The short life of a Chorlton Post Office ….. and the lost Fleming Hall

 It began life shortly after Chorlton’s main Post Office on Wilbraham Road was badly damaged during the Manchester Blitz in December 1940.

Chorlton Post Office,  Manchester Road, 1941-1961

That Post Office had opened in 1905 and did all things posty till the night of December 24th into the early morning of December 25th when enemy action destroyed many properties across the city including here in Chorlton where thirty people were killed.

Just how soon after that event the Post Office took over number 70 Manchester Road is unclear.

Back in 1929 the site had been home to "Meta Manufacturing Co Ltd" and in 1954 the “Sub Post Office and MO Office” shared the site with “Liner Concrete Machinery Co Ltd service depot”.

But in 1961 we had a brand-new Post Office very close to the original 1905 building, and I guess soon after the temporary Manchester Road premise was vacated.  Just when that will be down to trawling the street directories for the years after 1961.

Chorlton Post Office, Wilbraham Road, 1905-1940

So, a short history but one that still plays a prominent part in some Chorlton people’s memories and perhaps this story will bring forth more accounts of the place.

And in conversations with friends I discovered more about the bomb-damaged Post Office.  For a short while in the 1950s into the 60s, it fronted the Fleming Hall, which was the centre of the local Conservative Party.  This was a bit of our recent past and I am indebted to my old friends and fellow historian Lawrence Beedle who told me it was named after Edward Fleming 1891 - 1950. He was the Tory MP for Withington Constituency 1945 - 1950. He then stood for Moss Side when the boundaries were redrawn and Chorlton was put in that Constituency.

Fleming Hall, Wilbraham Road, 1950?-1963?

It’s the 1950 General Election and sadly Mr.Fleming died on the 17th February during the campaign. I think he took a turn for the worse at his sister’s house on High Lane. Anyway, polling was immediately suspended by all the local parties. The Tories went on to win the General with Winston Churchill.

Moss Side Constituency voted two weeks later and elected Florence Horsborough. She’d lost in Midlothian and Peebles but got another crack at obtaining a seat. Manchester’s first woman MP, first woman in a Conservative cabinet".**

Chorlton Post Office, Wilbraham Road, 1961

Other friends have also shared their recollections of the hall which I wrote about in a series of posts and are available by following the link.***

And that is it.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, East Side: Corner of Keppel Road and Manchester Road, looking southeast, showing Chorlton Post Office (No. 70) 1958, m11798, former Post Office, Wilbraham Road, 1959, A.E.Landers, m18242, and in 1961, m18511, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Post Office in 1907 from the Lloyd Collection

*Kelly's Directory of Manchester & Salford, 1929 & 1954

** Lawrence Beedle

***Fleming Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=fleming+hall

Walking Well Hall in the April of 1844

Well Hall in 1746

Walk along Well Hall Road which runs from the High Street north to Shooters Hill  on a sunny day and  it is a pleasant enough trip which starts with the church takes in the Tudor Barn and the Progress Estate before finishing with the common and the woods.

Had you done the same journey in the spring of 1844 it would of course have been very different. Back then it consisted of some farms, a posh house and a collection of cottages with the odd pond and lots of open land.

These were a mix of arable, meadow and pasture land with the woods stretching off north and east bordering Shooters Hill.

Here were agricultural labourers, a blacksmith, some “middling families” and an assortment of others who made their living from teaching to tailoring.

And it is these people’s lives in this small hamlet north of Eltham High Street that I want to explore.

Well Hall House, 1909

1844 is a good point to start because in that year the tithe map and schedule had been published which detailed who owned the land, who rented it and the use it was put to along with its value.

So just north east of the Pleasaunce was Andrews Meadow which was a six acre plot of meadowland farmed by Samuel Jeffryes and owned by Sir Gregory Page Turner and a little further north and on the land that would become the Well Hall Estate was Bridge Field and Eleven Acres which confusingly was actually 26 acres of arable land.

Now there is no reason for me choosing these two fields over others except that I am drawn to any piece of land with my name and to the field where our old house now stands. All of which is a bit self indulgent and so back to the inhabitants of Well Hall.

Baptismal record of Charlotte, daughter of Samuel and Frances Jeffryes, 1837

As ever it is the people of property that we know most about and two of these were Samuel and Frances Jeffryes.

We know their children, where the family lived, something of how they made a living and even how Samuel voted in the key Parliamentary elections of 1837 and 1847.

Now the picture is not complete and there is much research still to be done but there is enough for a story.

Samuel was born in 1803 and came from Shropshire.  Frances was five years younger and had been born in Wales. Their early married life was spent in Shropshire in the village of Sutton where they had five children but by 1837 they were in Eltham and it was here that Frances gave birth to another eight who were all baptized in the parish church.

Burial record of Samuel Jeffyres, 1867

At one point in the late 1830s they lived in Well Hall House which was that large eighteenth century house beside the Tudor Barn but were on what is now Eltham High Street quite close to the church by 1844.

He variously described himself as a “farmer” and a “gentleman” and in the 1840s farmed over 250 acres north of the High Street much of which boarded Well Hall Lane.  And despite moving to Westminster both were buried back in the parish church.

It would have been a short walk from their home on Eltham Street to the church but a slightly longer one from there down to Well Hall for their route would have taken them west past the church to what is now Sherrard Road down past the big pond in Homefield and then on by twists and turns to Well Hall House the home of the Reverend Charles Gulliver Freyer and a short walk on to the six houses a little beyond Kidbrook Lane occupied by John Evans and six other families.

And beyond this just open fields up to the common and Shooters Hill, which is all to the good given that this is fast becoming just a travelogue.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; map of Well Hall in 1746, Engraved by Richard Parr, surveyed and published by John Rocque, 1746 IDEAL HOMES: A History of South East London, the Universiyuy of Greenwich, http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/resources  Well Hall House from The story of Royal Eltham,  R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm, remaining images from the parish records of St John the Baptist

Now …… you can wait for a bit of the past .... then two turn up at the same time …….. outside Manchester Cathedral

So, here are two bits of how we lived.

Both have now long vanished.

The last Manchester Corporation tram completed its last journey in January 1949, months before I was born.

As for the public urinal, I have no idea when it closed, but like the tram it is now just a memory, which I may have used, but have no idea when it ceased.

The statue of Oliver Cromwell went in the 1980s so maybe it went then.

Location; Manchester Cathedral

Picture; Two trams and a urinal, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

Who stole Alton Towers?

Today I was reminded by my old Facebook chum Bill Summers of that house on Edge Lane called Alton Towers.

Alton Towers, 1907

Like him I have often come across it on maps and set to the challenge he laid down today, when he posted the 1911 OS map showing the property adding, “We all know roughly where Alton Towers is or have heard of its pleasure grounds but might be surprised to discover there was another- in Chorlton cum Hardy back in the day. 

Just wondering if Andrew Simpson can tell us anything of it. 

It stood for a while at the side of St Clements Church on High Lane, so maybe there is a photo out there somewhere". 

It was a challenge I couldn’t turn down.

Today the site is open land and was gifted to St Clement's for the use of young people and is now part of the school, and that is pretty much how I remember it from when I washed up in Chorlton in 1976.

The site of Alton Towers, 1933

The last recorded reference to the house is on the 1911 census  but interestingly it is not listed in the street directory for that year and the OS map for 1933 shows it as open land with a tennis court in one corner.

So sometime between 1911 and 1933 it disappears.

I can track it back from 1911 to 1879, and I am fairly sure that 1879 marks the date when it was built.  

It was owned throughout by John Richardson who rented it out to just five tenants over those thirty years.

It had been a grand house with ten rooms, set back from the main road in a large garden and commanded an annual rent of £100 and a rateable value of £68.

And not to be short changed had a series of green houses arranged amongst the trees in the garden.

In 1911 it was occupied by an Edward and Christina Wright, their four children and two servants.  Mr. Wright described himself as a “Paper merchant" with his offices at 62A Fountain Street. 

The site in 2023

What happened after 1911 is yet to be discovered but I do know that one of his son’s was living at 22 Whitelow Road in 1917, because his Attestation papers say so.

It may be that the family moved from Edge Lane to Whitelow Road.

There is no reference to Alton Towers in the 1921 census, and sadly so far the only images we have are of a gate post on pictures dated in 1930 and 1959.

Sad looking gate post, Alton Towers, Edge Lane, 1930

Not that I am finished.

I shall explore the life of John Richardson, and talk to St Clement's Church about their acquisition of the land and follow up the story of a fire.

so heaps to find out.

We shall see.

Location; Edge Lane

Picture, Alton Towers, 1909, OS map for Manchester and Salford, 1909, site of Alton Towers, 2023, courtesy of Google Maps and Only a sad looking gate post, Alton Towers, Edge Lane, 1930, m17809, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Looking for the lost 32 cottages and 15 cellars, home to 208 people

Looking down Commercial Street, 2015

Now I first wandered down Commercial Street sometime in the 1980s looking for Omega Street, and its neighbours Alpha Street and Fogg’s Place.

And I must have missed them by just a few years.

That said I don’t think they would have featured in any glossy guide to comfortable inner city living.

In 1853 they had formed a complex of back to back housing consisting of 32 cottages and fifteen cellars inhabited by 208 people.*

Commercial  Omega Street, 1849

Directly opposite was the Egerton Mill, while behind them there were two more and the surrounding area was dominated by more textile mills, a handful of iron works and the Hulme Brewery.

And I doubt even the most optimistic estate agent could gloss over the noise from the nearby railway or the smell from the river Medlock which flowed in a curve close by.

Back in the 1980s you could still see the outline of the house walls in what at the time was a temporary car park but when I returned some 20 years later these had vanished under new tarmac and there was nothing left to show what had once been there.

Looking across to Omega Street from Commercial Street, 2002

Now another eighteen years on and the surrounding buildings had either been demolished or made genteel and the worst I suspect in the form of pollution comes from the noise of loud music in the flats opposite or the conversation of the office workers making their way home.

And even that car park is now boarded up which may soon mean even space inhabited by those three streets and 32 cottages will be lost for ever.

Location, Manchester

Pictures; Commercial Street, 2014 courtesy of Andy Robertson, Omega Street, 2003 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and area in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Report of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association 1853

When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012

So were you in the Eltham Hill Gaumont on Sunday September 12 1965?

Now you pretty much know it’s time to get a life when you go looking for the date for a film listing for the Eltham Hill Gaumont.

Eltham Hill Gaumont, 1998

The listing was posted recently by Kath May and advertised the four films showing for the week beginning September 12.

For those with time on their hands on that Sunday the cinema was showing for just the one day The Unknown with Dean Jagger and Teenage Frankenstein with Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway.

With titles like that they were of course X rated under the old Board of Censorship classification and if there was anyone still unsure the listing carried the warning Adults only.

Now I have never really given it much thought but I suppose Sunday in the cinema in the 1950s and 60s would be a slow day.

The cinema , circa 1938

Most people would have gone on a Friday or Saturday night and the week would be given over to a more discerning audience, leaving Sunday for those just over 18 with money left in their pockets and with a taste for the macabre.

For the rest of the week starting on the Monday and running for a full six days there was Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn in Last Train from Gun Hill which was an A and Yul Brynner in Escape from Zahrain.

I went looking for the plots of the four films and wish I hadn’t bothered.  Suffice to say that today I doubt that even the most desperate of TV executives would look to showing them on even the graveyard slot.

So as a reward and in answer to Kath’s musings of when this week was I went off and roamed the records.  

Film poster, 1957

Now the films themselves were no clue.  The Unknown dated from 1956, Teenage Frankenstein from the following year and Last Train from 1959 which left Escape from Zahrain which was made in 1962.

But given that you can on the internet find a day if you have the month and the year with just a little bit of fiddling it was possible to place Sunday September 12 in 1965.

Which just leaves me to record that the Gaumont had opened on April 14 1938 showing Queen Victoria with Anna Neagle and closed on June 19 1967 with David Niven in Happy Go Lovely and Dana Andrews in Duel in the Jungle.*

It reopened as a Mecca Bingo Club and the rest as they say is a down to two fat ladies and a joyful shout of Bingo.

But I wouldn't have done the job properly if I didn't also try to date the second picture of the cinema.

It was showing Will Hay's film Oh Mr Porter which was released in 1937 and so I am guessing it will be the late 1930s.

And that's all I am going to say except to thank Kath for finding and posting the film listing leaving me to go off and watch the paint dry on the back door.

Picture; the old cinema November 1998 courtesy of David Simpson and sometime before 1952, cousinadnab taken from Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991 and film poster for Teenage Frankenstein, 1957 which is in the public domain

* Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991