On finding Miss Wright of Chorlton .............. unlocking a bit more of our history

464 Wilbraham Road, home to Miss Wright circa 1900

Now Miss Wright of Chorlton has been found.

She was and continues to be a clue to the story of the Girls Friendly Society and the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Church Institute which have featured in stories over the last few days.*

The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Church Institute was based for a while in one of the big houses in St Clements Road and the Girls Friendly Society met there during the early decades of the last century.

In 1928 Miss Wright was the President of the G.F.S. and I always knew that if we could find her we would come to know more about both the society and the Institute.

And yesterday Sandra Hapgood came up with Miss Wright’s story which came to light in the 1934 St.Clement’s church magazine in which “she is mentioned as Branch President Miss Wright of 464 Wilbraham Road (now the RBS)

The Acting Branch President was Mrs Evans of 99 Claude Road [and] in 1934 they met every Thursday in the New School (St. Clements) 7.40 - 9.45pm.”

It may also be that the short description of the "G.F.S" in the magazine was actually written by Miss Wright.

"The long, light evenings have gone, so it was with a certain amount of pleasure that we turn to meetings indoors for our recreation and instruction.

During October, on Thursday evenings, G.F.S members will commence their various activities, including musical drill, country and ballroom dancing, ping-pong and other games, needlework - and chatting by the fire.

The evening of Thursday, October 18th, has been reserved for a Lantern Lecture, to which an invitation has been extended to all. Details of the lecture will be announced nearer the date."**

Looking down Wilbraham Road, circa 1900

Sandra adds "it is signed M.I.W and I thought we had Miss Wright's initials but sadly not. 
M.I.W is Miss Wilson the headmistress of the Infant school at that time.”

Now all of that helps with the Institute which was the home of Mr and Mrs Crowhurst in the 1890's who ran a “Ladies School” there and which may have been rented out to the church by its owner William Batty around 1900.

The house was still listed as a club in 1934 but as the new school had been built on St Clements Road some at least of the events that were hosted there had moved across the way.

All of which for me is a fascinating little bit of our local history more so because it is a bit that now sits very much in the shadows.

So I shall go looking again for Miss Wright, Mrs Evans and the others who will tell me more about the Institute and the G.F.S., which just leaves a thank you to Sandra.

Picture; the corner of Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Roads and Miss Wright’s house, circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

*The Girls Friendly Society, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Girls%20Friendly%20Society

**St Clement’s Church Magazine, 1932, courtesy of Sandra Hapgood

Down on the Kent coast at the seaside in the 1930s

Now for reasons I won’t go into I never went on holiday to the seaside as a child.

Apart from one disastrous day at Dover waiting to meet my dad off the ferry with a coach load of returning tourists my summer holidays were spent with my grandparents in Derby.

Sand, sea under a Greek sun would be years away, but for those who could do the yearly break at a resort on the coast was a must.

So I am back with some old photographs of the way we used to do it during the middle decades of the last century.

The weekly paid holiday and relatively cheap train fares made the seaside holiday pretty standard.

In many parts of the country most of the factories would shut down for Wakes week and on mass it seemed large parts of our towns and cities exchanged grubby streets and noisy factories for the fresh sea air, fish and chips on the pier and the dreaded landlady.

Those who worked together, got on the same trains and went to the same holiday destinations. So much so that places like Blackpool talked of Glaswegian week and the beaches, trams and pubs would echo to the different accents of the different Lancashire mill towns throughout the summer.

All of which is a lead in to these two photographs of Harold and Alma Morris somewhere by the sea in Kent.

Both in their different way capture perfectly what those holidays were like.  Paddling in the water was just that with the trousers rolled up a smile for the camera and that knotted handkerchief, less a parody on more a reality.

And of course at some stage that pose on the shingles, prepared for a heat wave but mindful that even in June a British summer can prove a tad cold. Alma stares back at us with her towel over her legs, less a modest pose and more I suspect a necessity.

The other thing that strikes you are the cigarettes, this was after the period when most people smoked, when men’s fingers were stained yellow with nicotine and the upstairs on the bus offered up a dense cloud especially first thing in the morning.

I don’t pretend that these pictures are unique but these are less often seen than perhaps was once the case and they capture a way of leisure that has changed.

Many resorts couldn’t cope with the competition from cheap package holidays to destinations where the sun was guaranteed, and are now pale shadows of their former selves; others like Blackpool have reinvented themselves as the place you go for a weekend away or that all important stag or hen night.

So I am pleased Jean shared these pictures of her uncle Harold and aunt Alma doing the week by the sea.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons.

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 11 Dalton Entry

Now this is a bit of a cheat, because I have already written about this little alleyway which leads in a twisty way to Tasle Alley and Mulberry Street and the Hidden Gem.

But that won't stop me.

Location; Manchester

Picture; 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Half twelve in the Rynek Starego Miasta .... thinking about history ... and talking about Polish food

Now it was just past midday and after a morning in Warsaw’s old town we were hungry.

In the square, 2026

And as you do, we wandered into the Market Square which was laid out at the beginning of the 14th century at the start of the city’s story.

Since then, it has experienced heaps of history. At one time it was the capital of a superstate which as the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

Helping the tourists, 2026

But those glory days were marred by Poland’s partition in the 18th century at the hands of Prussia, Russia and Austria, the moment of freedom while the brief period of independence after the Great War was ended by the dark days of the Nazi occupation, and Soviet dominance.  During that Nazi occupation the Market Square was pretty much destroyed in the Uprising.

Today the square is a bustling place full of locals and tourists and because everyone needs to eat a selection of restaurants occupy part the open space.

There wasn’t much to choose between any of them, so we joined the queue which looked to be the shortest and it turned out to be ok.  

Like its rivals the menu was heavily orientated to fish and meat, which came in enormous portions of which schnitzel seemed the most popular choice.

I feared as one of the veggies in the group I would be at a disadvantage but there was pierogi which is a traditional Polish dish of dumplings which were filled with cheese, and mushrooms and topped with sour cream. They came with a salad of shredded carrot, cabbage and beetroot.

 Schnitzel in the square 2026 

And were the choice of our neighbour who interestingly started their meal with a platter of cheess and fruit.

The conversation drifted from that starter to the different pierogi I had already encountered and settled on schnitzel which as everyone knows is a thin slice of meat which is breaded and then fried.  My Wikipedia tells me that “it is popular in many countries and is made by using veal, pork chicken, mutton, beef or turkey”.*

And here the discussion took a turn because a few years ago our Saul found some very large mushrooms in the forest and Julia never one to waste food transformed into a meatless Schnitzel.

Giant mushroom, 2025

Mushroom Schnitzel, 2025

Alas I was not there to share the cooking of the wild mushrooms, but I wish I had.  But there will always be another time.

Location; Rynek Starego Miasta, Warsaw

Lunctime in the Square, 2026

Pictures, of the Market Square, the restaurant and the customers, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and that mushroom and Schnitzel, 2025, Julia ICE Czajkowska

* Schnitzel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnitzel

 

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 9 Town Hall Lane

Now this is Town Hall Lane and looking at it you half expect that it would once have gone somewhere but was long ago doomed to become a dead end by the grand plan of a developer.

But not so as early as the 1790s it led off from Cross Street and finished at the back of a building.

That said in 1793 you could have walked along its length stepping off into a side alley on the northern side and by degree squeezing down a very narrow alley onto Tib Lane.

But by the 19th century our lane just ran beside Town Hall buildings and so hence the name.

Not that any of the maps bothered to record a name, although Goad's Fire Insurance map did refer to it as Town Hall Buildings.

But by then the Town Hall had gone, replaced by the more majestic one in Albert Square.

I have Antony to thank for alerting me to this one.  I have to confess that in all of my 40 odd years in the city I had not once given it a thought.

Location; Manchester

Pictures;Town Hall Lane, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Travelling by tram round the Well Hall Circus

Now I have no idea when this picture was taken. 

I do know that it will date from after 1931 when the roundabout was built which according to Eltham and Woolwich Tramways was constructed as part of the Westhorne Avenue extension.*

And if I wanted to be more specific I guess it can be no earlier than 1938 a date which cinema buffs will confirm.

The Odeon was opened in 1936 and of the two films showing that week The Dark Horse was made in 1932 and I’ll give a million six years later.

I can’t say either would have got me walking down from our house.

The Dark Horse was a political comedy starring Bette Davies and turned on the efforts of Ms Davies and others to find a candidate for Governor at the Progressive Party convention and ran through a series of improbable plot lines.

Not to be out done its running mate that week centred around Warner Baxter who played a millionaire saving a tramp from suicide, and then taking the tramps clothes and disappearing with a rumour that he would give a million dollars to anyone who is kind to a tramp.

But perhaps I am being unfair.  I can sit through endless episodes of Coronation Street, have bought at least two DVDs of Downton Abbey and can pretty much quote James T Kirk word for word in all his Star Trek films and plenty of the TV shows.

And having demonstrated my unnerving attention to detail I can offer up the names of all those who occupied the shops stretching down from the cinema to the Pleasaunce when Ms Davies was at the Odeon.**

But I am on firmer ground with the second which dates from December 29 1948 and I have to say it doesn’t look so different from when I walked up Well Hall Road in the mid 1960s.

From memory the path across the roundabout had gone, along with the tram poles although I suspect under the tarmac still lurked the tramlines.

And for all I know they may still be there.

Like all good stories I learnt something knew because back in the 1940s our roundabout was, according to the London Transport timetable known as Well Hall Circus.

So that is all I shall say, except to thank Middleton Press for giving me permission to reproduce the pictures from their book Eltham and Woolwich Tramways and promise you more later.

Oh and a thank you to Tricia Leslie who first came across the pictures and posted them and then introduced me to the tram book.

Pictures; Arriving at the Well Odeon,  circa 1938, A J Watkins, and Well hall Circus, 1948, H B Priestley reproduced from Eltham and Woolwich Tramways

* Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, R J Harley Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

** A car, a row of shops and a little bit more is revealed about the history of Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/a-car-row-of-shops-and-liitle-bit-more.html

Searching for the Girls’ Friendly Society in that big house on St Clements Road in 1911

At a church garden party, date unknown

Now I would dearly like to know lots more about the Girls’ Friendly Society or for that matter the night a chap from the Town Hall came to talk on the sanitation in Manchester to a selected group of earnest young men

Come to think about it I would just love to know all I can about the meetings that went on at the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Church Institute which hosted a whole shedful of activities which were run by St Clement's Church.

I  had no idea that the Institute existed and it was only while I was looking for something entirely different on Whitelow Road that I came across a reference to the club on an 1934 map.

And with a bit of digging out of the shadows came the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Church Institute which offered a whole range of entertainments and serious events to the parishioners of St Clement's during the early decades of the 20th century.

It was there by 1911 and possibly a full decade before and may have continued until the 1920s.

Just possibly in the garden of the Institute

At the time St Clement's did not have a church hall and so used eight of the rooms in the house leaving three for Samuel Holt and his wife Christina who in 1911 were described as the caretakers.

During that period it offered a whole range of activities from sewing clubs to lectures and according to Ida Bradshaw was pretty much used during the day and the evening.

All of which brings me back to the Girls’ Friendly Society which was a means by which young women, some of whom may have been servants and living away from home could meet and make friends.

Here in Chorlton most homes employed just the one domestic servant who was expected to carry out all the duties of maintaining the house and had little spare time, so I rather think our Friendly Society must have been a life line for some of them.

Sun and strawberries

And I expect some of them went on the one trip I know the Institute organised to Southport in a charabanc.

Of course much of the documentation will have been lost but there may be an odd newspaper story or photograph and perhaps even a stray letter which makes reference to the Institute.

The house dates from around 1881 and was the property of William Batty who rented it out to various tenants of which Mr and Mrs Crowhurst are the most intriguing.

Thomas Messenger Crowhurst described himself as an “artist, art teacher and landscape painter" while his wife ran a “Ladies School” from the house.

Mr Billing and Miss Attwood, 1913

And it may be when they vacated the property Mr Batty offered it to the church.

All of which opens lots of avenues of research possibilities starting with Mr and Mrs Crowhurst, and Mr Holt the caretaker, and Mr Edgar Taylor who in 1910-11 was the Secretary.

He was an accountant, lived on Park Road and may yet yield up some information.

After all we do have one wedding which took place at the church in 1913 and as Miss Vivien Horsfall Attwood was reported as being from a popular and well known family she may well have spent time at the Institute..

Speculation perhaps but worth following up.

Added to which there are the newspapers which might carry stories of events and perhaps even names which could take us even further.

And it may be that a photograph I had long thought was in the grounds of the church could be in the garden of the Institute.

So I rather think we have not heard the last of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Church Institute.

Pictures, a garden party, date unknown, and Mr Hugget Billing and Miss Vivien Horsfall Attwood  A Chorlton Wedding, the Manchester Courier, April 17 1913, from the collection of Sally Dervan