When the bulldozer came to Beech Road ………… well almost

I just missed the battle which if lost would have seen a swathe of properties from Crossland Road north across Beech Road and encompassing Acres Road demolished because they were judged “unfit for human habitation”.

Summer Cottages, 1958

I knew that there had been plans, and at one stage a small row of cottages off Beech Road were demolished in the early 1970s.

These were Summer Cottages, and were probably the last one up one down cottages and occupied part of what is now The Forge.*

And I always thought that Summer Cottages were the properties that Richard and Muriel often referred to as part of a clearance scheme. 

Richard and Muriel ran the greengrocers on Beech Road and Richard in particular was still quite cross about the plan a decade later.

The City Council had already demolished some cottages at the top of Sandy Lane in the 1950s or 60s and went on to clear Brownhills Cottages also on Sandy Lane and another row on High Lane.

Crossland Road, 1972

But I was unaware of the extent of the planned clearance around Beech Road.

It would have included the demolition of some of the houses on Crossland, Road, all of Redbridge and Stanely Grove, some of the shops on Beech Road  as well as Acres Road and possibly a section of Whitelow and even Chequers Road.

The Guardian in the March of 1974 reported on a City Council scheme to demolish 750 properties in the Slade Lane, Chorlton, and Didsbury areas.

Here the residents of the proposed area reacted with a mix of dismay, anger that there homes should be labelled “slum dwellings” and resolved to organise to oppose the plans.

Stanley Grove, 1972

A resident’s association was formed which linked up with similar groups across the city and worked with experts from Manchester University, Town and Country Planning specialists and commercial companies along with “The People of Chorlton”.

Their report dated March 1974 arrived in our house yesterday and it makes for fascinating reading.  

It consists of three parts, which are the Residents’ Case, the Social and Planning Context, and Technical Report.  The third part is supported with costings, suggested alterations to named properties, and a time scale.***

By October the City Council had revised its plans and chose to renovate the properties, a wise decision which has left us with so many fine 19th century houses and retained something of the character of old Chorlton.

Redbridge Grove, 1972

There is much still to so.  I would like to clearly define the area which would have been redeveloped, and solicit the memories of those who took part or just remember the campaign.

Some of those are listed in the report.

Added to this there will be the minutes of the various City Council committees and the story as reported by the local newspapers.

So much still to do.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Summer Cottages, R E Stanley November 1958 m17666,  Crossland Road, H Milligan, m18209, m18209, and m17732,  Stanley Grove, 1972, A Dawson m18210 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Acres Road, 2023, courtesy of Google Maps

Acres Road, 2023

*Summer Cottages, the hidden homes behind Beech Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/04/summer-cottages-hidden-homes-behind.html

**Taken for Granted? Gillian Linscott, Guardian March 23, 1974

***Chorlton Village, the residents association’s case for improvement March 1974

****Council’s about turn on Housing, Michael Morris, Guardian October 3rd, 1973

Just how much we forget …………….. Manchester ……. 1964

When you live in a place, it is easy to miss how it is changing.

This is Piccadilly in 1964, and I can remember going in all of those shops and standing at that bus stop.

More than half a century on, I can’t now tell you where we were going from that  bus shelter, or just when the buildings and their occupants changed, or for that matter whether I prefer the scene now or then.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Manchester Piccadilly, 1964, 1964-0386 "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection"

As others saw us ........... Eltham in 1858 according to the Melville & Co's Directory

Front cover of the Directory

“Eltham is a small ancient but pleasant town and suburb of London adjoing Lee, eight miles S.E.from London, in the lathe of Sutton-at-Hone, Blackheath hundred, union of Lewisham, West Kent. 

The population, with Mottingham, in 1851 was 2,437.  The church of St John is a plain edifice, but was considerably improved and enlarged in 1819.  The living is a discharged vicarage, in the diocess of London.  

There are six alms-houses, founded by Thomas Philpot in 1680, and Foster’s Almhouses.  There are two chapels-one for Independents, and the other for Wesleyans.

Mottingham is a hamlet, partly in the parish of Eltham church, and three miles N.W. from Bromley.
POST-OFFICE-James Lawrence, Postmaster.  Money Orders are granted and paid at this office.”

And in 1858 that was pretty much all you needed to know.

Eltham Lodge in 1909

The directory listed 65 names under Gentry, and all the familiar big houses are there.  So Mrs Wood was living at Eltham Lodge, James Vicat at Southwood House, Mrs Lucy Lambert at Eagle House and Alfred Bean Esq in Castle House.

But more interesting are those listed under Trades.  Here are the people who toiled for a living, getting their hands dirty busying themselves from dawn till dusk.

And there are the usual mix of trades ranging from blacksmith, carpenter and tailor to those selling everything from food to drugs running private schools and even a collector of taxes.

As ever a significant number of those engaged in meaningful activity were the beer sellers and publicans who amounted to 17% of the trades listed.  Of these quite a few ran beer shops as opposed to inns.  They owed their existence to the 1830 Beer Act which allowed anybody to brew and sell beer for a small charge.

Often these beer shops were no more than the front room of a house and many of them did not last long.

Some at least may have been a short term strategy lasting just long enough till an alternative means of income could be found.

I rather like Melville & Cos Directory for Eltham and I rather think I will return to it, looking in more detail at the people it listed, checking them off against the census returns for 1851 and 1861 and exploring where they lived.

Pictures; front cover of Melville & Cos Directory of Kent, 1855, and Eagle 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

OK let the Chorlton Arts Festival begin …….*

Last night saw the launch of our own arts festival.

It has been a feature of Chorlton’s cultural life for 24 years and yesterday evening’s event was a mix of speeches, music and lots of fun.

The speeches were short, the music from the choir was uplifting and artists, poets, musicians and writers celebrated together the start of another community-based arts festival.

And much fun was had.

To be followed by even more fun with over 200 events across Chorlton from May 8th to May 21st, in pubs, cafes, church halls and schools.

All of which will mean there will be something for everyone and as ever they celebrate our own community talent.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Celebrating our own arts festival, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Arts Festival, https://chorltonartsfestival.org/

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe” ......... May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day and “the end of the German War”

Homecoming, Bellville, autumn 1945

“Tonight I will go to sleep knowing that everyone I love will be safe.”

Even now that one line entry in a diary has a profound effect on me.

It was written in the late evening of May 8th 1945, at the end of the first day of peace in Europe.*

For some it had been a riotous night of fun, dancing and abandonment, for others a time of quiet reflection on the cost of six years of a hard war.

I don’t know what my parents and grandparents did on that night.  Nana I expect spent some of it thinking of her son who was buried in a cemetery in Thailand and must also have wondered what her native Germany would be like.

She had been born in Cologne a city which like so many was now a desert of rubble, wrecked streets and shattered lives.

Granddad no doubt was in a pub while mum and dad would have been celebrating in their different ways.

It is of course an event fast fading from living memory and will soon join the experiences of those who lived through the Great War as a piece of history only now visited through the films, books, memorials and personal accounts of that earlier conflict.

Celebration, Hallstead Avenue, Chorlton, May 1945

And so here are just a few images of the days following the end of the conflict in Europe.

During the spring of 1945 it was clear that the war was drawing to a close.

In March the Western Allies had crossed the Rhine in to Germany and in April the Red Army was in Berlin.

The death of Hitler on April 30th moved things on and on May 7th in the early hours of the morning the German army in the west surrendered.

Despite no immediate official announcement the news spread that the war was over and later in the day the Government confirmed that Germany had surrendered and that May 8th would be a national holiday and designated it Victory in Europe Day.

The Manchester Guardian reported that here in the city,

“At ten o'clock Albert Square had become a great dancing floor, upon which partnerships were formed on a free and easy plan. Music came from the town hall and reached the crowd through loudspeakers. 

Homecoming, Belleville, 1945

A popular prank was to climb on to the roofs of the air-raid shelters to dance - probably it was the men of the navy who began it. 

But whoever set the example found abundant followers, and presently the girls of the WAAF and the ATS showed a readiness to participate. Without ceremony dozens of them were hauled to the top amid a good deal of cheering. 

Fireworks were occasionally thrown into the air, and there was an unexpected supply of paper hats, streamers, confetti and other carnival accessories which, after years of a paper famine, would have been thought to be unobtainable.” *

And across the country and beyond celebrations were planned and carried out.

I am not sure that our own celebrations happened on that night.

Reunion, Belleville, 1945

These were spontaneous events and what was clearly a formal sit down affair needed planning.

I have every confidence that someone will have recorded the evening in their diary and we will learn the date and perhaps something of the mood in the school hall.

The Government had already said that

“Bonfires will be allowed, but the government trusts that only material with no salvage value will be used.” 

And that “until the end of May you may buy cotton bunting without coupons, as long as it is red, white or blue, and does not cost more than one shilling and three pence a square yard.” 

Strangely for such a momentous event the expressions on the faces of the group seem sombre.

A party, School Hall, Chorlton Green, May 1945

There are a few who are smiling and some who look slightly baffled but the rest just stare back at the camera.

Perhaps the time lag between the victory news and the celebration party was enough for the euphoria to wear off, or maybe uppermost in many people’s minds was the sacrifice in treasure, lives and lost time.

I remember an old friend from Ashton-Under-Lyne  saying to me that her abiding memory of the war was how it "had robbed her of a good six years of  my life.

Instead "of just growing up and having the sort of fun a teenager should have there was always anxiety. 

You were worried about your own safety and that of your family and the knowledge that any boy you grew fond of might be killed.”

And that is perhaps the moment to close.

Pictures; Chorlton in 1945 from the Lloyd collection and homecoming of the Prince Edward Hasting Regiment, Belleville Ontario, autumn 1945 from the collection of Mike Dufresne.

*Manchester Gurdian May 9 1945

In Jubilee Cottages behind the High Street in the spring of 1851

The High Street, with Fry's Buildings 1858-73

Jubilee Cottages were one of those places I wish I had been able to visit but I missed them by just seven years.

They were built in 1833 and demolished in 1957 to make way for an extension to Hinds and the playground of the old village school.*

In the 1830s they were owned by John Fry and appear on official maps as Fry’s Buildings but have always been known as Jubilee Cottages because they were built in the year that the Reverend Shaw Brooke celebrated his fiftieth year as vicar of Eltham.

Now I have haven’t seen a picture of them but they were five roomed cottages with “three up and two down”** and were occupied by a mix of families most of whom earned their living as tradesmen or labourers, including a butcher, dressmaker, two cordwainers, a baker, three carpenters and eight labourers.

Ram Alley, 1909

As such they were typical of the inhabitants of smaller properties tucked away off the High Street, and like those of Ram Alley and Sun Yard disappeared in the early years of the 20th century.

Those in Sun Yard were a row of cottages lying at the rear of the Sun Inn and approached by an archway formed by the inn’s buildings.

They were condemned as unfit and demolished by the time that the historian R.R.C, Gregory came to write about them.

Of course what makes all of them fascinating is that through the census returns, the tithe schedule and rate books we know who lived in them.

Like Thomas and Caroline Evans who are listed as living in one of the middle houses of Jubilee Cottages in 1844 and were still there in the spring of 1851.

He described himself as a gardener and in that spring of 1851 they had three children, all born in the property.

Thomas himself was born in Eltham and baptized in St John’s in 1813, and in 1891 he and Caroline are still in Eltham in one of the alms houses.

Baptismal record of Thomas Evans, 1813, St John's

And more about both of them and the other residents of Jubilee Cottages, Sun Yard, and Ram Alley another time.

*Hinds was the departmental store built in 1934, and the village school was the new National School opened in 1868 and now called Eltham Church of England School on Roper Street.

**1911 census

Location; Eltham, London

Pictures, detail of Eltham High Street from the OS map of Kent, 1858-73 First Edition, and Ram Alley, 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,

Mr. Taylor’s very old cottage ……….. on the edge of the meadows

Now I am back with a familiar picture which has appeared before on the blog.

Mr. Taylor's cottage, date unknown

The caption just says, “old cottage near the meadows, Chorlton-cum-Hardy”, and to add to the lack of detail the image is undated.  

I might be able to track down when the image was first used by the Reaud picture postcard company, because we do have a catalogue number.

Trying to locate exactly where it was continues to be a challenge, but I think we are on what is now Brookburn Road, with the Bowling Green Hotel roughly behind us on what is now a new build, but was once the United Servicemen’s Club.*

The footprint of the cottage conforms to a property shown on the OS map for 1894, and is similar to ones which show up on earlier maps from 1854, back to 1818.

The cottage opposite the Bowling Green Inn

During the 1840s, it was home to a John Taylor who had been born in Chorlton in 1784, and gave his occupation as an agricultural labourer.  

The cottage was owned by the executors of John Renshaw who had an extensive property portfolio across the township, including Renshaw’s Buildings which were on the site now occupied by the Royal Oak Hotel.

By 1851 Mr. Taylor was still in a Renshaw property but had moved to a house in Martledge.

Judging by the census return from that year he was still working, although does appear to being sharing the home with a Mary Taylor who was six years younger and described herself as a “laundress”.

In time it will be possible to track some of the other residents, and determine when the house was demolished which I think may be the mid 1920s.

I have always been fascinated by this picture, particularly because it offers up an image of cottages which had once been typical of the properties in the township and may date back to the late 18th century.**

It looks to be larger than some labourer’s homes, which were one up one down, and it has space for a cottage garden.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; “old cottage near the meadows, Chorlton-cum-Hardy”, undated, from the Lloyd Collection, and its location from the Tithe map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1845

* That club on Brookburn Road in Chorlton ....... and a fascinating find  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/08/that-club-on-brookburn-road-in-chorlton.html

**A property roughly in the right place shows up on Yate’s map of 1786.