Fires over Oldham .... July 2026

I woke to the distinctive smell of smoke this morning.   

"Fires in the distance", 2018

It had been there last night and at the time I put it down to someone close by burning unseasoned wood as part of a BBQ.

After all England were two hours away from playing Norway in the World Cup and across the country families were preparing for the event with a pre match get together over warm beer, singed sausages and sad looking salad.

But no, this was another of those Moorland fires which may have been caused by a spark from a careless BBQ, discarded cigarette or just the action of the sun on a piece of broken glass.

The Manchester Evening News tells me  that "last night Emergency services are on the scene following reports of a huge moor fire near Dovestone Reservoir, in Oldham, this evening.

Burning hills, 2018

Smoke can be seen billowing into the sky close to the beauty spot. According to reports, the clouds can be seen for several miles.

Members of the public have been advised to avoid the area. And those living nearby should keep all doors and windows closed.

The cause and extent of the blaze are not yet known".*

We are in that season of such events, and I was reminded of that devastating fire above Stalybridge eight years ago which lasted for days. 

At first, it was just a hint of smoke but as that first day continued it became noticeable, and there was just a slight haziness, like looking out through a dirty window.

We were a full 16 miles away from Stalybridge and yet for days it was an ever-present reminder of the inferno which had taken over the moors.

There were many images of that fire, but Peter Armistead’s taken from Spinneyfields, a full ten miles away of the hills on fire to the east is a powerful reminder of those few days.

Dig, cut and burn, 1958

And as the smell from the recent Oldham fire lingers, I am reflecting on how wood smoke would have been an everyday part of how we lived.  

In the autumn into the winter back in the 1950s, every garden would have its share of regualr bonfires, when the dead branches and finished flowers would be burnt with piles of leaves.

And long before the use of coal, logs and branches and twigs  burnt in the castles and halls of the great and the good down to the mean dwellings of the poor were essential for cooking and keeping warm.

Wood, peat and the smell, Middle Ages

On a good day using dry and seasoned wood it must have been a dream, but on dank and wet days when the smoke from the open fire refused to disappear up the chimney or out of the vent in the roof the experience will have been very unpleasant.

It will have lingered across the open living space giving off that pungent smell which stuck in your throat, stung the eyes and made it difficult to breathe.

Added to which it worked its way onto and into your clothes and followed you around.

Coming in to Manchester, 2019

The consolation is that the fire will eventually be brought under control through the work of the Greater Manchester Fire Service, and in the meantime leave you with a happier picture taken by Peter a year later, as he flew in from western Canada, 

Enough said.

Location; Spinneyfields, Manchester, 2018

Pictures; fire on the hills, Stalybridge, June 29th, 2018, “Coming into Manchester”, August 19th, 2019, from the collection of Peter Armistead, Dig, cut and burn, 1958, Looking at Other Children, Jean and David Gadsby, from the series Looking at Geography, 1957 and Norman houses, from A History of Houses, R.J.Unstead, 1958

*Emergency services are on the scene in Saddleworth, Rachel Vickers-Price UK and World News Reporter and Ian Hughes, Manchester Evening News, July 11th, updated July, 12th, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/dovestone-moor-fire-live-huge-34277110

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 7 ....... a plough 1894

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

This was the last time the land opposite our house went under the plough.  The year is probably 1894 and the field was Row Acre.  I can be pretty sure that the chap at the plough was Alfred Higginbotham whose family had farmed here since the 1840s.  Row Acre stretched down from Cross Road to what is now Acres Road and was divided into strips.  Along with the Higginbotham’s parts of Row Acre were farmed by the Bailey family, Thomas White and John Brundrett, and perfectly echoed the medieval idea of a community each working a strip of land.  And of course the plough reminds us that we were a farming community. The image was originally dated 1896 but that was the year the Rec was opened, so I think we can push the date back by two years

Picture; Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1894 from the collection of William Higginbotham

Eltham Park Railway Station ........ the one I never visited

So, despite living in Eltham for an important chunk of my childhood I never visited Eltham Park Railway Station.

Eltham Park Railway Station, 1908

But then we lived on Well Hall Road and there seemed very little reason to stay on the train.

On the rare occasions when I did visit the next station on the line it was part of those adventures which led me wandering across Eltham on sunny Saturdays or in the school holidays.

All of which means I have no idea what it looked like, and so I am grateful to that smashing little book Eltham Village published in 1984.*

More so because one of the authors, Paula Richardson has given me permission to reproduce this picture, and as we all know it is always correct to seek the permission of those who first reproduced the image.

Likewise, I shall credit that excellent site Disused Stations for the history of the railway Station, which opened in 1908 by South Eastern & Chatham Railway Company and closed on March 3rd, 1983.**

By then I had done a decade in Manchester and remember my surprise when on going home later in that year the train from Charing Cross deposited me on the platform of entirely different railway station.

Not much of a story I suppose, but sometimes history is made up of the little things.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Park Railway Station, 1908, from Eltham Village

*Eltham Village,  Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson in 1984 and published by G & Pi Publications Eltham

**Eltham Park, Disused Stations, http://disused-stations.org.uk/e/eltham_park/index.shtml

On borrowed time, with tram car 562 in the summer of 1938

 I do have to say that this is one of my favourites from the collection not least because there is so much going on in the picture.

Now it is August 2nd 1938 and car 562 is clanking its way along its route to Albert Square.

Once not that long ago its driver would have only had horse drawn vehicles and pedestrians to contend with but by the summer of 1938 it was pretty much free for all with cars, vans and lorries.

And the writing was on the wall for the stately tall tram.  Ten years before our picture, the decision had been taken to replace the 53 route from Stretford to Cheetham Hill with motor buses and just over a decade later in 1949 the last trams were running on their last journeys.  According to one source the switch to buses on the 53 route was to increase passenger numbers by 11%.*

Added to this was the real need to put in substantial capital investment if the trams were to continue to run and so in 1937 the Corporation took the decision to phase out the tram in favour of the bus and trolley bus.

And if had not been for the outbreak of war two years later there would have been no tram on route 38B passing Grosvenor Street.

It would mean the end of a network of 292 miles of tram track which in 1928 carried passengers on 953 trams across 46 routes. And of course the end of that delicate tracery of cables suspended above the roads which gave power to the trams.

You can of course be swept along by such nostalgic tosh, so back to the summer of 1938 on Grosvenor Street.  Our tram is sandwiched between the van of Ball & Lawrence Ltd who dealt in carpets and that swift moving car crossing car its path.

And then there are the adverts, some of which just fade into the background but deserve mention.  In the shop directly in front of the van and by the speeding car are displays for Craven and Players cigarettes while partially hidden from view is a reminder that the railway company offered routes to Liverpool and North Wales.

But for anyone with an eye to the date and to outbreak of the war a year later it is the advert to “Join the Modern Army” which has a special significance.

Picture; from the collection of Alan Brown

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester_Corporation_Tramways

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 6 .... three concrete stumps 1959

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

They are gone now but for almost all of the time I have lived in Chorlton, there were three concrete stumps on Wilbraham Road outside what is now the takeaway burger outlet. At some point when part of the building was the pottery studio they had been decorated with colourful tiles but I have to confess I thought little about them.  Only once did I ponder on whether they had been the base for petrol pumps which of course was what they were for here was Wilbraham Garage.  It wasn’t the first in Chorlton, that was probably Shaw’s on Barlow Moor Road but still it is an indication of how far the motor car had taken over.  The three stumps supported four pumps which stood in front of the shop and garage and like Shaw’s were in a row of conventional shops and houses.


Picture; Wilbraham Road,, A E Landers, 1959, M18423, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Tram car 283 out from Victoria Park ……. with Mr. William Becket

I don’t have a date for the picture, but it will be sometime after the Great War.

The guard standing in front of the tram is Mr. William Becket, and his career pretty much matched that of Manchester Corporation Trams.

He started on the trams, but ended his career as a bus inspector, while motor buses slowly replaced the tram, with the last tram car taking its last trip as a scheduled route on Sunday  January 9th  1949.

This was the 35, from Victoria Street to Hazel Grove.  The last moments of that journey have been recorded by Ian Yearsley in his book The Manchester Tramways.*

“That evening a group of us made our way over to Exchange to ride on the last car to Hazel Grove and back. As we stood on the wet pavement by the Cathedral it was hard to believe that this was really the end. ….... Eventually the last through car to Hazel Grove arrived, and we watched it go through the familiar routine for the last time.  The few passengers got off, and the car rolled gently down to the end of the track by Oliver Cromwell.  The light went out and in the faint light of the streetlamps we could see the guard walking around.”**

Tram car 283 had ended it service two years earlier, on December 22nd, 1947 when it was replaced by a bus.

I have Steve Casson to thank for the picture.  Mr. William Becket was his grandfather, and Steve wondered just where the photograph had been taken.

I haven’t been able to find the spot, but I know that in its forty-five years it plied a course from Victoria Street to Princess Road, and later to Fallowfield and Wilbraham Road and then Barlow Moor Road.  Later still the service was extended to Mauldeth Road via Kinsgway and was extended again to East Didsbury.

But I think Steve will be interested to know that its period of service from Victoria Park to Princess Road was from December 1st, 1902 till December 1924, and as this was the time his granddad worked the route, I guess it will be along that corridor that we shall have to look for the location of the picture.

Location; somewhere between, Victoria Park to Princess Road

Picture; tram car 283, somewhere between, Victoria Park to Princess Road, circa 1902 to 1924, from the collection of Steve Casson

*The Manchester Tramways, Ian Yearsley and Philip Groves, 1988
**ibid The Manchester Tramways,  p244

Annie Morris, Ram Alley and more stories of Eltham in the 19th century

Annie and her son William in 1877

I  am back with Annie Morris whose life in Eltham pretty much covered the period when the place shifted from a rural backwater to a suburb of London.

She was born Annie Rice Foster in Pound Place in 1848 and her grandfather and father were blacksmiths on the High Street.

She would have known and gone to school with many children whose parents still made a living from the land, either as farmers, agricultural labourers or trades associated with the rural economy.

Her husband John was a carpenter and joiner, and his father variously described himself as a labourer, groom, gamekeeper and gardener.

John had been born in Yorkshire and his father was from Wales, and during the years before 1851 the family moved back to Wales before settling in Eltham which rather contradicts that old school’s history idea that people seldom travelled.

Judging by the census records the lanes of Eltham would have been full of different accents.  Annie’s grandfather had been born in the North West, her father in law in Wales and her mother in law in Yorkshire.

And looking at the at the servants employed in the grand houses around Eltham they also were drawn from across the country which shouldn’t surprise us given that few of these wealthy families would choose to employ local girls.

In the same way Annie and John moved around a bit, having started their married life in Plumstead in 1875, they were back in Eltham by 1880 and lived in a succession of cottages.

Ram Alley in 1909

Of these I am drawn to their time in Ram Alley which consisted of four cottages by the High Street.

Now I doubt that these properties were ever that wonderful to live in.

Three of the four had just two rooms while the fourth consisted of three. In 1895 they were all condemned as unfit to live in but in the way of these things they were not demolished for another forty-three years.

Annie and John were there in Ram Alley by 1891 bringing up six children in just two rooms.

And it is easy to brush over that simple fact but eight people is difficult enough especially given that the four boys ranged in age from sixteen down to four and there was a daughter under two.

That said Court Yard where they were living a decade later was only marginally less of a squeeze for while it had five rooms there were still eight of them and young Mabel was now 11.

But such was the lot of many working class families in both rural and urban areas and throughout the 19th century commentators reported on the ingenious ways families coped with such overcrowding, ranging from the simple blanket hung across the upstairs room to sharing out children with neighbours or grandparents.

I suppose there was always that simple observation that soon enough the children would move on.  By 1911 Annie and John were sharing Court Yard with just two of their children while up at Ram Alley, three of the four properties were occupied by just one person and the fourth with its three rooms was the home of George Meakin and his lodger Elizabeth Lumley.

Detail of Annie and William

Annie was to record her memories of growing up in Eltham to a local newspaper in 1931 and in the fullness of time I will revisit the stories she had to tell.

But I shall close with another look at the photograph of Annie as a proud mother in 1877.

She is sitting with her eldest son William and the picture was taken in Woolwich.

Now this must have amounted to quite a financial outlay for a working family and I rather think there will not be that many from this period or from their class.

And it is the detail that draws you in.

William is dressed in his finest baby wear but it is Annie who makes the lasting impression with that carefully prepared hair and the striking dress.

She would have been 29.

Location; Eltham, London


Pictures; Annie Morris with her eldest son William courtesy of Jean Gammons, and Ram Alley 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