Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past ...... on the wireless today

I am a great fan of Radio 4's Start the Week which is one of those talking programmes the BBC excels at and this one was no exception.

Two  Pentax K1000's, 1978

The sleeve notes perfectly set the scene with, "What can the things we create, keep and bury tell us about who we are? 

On Radio 4's weekly discussion programme, Adam Rutherford explores material culture – the power of objects you can touch – and how they connect us to the past.

Classicist Mary Beard discusses her book Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old, arguing that everyday remnants of antiquity, from bread to paint pots abandoned at Pompeii, still matter. And that Ancient Greece and Rome continue to shape how we see our own world.

Theatre director Greg Doran set himself the task of tracking down the surviving copies of Shakespeare’s First folio, after the death of his husband the actor Antony Sher. He recounts his worldwide quest in Walking Shadow: Love, Loss and Shakespeare, which also reveals the importance of the enduring physical presence of Shakespeare’s work.

Nokia 3310, 2000

Dr Sophia Adams, curator at the British Museum, discusses the extraordinary Melsonby Hoard, the largest collection of Iron Age metalwork ever found in Britain, and what its burnt and buried objects reveal about power, ritual and life before the Roman conquest. The exhibition, Chariots, Treasure and Power: Secrets of the Melsonby Hoard, will go on display at the Yorkshire Museum, York from 15th May 2026.

The Ronson Veraflame, 1957

Producer: Katy Hickman

Assistant Producer: Natalia Fernandez"

And not wanting to delve too far into the past I chose some objects that mean a lot to me.  

They include my old Pentax K1000 cameras from the age of smelly photography. They were a constant companion from 1978 and performed and survived in the searing heat of summers in Greece, the clammy heat of an August Paris as well as heaps of venues from Manchester, London and plenty of other places.  

To these I have added my own first Nokia 3310 and a Ronson Veraflame which mum used all the time and I thought was the tops of stylish fashion in 1960.

Location; BBC Radio 4

Pictures; my old Pentax K1000's, 1978, my own first Nokia 3310, 20000, a Ronson Veraflame, 1957

*Why Stuff Matters: Objects, Power and the Past, Start of the Week, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002v9nv

Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

There have been many who have written about the history of Chorlton.

Almost all of them draw on twenty-five articles written in the winter and spring of 1885-86 by Thomas Ellwood.

These were published in weekly instalments in the South Manchester Gazette and reappear as articles in the Wesleyan and Parish magazines throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ellwood in turn drew on an earlier work on the histories of the churches and chapels of south and east Manchester written thirty years earlier as well as contemporary documents.

 But the real strength of his account is that much of it is based on the oral testimonies of some of the oldest inhabitants of the township, people who had had been born at the very beginning of Ellwood’s century and who confidently recorded the customs and people of an even earlier time.

Picture;  from The Manchester City News, Saturday March 4th 1922

Steam fun ……….. London Road ……..

This is another 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, “Happy hours spent train spotting are recalled by Bill Johnson’s superb shot of Coronation Class 4-6-2 No. 46256 Sir William A. Stanier F.R.S with steam issuing on all fronts , including the coal pusher, as she backs down to collect her train………  Popularly known as ‘Duchess’ No ”. 46256 was the penultimate  member of her class, being turned out  from Crewe in 1947 ……..”

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.

Location; London Road, Railway Station, 1959, 

Picture; London Road Railway Station, date unknown, W. Johnson from Manchester Railway Termini

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

The history of Eltham in just 20 objects ........Nu 10 the drainhole cover ..... from Tricia

The challenge is to write a history of Eltham in just 20 objects which are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

And here is Tricia's Contribution to Eltham's Hall of History

"The drainhole cover was situated until 1970 in Eltham Court Yard and was only removed when the road was widened to take the bus lay-by outside Grove Market. 

It bore the following inscription 'Invented by T.C. HAWORTH, Surveyor, Eltham 1874'. 

It appeared more like a safe door than a drainhole cover and needed several men to remove it.

It was presented to The Eltham Society by the Greenwich Borough Council but the question is where is it now?"

Contributor; Tricia Lesley


Pricture; Court Yard, 1970, Mr. F Shepherd (beared) then Chairman of the Eltham Society recieves the Haworth drainhole cover from Greenwich Council officials, Photo; Kentish Independent supplied by Tricia Lesley

Historians of Chorlton ...... John Lloyd

Written in 1990

Anyone interested in the history of Chorlton owes John Lloyd a lot. 

He wrote the first ever general history book on the township in 1972, and went on to publish a collection of photographs drawn from his and other people’s collections.*

Now he was not the first historian to do so. 

Thomas Ellwood wrote 25 articles between 1885-6 about the history of township and both John Lloyd and Ellwood relied on the earlier work of the Reverend John Booker who wrote a series of histories of the chapels around Manchester in the late 1850s.

 His History of the Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton, Chetham Society, 1859 is a very detailed account not only of the parish church but also of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

But neither Booker’s account nor Ellwood’s articles are easily accessible and the great value of John Lloyd’s 1972 book was that it incorporated these earlier histories with a final chapter describing Chorlton during the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Cow Lane, date unknown

Sadly the 1972 edition is out of print but his picture book has been recently reissued.

In the concluding chapter he reflected on the pleasure and challenges in writing his book and looked back to the comments of Ellwood who in the May of 1886 had written “his task had been laborious but pleasurable” adding “the present author can echo the same sentiment ........ in another half century another chronicler will be able to take today’s story into the ever unfolding record of events”

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

Picture; article written in 1990 and published in the Reporter and Cow Lane date unknown, from the collection of Rita Bishop

The age of the parking meter was short ....... we won’t see their like again

Now I am always surprised at what was once familiar street furniture can disappear like snow in the winter sun.

And looking at this 1968 picture of St Peter’s Square there will be a few who wonder what I am on about.

But I suspect that anyone born in the last two decades may wonder what that poll with the domed shaped device beside the car was used for because the age of the parking meter has come and  gone.

It was a short life.

The first in London was installed just fifty years ago which post dated their introduction in an American city by just 40 odd years.*

There are some  in Central London but 3,500 have gone leaving just 800.

And as ever, I can’t remember exactly when they vanished from the streets of Manchester and Salford.

At which point I know someone will come up with chapter and verse and also point me to the surviving ones somewhere.

As it is there were parking meters here by 1961 when the barrow boys of Back Piccadilly were concerned that their livelihood was under threat from the introduction of parking meters along the narrow street in November of 1961.*

Our image was taken in the October of 1968.

And for me the bonus of the picture is that it shows those lost buildings, one of which went I think sometime in the early '70s and the other very recently.

Location; Manchester







Picture; St Peter's Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Time runs out for the parking meter, Josie Barnard, The Telegraph, November 07, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/4029123/Time-runs-out-for-the-parking-meter.html

**Back Piccadilly may lose barrow Boys, Manchester Guardian, November 20, 1961

Pictures before a demonstration ….. St Peter’s Square April 18th event

Yesterday there was a demonstration and a counter demonstration in the city.

Today social media teams with pictures, videos, commentaries and opinions of the event.

Three hours before St Peter’s Square was a tranquil scene populated by passers by and a growing police preparation.

Not perhaps an exciting series of images but an alternative to the flag waving and counter placard waiving groups.

Location; St Peter’s Square

Pictures; St Peter’s Square, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson