Vanished Manchester communities ...........

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

On walking along Academy Road out of Woolwich in 1906

Just occasionally I slide into nostalgia and this 1906 postcard of the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich does it for me.

Now given that I was born in 1949 and first saw the Academy in the summer of 1965 it is not in a strict sense a trip down memory lane.

But more of that later.

This was one of a series of six cards marketed by Raphael Tuck and Sons in 1906 under the title of Woolwich.

I suppose what strikes you first is the close similarity between this image and what you can see now.  True, I doubt any one today would be able to stroll so easily across Academy Road and the military have long since gone.

But otherwise early on a Sunday morning in late September it might just be possible to get close to what we see here.

And I rather think that is what I remember on warm summers evening on the way back from Woolwich to Well Hall.

Best still was when you walked it at a slow and even pace fully appreciating the buildings to your left and the open spaces stretching east down to Hornfair Park.

Now I don’t think I passed that many people in the entire length of the walk from Woolwich up to Shooters Hill and then down along Well Hall Road.

All of which allowed you to wander in your own thoughts and more than once to ponder on an unmade piece of pathway which naively I thought might be Roman.

Take the same journey on one of those evenings heavy with the promise of a thunderstorm and you might well be rewarded by the magnificent sight of lightening streaking across the sky over Shooters Hill followed by the roll of thunder.

But this is so much indulgent tosh, so I will leave you with a second Tuck postcard dated a year earlier from the set entitled Woolwich Town and City.

The company issued two of the same scene one like this which had been tinted in colour and a monochrome copy.  I rather prefer the grey and black card but this coloured one has the advantage of a message on the back and unusually the sender added her address in Plumstead.

But it is the message itself which draws you in.  HP of 34 Charlotte Street sent the card on July 27 1905 with the news "that Mr Coventry died last Tuesday afternoon, was buried on Saturday.”  And with that classic understatement added “Mrs Clarke and her mother came to tea on Monday all quite well.”

Such are the rewards and insights of reading old postcards

Pictures; The Royal Military Academy, from the series Woolwich, 1906 and the Royal Military Academy from the series Woolwich Town and City 1905 issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

Chorlton Brook

It winds its way across Chorlton from the border with Withington, having traversed the city, taking on different names in that journey, and runs out into the Mersey.*

In its time it was an important source of water to the people of the township, and by the late 19th century was notorious as a polluted waterway.

This is one of those views most people seldom see, and requires the curious and members of The Friends of Chorlton Brook, to peer over the Brook Bridge on Barlow Moor Road without falling in.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Brook, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Brook, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Brook

OK you can come in now....Chorlton gets its first proper municipal Library

Opening the library in 1914

I say first proper municipal library because we had had a few private ones and a temporary one but this building opened in November 1914 was a proper first.

It arrived after the promise made to the people of south Manchester that  in return for voting to join the city in 1904, the Corporation would provide purpose built libraries.*

But they were a little slow in coming.

The library in the 1920s

In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.

It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The library in 2012

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles."

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago.

It was one of those funded by Andrew Carnegie but more of him elsewhere on the blog.

Pictures; the opening from the Manchester Courier, November 5 1914, courtesy of Sally Dervan, the library in the 1920s from the Lloyd collection and the entrance today from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton's libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20libraries

A sightseeing trip to Woolwich and those old wooden prison hulks with their chained convicts

Now I had completely forgotten about those old 18th century prison hulks moored at Woolwich and also of the excellent little book by Mr Reg Rigden*

The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford, describes in detail those three festering and rotting former warships.  I long ago lost my copy and so was over the moon when my friend Jean sent me her copy.

They were one of those short term measures used to solve the prison crisis in between sending convicts to America and later Australia.

And as so often happens they became tourist attractions with enterprising businessmen offering up river tours which provided glimpses of the chained men in the hulks or at work on the nearby shore.

So numerous did these excursions become that eventually they had to be ordered to stop.

I suppose it is easy to see why so many found such river trips a fascinating part of any visit to London.

“By 1777 there were over 220 felons at work in Woolwich, each chained by the leg.”*

Nor did the resumption of transporting convicted criminals across the world in 1787 spell the end of our prison hulks.

They had become part of the prison system and would continue well into the middle of the 19th century with the last Woolwich ship being burned in 1857.

There had been three such ships moored at Woolwich.

These were the Warrior, Jusitia and Defence which originally under "contract to a private individual, Duncan Campbell who looked after the convicts and was paid by the Government”* who in the 1780s had paid £32 a year for each convict which was later reduced to £26.

All of which promises more stories focusing on the awful conditions on board and some tales of desperate escapes.

So more later, alternatively you could just read Mr Rigden’s excellent book

Picture; cover from The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford

*The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford, Reg Rigden, 1976 London Borough of Greenwich

The forgotten story ………. a little bit of squatter history in Alexandra Park

Now the story of how the military buildings in Alexandra Park were taken over by squatters in 1946 has faded from memory.

The squatter movement was a direct response to the shortage of accommodation after the war much of which was because of war damage but also because some properties had been deliberately left unoccupied by their owners.

The campaign was nationwide and in London was co-ordinated by the Communist Party.

Here in Manchester the first successful squat was at “the gun site near Alexandra Park which housed one family at 8 p.m., but by the following day contained a community of over 20 families and all available huts were occupied.  

Among the first to arrive was Mr. E. Brent, a Dunkirk veteran and survivor of the sinking of the Lancastrian.  

Like Mr Herbert Pendleton, who was first on the field he had brought his wife and child from lodgings and was delighted to be in a place of his own.”*

Within a day the occupants "were visited by a butcher and a milkman and while conditions were primitive and the buildings lacked electricity” two huts have running water, one even boasts a bath and for the others there is a tap in the grounds.”

By the following week the occupants had elected a committee to look after the interests of community and collect money against future demands for rates and other charges, preparation were being made to bring in electricity and just eleven days after the squat began the residents were paying the Corporation rent.

For Mrs S. Middleton this amounted “to eight shillings a week for the hut where she lives with her husband now a clerk and their six year-old daughter, Jean.”**

In the great sweep of the park’s history the story of Mr and Mrs Middleton, and the Brent and Pendleton families may not amount to much, but they remain a forgotten episode which may now provoke a series of memories about that event.

And that would be something given that to date all we have are four newspaper reports and three pictures of a family and their home.


Pictures; outside one of the homes, 1946, Walters, m07247, inside the home, 1946, Walters, m07249 and m07248, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*A Sergeant Major ‘scares’ Salford Squatters, Manchester Guardian, August 17, 1946

** Another Squatters ‘ Victory', Manchester Guardian, August 28, 1946

Fair sits the day for a walk through Chorlton's past at 2pm today*

There is still time to get your tickets for this history walk through our collective past.

The Narnia Lampost, 2024

It's a stroll down Beech Road which will reveal what life was like in a small rural community on the edge of Manchester during the early 19th century, and on the way we will  discover that essential piece of advice of just who did you have to be polite too?

Meet at the top of Beech Road at the junction with Barlow Moor Road at 2pm and join us for the walk via the Rec, the old village green and on to the Edge Theatre.

Chorlton Book Festival, 2026

And in between there will be the stories of the people, and the interesting, the bizarre, and more than a few silly events, and of course plenty of sound history.

Tickets are still available from https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-down-beech-road-in-the-summer-of-1848-tickets-1996447382865?aff=odcleoeventsincollection

And for just £11 not only will all this local history be revealed but at the Edge there will be a bevy of light refreshments in that historic building.

So today at 2 pm, from Beech Road at the junction with Barlow Moor Road, for an hour and a bit.

This event is part of Chorlton Book Festival**

Pictures; The Narnia Lamp post, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*And for the curious the title is nicked from "Fair sits the wind for France"  which is the opening line from the 1606 poem "The Battle of Agincourt" by Michael Drayton and a nod to H.E.Bates and his 1944 novel "Fair Stood the Wind for France". 

 ** Chorlton Book Festival, September 17th to September 26th   https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/chorlton-book-festival-2026-4861494/