On Court Yard in 1911 with Mrs Morris and memories of Eltham in the 19th century

I am looking at number 25 Court Yard, and there in the picture are Mrs Annie Morris and her sons David and Harold.

I don’t know the date but I reckon it will have been sometime around 1911 because in that year David would have been 33 and Harold 24 which pretty much fits with their appearance in the picture.

And there is much more that this image can help us about the history of Eltham.

Number 25 was a five roomed house just past the Crown on Court Yard and it was one of twelve houses running from the pub to a slightly grander set of houses.

The first five or so properties commanded rents of 4 shillings a week and it was here that Mr and Mrs Morris moved sometime in 1900.

This was number 17 Court Yard, but with two years they had moved to number 25 and paid 2 shillings and sixpence in rent.

Either way this was an improvement on Ram Alley where they had lived and which had been condemned as unfit for habitation in 1895, a decision which meant little given that they were still standing in 1930.

These twelve were a mix of four, five and six roomed houses which were home to a mix of occupations including a caretaker, baker, porter, a butcher and two gardeners along with house painters, a general labourer, domestic servant and retired carpenter.

On the surface just your average range of jobs, but of course they reflect the changes that were beginning to push Eltham out of its rural past into something closer to what we know today.

And so while Annie’s husband had been a carpenter one of her sons worked at the Woolwich Arsenal.

She  was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”*

She had been born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place and recalled that when she was young “Eltham was but a village and children and young people then were forbidden by their parents to be out after dark. When Mrs Morris was two years old a Mrs Miller kept the school in Back Lane. 

The old inns and taverns of Eltham are still of the same identity except for structural changes.”*

Now there is much more of Mrs Morris’s memories and in due course I will come back to them.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Eltham District Times, June 1931

It started with a picture and became a story.......... Charles Ireland

The Palais de Luxe, circa 1928

It started with a picture and became a story.

The picture was of the Palais de Luxe Cinema on Barlow Moor Road and is not one I had seen before.

In that usual way of things it was in the possession of the archives and public records centre of East Dunbartonshire Council and got there because the fine iron and glass canopy which fronted the cinema had been made by the Lion Foundry in Kirkintilloch.

The story unfolded as the archivist and I sought to resolve the copyright issue of the photograph.

Ms Janice Miller was keen for me to see the picture but quite rightly was concerned that this might contravene the 70 year rule on copyright usage.

The photograph was by C Ireland and may have been taken around 1928 and that was all there was to go on. He might have been a local photographer or one especially commissioned by the Lion Foundry who came down from Scotland or just possibly one of those travelling photographers who captured local scenes to be converted into post cards.

Now both of us were fully prepared for a disappointment. After all we had just a name which is not much to go on.

But a Charles Ireland ran a photographic shop at 25 Lower Mosley Street in town during the first decade of the last century and continued in business there to at least 1927. The same set of telephone directories also revealed that by 1921 he was living at 76 High Lane here in Chorlton.

It is one of those amazing things about detective work that once the first secrets of a person’s life come to light others bubble up in front of you.

He had died in 1930 aged 63, left £5,330 to his widow and was buried in Southern Cemetery. He had been born in Newton in Manchester in 1867 and by 1891 the family were living here on St Clements Road.

This seems to have been a step up. The family home on Oldham Road in Newton was at the heart of an industrial area. Just to the north was the large carriage and wagon works of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and to the south and east there were brick works cotton mills, bleach works as well a glass works.

25 Lower Mosley Street, 1964

Charles’s father Edward was in partnership as a pawnbroker although he also described himself as a photographer, and by 1891 this appears to have been his sole occupation.

There were as yet few photographers listed in the directories for Manchester in the 1880s and they are still described as artists.

By 1895 he had opened the shop on Lower Mosley Street which Charles still ran until the late 1920s.

The family continued to prosper and by 1911 they have moved to that large detached house on the corner of Edge Lane and Kingshill Road.

76 High Lane, date unknown

As ever the romantic in me fastened on the fact that in 1913 Charles married his photographic assistant. Edith May Hindley was 32 years old and like him had been born in Newton.

Sometime perhaps around 1918 they moved into 76 High Lane which had been the home of the artist Tom Mostyn the artist.

 It is still there having benefited from the addition of the large upstairs window and studio which I guess was the work of Tom Mostyn and which Charles in turn may have used.

I have yet to visit the grave in Southern Cemetery but it is on my list of things to do. Here he was buried along with his father and mother in law, his sister and finally in 1948 his wife

So far no other pictures accredited to Charles have turned up but they will. His working life stretched back over 40 years and the picture of 76 High Lane may even be his although sadly there is no date and the quality is pretty poor.

But I travel in hope that out there in a collection I will come across more of his pictures. Ms Janice Miller and the East Dunbartonshire archive can only be the first.

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; the Palais de Luxe cinema, circa 1928 GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, 25 Lower Mosley Street by H W Beaumont 1964 m02915, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, & 76 High Lane, date unknown, from the Lloyd collection

The story that is 232 years old …… the Horse & Jockey reopens

I for one am keen to see the new Horse & Jockey which reopens on October 20th.

Summer 2022

The pub dates back to 1793, in a building which was already old when Henry V111 walked up the aisle with Anne Boleyn.

I have been going in for over half a century, and have written about on and off for the last two decades.*

The Jockey Gang, 1938

It also featured in the book I wrote with Peter Topping on Chorlton pubs, and because of his historic significance was the first in a new series on our pubs and bars.**

It was the venue for inquests, was the scene of an historic arrest and once had its own bowling green.

In 1793 it was just one of four cottages and the eastern end was until the early 1890s the home of the family who stole Chorlton Green and turned it into their own private garden.

All of which you can read on the blog.

Leaving me just to say the full report on the refurbished Jockey can be read by following the link to yesterday's Manchester Evening News.***

 Pictures; The Jockey 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and A 'gang' of 'teenagers' outside the Horse and Jockey circa 1936 courtesy of Yvonne Richardson

*The Horse and Jockey, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Horse%20and%20Jockey

**The  book is available at www.pubbooks.co.uk or the old-fashioned way on 07521 557888 or from Chorlton Bookshop, and costs £4.99.

***Historic Greater Manchester pub to reopen its doors as opening date revealed, Jenna Campbell, Manchester Evening News, October 14th, 2025, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/historic-greater-manchester-pub-reopen-32672167

A will ……. the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War

There are always stories, and some are more unexpected than others.

Well Hall Road and the hutments circa 1920

This one concerns a will, the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War.

Now as someone who had grown up in the Progress Estate I was well aware of its connection with the Royal Arsenal and the Great War, but didn’t know that there had been a whole set of “Hutments” constructed at the same time.

They were more temporary and all had gone before we settled in 294 Well Hall, so it was a revelation when I firs came across them and more so when I discovered a connection between them and George Davison, from Manchester who served in the Royal Artillery and was stationed in Woolwich.**

The Will, 1918

In the March of 1918 he made his will shortly before embarking for the Western Front.

It was witnessed by H M Drinkhall and V L Dade, and was hand written in a single sheet of note paper and is simple and the point. “This is the last will and testament of me George Gurnel Davison of Birch Vale Cottage, Romily, Cheshire.

I give devise and bequeath to my dear wife Mary Ellen all my property whatsoever and wheresoever and I appoint her sole Executor of this my will.”

By the time he made the will he had served with the Royal Artillery for four years and spent time in London and Ireland but now with the German offensive in full swing he was about to go to France, and as we know would be killed just three months later.

In one of his letters to his wife he had mentioned the Drinkhall family and how they were looking forward to her coming back to stay.

And that set me off looking for them, and in that I was helped by my friend Tricia, who located them to one of the hutments on what is now the site of the old Well Hall Odeon, which is just a few minutes walk from our old house.

That hutment will be one of those near the top of our picture, and takes me off on a number of different directions.

Detail of the hutments, circa 1920

In time Tricia and I will go looking for more on the Drinkhall’s, but for now I like the idea that someone I was writing about in connection with a book should have spent time just yards from where I lived.***

But it also points to an interesting aspect of the war, which was that Mrs. Davison visited her husband while he was stationed around the country.

As well as staying with the Drinkhall’s, she spent time in Ireland, where the one surviving photograph of the couple and their son was taken in 1916.

I have no idea if this was a common practice but given the restrictions of train travel and the cost of such journey’s it should be a fascinating area of study.

The Davison family, 1916

For now, I shall just gaze on Tricia’s picture with renewed interest.

Location; Eltham, London


Pictures, Will, 1918, of George Davison and the Davison family, 1916, from the collection of David Harrop, and picture postcard of Well Hall Road, date unknown courtesy of Tricia Leslie

* The Eltham Hutments by John Kennett, 1985 The Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/

**George Davison, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/George%20Davison

***A new book on Manchester and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

In Manchester voting in the Parliamentary election of 1844

“This day may be characterised as one of great activity, bustle and preliminary preparation, on both sides, for the completion of the canvas, and for bringing up the voters”*

Manchester Guardian, May 1844

And in the 171 years since the election of 1844 little has changed for the election team, the candidates and the voters.

So while there is not the violence or the bribery and voting is carried out in secret there is much that would be familiar to a voter from 1844 looking at an election today.

They might be surprised at how restrained the candidates were when talking about each other and mystified at the lack of dirty tricks and intimidation practised by the leading members of the political factions.

But they would be at home with the banners and posters and the sheer excitement of the outcome.

Yesterday we followed our 27 voters into Manchester from Chorlton where they voted at the Bush Inn on Deansgate.

James Bracegirdle, Methodist

They were a mixed bunch of “gentlemen,” business types and farmers.  Over half qualified to vote by virtue of owning property while the remainder were tenant farmers.

But only two were absentee voters, which contrasts with another rural area down south where just fifty percent lived in the place they cast their vote.**

It is a practice which sits a little uncomfortably with our modern ideas of democracy as does the practice of voting openly and having your vote recorded in the Poll Books.

Now not all of these Poll Books have survived but where they do they give a fascinating insight into how a community might vote.  Of course some care has to be taken with them.

Our 27 represented about 9% of the entire adult population and there is plenty of evidence that the open nature of voting led to some tenants feeling that they could be intimidated by the landlords.

Just nine years earlier the vote in Chorlton mirrored the wishes of the big Tory grandees who forcibly expressed their preferences.  So of the sixteen tenant farmers who were qualified to vote, twelve farmed land from one of these big Tory landowners.

They may not have voted for the “big family’s wishes” and it is equally possible that they shared the same outlook, but as we saw yesterday the Tory candidate received 72% of the vote here.

Jeremiah Brundrit, Methodist

Of course some of our electors were well off enough to be independent of any such intimidation and this may have included the small group of Methodists.

In total we have the names of 72 Methodist families who were active in the years up to 1851 out of a total of 119 families.  Not all of these have revealed their occupations but of those who have, seventeen  were farmers and market gardeners, nine  in trade and retail, forty four were labourers, one, Betty Moores was a charwoman and one a servant.***  
There were also a policeman, a coachman and a sailor.

Few of the farmers worked large amounts of land; most were market gardeners making a living from less than 5 acres.

But even given this middling to lowly economic status Chorlton Methodists represented a large number of those entitled to vote in the reformed Parliament.

In 1832 of the 21 electors, eight were Methodists of which 5 were freeholders and three tenant farmers.

I doubt that will ever know whether they went together to Manchester to vote and sadly the Poll Book for 1844 is not available so it is impossible to hazard who they voted for or if they all voted the same way.

At least we know that James Holt of Beech House consistently voted Tory.  He had a fine house in a large estate stretching from the corner of Beech Road, down to High Lane, along High lane almost to Cross Road and back along Cross Road to Beech Road.  He had made his money in calico engraving in Manchester and moved from his fine house in St John’s Street to Chorlton in the 1830s.

But he retained his right to vote in Manchester and had two votes.  And his story is for another time.

Pictures; from the Manchester Guardian, May 1844, Jeremiah Brundrit and James Bracegirdle from the Wesleyan Handbook, 1909, data from the electoral register for 1832

*The Manchester Guardian May 29 1844
** This was Eltham in Kent where only 35 of the 67 electors lived in the district.
*** Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1847 from The Register of Baptisms, In the Wesleyan Chapel Radnor Street Circuit 1830-1837, microfilm MFPR2120, Local History Library Manchester City Council Libraries, Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1850,

430 years of history …. 30 appreciative listeners ….. and one more talk

Hough End Hall, that Elizabethan pile on the edge of Chorlton has been in and out of history for centuries and yesterday its story was unveiled to an audience at Chorlton Good Neighbours.*

Awaiting an audience, 2025

Four hundred years and a bit is not a wink in time and there was much to discover about the families that occupied it along with the stories of those who played in it in the 1960s as well as the fond memories of many who wined and dined there and finally to the campaign to save it as a venue for community use.

Added to which we explored the life of the chap who built it in 1596.

This was Sir Nicholas Mosley a Manchester man who did “gooder” in London, walked with the people of power and was rewarded not only by a fine fortune but gifts from the first Elizabeth which included the marriage bed of her grandparents, Henry V111 and Elizabeth of York.

All you ever wanted to know ... 2025

The story is not all happy, because during the Civil War Mosley’s chose the wrong side in the Civil War and were eventually forced to sell the hall and land to the Egerton estate in the 18th century to allay gambling debts.

The story unfolds, 2025  .....

What followed were the “sleeping years” when for 250 years the hall was a farmhouse and its occupants were tenant farmers. 

In the 20th century it was nearly demolished to make way for Mauldeth Road West, was proposed as a museum cum art gallery, before being sold off to a succession of developers who hid it from view by two giant office blocks.

Even given this the Hall still shone for decades as a restaurant and briefly as a suite of offices before going up for sale in around 2012.

A local campaign to buy the building and convert it into a community centre was pipped at the post by a faith group.

.......to an appreciative audience

All and more wasrevealed in the hour and a bit, followed as ever by a heap of questions.

Leaving me just to thank Helen and Chorlton Good Neighbours for the invite, Bernard who did the technical stuff and Angela who stood guardian at the door.

And as unaccustomed as I am to self-promotion I will just close with a comment from Helen who wrote “Thank you again Andrew for your talk yesterday ; I hear people say what a brilliant speaker you are and Bernard said it was an excellent talk 

The Hall, 1849

Many thanks again - I'll ask you again next year if you could do another one (or two) as I know people will turn out for you !”

Location; Chorlton Good Neighbours

Pictures; awaiting an audience and screen shot from the power point talk, 2024-25, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and an appreciative audience, 2025, courtesy of Helen from Chorlton Good Neighbours and the Hall in 1849, from Mosley, Sir Oswald, Family Memoirs, 1849, Printed for Private Circulation

*Chorlton Good Neighbours, https://chorltongoodneighbours.org/

Lives revealed, commitments rediscovered

“they were robbed of their childhood and of the opportunity of a sound education .... the emigration of young children for working purposes savoured of a traffic in child labour carried on between agencies in this country and agencies in Canada and children would not be allowed to go from the care of the Guardians to anything like such conditions in this country.”

I have been thinking that William Edward Skivington deserves to be remembered. His was a short life spanning just 42 years from 1869 to 1911.

 There are no blue plaques to him in the city, nor to my knowledge has he been honoured in any way for his work on behalf of the unemployed and poor of Manchester.

 No photographs of him have survived and even the mean little streets in Hulme where he grew up and lived are long gone. But some of what he said and did and something of his political ideas do exist and from these I want to tell a little of his history.

 I first discovered him as one the three socialist Guardians on the board of the Chorlton Union which administered the Poor Law across south Manchester. Time and time again the three spoke out against the sending of young children from our workhouse to Canada to work on farms and as a domestic labour. They questioned the often petty but humiliating practices that existed, demanded better conditions and opposed any perceived cuts in the provision of relief to the inmates.

Now admission into the workhouse for working people was just an accident away, be it unemployment, ill heath, old age or just bad luck. And it was a scenario which William Skivington would have been all too close to himself.

His father was a bookbinder, his mother a bookfolder, and both he and his brother had worked as iron turners. He began his married life in a one up one down back to back in Hulme and his brother died at the early age of 17 from an industrial accident.

He was a member of the Socialist Democratic Federation which was formed in 1884 and was the first Marxist political group in Britain. The membership included trade unionists like Tom Mann, John Burns and Ben Tillet as well George Lansbury, William Morris and Eleanor Marx. During the mid 1880s against a backdrop of economic depression the SDF campaigned for “the Right to Work" and demanded the establishment of state directed co-operative colonies.

Now I don’t know when he joined but in 1896 he nominated an SDF candidate in the municipal elections and may have already been in the party when he unsuccessfully stood for election as a Poor Law Guardian two years earlier.

 The SDF experienced splits and defections along with short periods of greater political unity. In 1900 it had come together with the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and some trade unions to form the Labour Representation Committee, but left just seven years later. William remained in the SDF speaking at its meetings and on occasion arguing against members of the Independent Labour Party within the unemployed movement.

And it was the unemployed movement which dominated much of his political life during the first decade of the 20th century. In the winter of 1904 in Manchester something like “7,000 heads of families were out of work, and that probably twenty-one thousand children were on the verge of starvation”* and William was at the centre of the campaign to publicize the situation and argue for change.

Over the next seven years he was on delegations which met the Prime Minister and leading Government Ministers, organised mass meetings, as well as marches and sat on the Distress Committee which had been set up by the Unemployment Act of 1905. He argued for improved rates of pay for the unemployed in the public works schemes, highlighted poor working conditions, constantly pushed for the adoption of new opportunities for the jobless and the rights of women workers.

Above all it was not just about the right to a job but about a person’s dignity. So when the Distress Committee found work for some men carrying sandwich boards at eighteen pence a day, “it was not right that human beings should be employed as perambulating hoardings.”**

Likewise “He was opposed to emigration as he thought its only use was to supply Canada with cheap labour so necessary to that country. He had received a letter from a friend out there, who said the prison in the town where he was was filled with boys from a well known charity organisation in the country and the asylum with young men who had been homesteading.”***

Which is pretty much where we came in.

I would like to end on a positive note but stories don’t always end such. Unemployment remained an issue and by 1910 -11 we were locked into a period of industrial unrest which highlighted the class fault lines.

And William was dead at 42. His obituary notes that “as his home was in the working class district of Hulme he was constrained by his interests in the improvement of the conditions of living there to bring forward many propositions for an active policy in the provision of work by the municipality” **** 

Which is a fine if brief record of a man’s commitment.

But nor is this quite the end. William it seems died of neglect, at the hands of the Royal Infirmary after he had attended feeling ill. It could almost have been one of his own campaigns to highlight the disparity between different health services. But that is another story for another day.

 *J B Hitchen speaking at a mass rally in Stevenson Square quoted from the Manchester Guardian November 17th 1904. **Manchester Guardian March 21st 1906 *** Manchester Guardian June 26th 1905 **** Manchester Guardian November 17th 1910