Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 39 ............. the mystery of the moving street

Now this entrance looks as if it should go somewhere and back in 1851 it did.

What should be Back Spear Street, 2016

This is Back Spear Street which is off Spear Street.

Spear Street  is one of those streets that connects Hilton Street to Great Ancoats Street.

It is narrower than Oldham and Lever Streets which run parallel but it still offers up some interesting sights including a few of those new wall painting which are everywhere in the Northern Quarter.

And it has a mystery in that Back South Street seems to have moved.

On the 1849 and 51 maps it is directly opposite Faraday Street and contained seventeen properties along its length which ran off Spear Street and then took a right to run parallel with its name sake.

In time I will go looking for its residents, and that search might also reveal why what is now called Back Spear Street starts a little further north and still has an echo of that dog leg set up.

Back Spear Street, 2016

I must admit that at first this did confound me but Goads Fire Insurance map and the current street plan place it closer to Warwick Street than it was.

I don’t have an answer and I suspect the search might not prove doing.

So instead having featured the entrance to the old Back Spear Street and its rival I shall close with the building that stands beside our earlier one.

In 1851 this spot was listed as livery stables, from where a Mr William White ran a coach business.

Almost thirty years later it was the site of a glass manufacturer and by 1903 was specializing in the manufacture of millinery products.

The building beside the old street entrance, 2016

I can’t date our building and so it will have to be a trawl of the rate books but it does post date 1851 and having been at the mercy of the fly poster it does now have one of those Northern Quarter paintings.

And that just leaves me with the mystery because if you follow the directories over the years Back Spear Street seems to where I first found it but that conflicts with our maps.

All very strange.

Which just leaves someone to come up with the answer.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, Spear Street up and down its length, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking Well Hall ......... past the station and then the climb up to the High Street

Now anyone who walked up to the High Street from anywhere along Well Hall Road may well have wondered about these houses.

I was always fascinated by how high and set back they were from the road and was always particularly intrigued by the one with high wall and brick entrance.

And I remember the time when one of the occupants excavated all that land in front of their house to create a car space which must have been in the late 60s or early 70s.

In time someone will post on the history of these properties.

Tricia’s picture, she thinks, dates from the 1930s and certainly the tram lines  will date it to before the end of the 1940s.

When I regularly walked Well Hall from our house just beyond the roundabout which will have been thirty or so year after the picture was taken little had changed.

And I still remember the school friend who lived on the opposite side of the road.

She was called Deboarah, was a year below me at Crown Woods and went off to train as a teacher.  Alas our paths never crossed again.

Many others remember those houses.  My friend Jean thought they were posh while Lesley like me passed them many times on foot.

For me it was the return journey back from the High Street, which was just that better with its view down the slope to the station and then that steady rise away in the distance that took in the Odeon and the woods.

So thank you Tricia for posting the pictures.

Memories are made of these.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; Well Hall Road, circa 1930s, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

From green fields to gas works, the Reverend William Birley’s change of parish in 1859

In 1859 the Reverend William Birley had left Chorlton where he had been for seventeen years exchanging the small rural living for one in the  in the heart of Salford.  

This was St Stephens* and it was surrounded by rows of terraced housing which hid smaller houses and dark courts as well as the gas works, timber yards, iron works and cotton factories .

To the west and north the area was cut off by the river and to the east by the railway.

The contrast between the two places could hardly be starker.  During the day there was the noise from the countless factories, mills and foundries, while at night the clunk of shunting railway wagons and the whistle of steam locomotives carried over the roof tops.  Added to this was the all pervading smell from the gas works and the ever present pall of smoke from countless domestic fires and factory chimneys. **

But this was just the outward appearances of a hard and grim parish.  In the area bordering the church most were engaged in manual occupations.    Many of these were best described as pauper trades,

“for the wages can never enable a man to rear a family in independence.  Street sweepers, night soil men and policemen, handloom weavers and cotton dyers, hawkers, strikers in foundries, minders of planning and drilling machines, railway porters and the whole range of labourers, ....their wages varying from 12 to 18s [60p-80p] per week.  Deduct from this highest sum of 2s 6d for rent and how can a man keep and clothe himself, wife and four or five children on the remainder?”***      

These were also physically demanding jobs which could be dangerous.

Nothing perhaps prepared the casual visitor to the scene in the gas works as the men cleared the coke from the ovens and transported the red hot material on hand waggons, or the noise, dust and repetitive labour of the spinning room of a mill.
Perhaps it was the wish to bring a message of religious hope to such a place which motivated William Birley.

After all the income at St Stephens’s was £145 a year which was just £42 more than he had received in income from St Clements’ in the township.****    His sense of duty had also led him to sit as a Poor Law Guardian while still living in the township and later became an Inspector of schools for the county.*****

He was comfortably well off having described himself as of independent means at the 1841 census, held shares in a number of railway companies and was a director of at least two companies.  

He chose to live some distance from his parishioners in Leaf Square.  This was a pleasant and elegant spot separated from Greengate and St Stephen’s by a double loop of the river, and further isolated by the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal, and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

Looking out from his windows he had an uninterrupted view of the delightfully laid out square, and across open land to the river and Peel Park beyond.  Only the railway and canal could be said to act as mild blots on what was otherwise a fine vista.

Moreover his neighbours were drawn from the same genteel class.  They included a property owner, retired solicitor, fellow cleric, an iron merchant and those on independent means.      As would be expected all had a variety of servants, housekeepers, cooks and governess’s to ease their comfortable lives.

True there were nearby examples of industry in the form of cotton and flax mills, a dye works and brewery but these were surrounded by open land and houses with large gardens.   Even the rope walks which were some distance away between the square and the railway could not have been said to distract from what was a pleasant place.

St Stephen’s, it has to be said was more impressive than our own church in the township.  It was made of plain brick, dated from 1794 and was reckoned by contemporary observers to be comfortably fitted, containing three galleries and an organ.   All of which made it bigger than ours and with its tall classical tower and two floors it stood out from the village church William had previously preached in.***

But then it was set in the middle of Salford, with a timber yard running alongside the graveyard and a  foundry at the back of the church.   Just across the road towered the gasworks and a little further away was the rope works.

There is more on William Birley, the book. The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Pictures; St Clements Chorlton-cum-Hardy, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1841-53, and St Stephens in Salford & Leaf Square, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Duffield, H. G., The Strangers Guide to Manchester 1850, 29, , The church was demolished in 1962 and the site is now a small park between Trinity Way and St Stephens Street.

**In the 1861 census these comprised the enumeration districts of numbers 7, 8, 9 , and 10, where the occupations included labourers, warehouseman, textile workers, foundry workers, laundresses, and porters

*** Watts, John, The Facts of the Cotton Famine, Simpkin, Marshall & Co, Manchester 1866, page 99, Google edition page 120

****Lewis, Samuel, A Topographical Dictionary of England, S Lewis & Co Vol 1& 3 1840

*****He held shares in the Birkenhead, Lancashire and Cheshire Junction Railway and the Fleetwood, Preston and West Riding Junction Railway [Preston Guardian December 24 1846], and  was a director of the Socttish Amicable Life Assurance Society [Manchester Times Saturday February 17 149], and the Manchester and London Life Assurance and Loan Association [Manchester Times Saturday March 12 1853],

Poverty…. gas masks ….. going to the flicks …. and a night in Chorlton ….. stories from Madeline Alberta Linford

Madeline Alberta Linford was by any measure a remarkable woman.

Madeline Alberta Linford, 1921

At just 22 in 1917 she was writing for the Manchester Guardian, at 27 she had reported on the famine and typhus outbreak in Poland followed by on-the-spot reporting from Austria, and Germany.

In the same year she was chosen to create to create a page "aimed at the intelligent woman", defined by C. P. Scott  as discussing issues such as "domestic economy, labour-saving, dress, household prices, and the care of children".*

And she remained the only woman journalist on the Manchester Guardian till 1944.

During the war she was also night picture editor, combining it with voluntary war work.

She “wrote a biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1924, and five novels: Broken Bridges (1923), The Roadside Fire (1924), A Home and Children (1926) Bread and Honey (1928) and Out of the Window (1930)”.* 

To all of this she also championed other women writers.

I first came across Ms Linford when Tony Goulding wrote about her life for the blog back in 2023.** 

It is a comprehensive account of her life and particularly her time in Chorlton on Claude Road and Wilbraham Road and is an excellent starting point.

My interest was reignited after a chance conversation with Cllr Mathew Bentham whose friend now lives in her old house in Chorltonville.

August 1917

As you do, I went looking for her articles in the Manchester Guardian. 

Alas her stories on Poland, Germany and Austria have yet to turn up, but there were plenty of articles spanning her years as a critic reviewing plays, and films as well as those reporting on contemporary issues.

Reading them for the first time over a century since they were produced, they offer up a fascinating insight into Britain during the early and middle decades of the last century.

And there were some surprises, not least that in 1917 both here and in Hollywood films were being made in colour.

Her review of Annabel’s Romance in the August of 1917 at the Deansgate Picture House begins with that simple observation that “A coloured film is still rare” **, while five years later she playfully remarked that the colour effects in A Study in Scarlet made “Faces as expressionless as though a sponge had wiped the life out of them”.****

Deansgate Picture House, 1928

But for me it is her articles on hospitals, shopping and the impact of the war which bring the 1920s and 30 bouncing into life.

December 1922

Like the piece on the Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, written in 1922 which is both informative and written with style.

She visited in late December when “the hospital is in party dress [with] its Christmas decorations which are simple and consist of silvered twigs latticed across windows with robins perching on them, trails of pink almond blossom, and bright ballons tugging at their strings.”*****

But this is 1922, in that time before the NHS when poverty is the main reason why the fifty-bed hospital is full and why “the fifty cots could be filled over and over again”.

“All of them are suffering in some way or another from malnutrition.  They come from the most destitute homes in Manchester where their poor little bodies have been the victims of ignorance, poverty and in a few tragic cases, of actual neglect … where all the good things of life are short”.

Manchester Babies’ Hospital, 1962

“Children of six months weighing only six pounds; newborn babies whose weight barely reaches three pounds. 

The wards are full of them, lying with terrible apathy in their cots, their faces wizened and furrowed like those of the very aged, and their waxen fingers as helpless as broken ones. Anyone who since the war has visited the infant welfare centres of Berlin or Vienna will find the tragedies all over again in this Manchester hospital.”

And because rickets marches with poverty “the conservatory has been turned into a semi-open-air ward for rickets”.

Equally telling is the admission of just how much money is needed to maintain and advance the care. So, while “The Babies’ Hospital is full of plans for the future and a laundry is now being built and X-ray department is one of the great needs [with] it is hoped an extension to enable another twenty babies to have their shire of skill and kindness but for these schemes as well as the ordinary everyday running of the hospital money is badly needed”.

It is a powerful piece of reporting which comes with the style of an accomplished writer and so she begins by locating the hospital in a “big old house of the type of successful businessmen built for their families half a century ago. One can imagine it furnished in mahogany and rep with steel engravings of ‘Pilate’s Wife’s Dream hanging in the hall and camellias cherished in the conservatory”.

That same playful way of writing is evident in a series of articles she wrote in the run up to the first war time Christmas of 1939.

Set against the novelty and danger of going out in the blackout, and the surprise that the shops almost had a prewar feel about them the ever-present conflict is not far away and includes a delightful and humorous take on what the fashionable woman looks for in a bag to contain her gas mask.

July 1947

And along with all the serious and the not so serious comes a review of our own “Chorlton Repertory Theatre Group which has been an enlivening feature of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and the neighbouring suburbs”.

Written in in the summer of 1947 it reviews the group’s “choice of plays, performed in the Public Hall ranging from Shakespeare to Noel Coward and to farces which had caught the fancy of West End audiences” and focused on “The Letter” by W. Somerset Maugham.

It is a well balanced and I think affectionate report and offers up the names of some of the actors.  These include Harry Littlewood, Gloria Foster, Arthur Spreckley, the producer, and James Lovell who “designed and painted the excellent sets” which might be another story. 

One to read, 2024

But for now, I will just leave you with a suggestion to read a review by Quentin Outram of a selection of Ms Linford’s writing “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford" edited by Michael Herbert and published in 2024

Pictures; Portrait of Madeline from the Guardian’s photograph of its 1921 editorial staff researched by Tony Goulding, Manchester Babies’ Hospital in Burnage Lane, m15731, 1962 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Deansgate Picture House, from Kinematograph Year Book, 1928

Further reading; Outram, Quentin, The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, Society for the Study of Labour History January 3rd 2023, https://sslh.org.uk/2025/01/03/the-journalism-and-writing-of-madeline-alberta-linford/

Herbert Michael,[ed] “M.A.L” The Journalism and Writing of Madeline Alberta Linford, self-published through Lulu.com and available Society for the Study of Labour History, https://sslh.org.uk/

* Madeline Alberta Linford, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeline_Linford

**Madeline Alberta Linford .... another story from Tony Goulding, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/12/madeline-alberta-linford-another-story.html

***A Coloured film at Deansgate Picture House, Manchester Guardian, August 21st, 1917

****A Study in Scarlet, Manchester Guardian, February 24th 1922

*****A Hospital of Cots, The Sick Babies of Manchester, Manchester Guardian, December 29th, 1922

******Chorlton Theatre Group, Manchester Guardian, July 30th, 1947

Touching our history 18th century silver from the old parish church

It is for me one of the most exciting things about crawling around in the past and it is when you get to touch something you have written about.

It is as if the very act of holding it in your hands links you to every other person who has ever picked it up.

Now over the course of the last few years I have come across many documents, pictures and things which came my way as I wrote the book*.

And as I promised to run stories about how the book was written this seemed a good moment to start.

The first is  the silver tankard donated to the church in the 1730's and used and seen by congregations in the old parish church until well into the 20th century.

The second is the minute book of the meetings which ran the township during the 19th century.

They cover the period 1839 through to the 1850s and document who was appointed as the officers including the constable, those responsible for the highways and assessing the rates as well as decisions on how our money should be spent.  There in the handwriting of Edward Smith are the names of the men who sat in the old school house on the green and carried out the business of local government.

I suppose it is a little daft but each time I use the book I am conscious that perhaps only three or four other people have turned its pages since it was written 160 years ago which is a great shame because here are the voices of the committee trying to grapple with the mundane and the deadly serious.

In 1850, James Higginbotham argued that because the services of the constable had not been called on during the year before “there should be no Constable returned for appointment this year.”  

And when the decision was repeated in 1853 it was as James White said because “the Township is sufficiently protected by the County Constabulary that there be no special constables returned.” It was a decision which must have sat uncomfortably with many who reflected that the previous decades had been marked by all manner of crimes and disturbances.

And only went to underline the serious loss of money from the Committees' own accounts just two years earlier.


* The Story of Chorlton-Cum-Hardy
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Picture; of the tankard from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2011

At the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, May 20th 1936

Now it would be a full 28 years after the Well Odeon was open that I first saw a film there.

And of course I have no idea what the film was or for that matter almost any of the pictures I went on to see at the place.

But it was a regular haunt made more so because I had the job of taking my sisters there on a Saturday morning.

Of all the picture houses I have been in there, was something special about the Odeon.

It started with that unique box office in the centre of the foyer, that thick carpet, the decor and of course the smell.

Put them all together and you felt that this was somewhere special, a place not only to be entertained but a place where for a few hours the daily routines along with the niggles of the day could be forgotten.

And these picture houses were designed for just that purpose.  Plenty of homes back in 1936 were still austere places little in the way of luxury and by comparison drab and dim and cold.

But the Well Hall Odeon radiated style from that tall glass and tiled tower to the sweep of the entrance roof.

And it was big. It dwarfed the houses that surrounded it stretched back and was only really challenged by the church opposite.

So I am really pleased that Chrissie shared the souvenir programme with me.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; souvenir booklet of the opening of the Well Hall Odeon, 1936 courtesy of Chrissie Rose

Lost stories from Chorlton’s graveyard ………

 I am looking at a picture of our own parish graveyard sometime in the late 1970s and it records a scene which has long gone.

When the gravestones were numerous. 1979

Many of the gravestones would be removed during the make over which turned a neglected and forlorn spot into a pleasant recreational area.

In total there had once been 361 monuments to those who had been buried in the graveyard, but only a few survived the rest are lost to us.

And that of course is a terrible loss, both for the descendants of those who were interred here and also to the historian wanting to uncover Chorlton’s past.

Because here had been buried the people of plenty, along with the less wealthy, ranging from farmers, tradesmen to the families of farm labourers.

The Stopford family, 1979

The earliest recorded burials date from the mid-1700s with the possibility there may have been some from the previous century.

We do have the parish burial records along with an inventory made in 1975 of the 361 gravestones, but that will never be the same as standing in front of them and reading not just the names but also the messages that were left.

The Isherwood family, 1979

Like that of William Barlow Stopford who “fell asleep in Jesus” aged just 23, who was buried with his father who was 31 when he died and William’s brother Frank who died on November 14th just 19 months old. 

Sadly, their gravestone is one of the missing ones, along with that of the Isherwood family, whose gravestone records the names of six, two of whom died at 8 and 14 months.

In time I will go looking for their stories but for now all I have are pictures of their gravestones and the locations of where the two sat.  The Stopford’s rested just east of the lych gate and was the first you would encounter on entering the graveyard while the Isherwood plot was one of six graves that rested against the south wall of the church.

I wish I had taken more on what must have been a spring day in 1979, but soe far I have only turned up the two images amongst the 1500 or negatives which I am slowly digitalizing.

There may be more but at present that is it.

Location; the parish graveyard

Pictures; lost scenes from our parish graveyard, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson