One camera ….. 1965 ….. and a collection of lost scenes

It is 61 years ago that this collection of images was taken.

"Clearance in Hulme", 1965

They cover Manchester, Stretford and out to Chorlton and Wythenshawe and are a mix of industrial scenes, some old historic buildings and more than a few of well-known city centre sites.

What they have in common was the year they were taken and that originally they were colour slides.

The collection was donated to me by the daughter of the photographer, but somewhere along the line their identity was lost, although I am still looking for the letter, email or Facebook message which alerted me to the names of the woman who donated them and the photographer.

"Old Shambles' 1965

I hope by posting them the donor will come forward and I can change the credit from the 1965 collection to a name.

The first two are both of lost Manchester.

I have no idea where in Hulme the clearance area was, and I only have vague memories of the old Shambles.

But they are a unique record of how the City was in 1965 and just how it was about to change.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, “Clearance in Hulme” and “The Old Shambles showing Wellington Inn and Sinclair’s Oyster Bar,” 1965, from the 1965 Collection

"the frown of fortune"...... the story of Sam Mendel and Manley Hall in Whalley Range

Now I don’t usually do stately homes, but back in 1879 I might just have made the effort to visit Manley Hall which had once been the home of the 'merchant prince' Sam Mendel.

It was an impressive place built in the Italianate style with fifty rooms in 80 acres of grounds which included a greenhouse, an orangery, deer park fountains and ornamental lakes.

Added to this was a fine collection of paintings including works by Constable, Gainsborough, Leighton, Millais and Turner.

All of which reflected the vast wealth of Sam Mendel who had made that wealth by being able to ship textiles to India and Australia around the Cape of Good Hope  faster than his competitors.

“He was the son of a rope manufacturer who started business off Blackfriars Street, succeeding to the business of Mr. Robert Gardiner, a Levant merchant [and] built a warehouse in Dickenson Street, removing thrice to Booth Street, to Portland Street, and finally to his splendid warehouse in Chepstow Street.  

It is said of him he was never known to do a shabby act, but in the end he felt the frown as well as the smile of fortune.  

In 1875 his magnificent estate – Manley House- was the scene of a memorable sale, and it has ever since been but the ghost of its former self, in spite of effort after effort to galvanise it into life. The estate was cut up into building lots, and the tenantless hall survives only to witness the short-lived greatness of its builder.”*

And the frown of fortune was no less than a too ambitious desire to add to his vast collection of art which left him in serious debt to an art dealer. 

The house and its contents along with the 80 acres were put up for sale in the spring of 1875 and the auction of the contents stretched out over five days.

Not that I would have been wealthier enough to consider biding for the fine furniture, paintings, silver plate and old Chelsea porcelain.

Nope, for me it would have a walk around the gardens when they were opened to the public later in 1875.

And I rather suspect it would have been the piece in the Manchester Guardian of May 30 1879 which pushed me out of Chorlton and in to Whalley Range to walk the gardens, because the “announcement of yesterday with regard to the coming sale of this fine estate ... [means] that in all probability Manley Hall will not much longer remain open to inspection.”**

So despite the poor weather which had done little for “the great floral display which might very properly have been expected at the Whitsun Holiday” there was still “much to admire in the greenhouses and ferneries.”  

Along with “the Clown cricketers who were to play in the park on Monday, Thursday and Saturday and the Latelle ‘aerial bicyclists’ who have lately completed a successful engagement at the Westminster Aquarium [and] Mr. J.A. Whelan of Huddersfield who will make an ascent in his balloon ‘The Duke of Edinburgh’ on Thursday and Friday as well as a variety of amusements for visitors.”

But I rather think it would have been the “bands of music” which would have attracted me, one of which may well have been our own Chorlton Brass Band.  They had been formed in the 1820s and while I do not have a complete list of where they performed, there are records of them at Bell Vue, Lytham, Blackpool and Stalybridge as well as closer to home in Chorlton and up at Barlow Hall.

Now Samuel had sponsored the band during the 1860s and it would be nice to think that they were there at Manley Hall in the June of 1879.

And that perhaps is an appropriate point to close, for Samuel’s eclipse appears to have been a loss for Chorlton.

For not only did he sponsor the band but was a very active patron of the old parish church and in that great schism over the building of a new church and ist location on Edge Lane he remained with the group championing the existing building.

Next; the fate of the Hall and something more on Sam.

Location; Whalley Range, Manchester

Pictures; of Manley Hall circa 1878 from the Lloyd Collection, and picture of Sam Mendel, from a photograph by Franz Baum, 22 St Ann’s Square, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

* Shaw, William Arthur, Manchester Old & New, 1896, Manchester

** Manchester Guardian May 30 1879

One Acre Allotment and more stories of rural Eltham

One Acre Allotments, 1908

Even in the most built up urban areas there are clues to our rural past.

Here in Chorlton there is still the village green with the old school, the parish graveyard, two old pubs and some former farmhouses along with a barn where the Methodists held services at the beginning of the 19th century.

And Eltham is no different; although I have to say this bit of what was once Kent and is now south east London has managed to retain far more of its old fine houses.

But it is not of fine houses that I want to focus on today but the intriguingly named “One Acre Allotments" which have their story.

They were all that was left of the fields to the north of the High Street beyond the line of buildings and had you had a mind to you could have walked them all the way up to the woods and Shooters Hill.

Our field was known locally as One Acre and was directly behind what is now the school on Roper Street.

One Acre  1844, One Acre  is numbered 251, 

It was meadow land and formed a block of meadows which stretched east across along the present Gourock Road and also included the field that ran along what is now the west side of Roper Street.
and was “often used to accommodate for the night the herds of cattle or flocks of sheep that were being driven out of Kent into the London market.”* 

A practice which seeks to remind us that most of our big cities were supplied with fresh food which before the railway was walked to its destination and joined the livestock permanently kept in urban centres.

In total there were four of these meadow fields and only one is officially listed with a name.  In the 1840s they were farmed by different tenants but three were owned by Sir Gregory Page Turner while that on the western side of Roper Street was Glebe land.

It might not be good history but I do catch myself wandering down the lane which is now Roper Street and heading off onto the footpath where the land finished.  Had I done this in the 1840s there at the end of the lane would have the stile and the start of the footpath.

The Smithy and One Acre Meadow, 1858-74

And  I had a choice, turn east and by degree I would have ended up at Shooters Hill, and if I gone west along what was sometimes called “The Slip” which ran parallel to the High Street I would have reached the parish church.

And if that was not enough choices at both the start of The Slip and at its end there were paths off to Well Hall and Shooters Hill.

Now I rather think there may also be stories about the people who rented these four fields.  Each is known to us, and two appear to have been comfortably off describing themselves variously as Gentleman, Independent or Merchant.

But as ever there seems a little bit of mystery and yes it is our field which the records show was rented by a George Smith snr in 1839, but exactly which George Smith is a problem, for there were three living in Eltham during the 1820s into the next two decades.

The most obvious was George Smith who listed himself as a blacksmith during the period.  He lived in the High Street had a son called George which might explain the description George Smith snr and his smithy was at the bottom of the lane where it joined the High Street.

If this is him the fates were not kind, by 1851 he is in hospital and his son is living with his former wife who had reverted to her maiden name. And like so much of the history I like this just gets a tad messier, because George Smith snr is recorded as renting 40 acres along with a “farmhouse, barn, yard and building” which seems a bit out of the range of a blacksmith.

But we shall see.

*R.R.C.Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham
Pictures; One Acre Allotments 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 detail of Eltham, and detail of the Smithy and One Acre Meadow,detail of Eltham High Street, 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx and detail of smithy, the lane and the meadow land from the OS map of Kent 1858-74

On small things history turns …. commemorating the Hardy Lane Co-op

Last week I was reflecting and reporting on the story of one Co-op store with heaps of history.*

Some of Co-op Party behind the Guild banner, circa 1980s

It is the Hardy Lane Co-op on the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Hardy Lane, and it has been serving the community since it opened in 1929.

What makes the shop a tad unique is that it still retains its meeting room which for just under a century has hosted political meetings, been used as election committee rooms and been a venue for a host of other events from film nights to whist evenings.

And there will be many who remember it with affection as the place where they were introduced to the Woodcraft Folk, which “is a movement for children and young people, open to everyone from birth to adult, offering a place where children will grow in confidence, learn about the world and start to understand how to value our planet and each other”.**

Last year it celebrated its centenary and so just pips our meeting room.

I first washed up in the room sometime around 1979 where the local branch of the Co-op Party held its monthly meetings and there on the wall were the banners of the National Guild of Co-operatives and  the banner of the Chorlton and Manley Road Co-operative Women’s Guild.

Chorlton and Manley Coperative Women's Guild, 1937

"The National Guild of Co-operators was established in 1926 as an organisation of men and women aged from sixteen years, who are or are willing to become members of their local co-operative society, and are united by a common interest in the co-operative movement.

The guild has been instrumental in lobbying government on matters of national concern as far ranging as anti nuclear power issues and saving rural post offices."*** 

And close by was Chorlton and Manley Coperative Women's Guild dating from 1922 which was a branch of the Coperative Women's Guild formed as The Women's League for the Spread of Co-operation in 1883, changing its name to the Women's Co-operative Guild in 1885 

It was involved in many campaigns, including the campaign for female favouring the less violent approach of the Suffragists.

The Guild continued to campaign until universal suffrage was finally granted in 1928.

Other campaigns included those around maternity rights and financial support for working class women, who often had large families due to a lack of access to contraception and sexual health information, and could try and procure backstreet abortions which were dangerous as well as illegal. 

The Guild supported the work of Marie Stopes in family planning and better provision of maternity and infant care. 

This led to the Shipley Society opening the first ever co-operative maternity care centre in 1920- which would have been a radical move in the pre-NHS years.***

Freedom of the Branch, 1947

And amongst all of that will have been the  Chorlton and Manley Road Co-operative Women’s Guild. 

As yet I know very little about its activities, but I do know that in 1947 Alice Lomas was awarded a certificate conferring “the Freedom of the Branch for services rendered to the Guild Cause during her membership of 25 years.”

During the 1920s and 30s Alice lived at 20 Provis Road in Chorlton. I know she was born in 1894 and married William Lomas in 1913.

And the rest as they say is all to be discovered and in the process, I rather think we will uncover lots more of the activities of the Chorlton and Manley Road Co-operative Women’s Guild.

In the meantime, the historic significance of the meeting rooms will be marked by a Blue Plaque on the exterior of the Co-op sometime in July of this year.

It is a fitting commemoration of the role the Co-op rooms have played in the community and reflects the history of the last century.

Location; The Hardy Lane Co-op

Pictures; Chorlton and Manley Road Co-operative Women’s Guild banner circa 1980s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Freedom of the Branch, 1947, courtesy of Dave King, Chorlton and Manley Road Co-operative Women’s Guild banner, 1937, from the collection of Lawrence Beedle, Blue Plaque, Chorlton Civic Society, 2026

*Just how do you honour a shop with history?....... https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/05/just-how-do-you-honour-shop-with-history.html

**The Woodcraft Folk, https://woodcraft.org.uk/

***National Guild of Co-operators, https://www.uk.coop/directory/national-guild-co-operators

**** The Story of the Co-op Women’s Guild Liz MvIvor, https://www.co-operativeheritage.coop/blog/the-story-of-the-co-operative-womens-guild

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 12 Chancellery Lane

Now I had wandered over to Spring Gardens to find Concert Lane and instead rediscovered this last bit of Chancellery Place most of which is broad enough but then narrows as it does a slight twist and opens up on Pall Mall.

Both of them are streets I have known for forty years and just rather took them for granted, but now I am wandering them all over again

Location; Manchester








Picture; Chancellery Place, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost images of Whalley Range part 2 the petrol pumps

I wonder when these petrol pumps on Upper Chorlton Road were taken away.

They were recorded by A.H.Downes in the summer of 1960 and were on the site of the furniture store.

In an age of big computer operated petrol pumps which do all most everything but make a coffee I like these three.

Simple design, and simple machinery but they did the business and take me back to my childhood.

They come from that time when someone would come out of the garage and work the pump,offering to wipe the windscreen and was available for motoring advice.

You still find this service in places like Greece and rural Italy and no doubt even here in remote communities.

They have long since vanished but the telephone kiosk was still on the same spot just a few years ago.

Picture; Petrol-Pump, Whalley Range, Upper Chorlton Road, north east side, 1960, A.H.Downes, m40781 and again in 1973, photographer unknown, m40728, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Stories of the Great War from Eltham and Woolwich ............. nu 1 the milestone on Shooters Hill

An occasional series reflecting on the impact of the Great War.

Now I have to say I never really knew the story of the war memorial outside Christ Church on Shooters Hill.

I will have passed it countless times, but when you are young war memorials scarcely register especially when there is the promise of an unknown adventure in the woods behind.

But reading it now is to be reminded of the terrible loss of life during the Great War.

The inscription is simple and to the point.

What gives the memorial its added significance is that it is part of an older milestone of which I knew nothing.

And for that knowledge I have Tricia Lesley to thank who unearthed a wonderful history of Woolwich which gives a detailed description of the milestone and the war memorial.

“Originally on the other side of the road, having been placed there by the New Cross Turnpike Trust, the eighth milestone out of London on the Old Dover Road was accidentally fractured by a Borough Council steam roller during road repairs in 1903.

The Dartford plate had been totally destroyed in the collision.

It was thrown aside to be broken up but Vicar Wilson, with authority from the Borough Engineer removed the pieces to the church grounds where they were dowelled together and set up near the church door.

When the church war memorial was being discussed, Col. Bagnold, chairman of the parish war memorial committee, suggested fixing on the eastern side of the stone a plate indicating the distance to Ypres, with the addition of figures telling of the casualties incurred in defending the salient.  

The Director-general of the Ordinance Survey was called and arrived at the figure of 130 miles to the cloth Hall, correct to one-tenth of a mile.

The whole memorial was unveiled by Major General Sir Webb Gillman and dedicated by the Rector of Woolwich in October, 1922."*

All of which leaves me to say I have the book on order, and wish I had the opportunity to repeat the magic adventure in the woods.

Pictures; memorial stone, courtesy of Running Past, @running_past, Shooters Hill, courtesy of Jean Gammons, 1977 and cover of The Woolwich Story 

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