Walkng the streets of Manchester in 1830 in the company of J. T. Slugg and in search of Antonio Preduzzi.

St Ann's Church, 1793

I am on the streets of Manchester in the early 1830s in the company of J T Slugg* and in search of Antonio Preduzzi.

Over the last few days I have been exploring that Italian connection with the city and it has led back from Little Italy in Ancoats at the end of the 19th century  to the Preduzzi brothers who came from Lombardy and settled here in 1810 starting up a series of successful businesses.

They were living in what at the time was reckoned to be one of the most exciting places in Britain and which was talked about  as a model of the new age.

Here could be seem the raw enterprise and keen innovation of the new capitalism reflected in the ever increasing number of cotton mills, dye works and the acres of poorly constructed homes for a workforce which was increasing every day.

And because these men of industry wanted a quicker and cheaper way of transporting their products to and from Liverpool they built a railway which was not just a railway but the first passenger railway using technology which would define how locomotives were built and pretty much set the seal on how a railway would be run.

Of course we all know that behind those smoking power houses of cotton manufacture and great show warehouses there were the mean and narrow streets leading to even meaner and darker courts where little light or fresh air penetrated but which were home to all those who toiled for long hours and little remuneration.

This is that other side of the new way of doing things and was much commentated on by Dr Kay, Dr Gaultier, Frederic Engels and a possession of curious visitors.

And as revealing as these accounts are of the horrors of Manchester they are often paraded at the expense of the more benign descriptions of the city in the 1830s and 40s and for this I have turned to J.T. Slugg who arrived fresh faced and not long out of his teens from Bacup in the March of 1829.

The Infirmary, 1824

Fifty years later he set down his memories of the place which began with a walk up Market Street to Piccadilly and the Infirmary.

Less than a decade before he had arrived in the city this main thoroughfare had still been a narrow way flanked on either side by buildings which dated back a century or more.

These were home to taverns, sweet and bookshops the odd warehouse and a number of coaching offices. And in an age soon to be dominated by the railway it is a fitting reminder that for long distance travel the stage coach was still supreme.

And this was still at a time when “there was a very heavy duty on all kinds of glass, and as a consequence not a single shop-window contained any plate glass, but were composed of small squares of ordinary glass.”**

These would have been the sort of shop fronts that would have been familiar to Antonio and his brother.

He had opened a shop as a picture dealer in Spear Street around 1810, and later moved to Tib Street before settling at 31 Oldham Street. By this time, he was trading as a carver and gilder, and maker of looking glasses and picture frames. Oldham Street in the 1820s was a wide street containing ‘some very elegant shops and houses’.  Antonio's shop was above a confectioner's on the right-hand side from Swan Street.

The Infirmary, 1793

Here he framed and glazed needlework, drawings and pictures; re-gilded and silvered old frames and mirror plates; and made and repaired barometers, thermometers and hydrometers.

He also had premises at 44 Deansgate in the early 1820s and in 1831, to larger premises at 33 Piccadilly, opposite the Infirmary.

Like his previous shop, this one was on the first floor with a flight of steps leading up to it. The shop extended quite a long way back and had two long counters and a little sitting room beyond. There were also workshops on the premises.“***

This placed him in a prime position  which he shared with a few other shops, some rather fine houses and the offices of the Manchester and Salford Waterworks Company which supplied the town with its drinking water.

33 Piccadilly, the shop of Preduzzi & Co

Directly opposite was the Infirmary which “was a plain brick building  [and also] included the lunatic asylum.  Infrontwas the sheet of water known as the Infirmary Pond, separated from the footpath by palisading.  

At the Infirmary gates stood the public baths, the income arising from them being appropriated to the support of the Infirmary.  

The charge for the cold bath to non subscribers was 1s.; to subscribers of half-a-guinea, 10d.; and to those of a guinea, 9d.  

The price of a vapour bath was 5s; of a vapour and hot bath when used together, 6s.; and of the shampooing bath, 7s.”****


And while we are familiar with the huge show warehouses like S & J Watts on Portland Street which were built expressly to showcase the products of our textile mills, there was not a “single warehouse in either of these streets, Mosley Street, Portland Street, Peter Street, Oxford Road or Dickenson Street” but soon enough they would make their appearance at the cost of hundred of buildings in the neighbourhood which would be destroyed.

I don’t know what Antonio made of these changes which were transforming his adopted city.  When he had arrived in 1810 it was still possible to walk in to open fields just a short way along Oldham Road while to the south all of Hulme, Moss Side and Chorlton on Medlock were pleasant open space.

And yet by his death in the Chorlton Workhouse in 1846 great swathes of these spaces were the preserve of terraced houses, cotton mills and dye works.

Pictures;St Anne's Church and Manchester Infirmary from the Laurent map 1793, 33 Piccadilly and the Infirmary from the 1844 OS of Manchester & Salford, by permission of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ the buildings opposite the infirmary including the premise of Peduzzi & Co, 1824, m5291, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council  

*J.T. Slugg, Reminiscenes of Manchester, 1881
** Slugg, chapter 1
*** Collections Department, Museum of Science & Industry
**** Slugg, chapter 1

A chance photograph, some demolished houses, a lost Chorlton road and a lesson in always carrying a camera

It is one of those curious things that it is often the most recent history that goes unrecorded.

I must have walked down Ransfield Road loads of times in the late 70s and early 80s, but cannot remember these houses which were being demolished in Andrew’s photograph.

It was taken in the April of 1983 and like always there is a bit of story.

They date from the last decade of the 19th century and didn’t make their 100th birthday.  All of which is more puzzling given that they were six roomed properties and occupied by relatively well off working class people.  Here was a salesman a secretary, two clerks a plumber, tailor and a telegraphist.

And judging by Andrew's picture they were typical of what had been built at this end of Chorlton

Added to this the properties on the northern side of the road and those in the adjoining Claridge Road are still there. So there is a puzzle which a trawl of the clearance orders might throw up a reason or perhaps it was just a case of a developer buying the properties.

I had wandered down Ransfield Road just a few weeks earlier and couldn’t place when the new properties went up and for a while tracking the history of Ransfield was equally hazy.

Maps from 1907 showed them there but the street directories stubbornly refused to mention them.

All of which was because during the early part of 20th century Ransfield was called Richmond Road and may have been renamed because of the presence of another Richmond Road in Fallowfield, several Richmond Streets and two Richmond Groves one of which was here in Chorlton.

So in the process of exploring a line of demolished houses in the 1980s the quest turned up  another of our lost roads and in the process also points up that simple rule “never let an opportunity go by to record those moments of change."

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Robertson

On Shooters Hill with Mrs Craven and George Field in the June of 1841

I have decided to head north of Well Hall to Shooters Hill in search of a story. 

Back in the 1830s and 40s, it was a mixed bunch of those deriving an income from the land and the well off.

So of our forty two people in gainful employment in the June of 1841 the largest group were those who described themselves as agricultural labourers, farm servants or gardeners.

These were followed by those of “Independent means” along with one solicitor, a governess, a tea broker and a publican.

They lived fairly close together on the southern side of Shooters Hill on a stretch facing the Bull Inn.

And I guess quite a few of our band of workers would have spent time in the company of George Field who along with his wife Mary ran the Bull Inn.

Not that I would expect the Bull was ever frequented by Louisa Crewe who rented 21 acres  from the Crown and lived in Hazelwood House which was a big enough pile for it to be marked and named on the tithe map of 1844.

She had not long become a widow.

But of her, her employees and the others in Shooters Hill more next time.
Location, Shooters Hill , London

Picture; detail from the tithe map of Eltham, courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

Platt Abbey … another story by Tony Goulding

A friend’s request has prompted me to research the history of this building which stood on the plot of land opposite the side view of Platt Hall now occupied by two tower blocks. 

Platt Abbey 1895

A full history of its residents has not been possible, and in any case the sheer number of them over the house’s 125+ year lifetime meant the story’s length would preclude it. What follows then is a selection of stories associated with the property. 

The first people I found living in Platt Abbey, in 1830, were William Robinson, a wine and spirit Merchant of Exchange Street, Manchester, his wife Lucy and at least three children Charles, Frances, and Harriette Louisa. This information was gleaned from extensive contemporary press coverage of a “shocking murder”. On the night of Thursday 20th May 1830 Charles Robinson was shot and killed on Oxford Road, Rusholme, Manchester whilst he was walking home from a friend’s house. He did not die immediately but shortly after being helped to the residence of a local physician Dr. James Edge Partington, who happened also to be his brother-in-law. (1)

The 1861 census records the occupant off the house as Mr. James Dunn, a commission agent. In the following census of 1871, it was a cotton spinner, Mr. Charles Ogden. However, the next person of note to live in the house was the soldier, author and playwright Ian Hay. (2)

He was born in the house on 17th April 1876 his birth name being John Hay Beith, the son of a cotton merchant and magistrate, John Alexander Beith, and the grandson of a Presbyterian minister, of the same name, who was one of the founders of the Free Church of Scotland. His father was one of the attendees of the meeting on 27th June 1882 at Daniel Adamson’s house, The Towers, Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, to discuss the proposal to construct the Manchester Ship Canal.

Ian Hay (Alias of Major-General John Hay Beith C.B.E. M.C.

The residents of the house recorded in the 1881 census were the Kipping family; James Stanley, a cashier at the Manchester branch of the Bank of England, his wife, Julia (née Duval), (3) four of their children and two servants. One of these children, Frederick Stanley, was recorded as a London University student. An old boy of Manchester Grammar School and Owens Park College, he was to have a distinguished career as an eminent scientist, becoming the professor of Chemistry at Nottingham University.

 Abbey Solicitors April 18th 2026

The Kipping family moved out in March 1888, and the tenancy passed to a succession of a variety of professional people for the 6 decades before the house was demolished in 1949 to make way for the present buildings on the site.     Ernest Crewsdon, chartered accountant; Archibald Donald, physician and surgeon; Lawrence Walker, a printer, publisher, and wholesale stationer and Archie Thornhill another printer. The property also served for a period as a residential hotel.

The earliest residents, following the Robinson family, were all tenants. On of their landlords was Robert Palin who is recorded as the owner in the rate books for Rusholme Township from before 1845 until 1883. He appears to have been an absentee landlord, however, as there are no other records of him in the Manchester area. He does appear in 1881 as the plaintiff in a legal dispute with the defendant John Bebbington which resulted in an order for the sale of the property issued by The Court of Chancery.

Platt Abbey was one of five buildings on the site demolished in 1949 to make way for the two tower blocks

Until recently, it was recalled by this nearby firm of solicitors.

Frederick Stanley Kipping 

Abbey Solicitors 18TH April 2026

Pictures: - Platt Abbey 1895 m38718. Courtesy of Manchester Libraries. Ian Hay Beith – Printed in and scanned from Hay, Ian (1921). The Selected Writings of Ian Hay, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin OCLC: 1080341 Public domain. 1080341 Public Domain.

 ttps://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61676395

Frederick Stanley Kipping by Unknown author - Prabook, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16621622.

Abbey Solicitors from the collection of Tony Goulding.

Notes: -

1) Dr. Partington was married to Charles Robinson’s sister, Frances.

2) Ian Hay’s debut and most successful novel “Pip” was published in 1907. It is a coming-of-age story centred on the schoolboy title character with references to the sporting activities of Edwardian England. Further fiction was less popular and during a distinguished war service, being “mentioned in dispatches” and awarded the Military Cross, he turned to writing of his army life which provided him with a best seller “The First Hundred Thousand”. In the inter-war years, he was a very successful playwright, often in collaboration with other well-known authors: including P. G. Wodehouse, Edgar Wallace and the author of “The Four Feathers” A.E.W. Mason.

3) Frederick Stanley Kipping is best known for his pioneering work on organic compounds of silicon which led to the development of synthetic rubber. He is credited with coining the term “Silicone”. He was the Professor of Chemistry at Nottingham University from 1897 until 1936.

Withy Grove Records ….. one building on Thomas Street … and John and Betsy Greenwood

 I am standing outside number 5 Thomas Street thinking of going into Withy Grove Records which will be a treat.

Withy Grove Records, 2026

I belong to that generation that bought vinyl.  Of course, back then I doubt I ever used the word vinyl. They were just records, coming as singles, E.P.s or L.P.s, and they are still my chosen way of listening to my music.

Selling the vinyl, 2026

True I have an equally large collection of CD’s but there is something different in putting the L.P. on the deck and listening to the sound which comes with all those scratches, which I can still place alongside the girlfriend I was with at the time.

Despite the temptation I didn’t go in and instead turned my attention to the building which I reckoned has some history.

Throughout the late 19th century into the 20th shop appears to have been part of one premises which included 42 Shudehill and round into Thomas Street as far as Salmon Street.

It was occupied by the firm of Joseph Brook wholesale druggist and drysalter and for those unfamiliar with the word drysalter my Wikipedia tells me that they “were dealers in a range of chemical products, including glue, varnish, dye and colourings. 

They might supply salt or chemicals for preserving food and sometimes also sold pickles, dried meat or related items. The name drysalter or dry-salter was in use in the United Kingdom by the early 18th century when some drysalters concentrated on ingredients for producing dyes, and it was still current in the first part of the 20th century”.*

So far, I can track them in this building from 1851 to 1929 and with more research it should be possible to pinpoint when the firm vacated the site.

The Drysalters on Thomas Street, 1888

I rather think that this makes it over 170 years old and begs the question of when it was built.  And that I think might be around 1850.  Adshead’s map of 1851 and Goad’s Fire Insurance map from 1888 show it as one building and despite what appears to have been serious rebuilding at the Salmon Street side, it does still look like one original construction.

The 1850 street directory lists four distinct buildings facing onto Thomas Street, each with a different occupant, ranging from a surgeon, hairdresser, leather cutter and last maker, and this is confirmed by the OS map of 1849.

And it is the surgeon that offers up a bit of a mystery.  He was John Greenwood who in 1851 lived in the largest of the four.  He describes himself as “a surgeon, chemist and druggist”, and his actual address is listed around the corner in the same building which looked out on Shudehill at number 42.

Those four separate buildings, 1849

The rate books show that this property commanded a rateable value of £10 and a yearly rent of £12 compared to the other three in Thomas Street which were much lower.

Mr. Greenwood lived here with his wife two children, a house servant and a “shop boy for the chemist shop”.

But a decade later he has moved on which would fit with the theory of new build.

And here is the possible mystery, because according to the 1861 census he is alone and living as a lodger with six others at the Temperance Coffee House on Deansgate which was just down from Blackfriars Bridge.

As yet I can find no reference to his three children who would have been fifteen, thirteen and 12, while there is a suggestion that his wife had remarried, moved back to Yorkshire and had a new family.

All of which will demand more research and takes me away from Thomas Street, and Withy Vinyl, but then that’s how stories go.

Where we began, 2026

Location; Thomas Street

Pictures; Withy Grove Records, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Thomas Street in 1888 from Goad’s Fire Insurance maps and in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

*Drysalter, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drysalter

Taking Eminent Victorians for granted ……. statues

Now the debate on who we continue to commemorate from the last three centuries rolls on and rightly so.

Prince Albert ..... thinking of Victoria? 2019

It is a discussion which gets to the heart of our past as we reflect on Britain’s involvement with the Slave Trade and Slavery, along with those we choose to see as significant and of course on those who made and wrote our history.*

Not that this is new, reinterpretations of historical events, and people goes on all the time, and one of my favourite such revisions is the book Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey published in 1919, which examines the lives, record and reputation of four “Victorian greats”. ** 

James Fraser, looking down on the markets, 2019

They were Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Charles Gordon.  

Today only Florence Nightingale will be familiar to many people, but back at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the other three were up there on that pedestal of the good and the inspirational.  

And only Florence Nightingale survived Mr. Strachey’s forensic reexamination of their careers, in what at times is a savage, witty and cynical account.  

Just how savage, witty and cynical he could be I leave you to judge, from the end of his chapter on General Gordon, which having surveyed Gordan’s life and the campaign to avenge his death concludes that “General Gordan had always been a contradictious person – even a little off his head, perhaps, though a hero; and besides he was no longer there to contradict .... At any rate it all ended very happily – in a slaughter of twenty thousand Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring”.**

There will be those who will turn their gaze on those public statues here in Manchester, and in the fall out from the Colston case Manchester City Council began weighing up the continued justification for  the presence of some of those “worthies” on our streets and square.*

Sir Robert Peel, 2019

And so drawn purely at random from some of the collection I have taken over the years here are three.

I make no judgements and leave it to others to add sound historical comments and only reflect that these long gone worthies are ingored by most, are the subject to occasional paint vandalism and at certain times of the year look down on the Christmas markets.

Pictures; Prince Albert, James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester, and Sir Robert Peel, Manchester, 2019-20, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*On that statue of Mr. Colston …..…and thoughts on Annie Kenney, the Sheffield Women of Steel and Totò, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/06/on-that-statue-of-mr-colston-and.html

**D Day ...... AD 43 .......Portrait Of An Age ..... and the death of General Gordan, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/d-day-ad-43-portrait-of-age-and-death.html

*** Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, 1918

Buying that armchair and bed from M E Coupe on the corner of Wilbraham Road in 1985

Now I am never surprised at the interest shown in photographs of Chorlton in the recent past.

In many ways they are more interesting than those from a century and a bit ago and I think it is because it is of a Chorlton many of us can remember and relate to.

That said the passage of even thirty years makes many of them look very dated. 

It is like looking through a dirty window, some of what you see you recognise but the rest is just a little unclear and unreal.

So here is the last of Chorlton in 1985.  The picture has featured before at  WilbrahamRoad where there is the story.