for the children’s sake did not go unheeded.

Nationally Labour gained 287 seats while in Withington which included Chorlton Labour took 16% of the vote which was an increase of 7% five years earlier.

I would love to know Alice’s part in all of this and I rather think it will not be long before it is revealed.

Pictures; Labour Party campaign posters from 1924 and 1929

*When all eyes were on Chorlton, the local elections of 1928, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alice%20McIlwrick

** Socialism in Surburbia, Rhys Davies, 1930

See also Posters from the 20th century, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Posters%20from%20the%2020th%20century

When history gets a bit more personal ......... the Croton family

Now I like the way that stories become personal, and so it is with two pieces I wrote on  Charles and Reginal Croton who were two our taxi drivers the late 19th century into the 1920s.*

Reg Croton, 1925

They were successful enough to have moved from horse and cab to motor vehicle by the 1920s and were listed in the telephone book by 1911.

And Reg posed for a series of photographs which along with a picture of the family home on Sandy Lane drew me to them and hence the stories.

The images include two of Reg and Mr. David Ball, the manager of the WH Smith bookstall on Chorlton Railway Station.

In one they are posing beside Reg’s taxi and the other in front of the bookstall.

These along with the picture of their home are in the Lloyd Collection remain the best source for pictures of Chorlton.

They were collected by John Lloyd, who wrote the popular history of where we live, and many of the photographs were lent to him by local residents.

Reg and David Ball, 1922

So it is more than likely that our pictures made their way into the collection by either a member of the Croton family or Mr. Ball.

All of which adds a personal touch to the stories, to which I can now add and even more personal link in the form of a series of conversations with the grandson of Reg's younger brother, and two more images.

And rather than paraphrase what Peter Croton said, I shall instead include the full conversation with those new pictures.

Reg and David Ball, 1925 outside Chorlton Railway Station

“I hope you don't mind me writing to you about your Chorlton blog. My family lived in Chorlton from about 1895 to 1985 and I attended Chorlton Grammar School on Sandy Lane for eight years in the 60s. I find the blog to be excellent and the detail amazing, something you can be extremely proud of.

My great grandfather, Charles Wesley Croton, had a taxi business and lived on Sandy Lane from about 1895 to 1926 when he died. 

His wife, Annie, continued to live there until the 1930s. I have noticed that the blog contains some information about Charles Croton, a surprising amount in fact. Someone has been doing their homework. 

Charles Croton, 1905, Whitelow Road

Charles Croton was born in London in  1866. His father was a coachman (not a hackney coach driver) at the Wesleyan Training College, Westminster hence Charles' middle name Wesley. He arrived in Chorlton c.1895, having been in Hulme since 1890. Of four children the eldest two, including Reginald (b. 1889) were born in Oxford, and the two youngest, including Harold John (b.1890), my grandfather, were born in Hulme. 

Charles tenanted a small holding on Sandy Lane (I understand owned by the Egerton family) and could often be found with his cab at Chorlton Station or the Lloyds Hotel. He had a flock of geese at the farm which were said to be better than any guard dog. I have attached a photograph of Charles on his hansom cab c. 1905, taken on Edge Lane. A very small point, Reg would have been thirty three at the time of the 1922 photograph.

I have frustratingly been unable to find the quote from John Fielden ref. his memory of Charles. 

Harold Croton, Twenty Five years service, 1944

I have attached an image of Harold's certificate for his 25 years’ service in the electricity supply industry. Most of this time was with Manchester Corporation prior to nationalisation after WW2. Charles, his wife Ann, Harold and his wife Ellen are all buried in the family plot in Southern Cemetery”.

I doubt this is the end of the story of the Croton family, and I will go looking for their plot in Southern Cemetery, find the exact location on Sandy Lane of their home, and look for possible adverts for the taxi firm.

For now, I will thank Peter for sharing more information on his family and reflect how the Croton’s perfectly reflect Chorlton-cum-Hardy just a century and a bit ago.

At a time when the township was filling up with new residents and exchanging its rural character for an urban one, Charles like many others moved into the township, offered a taxi service to the new professional people, and by degree embraced the equally new form of transport which was the motor car, along with a telephone.

The Croton family home, Sandy Lane, date unknown

While one of his other sons went into another of those new industry’s which were to come to be central to how we lived.

But their tenancy of a small holding rented from the Egerton’s and that flock of geese takes us back into the rural past of Chorlton.

But like all things change was in the air, and Peter tells me that "Reg became a publican in North Manchester when the land on Sandy Lane was redeveloped and it is that part of the city where his only son still lives".

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Reg and David Ball at Chorlton Railway Station, circa 1920s, and the family home on Sandy Lane, date unknown, from the Lloyd Collection, Charles Croton with his hansom cab circa 1905, taken on Edge Lane, courtesy of Greater Manchester County Record Office, Ref DPA 782/29, AND Harold Croton’s certificate for his 25 years’ service in the electricity supply industry, 1944, from the collection of Peter Croton

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

** Lloyd, John M, The Township of Chorlton cum Hardy, E.J. Morten, 1972, and Looking Back at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Willow Publishing, 1985

Remembering the eight children of Charles, Elizabeth, and Hannah Sharp ....... Ashton under Lyne in the 19th century

It will have been sometime in the summer of 1979 that I came across this grave stone in the parish church in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

The gravestone, the parish church yard, 1979

I had wandered past it for years and never really noticed it, but on that day by chance I stopped and looked at the memorial to the eight children of Charles, Elizabeth and Hannah Sharp who all died between 1839 and 1843.

Of the eight, only one reached the age of 18 with other seven dying between the ages of 2 months and one year and a bit.

It is a powerful reminder of the level of infant mortality in the not so distant past and is one that I have used over the years to illustrate just how uncertain were the chances of surviving to the age of 5.

And while I had transcribed it and included it in stories and articles, I have never reproduced the original memorial stone or gone looking for the family.

But today I have done just that and it has been a slow process taking up a big part of a morning and even now I have not got very far.

I know that Mr Sharp was married three times, and that his wives were Elizabeth, Hannah, and Sarah.

His marriage to Hannah took place in what is now Manchester Cathedral in June 1834 and he married Sarah in 1851 in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

This third marriage was sometime between January and March, and in April they are recorded as living at 10 Old Cross which was close to the parish church.  He described his occupation as “Hair  dresser and seedsman”, which chimes in with an earlier reference in 1828 to him in a directory as living on Old Street and earning a living as a “seedsman”.

In 1861 they had moved to the small village of Hotham where he continued to describe himself as a “seedsman” but also as a “Lodge Gate Keeper”.*

The children

Of his children I have so far only come across a reference to the baptism and death of Charles Slater Sharp, which occurred in 1843 but in time the others may come out of the shadows.

As it is, the death of Thomas aged 18 in 1839 might offer a clue as to his father’s marriage to Elizabeth which must be sometime at the start of the 1820s if not earlier.

I doubt we will ever know why Charles and Sarah moved to Yorkshire.

Places the Sharp's would have known, Ashton-Under-Lyne, 1854

It may be that they were returning to his birth county or perhaps the tiny rural village offered job opportunities and a quality of life which was no longer the case in Ashton.  Mr Piggot’s Directory for 1828 had commented that “its new streets are well built and contain many good and some elegant residences; but the old streets are narrow” and while in 1826, “the number of steam engines in Ashton was thirty-four, ..... at this period [1828] the number and power has greatly increased”, which was to continue into the 1860s.

By comparison, Hotham in 1825 contained just 62 houses and 203 inhabitants, which by 2011 had only grown to 233.**

Of course there is that darker and sadder explanation which falls back on the need to move away from such a litany of tragedy.

Location Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; the gravestone of the Sharp family, 1979, parish church, Ashton-Under-Lyne, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Old Ssquare, close to where the Sharp's lived, from the OS, Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Pigots Directory, 1828, Census Enu 1s 2 Ashton-Under-Lyne, Hotham Yorkshire, 1861, page 214

**A Topographical Dictionary of the United Kingdom, Benjamin Pitts Capper, 1825, page 432

Missing that old bridge

My old bridge circa 1940s

I cannot even begin to count the number of times I walked under the railway bridge which spanned Well Hall Road.

But then why should I?

It had carried trains across the road from 1895 and continued to do so for 90 years and I just took it for granted.

And then in 1985 as part of the construction of the relief road and the new station it was replaced by a new bridge which is a functional no nonsense bit of railway architecture and it lacks the style of the one I remember with those columns that adorn the upper part of the bridge and the brackets with their detailed wheels.

Detail of that bridge

Perhaps after those 90 years it had had its day but it is one of those little examples of how function can have style.

The picture dates to sometime after the last war but is pretty much as I remember it.

Go back a couple of decades and there were large hoardings underneath the bridge along with more on the embankment and a poster which ran right across the upper section.

And then it all changed again and now it has gone completely.

A new bridge 2015

I don’t suppose it matters over much but points to that simple observation that we take things for granted.

All of the shops beyond the bridge have changed since that tram trundled past although some further up by the Pleasaunce were operated by the same families when I walked up Well Hall Road.

So not an earth shattering bit of our history but still a bit of it.

Pictures; Well Hall bridge, circa 1940s, from the collection of A J Watkins, reproduced from Eltham and Woolwich Tramways and the new bridge 2014, from the collection of Chrissy Rose

*Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, Robert J Harley, Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

Buying a book at Wilcox's on Well Hall Road and a thank you

Well Hall Odeon, circa 1960s

It is pretty much one of those things that when you live somewhere you take it for granted.

Growing up in Eltham in the 1960s I don’t think I ever took a photograph of the place and most of the changes that occurred just passed me by.

That said I am not sure that there were many dramatic developments to Eltham during that decade.

The cinemas were all still there when I left as was the old station, and the shops on Well Hall Road just down from the Odeon were the same when I returned in the early 70s.

They included the radio shop where mum bought our first stereogram, the barber's shop next to the cinema where you always came out with a short back and sides no matter what you had asked for and Wells the Chemist and the cafe.

Some places have faded from my memory and others while still vivid have challenged me to remember their name.

Wilcox, Well Hall Road circa 1960s

So here I am with that shop at the top of Well Hall Road hard by Burton’s.

It sold everything from papers and sweets to books and on a Saturday morning it was one of the first ports of call before heading up the High Street to meet friends, or visit the library.

And only yesterday our Saul started reading the copy of Canterbury Tales which I bought from Wilcox’s sometime in the summer of 1967.

The book is much battered and is in danger of falling apart but it is a nice reminder of the continuity which binds me to the place where I grew up and still feel a pull for.

So I was pleased that I have come across a fresh collection of photographs from the community website This is Eltham and particularly pleased that they have given me permission to raid the archive.*

Some are very much part of my childhood while others look back to an earlier period of Eltham’s history.

But it is the one of Wilcox’s that has triggered off a rich cascade of memories and underlines for me the power of an image to reawaken the past.

And as these things go just as I finished the story, Lesley of This is Eltham, told me that Wilcox's  
"was my father's shop Andrew,  he had 5 shops in Eltham, 32 High Street, and there's a photo of my mother in that shop in 1938/9, then a haberdashery's in Well Hall Parade opposite the Pleasaunce, one with a Post Office in Westhrone Avenue and and a tiny, tiny one at the High Street end of Archery Road but that was probably gone by the time you came to Eltham."

Now that I think is just a perfect ending.

Pictures; Well Hall Odeon and Wilcox’s circa 1960 courtesy of This is Eltham


*This is Eltham, http://www.thisiseltham.co.uk/index.php