Lunch time on the green by the lych gate in 1910

We are sometime in the summer of 1910 and judging by the collection of young people I think it must be dinner time.

A few are young enough to be at school but four at least of the central group will have been working.

And I think they will have been on their lunch break from the laundry.  This was the Pasley later renamed the Queen and Pasley on Crescent Road.*

It opened in 1893, and at one point employed 50 staff. It was along with the brick works the closest we came to being industrial.

Inside the place which survived into the 1980s, all the washing machines were belt driven by a huge steam engine and the laundry was the first to install the “float-iron system” which consisted of the multiple roller pressing machines. This was 15 feet wide and 15 feet long and “was a mass production ironing machine, with delicately poised rollers. You could put a shirt with pearl buttons on it and it wouldn’t leave a mark.”**

So with the noise, steam, and general hubbub I guess posing for the camera outside the lych gate was a welcome diversion.

Now it is impossible to know who any of them were, but I rather think the young man standing with his arms folded might just be Arthur Higginbotham who would have been 15 and was the son of one of our local farmers.

The Higginbotham’s had been here since the 1840s and lived in the farmhouse almost opposite the church yard.

Someone very similar crops up in other pictures from the time riding a horse and while it is speculation it makes sense that this was Arthur rather than another employee of the Queen and Pasley, for I doubt they would have had a lad with a horse or likewise allowed their own horse to be ridden without a saddle through the village.

So on that hot summer’s day Arthur may have taken time out from the farm and strolled across to join the crowd.   I rather expect he knew all of the others there and like them enjoyed the novelty of having a photograph taken. Just how much of a novelty can be gauged in the mix of poses.

There at the centre are the confident ones staring back at the camera with arms folded and hands on hips.

And then there are those who peer back a little unsure of the pose to strike.  The boy with his hands in his pockets the girls with the basket one of whom is craning her neck to see what is going on.

But for me it is the two on the extreme left. One looks directly into the camera, but the other seems more interested in the work of the men down by the gates to the Bowling Green Hotel.

None of the workman gives the photographer any house room.  Whatever they are doing it is far more absorbing than the effort of posing for the camera.

And I suppose that is the point.  I said having your picture taken was still a novelty but that is a little inaccurate, because there would by 1910 have been regular commercial photographers wandering the township.

In some cases they specialized in taking pictures of the new rows of houses which were going up across Chorlton and would make a living from offering the images to the local householders who more often than not bought the card to send to friends and family.  You come across these with a cross drawn above a house or a comment on the back telling the reader, “This is our house.”

Other commercial photographers were more interested in the iconic scenes like the Horse and Jockey, country lanes or the Lych Gate.

And I suppose this is how our picture came together. On that hot summers day with some good light to play with the photographer had set up on the green, and as happens in minutes he has drawn a crowd. I say he because I am fairly confident that this was still a time when most travelling photographers were men.

And given that it was midday most of his audience were children or young people on their lunch break.

You can get some sense of just how impromptu the whole thing is from what looks like a cricket bat on the ground beside Arthur.

I guess the two boys were in the middle of a game, while the two young girls caught with their basket were either on an errand or carrying their lunch.

It is a wonderful picture and one that is worth far more study.  There are the buildings of the old Bowling Green and the barn of the farm to the left of the church and just poking up over the wall of the graveyard the monument with its apparently broken pillar.  All of which is for another time.

*renamed Crossland Road
**memories from the owner of the laundry March 1985

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Walking the Thames

Now I am the first to admit it’s a bit of a silly title but that is exactly what my friend Neil did, once under the river at Woolwich and then again at Greenwich.

It’s not my chosen way of leaving Woolwich for that other place, but Neil had never seen either of the foot tunnels and so it was an adventure.

I have to say that these are adventures I no longer want to do.

I prefer the ferry where I can see where I am going and know that the water is below me and not above me.

I still have vivid memories of that old illuminated sign at the Wapping and Rotherhithe  Underground Stations  announcing  “Men working on Pumps” when I used the Tube regularly in the 1960s to know that over is better than under, a feeling enhanced by one visit to Easington Colliery.

Kay’s father who was Chief Mechanical Engineer at the pit thought I would be interested in seeing how generations of the Baxter family had made their living.

There was no way I could say no to my future father in law, although a mile down and three miles out under the North Sea I wish I had done so.

I last walked the walk when I was ten and have never done the journey since.
I do remember it was exciting.

The floor slowly sloped down there was that echoing sound of your footsteps and the point where the other exist came into view.

So that is it.  I have thanked Neil for his pictures, which have made me a tad homesick but not enough to do that walk.

Location; London

Pictures, the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson

The one we have all forgotten ...... in the Square in 1978

I say the one we have all forgotten, but for many it will be a scene they have never experienced.

We are in St Ann’s Square looking towards Exchange Street with St Mary’s Gate beyond on a warm sunny day in 1978.

Back then you negotiated your way around parked cars, and waiting taxis while in the distance was that parade of shops which stretched down from the old Marks and Spencer’s with its bending canopy.

Today that building has gone, as have the parked cars and taxis and from our vantage point there is a clear view across New Cathedral Street which was cut when the area was redeveloped after the bomb.

Location; St Ann’s Square

Picture; St Ann’s Square, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Loons, lava lamps and growing up ............ the 1970's

Larva lamps I have known

Now it is odd the way that some decades get the thumbs up and others are relegated to the dustbin of history.

So the 1960's will always be the “Swinging 60’s, the 1890's will remain the “Gay 90's” and the 1920’s will be forever the “Roaring 20s”

And by contrast the following decade which began with a world depression and ended with a world war will never be remembered for the advances in technology, much that was innovative in design and culture and a growing prosperity in some parts of the country.

All of which brings me to the 1970's much berated by  journalists and second rate historians who are content to fall back on the lazy stereo types of striking workers, questionable fashions and larva lamps.

Of course those shallow titles, often coined on a slow day in a newsroom do contain much that is true of a period.

For my generation the 1960's was an exciting time in all sorts of ways while for my mother the 30's would always be the Means Test, mass unemployment and the slow slide to war.

Still a student, 1970

And any history of the 1970s does have to take in the three day week, the widespread industrial conflict and plenty of very grim wars from Vietnam and Cambodia, to southern Africa and the Middle East.

But nasty wars and equally nasty dictators along with strikes, tasteless design and awful fashions can be found in any decade during the last two centuries.

So it’s not that I make a special defence of the 1970's but just that like any time in history it was a mix of the good and bad and the happy and sad added to which it was the decade I passed from being a student into the world of work and along the way got married and bought a house.

All of which are reckoned to be pretty big stages in anyone’s growing up.

And set against the dismal days of the three day week and later the bin dispute there was the legislation to address equal pay and some aspects of discrimination in the workplace, a determination to challenge racist attitudes and a whole range of exciting new ideas in fashion and popular culture.

Down at the eight day loolkng for loons and strawberry perfume, 1973

At which point someone will cite the underlying issues of our economic decline, the continuation of the huge disparity in wealth, the persistence of racism and sexism and some very dodgy TV programmes.

But all of these could be found in the 60s and in the decade that followed but alas tend to be ignored.

So with this in mind I rather think I will set off on a new series exploring the 1970s and include a few of the things that were special to me including the lava lamp which despite everything my kids will say I still think was pretty neat.

Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license., Andrew Simpson, 1970, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and ; On the Eighth Day, 111 Oxford Street, in April 1973, m00173, y H. Milligan, H.,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

At the Tower of London in the summer of 1955 and other childhood memories

Outside the Tower with Nana, 1955

I can’t say I remember this day at the Tower of London.

It would have been I think in the summer of 1955 and Nana would have been on one of her all too infrequent visits to London from Derby.

This will have been the first time I visited the place and pretty much set me on a love affair with the Tower which I have never lost.

Within a few years of this picture, I was doing the trip on a Saturday with anyone who would come with me and often on my own.

The journey began at Queens Road railway station which was an adventure all in itself.

The platform was up a tall flight of stairs past a nondescript booking counter which even then seemed past its best, and from the cracks in the wooden boards of the platform you could see down to the ground below.

The train took you into London Bridge past rows of houses, backstreet garages  and warehouses and the unmistakable landmark of the Peak Frean biscuit factory with that overpowering sweet smell which hung in the air even on a cold January day.

And then the terminus at London Bridge, the river and down that dark flight of stone steps to Lower Thames Street and the magical walk past Billingsgate to the Tower.

Peak Frean, 1891

Now Saturday morning was a good time to walk Lower Thames Street, the porters and traders had finished up and the street cleaners were out in force tidying away the refuse from the early morning trading which left bits of fish strewn across the road.

Even now I have not lost the memory of that all pervading fish smell which along with the stone sets in the road and the twisting side streets were almost as they had been a century before and with not much imagination could place you back in the same spot in the time of Pepys.

This of course was just a prelude to the Tower itself, which on a Saturday back in 1959 was free to children which was an opportunity I exploited to the full.

Perhaps it’s one of the down sides of my character that I could and still can revisit a place week after week, do the same tour, stop at the same places and continue to be totally absorbed in all there is to see.

The Tower, circa 15th century

And like most of us it was also the sheer excitement of touching the stones and climbing the narrow spiral staircases of the White Tower that transported me back to some moment in the high Middle Ages.

Then there was that musty cold and sometimes dank smell that came out of the stone work along with the absence of much natural light in some of the towers which added to the sense that here you were walking history.

Now they say you should never go back and on occasion returning to some magical place of my childhood has been a disappointment which somehow spoils what I remember.

Of course I try not to wallow in nostalgia and I am fully aware that the developers, the City of London and the custodians of the Tower were never going to let my childhood memories get in the way of their view of progress.

The River, the bridge and Lower Thames Street, 1872

So the Tower is far busier than I remember, the walk from the station over the river and along Lower Thames Street resembles little of what I saw as a child and the cranes, ocean going ships with the warehouses that flanked the river are now as much a bit of the past as is the swirling fog, costermonger’s cries and the smell of the fish market.

Ah well as they say nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

Pictures; a young Andrew with Emilie Hall at the Tower, 1955, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the Peak Frean poster derived from Kennington's painting The Toy Shop, of 1891. Wikipedia Commons, The White Tower, a depiction of the imprisonment of Charles, Duke of Orléans, in the Tower of London from a 15th-century manuscript. The White Tower is visible, St Thomas' Tower (also known as Traitor's Gate) is in front of it, and in the foreground is the River Thames.
late 15th century from a manuscript (British Library, MS Royal, 16 folio 73) of poems by Charles, Duke of Orléans (1391–1465),  Wikipedia Commoms and detail of the River Thames and Lower Thames Street from the OS of London, 1862-72, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Looking down on Chorlton in 1927

I like aerial photographs of Chorlton and this one has the lot.

Looking down on my bit of Chorlton, circa 1930s-40s

My friend Bill sent it over  and it comes from Britain from Above.

And what makes it particularly special is that there,  to the left is Beech Road, the Rec and our house.

It was taken in 1927, and the picture offers up some interesting detail.

There is a  tram cruising down Barlow Moor Road, and there is still some open at the top of Beech Road by the tram terminus.  That land I think was built on sometime in the 1950s or 60s.

Beech Road, a lost farm, the Rec and a bowling green

And looking carefully at Beaumont Road, it is just possible to see the old farmhouse set back from Beech Road, which Scott the builder didn’t demolish until sometime in the 1930s.

Its replacement I am fairly confident was not built until after the war in 1945.

Which just leaves the eagled eyed to spot that to the north of Rec, there is still the bowling ground belonging to the Masons.

This would not become a carpark until the early 1960s.

And the photograph clearly shows the farmyard of what had once been Bailey’s Farm, and would not become Ivy Court until the late 1970s.

On Barlow Moor Road

I could go, but that would spoil the fun, so I shall close by pointing to the buildings on Barlow Moor Road, just south of Beech Road.

The Chorlton Ballroom is still looking splendid, and it would be many decades before it became a series of nightclubs, before being knocked down for a fast food outlet.

And beyond the ballroom, there is Lime Bank, which dates from the late 18th century.

So I shall just thank Bill Sumner who found and sent the image over to me.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; aerial photograph of Chorlton, 1927, Britain from Above, EPW 017620

On becoming your dad

I have become my dad which I suppose is not that surprising really.

It is less the physical appearance although that is clearly there it is instead all those little ways that creep up on you and take you back four decades.

So I caught myself sitting in an armchair recently talking to one of my son’s and all the speech rhythms, along with the words I used and even the hand movements were dad.

He retained his hair longer than I ever did and unlike him I am useless at making and repairing things but the rest could be him.

He was a calm gentle man who always put the five of us first even down to the nightly winter task of putting a hot water bottle  into each of our beds and today whenever our kids are sleeping over I will do the same, even given that the eldest is nearly 40 and the youngest just 28.

And it made me reflect on just how much we carry forward from the lives of our parents and pass on to our own children.

Now dad was born in 1906 and mum in 1920 which pitched their formative years in the first half of the last century and some at least of those experiences flowed into how they brought us up.

Our Christmases blended the growing consumerism of the late 1950s with older traditions which with just a little tweeking could even have come out of the novels of Dickens.

Of course much of it was down to that simple fact that so much of everyday life was still the same.

The coal, the milk and the papers were delivered to the door,  Sidney the knife sharperner made a regular appearance with his hand operated machine which he pushed around the streets and Sundays remained the day you endured with little to do and little on the television to watch.

That said there are clear differences between me and my dad.

I never shared his politics which were grounded on a belief in Empire and property or for that matter his preference for plain food which “was not mixed about.”

Instead I very early adopted  mother’s politics coloured as they were by the mass unemployment and Means Testing of the 1930s.

For her class politics remained at the bedrock of how she voted and how she saw the world.

But then mum died when I was 25 while I had my dad until 1994 which perhaps has something to do with that simple fact that I grew more like him with the passage of time.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson