The mysterious house on Whitelow Road and an intriguing story

Now, I never underestimate how a story can grow and shoot off in the most unexpected directions.

The caption on the photograph says Whitelow Road and I was drawn to it by the men working on the road.

It became a story and  I wrote that I would love to know more about the house.*

And that inspired my old friend Andy Robertson to delve deep in to Manchester’s Local History collection where he found another photograph of the same house.

He sent it over adding that “I think I may have solved the mystery. I found m17923 taken in 1959 and the house looks identical. 

You will notice St John’s Church to the right, so this old house was demolished post 1959 and the land is now the church car park. On the old picture the house looks like it could be on a corner. If this is correct we have an exact location for our workmen”.

And that led to a search for the inhabitants of our big house.  In 1911 it was the Cobley’s who had been there from at least 1891 and were in oil with the four daughters of the widowed Mrs Caroline Cobley listed as Co-Partners in Oil Trust along with the son.

The Trust, was listed in 1911 as “Cobley (The) Trust, oil and grease refineries , wheel grease and boiler composition manufacturers, 2 and 4 Stove st Tipping st, Ancoats”.**

In time I will go looking for the company on the maps of the period and see if they are listed in Company House and whether they appear in the local newspaper.

For now it is enough to record that their house was indeed a big one with twelve rooms, matched by the one opposite which had fourteen rooms and is now the site of a block of flats.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Whitelow Road, date unknown from the Simpson Collection, and in 1959, A E Landers, m17923, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* Lost in the attic .............. a new collection of photographs of Chorlton........ nu 1 Whitelow Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/lost-in-attic-new-collection-of.html

**Slater’s Directory, 1911, Alphabet, page 955, Trades page 1958

When G Mex was a car park ......

Now, with the passage of the decades it will become more difficult to find people who parked up in GMex.

In fact even the name GMex will be passing out of the collective memory as the place is now the Manchester Central Convention Complex, which may describe perfectly what the building does, but somehow doesn’t have the same appeal as GMex.

It’s time as a car park was not that long and for most of its existence this was Central Railway Station.

I just missed being able to catch a train from the station which closed in May 1969 just five months before I washed up in the city.

Instead I had to content myself with a visit about ten years later, when instead of trains there were cars.

I took quite a few pictures on that day, of which this is one.

It would be another seven years before I returned by which time work was well underway to transform it from an old railway station/car park into a conference centre but that as they say is another story.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Central Station, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Home thoughts from abroad nu 2 ................. walking home from Woolwich on a summer’s night in 1966

Woolwich Common, 1970

Some memories stay with you and are as vivid now as they were then.

I was sixteen, it was the summer of 1966 and I was walking home from Woolwich to Well Hall.
It was a journey I must have made countless times and it was one I always enjoyed, especially once you had cleared the town and made it up to the common.

It was that mix of peace, the lingering heat of a hot summer’s day and the smells from the grass, the bushes and the trees.

The bonus was always those nights that brought on a thunderstorm.

And almost the same spot in 1906

If I was lucky I got home before the rain but either way there were those magic moments when the woods above our house were lit up by the jagged streaks of lightening followed by the roll of thunder.

The best place to see it was just past the police station as the road fell down towards the roundabout.

And usually I was alone which made the event all that more awesome.

After all back in 1966 few people were daft enough to walk out of Woolwich at nearly midnight and so the only company were the occasional passing car or the odd 161 with all its lights off heading I knew not where.

And now a full half century later I still think of those nights.

Location; Eltham, London

Picture; Woolwich Common, 1970, from the collection of Jean Gammons and the Royal Military Academy, from the series Woolwich, 1906 and the Royal Military Academy from the series Woolwich Town and City 1905 issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of TuckDB http://tuckdb.org/history

On Barlow Moor Road at the Macfadyn Memorial Church sometime in 1929 with a postcard from mother

Recently I was at the Macfadyn Memorial Church on Barlow Moor Road, sometime between 1903 and 1913.

And today I am back again at almost the same place this time in the 1920s.  

Now I can be fairly certain of that because the postcard was sent in the September of 1929 and while the picture might be older I doubt that it will stretch beyond the beginning of that decade.

It is fairly recognisable but of course today the church has gone, replaced by a block of flats and trams haven’t run up Barlow Moor Road since the late 1940s.

Judging by the coats and the leaves on the trees we may be in late spring when a turn in the weather can still produce a cold spell.

By contrast the postcard was sent on a day when “we are still having summer here, today is lovely.”

What intrigues me about the postcard is that it was not sent through the post.

There is no address to which it should be delivered and no stamp so I guess it must have either been taken by hand to Morris and Marie or perhaps was inside a letter or parcel.

Now this is a bit of a shame as the couple were on holiday somewhere and Marie’s mother was concerned that they liked the apartments but was reassured that the holiday weather was equally good.

And that little comment reminds me that this was still the age of the postcard, and that people regularly sent them, not only as a greeting but for the more mundane business of arranging a meeting.

So on another card in the collection Lena had apologised for not being able to meet Miss Taylor that evening but would arrange to do so for Tuesday.

The card had been sent from Oldham on Monday afternoon with every expectation it would arrive that evening in advance of the time they were to meet.

In the same way Marie had sent her own holiday postcard to her mother at 43 St Anne’s Road and might well receive a reply the same day.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection.

Looking down on a vanished Castlefield ....... circa 1972

Now it is easy to forget just how run down, neglected and pretty dismal was the area around the Castlefield Canal Basin just a few decades ago.

It was a place waiting for something to happen, but sadly no one knew quite what and the extent of that forlorn landscape was caught by David Easton in a series of pictures he took from a moving train.

He posted them recently on face book apologising for  “the quality of these images. 

I hope they are of some interest though. 

Those of Castlefield were taken from a moving train and have been scanned from ageing slides. This was about 1972/3 when there was still some barge traffic on the Ship Canal. 

Some barges occasionally found their way onto the Bridgewater Canal although I think the warehouses were already out of use.”

And when I saw them I was immediately transported back to a time

before the developers saw a potential for the area and when sitting beside the canal with food and a drink meant nothing more than a sandwich and a bottle of fizzy pop.

So for all those who never knew the canal basin with its empty warehouses and sunken boats here again are a selection of Castlefield in 1972.

Pictures; from the collection of David Easton, 1972

The Welcome Inn ................... the early days

Now some stories just have a habit of not wanting to go away.

They stay hanging around challenging you to go off and discover something new to add to what has already been said.

And so it is with the Welcome Inn which every time I feature the pub strikes a chord with many people usually about my age.

In particular it is tales of Sunday nights which continue to bubble up enriched by the memories of meeting future husbands or lasting friends.

And I should know because while I was just that bit too young to drink I would listen to the happy crowds coming back down Well Hall Road past our house in the mid 60s a little after closing time.

More recently I began looking for the history of the place, and while a few people were able to offer up names of past landlords the very early history of the pub proved illusory.

And then my old friend, fellow researcher and local historian Tricia Leslie told me about The Woolwich Story by E.F. E. Jefferson.

It is as she promised me a wonderful account of the Borough from the earliest of times up to its merger with Greenwich.

I have already used the book and know I shall go on plundering it for some time to come.

So in the chapter on the 1920s I came across this “On the brow of the hill stood a large wooden building used as a workmen’s club but demolished about 1927 when the Welcome Inn was built.  

This modern hostelry set new standards in both furnishing and service.  Seated in comfort, one had to preserve patience until the waiter came to take the order, for customers were not permitted to get their own drinks at the bar. 

But this arrangement proved too leisurely, annoyed those who only had time for a quick one and tended generally toward the restraint of trade. A wise host discontinued the practice.”

Now I have no idea when that service was discontinued but I well remember the practice was still in use in some of the big Manchester pubs in the late 1960s, with the waiters in white jackets and in some rooms a bell push to summon assistance.

Sadly there are few photographs of the waiters or indeed the interiors and it would be nice if any could be shared of the Welcome in its heyday.

So that is it.  I now know when the pub was open which was clearly aimed at the Progress Estate and the new build going up behind the pub and the appeal is out for pictures.

We shall see what we get.

But in the meantime I shall go looking at the electoral registers which will give us the names of the landlords or landladies from when it opened through to the 1960s.

Location, Eltham

Picture; the site of the Welcome courtesy of Jean and the cover of The Woolwich Story

Past Kemp's Corner and up to Redgate Farm in the summer of 1900

Looking across the Isles, 1882

This is another one of those walks I would like to have taken if only to set the contrast from what I would have seen just fifty years earlier in the summer of 1853.

Now I have been writing about a series of walks that you could have made along what was then called Barlow Moor Lane north from the junction with Chorlton Row up past Lane End, and on into Martledge.*

We would have seen a few fine houses, a couple of farms, and a mix of more humble dwellings along with a pub and beer shop all surrounded by fields and the meandering Rough Leech Gutter.
But by 1893 the fields had all but gone, as had two of the farm houses, and the old wattle and daub cottages.

There was still a little of that old Chorlton to see.  Up where the Library now stands was Redgate Farm and just before it Renshaws Buildings which dated from the early 1830s and lasted well into the 1920s.

And tucked away in splendid isolation in their own grounds and hidden behind high walls were Beech House and Oak Bank.  These two dated back to the early decades of the 19th century and both in that summer of 1893 would soon also be demolished.

Renshaws Buildings circa 1900

In their place would be the houses that still line Barlow Moor Road and Manchester Road.

These were the product of the housing boom from the 1880s and were the homes of the professional, business and clerical families, many of who used the newly opened Chorlton station to get into the heart of the city in just ten minutes.

Now although I fight it I am an old romantic and I don’t think I would have made much of this stretch of Chorlton in that last decade of the 19th century.

So what would we have seen from what is officially known as Chorlton Cross but is more now popularly called Four Bank Corner, or just the Four Banks?

The simple answer is not that different from today.  What is now the HSBC would soon become Kemps the Chemist and Harry Kemp’s name would be what this corner would be called well into the 1960s.

Sunwick House, circa 1900

Opposite was Sunwick House which is still there but is now the Royal Bank of Scotland and beyond down towards Redgate Farm there was a row of large detached houses set back from the road, while on the north side there were Renshaws Buildings and the old Royal Oak.

This dated back to the beginning of the 19th century and was pretty much just a beer house serving the local population, the thirsty farm labourers and the Manchester trade who had come out from the city for the walk and a drink in the countryside.

The present pub would not be built until the mid 1920s and would replace Renshaws Buildings.  It is still possible to see the kerb and bit of pavement beside the pub which once fronted the old property.

But all of that is a little in the future and so back in 1893 our walk would have taken us north of Sunwick past Warwick and Selbourne Roads up to the farm.

Sedge Lynn, 1885

We probably would not have really noticed the home of Aaron Booth which went by the name of Sedge Lynn.

It stood where Nicholas Road joins Manchester Road. Back.

In the 1890s Nicholas Road had yet to be cut and our little section was still part of Manchester Road which ran off down through what is now the car park of the precinct and over Wilbraham Road. And for those of a tidy mind I might just add that Wilbraham Road was still quite recent having been cut in the 1860s.

Now I have written about Sedge Lynn, Mr Booth and his fascination for amateur photography and it is his pictures which more than anything shows the dramatic transformation of this bit of Chorlton in the decade before our walk.

Looking across Manchester Road towards the station , 1882

In 1882 he took a series of pictures just after he had moved in looking west across the Isles into the area which is now Oswald Road and across Manchester Road towards the station.

Stand on the site of Sedge Lynn today and look towards the station and the view is obscured by the houses of Warwick, Albany and Keppel Roads, which is pretty much what you would have seen in 1893, but a decade earlier this was still open farm land.

Pictures; of Martledge in 1882 courtesy of Miss Booth, Sunwick from the Lloyd Collection and the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road from the collection of Marjorie Holms

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road, Lane End is the junction between Sandy Lane, High Lane and Barlow Moor Road, and Martledge was the area north of the former Four Banks.