On Eltham High Street in the summer of 1977

Now there is a very obvious appeal about old photographs of Eltham.

Eltham High Street in 1977

The people stare back at you and it is easy to wonder about their lives, their hopes and of course what happened to them.

In the same way we are drawn to the buildings, comparing their appearance then with now or pondering on how the planners could have allowed such a magnificent house to be demolished to make way for an ugly block of flats or an equally drab parade of modern shops.

And the irony is that those 1950s/70s new build rarely have lasted the course.

The grey concrete has stained, the wood panelling has begun to rot as have the window frames and the modern signage is totally out of character.

So it is more pleasant to retreat into the images of a century ago.  All of which is fine but often ignores the more recent photographs, from say the 1970s or 1980s.  These can be just as revealing about how things have changed, with that added bonus that they show an Eltham which is almost as it is now but not quite.

In that sense they seem even more dated.  The fashions look outlandish and the cars comical.  But for the historian these images are just as important.

So in 1977 on this stretch of the High Street the King’s Arms was still serving pints, Warrens and the Golden Orient Tandoori Restaurant were yet to give way to Pat’s Textiles and Spice Island, and the Grove Market was a busy and vibrant place.

So and not for the last time I shall fall back on that old Monty Python quote, "no one expects the Spanish Inquistion" and make an appeal for more of those pictures from the recent past.

Picture; courtesy of Jean Gammons, 1977

Just before midnight on Princess Street …………1963

This is one of those pictures I wish I had taken.

We are on Princess Street approaching Whitworth Street, and given that it’s almost midnight the streets are empty.

I like the effect of the streetlamps, which along with the absence of people and vehicles makes for a very atmospheric scene.

Of course, the buildings running down from 113 to Whitworth Street have long gone, although they survived until relatively recently, after which the site was an empty plot for ages.

But when I first came across the picture last year, the plot was being developed with speed, with the boards promising “Luxury City Centre Living”, with the name Manchester Square.

Location; Princess Street




Pictures; Princess Street, 1963,  "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

Chorlton from Alexandra Road 1920 by Nora Templar

Looking towards Chorlton from Alexandra Road, 1920 

It is hard to think that just within living memory there will be people who remember the cows beeing brought back to the farms on the green, and of farmers cutting the harvest crops.

Nora Templar captured this scene looking across the fields from Alexandra Road towards Chorlton in 1920.

Nora was a well local historian who had lived at Dog House Farm from 1910 until the late 1950s. Like her father she was also an artist and some of his work will feature later in the year.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... nu 7 tram sheds and missing the tram

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

The Tram sheds, 2017 painted from a photograph, 1977

Now I always took the bus shelters for granted after all they had always been there and had always been bus shelters.

But not so.

They had started off as places to wait for the trams which began coming through Eltham at the beginning of the 20th century and which in turn were only made possible by the extension of Well Hall Road.

Neither of which I found out until recently.

LCC tram 1622, 2015

Of course it made perfect sense to extend Well Hall Road up from Sherard Road making a more direct route from Woolwich to the High Street.

And it made equal sense to start a tram service.

If I travelled on the old trams I have no memory, although Dad told me we made a special trip to see the last one arrive at the New Cross depot in 1952.

Sadly I can’t remember, and nor did he take a picture.

All of which just leaves the shelters as a testament to what had once been.

Location; Eltham, London

Painting; the tram sheds Well Hall Road © 2017 Peter Topping from a photograph by Jean Gammons circa 1977

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Picture;  LCC tram 1622, 2015, Crich Tramway Village courtesy of Andy Robertson

Rare pictures of the Horse and Jockey and a mysterious historian of Chorlton

This is one of three photographs that I doubt very few people have seen.

It is the Horse and Jockey in 1933 and appears in a Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy published privately in that year.

There are plenty of pictures of the pub from the very early years of the 20th century and lots from the 1950s onwards but so far I have only come across a couple which date to the 30s and 40s.

So this is an interesting one and shows the original before it expanded into the cottages on the left of the front door.

To our right beyond the fence had been the home of the Wilton family who lived there for most of the 19th century.  It was Samuel Wilton who around 1818 enclosed the green for his own personal garden with tall hedges and an allotment.  The space only returned to public use with the death of his daughter.

The remaining two photographs are of the parish church and Hough End Hall and all three were taken by F. Blyth who also printed the book at the College of Technology in Manchester while on his second year course.

But the text is by a J.D. Blythe and is as far as I know the first new account of Chorlton’s history since the twenty-six articles written by Thomas Ellwood during 1885-86.

Mr Blyth drew heavily on those articles and in places follows the earlier history word for word.  Not that this is to rubbish the book, particularly as I doubt it was meant as a serious rival to Ellwood’s work.  It may have just been a vehicle for F Blyth to complete a course at the college demonstrating his skill at photography and printing.

Now there is very little on either man.  J.D. Blythe was here on Claude Road between 1922 and 1929 and  is listed in the telephone directory but without trawling the street directories for the period we have no knowing when he went to live in Chorltonville and when he left.

There is a record of a J.D Blyth leaving for South Africa in 1919 with the stated purpose of settling in the Natal, but he returns just four months later in February 1920, and so far that is about it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the Horse & Jockey in 1933, F Blyth from A Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, by J.D.Blyth, 1933

Mending the light bulb on Randolph Street in 1962 ..... when gas was king

 Now, there is so much going on in this picture that its hard to know where to start.

But I suppose it is the man with the ladder, mending the street lamp.

He appears in several different pictures in the collection and was clearly being followed around.

Just why is now lost, but I suspect as the collection was originally from the City Council it will be to do with maintenance of Corporation property and possibly the problem of vandalism.

Some of the images show a broken glass covering.

In another the man appears to repairing the bracket or gas pipe, and yes I think this might be a gas  street lamp .

And before Eric of Northenden takes me to task, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that gas street lamps were still in use in Ardwick in the 1960s.*

All of which is confirmed by a small story in the Manchester Guardian which reported on February 22nd, 1966 that the “City’s last gas lamp” was taken down.  In a ceremony, attended by “50 people , including civic chiefs, gas officials, residents and cameramen, who crowded the top of Aden Street, Ardwick, yesterday  to say farewell  to the last of Manchester’s one time 21,682 gas lamps.

The lantern of gas lamp No. 1635 was taken down and ceremoniously presented to Councilor Joe Ogden, chairman of the gas lighting committee who said he would offer it up to Manchester Museum as a souvenir”.**

That momentous event was still four years away when our man put his ladder up against the lamp post on the corner of Randolph Street, and drew the attention of children, who may have been more fascinated by the photographer than the lamp man.

Either way they broke off from playing in the street to watch, not that the two lads in the distance, the window cleaner or the woman on her way to the corner shop seemed at all bothered.

There were two Randolph Streets listed in the directories, one in Crumpsall and the other in Levenshulme, and I am minded to think this is Crumpsall.

Although I could be wrong, probably am, leaving me confident that someone will know.

Location; Manchester

Pictures,  Gas Street lamps, Manchester, 1962 -3691.4 and 1962 -3692.1, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester Gas Lighting, https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=736794.0

**City’s last Gaslamp, Manchester Guardian, February 22nd, 1966

At the Kings Arms waiting for Fred Wisdom to pull a pint

Now this is one of those familiar pictures of the High Street, looking east towards the church and Court Yard some time in 1915.

It comes from an excellent collection from Greenwich Heritage Centre which I discovered recently.

On the surface it is interesting enough but it is the clues it offers up about some of the people who lived along this bit of the High street.

And because Mr Digby who took the picture focused on the Kings Arms I shall start with the pub and its landlord Fred Wisdom.

I can’t be sure when he took over the place but four years earlier he had been running the Railway Bell in Tonbridge.

He lived here with his wife Elizabeth, their two young children and his two nieces who worked behind the bar and described themselves as assistants.

And there is more because I know that Fred was born in 1878, Elizabeth two years earlier and they had been married in 1899.

I doubt we will ever know why they moved to Eltham but they were here by 1914 and were still pulling pints six years later.

All of which came from trawling the street directories and electoral registers which supply the names of the rest of the inhabitants on the block running up to Court Yard.

But for now my attention has been drawn to the big billboard on the gable end.

It is advertising the serialization of a story by Hall Cains who was one of the most popular novelists in the later Victorian and Edwardian period with many of his books being turned into films.

According to one source they were primarily romances, involving love triangles, but also addressed some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.

And as if on cue the book advertised as being serialized in the popular Reynolds’s News was Woman Thou Gavest Me. which I shall go looking for.

But I will just leave you back on the High Street in 1915.

Picture; the Old Kings Head, High Street Eltham, GRW 276, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/
courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php