When you make cheap comments about James Fraser ….

So earlier today I was a tad unfair to James Fraser, former Bishop of Manchester.

James Fraser, former Bishop of Manchester, 2026

His statue stands on the northern side of Albert Square hard by the water fountain looking out on Princess Street just yards from where Cross Street enters the square.

From his lofty position he has observed plenty of the changes to the area including the construction of the Second City Crossing which takes trams from St Peter’s Square down to Exchange Square and onto Victoria.

Perhaps happily he also faces outwards and so has never looked down on the several make overs to Albert Square and its eight long years as a construction site during the Town Hall’s refurbishment.

 But as that draws to its conclusion the square is home again to the Manchester Markets, and the Manchester Wheel, and that is where I have been unfair to James Fraser because yesterday, I posted an image of the bishop apparently standing,  aloof from all those seasonal preparations.

Making it worse with the caption “James Fraser turns his back on fun”.

James Fraser with his back turned, 2026

It was cheap and suggested that perhaps he was a party pooper.  Now I have no idea if he was a man devoid of humour, but a little research has thrown up that he was a deeply caring individual who applied his religious conviction in very practical ways.

My Wikipedia tells me he “was a reforming Anglican bishop ….. An able Church administrator and policy leader was active in developing the Church's approach to education and in practical politics and industrial relations. Though his views were ecumenical and he was respected within a wide variety of religions”. *

So much so that he was remembered as the "bishop of all denominations”.

I could go on but that Wikipedia article does it all too well and includes his work on child labour in agriculture, his wider work on education, industrial relations, and commitment to the co-operative movement as well as his defence of a fellow clergy man who fell foul of the establishment.

Moreover, I was intrigued by the comment from the Bishop Fraser Trust, that he “was a figure defined by service, humility, and a deep commitment to the people he served. Appointed in 1870, he quickly earned widespread respect by rejecting the comfort of a traditional bishop’s residence and choosing instead to live in the city centre, close to the community". **

The x marks the former  residence of James Fraser, 1894

And that led me to search out his residence, which in 1881 was at 177 Bury New Road in Broughton. 

His home was a terraced house, close to an Engraving Works a several brickworks and within walking distance of rows of more modest homes.

That said his neighbours in 1881 listed their occupations as merchants, accountants, solicitors, and doctors, as well as a surgeon and an Inspector of Mines.

So, perhaps his afternoon conversations over the garden wall were not with labourers, road sweepers, and washerwomen, but nor was he living in a palace or in the leafy green out suburbs.

And that is where I shall leave it along with an apology for using him in such a cheap and trivial way.

Location; Albert Square

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026 and the former residence of Bishop Fraser, from the OS map of  South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*James Fraser, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Fraser_(bishop)

** Bishop Fraser Trust, https://www.tbft.uk/about-us/welcome-from-the-ceo

36 barrels of gunpowder ..... that horrendous act .... and a noisy night of fireworks

Now there is a pernicious and pervasive way of thinking which looks for conspiracy everywhere.

Mutterings and secret plans, 1604

As a way of looking at the world it isn’t new, and can be traced back to those who wile away the wasted hours seeking to disprove that there ever was a moon landing, to the sinister Protocols of the Elders of Zion which was a fabricated antisemitic text, and runs back into the mists of time.

All that is needed is an event which someone will seek to deny, or bend to their own political purposes.

And we are all familiar with the assertion that the Covid virus was not real, but when challenged with the evidence, advocates often switch tack and argue that it is in the interests of “them” to manufacture the scare, thereby to increase the powers of State surveillance, or manipulate the international markets.

Attempting to refute them is like counting the grains of sand in a bucket or pushing water up hill.

More recently I have followed the line of that radical 18th century writer Thomas Paine who wrote “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, ….. is like administering medicine to the dead”.  

It a powerful guide to how to treat the outlandish arguments of those who have travelled beyond the borders of reason and reminds me of Deborah Lipstadt’s often referenced explanation for why she doesn’t debate with Holocaust Deniers because it is as pointless as discussing with “flat-Earthers or the Elvis-is-alive people”.*

All of that said there is a fine line between conspiracy theories and reinterpretations of past events. **

And as this is November 5th it neatly leads into the failed Gunpowder Plot, that awful act of planned terrorism which was so horrendous that its failure continues to be celebrated every year since Robert Catesby, Guy Fawkes and the other conspirators were caught and executed.

In recent years the celebrations have been eclipsed by Halloween, so while the fireworks will burst on either side of November 5th and continue like a damp squib for perhaps a week few kids now take to the street asking for “a penny for the Guy” and heaps will not even know the historical significance of burning the guy and setting off fireworks.

Plotting the unthinkable 1604

Suffice to say the story goes that a group of “Catholic gentlemen” in the face of continued official hostility to Catholics chose to stage a coup by blowing up the House of Lords at the opening of Parliament on November 5th.  

If it had succeeded the entire political establishment would have been killed, the State left leaderless and in the vacuum the plotters would have placed the King’s daughter on the throne and manipulated her to run the country.

So far so good, but it failed. 

The ringleaders were captured, tried, and executed and things got a lot worse for Catholics.

But even at the time some questioned elements of the plot, citing the King’s chief advisor as implicated in a “set up”.

Conspiracies and disasters, 1970s

In the 1890s and since some historians have revisited the story, deconstructed the events and the evidence, discrediting the official version.

All of which offered some of us a fine set of history lessons where we presented the traditional account, offered up suspected flaws and led our year 8 history students to draw their own conclusions.

In 1996 the historian Antonia Fraser presented her interpretation which while it accepted that there was a plot challenged bits of the narrative. ***

And over the next few days I shall revisit her book, reading it as the last fireworks burst into the night and reflect that while there are and have always been real conspiracies, the default line of many is to see conspiracies where they don’t exist, and trade on assertions and half-truths.

Pictures; a contemporary drawing of the Gunpowder Plot Conspirators, Crispijn van de Passe the Elder, and a popular badge from the 1970s

Guy Fawkes, Catesby and Winter, 1604

*Thomas Paine US History, https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-05.htm

**“administering medicine to the dead” ……. The American War of Independence ..... and Thomas Paine, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/11/administering-medicine-to-dead-american.html

*** The Gunpowder Plot, Terror & Faith in 1605, Antonia Fraser, 1996

So ……… who pinched the tennis courts by the Lloyd’s Hotel?

Now, everyone knows that the Lloyds has a bowling green, which will date from soon after the hotel was built in the late 1860s.

The Lloyds, 1970

Thomas Ellwood, our own historian writing in 1886 said that along with the bowling green there “is a bowling club which meets every Wednesday during the season”.

Adding “recently a lawn tennis club has also been started”.

This I suspect had something to do with Mrs. Crabtree who ran the pub in the 1880s and by all accounts “improved the place considerably in various particulars” and it may have been her who encouraged the bowling green members to build their own club house and as an enterprising woman with an eye for business also laid out a lawn tennis court on the open land along side Whitelow Road.

The growing population brought in by the housing boom centred along the Edge Lane/Wilbraham Road corridor and around what until recently was the “Four Banks” stimulated a growth in both cultural and sporting groups, and Mrs. Crabtree’s tennis courts may have played to that interest.

The Lloyds in 1894

But none of the maps dating from the 1880s onwards show the presence of those tennis courts, and while the same maps do not indicate other courts which were in place by the late 19th century and survived into the1900s, it suggests that ours did not last long.

Certainly, by the mid 20th century the site had become a car park, and so the mystery remains.

And a mystery not helped by the lack of any reference to the tennis courts in the rate books.

Mrs. Ada Crabtree is there as the tenant of the pub from 1884to1887, followed by Richard Crawshaw, but no tennis green which as an asset should have turned up in the Rate Books.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The Lloyd Hotel with that public lavatory, 1970, A Dawson, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass the Lloyds in 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Ellwood, Thomas, Inns, Chapter 23, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, South Manchester Gazette, April 17 1886

The one on the corner of Concert Lane and Spring Gardens …..

I must have passed this building countless times since I washed up in the city in 1969.

Where Spring Gardens meets Concert Lane, 2026

Back in the late 60s as a student at the old College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street I roamed streets exploring.

Concert Lane, 2026

Concert Lane, 2026

Afterall when the choice was the library or exploring, exploring always won out.

So, in a few short months I had got to know the back streets and alleys, a heap of interesting buildings which have long been lost and a collection of historic pubs and seedy cafes.

And yesterday I decided to look up the history of 47 Spring Gardens which occupies a triangular plot where Concert Lane and Spring Gardens run into each other.

Not that Spring Gardens always came this far south.

In the 1850s it stopped at King Street and seems to have been extended down to Chancery Lane by 1888.

All of which means there will be more research to do and along the way I shall delve into that narrow thoroughfare that is Concert Lane.

Location; Spring Gardens

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 

In the kitchen ……………. in 1959

Now I had all but forgotten this metal food processor.

Long before the swish big electric models, most homes had one of these.

Ours was used to mince the meat from the Sunday roast, and I suspect everything else.

It was made of metal, was operated by hand, and sat on the kitchen table.

Unlike this one, ours had a clamp, which meant that when it was not in use it would be stored away, freeing the table for other uses.

And like so many objects from the family home, I have no idea what happened to it.

I do know that in the fullness of time the basic gas cooker on the left of the picture was replaced by a similar model on the right.

Mum and Dad, I recall bought into a Cannon cooker around 1963, which survived the move from Peckham to Well Hall and lasted well into the 1980s.  Its novel feature was that it had the grill above the hob, which at the time we thought was quite neat.

All of which leaves the source for the picture, which comes from Manchester and was one of three featuring the food processor.

I am not sure why they were taken but I suspect they were part of a series focusing on modern kitchens.

In these energy conscious days, I rather think I would like a hand operated model, if only because they were so easy to use.

At which point I am sure someone will provide advice.

And they have, Barbarello pointed out that a modern version is now being sold, and more than a few have pointed out that we called them a "mincer" which I thought was just a name unique to our family.

Then to finish off Chris Payne sent over a picture of his family mincer, which I instantly recognised as the model we had in or house.

Location; Manchester

Picture; the food processor or mincer, 1959,"Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

 , and the more humble one, from Chris Payne, 2020

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 19 ........... Back College Land and the vanished Press House Steps

Back College Land, 2016

Now Back College Land looks like it should have some dark and unseemly past with more than a few dreadful tales.

Sadly if they exist I haven’t found them.  Instead there is just this very narrow street connecting Parsonage with College Land.

I think I can date it to sometime between 1793, and the following year when what looks like our street ran back from College Land towards some open land bordering Parsonage.

Just a half century on from that and it is a clearly defined place with even narrower thoroughfares leading off into closed courts on its southern side and a stables on the northern corner beside Parsonage.

I had hoped that it might have a listing on the street directories but it doesn’t which means its residents are pretty much lost to us.  Although Parsonage has offered up names which were on the 1851 census, Back College Land has as yet to offer up its people.

Back College Land and Press House Steps, 1851

Having said that the return for Parsonage did reveal the details of those who lived directly opposite our narrow street.

These were the residents of Press House Steps.  The census records that 122 people lived in just 33 properties bordering the river.*

They worked at a mix of jobs including a porter, some textile workers, and as milliner along with some hat makers and even a poultry dealer.

In the absence of our people from Back College Land I rather think those of Press House Steps will prove most interesting.

We shall see.

And if they prove to yield up some stories it will be a fitting reminder of the people and the place given that it had been swept away by 1900 when the the showrooms and work place of Orme and Sons, makers of Billiard Tables stood on the site.

Location; Manchester

*Press House Steps, Enu 1bb, 20-24, Market Street, Manchester, 1851

Pictures; Back College Land, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Press House Steps, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

The London of 1949

The Pool of London in 1909

This is the Pool of London in 1909.

Fifty years later given a few changes and a bit of bomb damage and it is pretty much as I remember it.

Fast forward another half century and I doubt that  either me or the photographer would recognise much beyond the bridge and the Tower.

All of which is not so much a trip down memory lane, but an introduction to some of the films I got for Christmas.

Of these it is Train of Events and Pool of London I want to write about.  Both were made in 1949 and are very much of the period.

The Thames, the cranes, ships and the Tower, 1909

Train of Events starred Jack Warner and was one of those disaster morality movies, where a collection of little dramas are acted out in advance of a train crash and yes the murderer and the thief do not survive the crash.

In Pool of London a fairly ordinary crime story is given bite with the exploration of one of the first inter racial relationships in a British film.

Both reveal a wonderful slice of London life on the edge of the 1950s.  Here are trams, bomb sites, the rather shabby side of a post war London and plenty of scenes now lost forever.

In that respect they are fascinating social commentaries and perfectly capture the period I grew up in.

The river was still a working river, Tower Bridge opened and closed regularly during the course of a day, the trains were all pulled by steam locomotives and there were references to rationing, shortages and the last war.

Trafalgar Square, 1955

Not that this is some rosy, cosy nostalgic trip.

The interiors of the houses remind me of how little there was in terms of affluence for most people, and there is that prevailing sense that this is still the era of make and mend.

It was also a time of blatant racial prejudice and intolerance towards “living over the brush” and one where some at least had not yet managed to forgive our former enemies.

So watching the two as I did yesterday was both a pleasure and a lesson in history.  I am too young to remember the old trams but here they were, along with some old 1949 television programmes and some fine scenes of the river, the city as well as Blackheath and Greenwich.

Now for a historian and a Londoner that can’t be bad.

Pictures; The Pool of London, 1909, from the series London, and Trafalgar Square, 1955 from the series London, both marketed by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/