What has family history ever done for any of us ………..?

 Now I ask that question not to offend anyone and certainly not to rubbish countless people including friends as well as my own sisters who have given up endless hours trawling the internet, reviewing dusty archives and standing in quiet churchyards confronting the graves of long dead ancestors.

Unknown and undated family member

And as someone who has done my share of all those things I understand the fascination to know who we are by knowing something of those in our family who went before us.

The journey often throws up tragedies, a fair few mysteries and some lost relatives.

During my research, I not only solved one dark secret, but uncovered a few more yet to be solved and discovered a new and exciting area of historical research. *

But all of which should come with a health warning, like the time on a warm sunny Saturday morning when I received one of those familiar family birth, marriage and death certificates which tell you so much about your chosen relative.

In this case that sunny Saturday became a whole less bright and sunny when the death certificate revealed that a brother of my great grandma Eliz had committed suicide with a cutthroat razor. The shock mingled with an overriding sense of voyeurism that I was somehow intruding on a family tragedy stopped me in my tracks.  This was not some light breeze into the corners of a relative’s life  but something very sad and dark.

And it raised the question of why do it, why burrow deep into  the lives of people just because they were once family and because I could courtesy of the internet?

Uncovering their stories, undated

More so because some will have spent a lifetime burying those secrets away from the gaze of loved ones, family and friends.

I always did and still do justify it by trying to place them in the context of where and when they lived and by so doing try to understand how they fitted into the bigger picture.

In the past that had led me to stop digging around the 1830s.  This was not an arbitrary decision but based on the official registration of births deaths and marriages in 1837 and the first fully accessible census return of 1841 which offers up details of when and where people were born and later lived, along with their occupations, and family members.

It was a decision which made sense, because they were easily found by searching genealogical platforms and it fitted with my own interest in the Industrial Revolution.

And so, I had rather answered that question of what had family history ever done for any of us, because it allowed me to better understand the great sweep of history by seeing how my family made all of work.

"............ I have thrown away the scabbard"

Not for me that fruitless and questionable quest to discover if one of mine had fought at the Battle of Hastings and by degree had been rewarded by stolen English land or punished for not stopping that arrow that may have wounded Harold.

But now I have joined the quest because having known we originated in the east Highlands and were a member of a clan I have begun to wonder if we were mixed up in that disaster that was the battle of Culloden.  It was indeed a disaster for many of the Highlanders who followed the fop who aspired to win back the throne for the Stuart’s. The defeat led the Young Pretender to scuttle back to Rome leaving those who had followed his vain glorious and misjudged gamble to be harshly punished by the authorities.

The Highland charge at Culloden, 1746

The journey is new to me.

 I had  grown up with the stories from my uncles, two of whom fought with the Black Watch and listened to the Jacobite laments but the realities of the defeat had turned me against all things Culloden.

The Royalist army stand firm, Culloden, 1746

Until having done the ancestral DNA test which confirmed where we came from and rediscovering old family trees that took us back to a John Simpson born in the Highlands in 1780 I just wonder.  He was born just thirty-five years after the battle, and so will have grown up with family members who might well have talked in hushed tones about the defeat and may even have known that his father participated.

It is a tad romantic especially given the daft nature of the Stuart attempt and the subsequent vengeance which settled on the Highlands and I guess is all most impossible to fulfil, but I wonder if we could get close to uncovering our part in the events of 1745-6.

Well we shall see, and despite the heaps of rabbit warrens I might vanish down I think it would be fun and end up with me deciding family history can do a lot for us.

Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch, 1918

Location; Our family

Pictures;  Unknown and undated family member and George Bradford Simpson 1918, from the Simpson collection, uncovering their stories,  undated courtesy of Ron Stubley "Gentlemen he cried, drawing his sword, I have thrown away the scabbard", from Scotland's story: a history of Scotland for boys and girls, , and The Battle of Culloden, David Morier, 1746

*British Home Children, the growing historical study of young people migrated from Britain and other parts of the old British Empire by the Poor Law Unions, and children’s charities. One of these was a great uncle of mine.

Beech Road 1980

Now I always think that some of the most fascinating pictures of Chorlton are not those of a hundred years ago but the more recent.

Often these we remember because they are our past and yet in a strange way they can seem as remote as a photograph of Beech Road taken at the start of the last century.

So it is with this one taken by my old friend Tony Walker in 1980. Richardson’s still bears its name of the Beech Tree Bakery with its pine panelling.

The Police Station is still an office for the City Council and away in the distance we still had a Post Office.

Looking more closely I am struck at how in 1980 Beech Road was still a conventional parade of shops. Next to Richardson’s was the fabric shop Marcele Materials and further down the Wool Shop as well as one of the two butcher’s while the boarded premises had been a grocery store.

 Completing the row was the Chinese takeaway of Mr Chan and the furniture place, where you could get anything from a three piece suite to a 1950 rotating ash tray.

And facing them was another butcher’s shop, a hardware place a grocers and further down Muriel and Richard’s veg shop. Within two decades many of them had gone.

Picture; Beech Road circa 1980 from the collection of Tony Walker

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 9........... bold new designs and a bit of Formica

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

I often wonder what  those who lived in our house in the 1950swould have made of the new household designs which were featured in Woman’s Own for January 12 1956.

Of course they may never have taken the magazine but they would not have escaped the exciting new ideas for transforming their early 20th century house into one which fitted with the 1950s.

Looking at them today they seem quite ordinary and just a little old fashioned but back then they were at the cutting edge of all that was new and innovative.

The basic designs were all there two decades earlier but were way out of reach of most working people.

But by the mid 50s that was changing.

It was partly as a result of the growing prosperity, along with new mass produced materials like plastic and Formica and the ever present offer of hire purchase, which meant for a “few pounds down and the rest over easy instalments” bits of the new life could be pretty much within the reach of every one.

All of which marks the 1950s off as more of a mould breaker than perhaps “the swinging 60s.”

Here were bold new colours, exciting fabrics and designs which relegated the old heavy furniture many peoples’ dreams to a place in a museum along with the odd dinosaur and other ancient relics.

And along with all these were those sheets of hardboard, which were cheap and could be applied to everything from period doors to the space in front of ripped out fireplaces.

For a few bob you could obliterate the beautiful features around doors create flat level spaces and add wonders to the fitted kitchens.

In 294 the master bedroom had lost its fire place and in its place a gigantic headboard with drop down drawers and a reddish swirly affect which I thought was the pinnacle of modern design.

But then I was only 14.

Sadly the DIYers responsible had also managed to take out the other upstairs fire places leaving just one small fine cast iron one downstairs.

Now it is pointless to rail against this vandalism.

At the time it seemed new and different and after six years of a bitter and hard war along with the preceding period of grim austerity all this was what we deserved.

And I have to admit I mounted similar attacks in the 1970s on good taste pulling out old features which gave the house its authentic feel and covering the walls with wood chip.

All of which means that I would have been no better in 1956, but just maybe now I might have cherished what was already there and just added the odd new idea.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from Woman's Own, January 12 1956

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

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

Getting prepared ………… Decimal Day ………. 1971

Now for anyone who has forgotten, and for all those who never knew, Decimal Day was February 15th, 1971, and it ushered in the decimalization of our currency.

Out went £sd, or again for those who don’t know, pounds, shillings and pennies and in came the simplified £ and new pence.

Hence forth a £ consisted of 100 new pence, which did away with the historic and wee bit confusing arrangement where a £ was made of 20 shillings, and a shilling was made up of twelve pennies.

In the process coins which went back into the long and distant past ceased to exist.

These included the shilling,  and the happenny, joining the half crown, threepenny bit and the farthing.

Now most of my generation and all those that went before me, we had no problem with counting pennies, shillings and Pounds, but I concede that in creating a decimal system was more logical.

Looking back at old news programmes, there were some who struggled with the change and mindful that it could be confusing, the Government ran a huge publicity campaign.

And out of that came New Money Snap, a game to be played at home by people of all ages.

I had completely forgotten it, but in turning out some old family stuff, I came across our copy.

The instructions point out that “The rules for ‘New Money Snap’ are the same as for ordinary snap with the additional rule that snap can be called where the money value is the same”.

Our pack is still in pristine condition, which rather makes me think that no one was at all confused, or worried about the changeover.

Location; the UK











Pictures; playing cards from New Money Snap, 1971, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

And the lights go back on in Manchester ………. August 17th, 1945*

The caption in the Manchester Guardian on that day in the August of 1945 simply reported “’Manchester Town Hall flood lit for V.J. Day’ A firework has just been sent up from the great crowd in Albert Square.”

Now for those who don’t know V.J. Day’ signalled the end of the war against Japan and followed on a few months after the defeat of Nazi Germany and the close of the European war.

Of course, to be strictly accurate the lights had gone back on ending the blackout on April 30th.* 

But as the Manchester Guardian reported elsewhere in that edition “The floodlit spectacle of London is naturally much grander this time than on V.E. nights”, which I suspect reflected the greater time to organise an event.

Victory in Europe Day had been almost a spontaneous outburst of joy after six long and bitter years of war.

Sadly, there was much more to the original photograph, but the passage of 80 years and the poor storage left the picture much battered.

Location; Albert Square, Manchester

Picture; Victory High Lights In Manchester, The Manchester Guardian, August 17th, 1945 

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 6 ........... winter in 294

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I can’t remember which wintry scene this will have been but I am guessing it will be in the 1970s and because I don’t remember it being taken it might be after 1973.

I did  trawl through the “Monthly Weather Report of the Meteorological Office”** for evidence of snow in London which offered up the news that it had snowed on Christmas day 1970.

But there are a lot of years on either side of 1970 so I shall just leave it.

Instead the picture took me back to living in the house before dad put in central heating.

It was a cold house, that is to say while the gas fire in the back room and the oil stove in the front kept the downstairs warm there was no heating upstairs.

Not that I guess that was any different from many homes at the time and like countless generations before me, going to bed was a quick affair of stripping off and jumping under the covers followed by that frantic effort to heat the bed up by  thrashing around.

Now Dad did go round with hot water bottles but sometimes I missed out and was doomed to the fate of cold bedclothes.

And all the hot water bottles would not prevent the slow but inevitable spread of ice on the inside of the windows which in the really cold winters rarely seemed to budge during the day.

Of course back then that was what you came to expect and pretty much took it for granted.

A few decades earlier and the occupants of our house might just have lit coal fires in the upstairs rooms in the most severe of winters but by the time we moved in the hapless DIYers had taken them out or blocked them up a move which today seems the height of vandalism but back in the 1950s and 60s was the “cool thing” to do.

I doubt that dad would have had truck with the ideas that bedroom fires should only be lit when someone was ill, keeping warm was for him always very important.

So in the fullness of time we got central heating by which time I had gone, moving from one very cold student bed sit to another in the more shabby parts of Manchester where icy windows were but one of the problems.

Of course back then it was all an adventure and which pushed 294 well into the background and it has taken this picture to bring it all back.

It was taken from the small back bedroom which was where dad decided to locate the boiler and which gave a magnificent view of the woods.

But that is for another time.

Pictures; looking out to the woods, circa 1970, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall   

**“Monthly Weather Report of the Metrological Office”http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/5/3/Dec1970.pdf