Taking Eminent Victorians for granted ……. statues

Now the debate on who we continue to commemorate from the last three centuries rolls on and rightly so.

Prince Albert ..... thinking of Victoria? 2019

It is a discussion which gets to the heart of our past as we reflect on Britain’s involvement with the Slave Trade and Slavery, along with those we choose to see as significant and of course on those who made and wrote our history.*

Not that this is new, reinterpretations of historical events, and people goes on all the time, and one of my favourite such revisions is the book Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey published in 1919, which examines the lives, record and reputation of four “Victorian greats”. ** 

James Fraser, looking down on the markets, 2019

They were Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Charles Gordon.  

Today only Florence Nightingale will be familiar to many people, but back at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the other three were up there on that pedestal of the good and the inspirational.  

And only Florence Nightingale survived Mr. Strachey’s forensic reexamination of their careers, in what at times is a savage, witty and cynical account.  

Just how savage, witty and cynical he could be I leave you to judge, from the end of his chapter on General Gordon, which having surveyed Gordan’s life and the campaign to avenge his death concludes that “General Gordan had always been a contradictious person – even a little off his head, perhaps, though a hero; and besides he was no longer there to contradict .... At any rate it all ended very happily – in a slaughter of twenty thousand Arabs, a vast addition to the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring”.**

There will be those who will turn their gaze on those public statues here in Manchester, and in the fall out from the Colston case Manchester City Council began weighing up the continued justification for  the presence of some of those “worthies” on our streets and square.*

Sir Robert Peel, 2019

And so drawn purely at random from some of the collection I have taken over the years here are three.

I make no judgements and leave it to others to add sound historical comments and only reflect that these long gone worthies are ingored by most, are the subject to occasional paint vandalism and at certain times of the year look down on the Christmas markets.

Pictures; Prince Albert, James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester, and Sir Robert Peel, Manchester, 2019-20, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*On that statue of Mr. Colston …..…and thoughts on Annie Kenney, the Sheffield Women of Steel and Totò, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/06/on-that-statue-of-mr-colston-and.html

**D Day ...... AD 43 .......Portrait Of An Age ..... and the death of General Gordan, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/d-day-ad-43-portrait-of-age-and-death.html

*** Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, 1918

Buying that armchair and bed from M E Coupe on the corner of Wilbraham Road in 1985

Now I am never surprised at the interest shown in photographs of Chorlton in the recent past.

In many ways they are more interesting than those from a century and a bit ago and I think it is because it is of a Chorlton many of us can remember and relate to.

That said the passage of even thirty years makes many of them look very dated. 

It is like looking through a dirty window, some of what you see you recognise but the rest is just a little unclear and unreal.

So here is the last of Chorlton in 1985.  The picture has featured before at  WilbrahamRoad where there is the story.

Eltham from the pen of Llwyd Roberts ....... nu 1 the old parish church circa 1840

Now I am a great fan of the work of Mr Llwyd Roberts.

He was born in Borth in Cardiganshire in 1875 and was articled to a Derby architect later spending  seven years as a draughtsman in Burton Upon Trent before working for a series of Welsh newspapers.

After war service and a period in the British army of occupation he settled in Eltham at Bloxham-gardens working as a topographical artist and concentrating on drawings of the ancient buildings of Kent.

And it will be during this time that he produced the drawings in the book.

Now I have to say that they fascinate me.  Some are quite clearly drawn from his direct observation of the buildings while others may be from earlier pictures and a few are a careful attempt to reconstruct a scene from an earlier period.

All of which may mean that some at least may not be an entirely accurate depiction of the past, but that said I suspect they are as close as we going to get.

Many were published in the Kentish Times in 1930 and as you do I went looking for copyright permission but given that the Kentish Times has now ceased to publish and the pictures are over 85 years old I think I should be OK.

I featured some of my favourite deawings earlier in the year and over the next few days I shall show so more.

According to Mt Roberts this "was the old parish Church.and the Kings' Arms as they might have loked between 1840-1860."

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Parish Church; drawn circa 1930, Llwyd Roberts

Blink … and you could miss Soap Street

You could easily miss Soap Street.

Soap Street, 2026

It is one those narrow thoroughfares off Thomas Street which loops round to come out on High Street and should have a dark past full of stories as befits a chapter in a novel from Dickens where poverty and hopelessness vie with sinister tales of the underworld.

It should but I don’t think it does, in fact it’s a bit of a cheat, given that the stretch that runs into High Street wasn’t even called Soap Street but until recently was just Back Thomas Street.

Added to which for most of its length it runs past the back of buildings whose only claim is the low quality of the graffiti that adorns the walls.  That said the mural of the woman and the cat is worth a glance.

And there is that wonderful curry house that is This and That, which is unpretentious and in its own words is a “Longstanding family run Indian dining room serving a classic menu of Indian curries”.*

I fell across it by accident a few years ago and was not disappointed, and judging by the number of customers yesterday I wasn’t alone in thinking so.

Soap Street, circa 1900

But back to Soap Street, which was cut sometime after 1819 when Greenwood’s map of Manchester shows it as an open space.  

Thirty years later it seems to be home to some  anonymous unremarkable buildings which didn’t even warrant a mention in a street directory until the late 19th century when four businesses are listed at number 1 Soap Street in 1895, which falls to two listings eight years later.

That said in 1911 one of the businesses was “Marsden, Harcombe and Co bed and bedding manufacturer”.  

Now for any one with an interest in our iconic buildings that name will instantly bring forth  the comment “ah that magnificent green tiled entrance at 56 Marshall Street”.

Marsden, Harcombe & Co, Marshall Street, 2015

It dates from 1934, was the home of the Greater Manchester Archive and was a place I visited regularly.  

It was still there in the May of 2025 when I passed it, but the area is ripe for redevelopment so as they say watch this space.

And by extension I wonder the fate of the surviving old buildings on Soap Street which along with This and That is home to the restaurant Trop, The Kebab Lab and out on Shudehill the Lower Turks Head.

Well, we shall see

Location; Soap Street, and Marshall Street

Pictures; Soap Street, 2026,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Soap Street, 1900, from Goad’s Fire Insurance maps, courtesy of Digital Archive Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Marsden Harcombe & Company, Marshall Street, 2015, courtesy of  Phil Portus

Soap Street, 2026

*This & That Indian Cafe, Manchester, https://www.thisandthatcafe.co.uk/menu

The picture of Annie Magee on Hawthorn Lane and that young Chorlton bandsman

Now if there is a simple lesson about old photographs it’s that you should never take them at face value.

So here is a picture from Peter McLoughlin's collection of family pictures which shows his mother Annie in 1925.

I was drawn to it the first time I saw it and it began the first of series of stories that feature those family albums.

But what I missed or more accurately ignored was the young man standing beside her.

I don’t know who he was or why he posed with young Annie and just assumed he was a young serviceman, but looking again at that uniform it seems far more elaborate and I think it is that of a bandsman and if pushed I think it might well be from our own Brass Band.

And that makes it rather special because there are very few pictures of our brass band which was at the centre of life in Chorlton from the mid 1820s till 1945.

Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

There are a few accounts of its founding in the 1820s and some more of when it reformed in 1850.

I know the names of some of the men who made up the early bands, along with the prizes they collected during the late 19th century and continue to come across newspaper reports of their activities.

The band neatly reflects the history of the township, starting as a small band whose members made some of their instruments including the drum which once made proved to big to get out of the cottage.

The early band was almost exclusively drawn from Methodists and most made their living from the land.

By the 1890s few of the members still worked the land, most worked in Manchester and most were either newcomers to the township or were first generation.

But so far I guess there are just half a dozen images of the band, some as they marched through Chorlton and one of them at Barlow Hall in 1893 but sadly that’s the lot.

All of which makes this picture of our young bandsmen so interesting and perhaps in time I will discover more about him.



Picture; Annie Magee and that unknown young man, 1925 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin and the Brass Band circa 1920 courtesy of Allan Brown

Walking the Greek iskands .... in the company of Gigantes

The art of cooking for one is pretty much the same as cooking for two or for a family.

Keep it simple, use the best ingredients you can source and have an eye on how the leftovers can used for another meal.

Which brings me to two staple and favourites which are Gigantes and green beans.

Both pretty much cook themselves and just require to be cooked in a tomato sauce.

Now my Wikipedia tells me that Gigantes “is a Greek dish of large white beans baked in a tomato sauce and may be served as a main dish or as a meze”.* 

I first came across them in Greece forty years ago and they remain one of my go to choices when ever I am on the islands.

At home I regularly make them using the humble butter bean which are cooked gently with tomatoes, olive oil, onion and some garlic and a mix of herbs.  

And it makes sense to cook them along with that other dish which use green beans which are made in much the same way as the Gigantes.

Both can be served along side each other with bread and a selection of dips.

I prefer them slightly warm, but they are just as nice when cold.

Variations of both can be found in an arc around the Mediterranean and are essentially peasant food.

Today I ate them with some green leaves, salad and fried potatoes which was a variation on the other day when I made some mashed potatoes, onions and peas.

Leaving me to use what was left of the two in a curry or with some pasta.

Perhaps not exactly how a Greek grandmother or Italian nonna would dish up, but well within that tradition of using up what was in the kitchen.

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; from the kitchen to the plate, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Gigantes plaki, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantes_plaki

The story of a strike and of strikes yet to come, part two .... a Chorlton postcard

On Newton street in July 1911

The Carters came out on strike in Manchester at the beginning of July 1911. 

It was the picture of police escorting a strike breaker which first caught my interest.

But they were not the first or the last during the next few years to withdraw their labour to advance a demand for better pay and conditions.

Early in 1912 the miners had come out following a ballot “in favour of giving notice to establish the principle of a minimum wage for every man and boy working underground,”* and at the beginning of March Manchester Municipal workers voted to follow those of Stalybridge, Salford and Stockport and strike for higher pay.

You can get a sense of the mounting conflict from the newspapers of the period. The Manchester Guardian was quick to comment on the concerns over coal stocks in the Greater Manchester area just weeks after the miners had come out, and carried reports that in Nottingham the bakers and painters were about to go on strike while in Manchester there was serious disruption to the rail network.

Leonard's fears

And here in Chorlton on the day the Guardian reported that 60% of trains from one Manchester railway station had been “knocked off” Leonard wrote to a friend of his worries about his mother’s illness and that “all our staff intend to come out on strike this weekend.”

Now it may never be possible to discover the business that he ran or what happened on Friday March 15th when the strike was due to start, but I shall endeavour to try.

He was “busy making arrangements to fill their places” and thought that “this Coal crisis ..... is a terrible affair.” 

All of which rather eclipsed his pleasure that at the Parliamentary bye-election earlier in the year “our man got in (Good old Blue) turned a liberal majority from over 2,000 to a conservative one of 500, great excitement.”

It is a fascinating glimpse on how people here in Chorlton looked out on the mounting political and industrial unrest and sadly represents the only comment we have so far.

As it was the strikes rumbled on through the year, but more about them tomorrow.

Picture; detail of a postcard sent on March 12th 1912 from the Lloyd collection, detail from the Carter's strike, courtesy of the Greater Manchester Police Museum

*Balllot paper issued by the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain, January 1912