Lunch time on the green by the lych gate in 1910

We are sometime in the summer of 1910 and judging by the collection of young people I think it must be dinner time.

A few are young enough to be at school but four at least of the central group will have been working.

And I think they will have been on their lunch break from the laundry.  This was the Pasley later renamed the Queen and Pasley on Crescent Road.*

It opened in 1893, and at one point employed 50 staff. It was along with the brick works the closest we came to being industrial.

Inside the place which survived into the 1980s, all the washing machines were belt driven by a huge steam engine and the laundry was the first to install the “float-iron system” which consisted of the multiple roller pressing machines. This was 15 feet wide and 15 feet long and “was a mass production ironing machine, with delicately poised rollers. You could put a shirt with pearl buttons on it and it wouldn’t leave a mark.”**

So with the noise, steam, and general hubbub I guess posing for the camera outside the lych gate was a welcome diversion.

Now it is impossible to know who any of them were, but I rather think the young man standing with his arms folded might just be Arthur Higginbotham who would have been 15 and was the son of one of our local farmers.

The Higginbotham’s had been here since the 1840s and lived in the farmhouse almost opposite the church yard.

Someone very similar crops up in other pictures from the time riding a horse and while it is speculation it makes sense that this was Arthur rather than another employee of the Queen and Pasley, for I doubt they would have had a lad with a horse or likewise allowed their own horse to be ridden without a saddle through the village.

So on that hot summer’s day Arthur may have taken time out from the farm and strolled across to join the crowd.   I rather expect he knew all of the others there and like them enjoyed the novelty of having a photograph taken. Just how much of a novelty can be gauged in the mix of poses.

There at the centre are the confident ones staring back at the camera with arms folded and hands on hips.

And then there are those who peer back a little unsure of the pose to strike.  The boy with his hands in his pockets the girls with the basket one of whom is craning her neck to see what is going on.

But for me it is the two on the extreme left. One looks directly into the camera, but the other seems more interested in the work of the men down by the gates to the Bowling Green Hotel.

None of the workman gives the photographer any house room.  Whatever they are doing it is far more absorbing than the effort of posing for the camera.

And I suppose that is the point.  I said having your picture taken was still a novelty but that is a little inaccurate, because there would by 1910 have been regular commercial photographers wandering the township.

In some cases they specialized in taking pictures of the new rows of houses which were going up across Chorlton and would make a living from offering the images to the local householders who more often than not bought the card to send to friends and family.  You come across these with a cross drawn above a house or a comment on the back telling the reader, “This is our house.”

Other commercial photographers were more interested in the iconic scenes like the Horse and Jockey, country lanes or the Lych Gate.

And I suppose this is how our picture came together. On that hot summers day with some good light to play with the photographer had set up on the green, and as happens in minutes he has drawn a crowd. I say he because I am fairly confident that this was still a time when most travelling photographers were men.

And given that it was midday most of his audience were children or young people on their lunch break.

You can get some sense of just how impromptu the whole thing is from what looks like a cricket bat on the ground beside Arthur.

I guess the two boys were in the middle of a game, while the two young girls caught with their basket were either on an errand or carrying their lunch.

It is a wonderful picture and one that is worth far more study.  There are the buildings of the old Bowling Green and the barn of the farm to the left of the church and just poking up over the wall of the graveyard the monument with its apparently broken pillar.  All of which is for another time.

*renamed Crossland Road
**memories from the owner of the laundry March 1985

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Walking the Thames

Now I am the first to admit it’s a bit of a silly title but that is exactly what my friend Neil did, once under the river at Woolwich and then again at Greenwich.

It’s not my chosen way of leaving Woolwich for that other place, but Neil had never seen either of the foot tunnels and so it was an adventure.

I have to say that these are adventures I no longer want to do.

I prefer the ferry where I can see where I am going and know that the water is below me and not above me.

I still have vivid memories of that old illuminated sign at the Wapping and Rotherhithe  Underground Stations  announcing  “Men working on Pumps” when I used the Tube regularly in the 1960s to know that over is better than under, a feeling enhanced by one visit to Easington Colliery.

Kay’s father who was Chief Mechanical Engineer at the pit thought I would be interested in seeing how generations of the Baxter family had made their living.

There was no way I could say no to my future father in law, although a mile down and three miles out under the North Sea I wish I had done so.

I last walked the walk when I was ten and have never done the journey since.
I do remember it was exciting.

The floor slowly sloped down there was that echoing sound of your footsteps and the point where the other exist came into view.

So that is it.  I have thanked Neil for his pictures, which have made me a tad homesick but not enough to do that walk.

Location; London

Pictures, the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson

A story of that iconic bit of Chorlton from 1993

It is just thirty-three years since our lychgate was last restored and I missed the anniversary back in April so here courtesy of Andrew Robertson and his collection of newspaper clippings is the story.

It always surprises people that the gate only dates back to the Queen Victoria's Jubilee but that said it has acted as a local land marks since 1887, and according to popular memory contained a bell which was rung to mark the end of the old year and the coming of the new.

That said you can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper.  The parish church closed in 1940 due to frost damage not 1930 and was demolished in 1949, while the gate was erected in 1887 not ten years later.

Still it is a nice piece of history and underlines the need to carefully collect those old newspaper accounts.

And in the next few weeks I shall be returning to this iconic image of Chorlton with some more stories, a new painting and tales of parish jealousies and disputes.

And as a postscript had a second make over in the winter of 2025.

Picture; courtesy of Andrew Robertson, South Manchester Reporter, April 1993

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 5 living through the Great War

Our house in 2014

The centenary of the Progress Estate has long passed.

Now we can lay claim to about thirty of those 100 years having moved in to 294 Well Hall Road in the middle of 1964 but I gave seldom thought to the history of the house or to the people who occupied it before us.

But now I am drawn to that past and have begun to explore something of what our home would have been like a century ago.*

And because I am deep into researching for a new book on the Great War the events of that year when the Arsenal workers and their families began new lives in Well Hall has special signifigance.

The popular story of how we coped during the four years tends to fasten on the participation of women on the shop floor and in the fields; the impact of Zeppelin raids and the blackout but all too often skips over the huge hike in the cost of living.

As Henry Hyndman the leading socialist pointed out “since the war had begun prices had gone up 22%, so that now the purchasing power of a sovereign was from 13s. 6d to 13s.9d.”**

And this was the context behind the industrial conflicts which rumbled on and which some at the time and since have sought to characterise as greedy workers exploiting a country at war.

The reality was very different as Sam Hague who spoke at a meeting in Manchester was quick to point out, “there never had been a time in the nation’s history when the working classes had so solidly backed the Government.”***

The aims of the committee, 1915

Working hours increased, and under the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 and The Munitions War Act 1915 workers were being prosecuted for absenteeism and striking over wages and conditions.

In Manchester the first prosecutions under the Munitions War Act were held at the Town Hall on Friday July 30 when thirty-two men employed at Craven Bros Ltd Reddish were brought before the Recorder charged with going on strike over wages and working conditions without first submitting the matter to the Board of Trade.

And in response to the rising cost of living the Labour movement set up local emergency war committees and food vigilance committees, which reported to the War Emergency Workers National Committee in London which had come into being on the day war broke out.

The idea of a food vigilance committee seems oddly old fashioned but back in 1915 it was seen by many as an essential way of preventing the  growing practice of adulterating food and the rise in the cost of living.

The London Food Vigilance Committee was a joint body made of the London Joint Committee of Co-operative Societies, the London Trades Council and the London Labour Party.

And cooperating with the Royal Arsenal Co-op in our part of London was Councillor William Barefoot of the Woolwich Labour Party.

These committees set out clear policies on how to manage shortages by insisting that “the Government purchase all essential imported food stuffs, commandeer or control all home grown food products and make effective use of ships and the control of transport facilities” thereby securing both a fair share of what was available and at a controlled price.”****

And a key part of this would be local authorities who should be “power to deal with the distribution of food stuffs and coal, and to establish Municipal Kitchens.”

There will be some who see in this a creeping form of state control but the reality was that war time legislation had already given the authorities sweeping powers but there was a woeful lack of action over the rise in rents, coal and food prices and the lowering of the quality of what was on offer to eat.

The Committees were fully aware that at some point rationing would have to be introduced and it followed therefore that the Co-op and Labour movements should be represented on official committees given that they "had an understanding of the food requirements of the workers.”

All of which brings me back to the Arsenal workers who were beginning to take up residence in their new homes and some of whom will have been actively involved in that committee.

Pictures; our house on Well Hall Road, 2014, courtesy of Chrissie Rose, extracts from documents from The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915, courtesy of the Labour History Archives & Study Centre,  at the People’s History Museum, Manchester,http://www.phm.org.uk/

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall,
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20100%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall   

**Manchester Guardian February 19 1915

*** Free Trade Hall, Manchester February 14, 1915

**** The London Food Vigilance Committee, 1915

The one we have all forgotten ...... in the Square in 1978

I say the one we have all forgotten, but for many it will be a scene they have never experienced.

We are in St Ann’s Square looking towards Exchange Street with St Mary’s Gate beyond on a warm sunny day in 1978.

Back then you negotiated your way around parked cars, and waiting taxis while in the distance was that parade of shops which stretched down from the old Marks and Spencer’s with its bending canopy.

Today that building has gone, as have the parked cars and taxis and from our vantage point there is a clear view across New Cathedral Street which was cut when the area was redeveloped after the bomb.

Location; St Ann’s Square

Picture; St Ann’s Square, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

London Road …….. January 24th 1959 …………..

This remains one of my all-time favourites from Eddie Johnson’s book on Manchester Railway Termini.*

Until recently I had not got round to asking for permission to reproduce it, but after a nice conversation with Eddie, here it is.

The caption says, "London Road, January 24th, 1959.  This view at London Road presents an almost Christmas card like scene, a splendidly pictorial effect which no doubt had the operating authorities cursing.  The overhead electric catenary reveals this to be the eastern side of the station, at the end of platform 3”.

There is more, but I will leave it at that, and instead just point out for those who do not remember, or never knew, Piccadilly Railway Station was once called London Road.

And the rest is just snow, which at 73 still delights me and makes me a kid again, which of course pictures of steam engines also have the power to do.

Location; London Road, Railway Station, 1959 

Picture; London Road, Railway Station, 1959, M.S. Welch from Manchester Railway Termini

* Manchester Railway Termini, Scenes from the Past: 3 E.M. Johnson, 1987

Loons, lava lamps and growing up ............ the 1970's

Larva lamps I have known

Now it is odd the way that some decades get the thumbs up and others are relegated to the dustbin of history.

So the 1960's will always be the “Swinging 60’s, the 1890's will remain the “Gay 90's” and the 1920’s will be forever the “Roaring 20s”

And by contrast the following decade which began with a world depression and ended with a world war will never be remembered for the advances in technology, much that was innovative in design and culture and a growing prosperity in some parts of the country.

All of which brings me to the 1970's much berated by  journalists and second rate historians who are content to fall back on the lazy stereo types of striking workers, questionable fashions and larva lamps.

Of course those shallow titles, often coined on a slow day in a newsroom do contain much that is true of a period.

For my generation the 1960's was an exciting time in all sorts of ways while for my mother the 30's would always be the Means Test, mass unemployment and the slow slide to war.

Still a student, 1970

And any history of the 1970s does have to take in the three day week, the widespread industrial conflict and plenty of very grim wars from Vietnam and Cambodia, to southern Africa and the Middle East.

But nasty wars and equally nasty dictators along with strikes, tasteless design and awful fashions can be found in any decade during the last two centuries.

So it’s not that I make a special defence of the 1970's but just that like any time in history it was a mix of the good and bad and the happy and sad added to which it was the decade I passed from being a student into the world of work and along the way got married and bought a house.

All of which are reckoned to be pretty big stages in anyone’s growing up.

And set against the dismal days of the three day week and later the bin dispute there was the legislation to address equal pay and some aspects of discrimination in the workplace, a determination to challenge racist attitudes and a whole range of exciting new ideas in fashion and popular culture.

Down at the eight day loolkng for loons and strawberry perfume, 1973

At which point someone will cite the underlying issues of our economic decline, the continuation of the huge disparity in wealth, the persistence of racism and sexism and some very dodgy TV programmes.

But all of these could be found in the 60s and in the decade that followed but alas tend to be ignored.

So with this in mind I rather think I will set off on a new series exploring the 1970s and include a few of the things that were special to me including the lava lamp which despite everything my kids will say I still think was pretty neat.

Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license., Andrew Simpson, 1970, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and ; On the Eighth Day, 111 Oxford Street, in April 1973, m00173, y H. Milligan, H.,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass