Walking through the lost Hulme and Moss Side

 Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

I don't have exact locations for the images, but some can be traced through the odd street name or feature.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

Chorlton Brook and the Cliffs at Holland Wood in 1847 ... part two

Holland Wood, by the Cliffs along Chorlton Brook, circa 1907

We are in Holland Wood, sometime at the beginning of the 20th century and according to the caption on the photograph, “on Chorlton Brook between Claude Road and Brook Road, looking from what is now Claude Road Bridge.”

This stretch of the brook was known as the Cliffs and had been well wooded, although by the time of our picture this seems to be less so.

Over the left is Brook Road and in the distance is Brook Farm.

Brookburn Road with Brookburn Farm in the distance, circa 1907

Back in 1847 the radical journalist Alexander Somerville* stopped at Brook Farm and reported his conversation with Lydia Brown the tenant farmer who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Mrs Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

He may even have wandered a little further along our stretch of the brook before up to the bridge over the Mersey and a conversation with Samuel Nixon also a farmer as well as the landlord of the Greyhound who was fairly disparaging about news papers and the news that came out of them.

The Brook, looking west

All of which has taken us away from Chorlton Brook which is the most southerly of our water courses It flows from the east into the township by Hough End.

By the time it arrives at this point it is already the product of many smaller streams of which the Gore and Red Lion Brooks are the last joining by Hough End.

For those prepared to leave the township the best glimpse of any of these streams is at Hough End Playing Fields where the Red Lion Brook comes out into the light and crosses the open before flowing underneath Hough End Crescent where it becomes Chorlton Brook.

Like so many of our journeys around the township back in 1847 we would have been surrounded by open fields.

But at the point where the Red Lion and Gore Brooks joined to become Chorlton Brook the landscape changed and the water course ran through an area bordered by trees known as Hough End Clough.

Sadly for the modern traveller the brook is lost again as it runs under Mauldeth Road West before reappearing and flowing past the high school and under Nell Lane.

The Brook with Hough End Hall, circa 1900

And just a little to the west of this point is one of those mystery watercourses, which might be another little stream flowing in an old brick tunnel or it may just have dried up.

But back in the 1840s it was clearly visible, coming in from the south across land farmed by Henry Jackson with field names like Old Marled Field and Great Thick Wood.

It fed into Chorlton Brook just below where the Brook now crosses Mauldeth Road West, through a wooded and wet area with the delightful name of Pitts and Bogs.  In its journey from the south it fed a number of ponds and as it flowed into the Brook it broadened out contributing to the swampy character of Pitts and Boggs.

Tracking it today is difficult and the Environment Agency has no record, but it may have followed a route which took it from the junction of Burton Road and Lapwing Lane, north towards the Brook, passing just east of Weller Avenue.  If so it may well be that the old disused railway line marks its course.

And yet another crossed Chorlton Park from two ponds just a little south and west of Brookfield House which is now owned by the Corporation and is divided between the warden’s office and an upstairs tenant.

The Brook as it flows through Chorlton Park, 2010

From now with just a small break we can walk alongside the Brook as it wanders through Chorlton Park and under Barlow Moor Road.  Back in 1847 the Nell Lane Bridge was a lower structure but still gave good views.
Looking east there was Hough End Hall standing in its own grounds which by then was the home of Henry Jackson and later Samuel Lomas who farmed 220 acres.  Directly south was Brookfield House, commanding fine views across what is now the park.

From here on the brook remains open to the air till it meets the Mersey.  Unfortunately as its route flows through private property there is no access to it till it crosses Brookburn Road.

There is a footpath which ran from Barlow Moor Road skirting Oak House Farm by the modern Oak House Drive and running down behind the gardens on the north side of South Drive and Claude and Brookburn Roads but this fell out of use and is now blocked off and it is very doubtful that it will be reinstated.

This is a great pity because it would allow our modern traveller to walk beside Brook along a steep wooded corridor known as the Cliffs which ran roughly along the route of the footpath.  Here the Brook skirts the edge of the village.  On the south side were Brook Cottage and Brook Farm.

Here to was the village pond which today was where the cark park of the Bowling Green Hotel stands. It stretched back from the lane to include all of the modern bowling green to the edge of Finney Drive and from the Brook to the hotel it contained fish and was rented out to gentlemen.

Once across Brookburn Road the course of the Brook twists and turns before flowing into the Mersey.

The land on either side would have mainly been meadows and running off from the water course would have been the ditches which allowed the farmers regularly water the land.  This as we know was a skilled task.

The Cliffs in 1841

Today while the area retains the popular name of the meadows the land does not resemble the former meadowland.

The scars from the tipping of rubbish are still visible and much of the land had been landscaped with trees artificial ponds and raised banks.

So today where young trees and bushes crowd in on the passer by back in 1847 it would have been more open with trees forming natural boundaries between fields. And not far from the bridge across the brook the land north was covered by an orchard which ran up to and over the old Road to the big pond on Turn Moss.

It was an one of the orchards that fascinated Alexander Somerville, but that is a story for another time.

Extract from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; of Chorlton Brook passing through the Cliffs and by Hough End hall from the Lloyd Collection, as it passed through Chorlton Park from the collection of Andrew Simpson, detail of the Brook and the Cliffs from the OS map of Lancahire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alexander%20Somerville

Walking Woolwich and Eltham in 1948 .... no 1

Now I am back with my copy of the Official Guide to Woolwich which was published by the council.

It includes Eltham and Plumstead, and was the “Fifth Edition”.

I have no idea when it was issued but looking at the images and some of the listings we must be sometime between 1948 and the early years of the next decade.

And over the next two days I shall concentrate on some of the images from the book and leave it at that.

The observant will clock that many of the pictures are attributed to Wells of Woolwich, while in the second post the motorbikes in the picture were for “Export”, which in the cash strapped immediate post war years was a vital way of earning money.

So that is it, and I shall continue till I run out of pictures.

Location; The Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, circa 1948

Pictures; Well Hall,  from The Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, circa 1948, and the Woolwich coat of Arms, courtesy of  Gary Luttmanm2021

One more bit of the jigsaw ….. the mysterious secret of the hidden Chorlton fourteen

Some stories just keep giving and the hidden fourteen photographs found in a house in Chorlton just  keeps giving. *

I was first alerted to them by Peter Armistead who has been developing   515-521 Barlow Moor Road and converting the old properties into a range of one to three modern apartments. **

They are mix of images all of which I guess date from the middle decades of the last century and were in a discarded box at 515-521 Barlow Moor Road.

They are a mix, ranging from images of smart cars, and equally smart “young people” on holiday to a group of men in uniform and the Grand Hotel Oceanic. 

If there is a connection between all fourteen it is hard to discern what that might be, but cars and holidays seem crop up in a few of them.  

The quality varies and while some are fuzzy and indistinct others are sharp and look to have been taken by a professional or at least on a good camera.

That consistent theme of smart cars and equally smart “young people” dating to the early 1960s might tell us something and they were clearly special to someone having been left in a finely decorated box.

That could have been the end of the journey in telling their story, because there is no apparent connection to Chorlton.

So, am I staring at a collection of once special images which were just abandoned perhaps in a moment of forgetfulness or on the death of the owner?

Not so because the box was not found in a random part of the house gathering dust but deliberately concealed inside a wall cavity which had then been plastered over.

And that takes the mystery to a new level because the simple act of concealment raises so many fascinating questions.

Why were they hidden and not thrown away?  What made them so special that they had to be disposed of in that secret way?

Now throughout time and across various cultures “things” have purposefully been hidden away in walls, under floorboards, and at the threshold of houses under the sill.

They range from coins and tokens to iron objects, as well as bottles, shoes, boots and even small animals. 

All seem to relate to the belief that the “thing” will ward off curses, bad luck and other malevolent forces or alternatively bring wealth and good fortune.

At which point I make no claim that our “random 14” pictures were part of some half understood primitive ritual but buried away they were with the intent that they would never see the light again.

I doubt that we will ever know that last part of the story, but Mr. Armistead may display some of the restored pictures in the public parts of the complex.

And I like that idea of letting the lost photographs come out into the light and take their place in the continuing life of No. 515-521 Barlow Moor Road.

Location; No. 515-521 Barlow Moor Road

Pictures, Fourteen random pictures in search of a story

*No. 515-521 Barlow Moor Road,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/No.%20515-521%20Barlow%20Moor%20Road

**Armistead Property, https://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/

Vanished Manchester communities ...........

Now I have been a great fan of Roger Shelley’s photographs for over a decade, ever since he shared a collection of pictures he took of a group of young lads playing in the near ruin of Hough End Hall nearly 60 years ago.

The attention to detail and his ability to capture the moment are skills I wish I had.

And so, I was very pleased when he posted another group of images he took during the house clearances in Hulme and Moss Side.

The pictures are a mix of street scenes, and the people he encountered, including kids at play, men and women at work and the ever present piles of rubble as the grand plan advanced and centuries old houses disappeared under the impact of the wrecking ball.

Like the work of Shirley Baker* his pictures don’t dwell on sentimentality and don’t make judgments of the wholesale clearances of communities.

They just record what he saw.

And with his permission I will be working my way through the portfolio, fastening on images which tell their own stories.

Location; Hulme and Moss Side in the 1960s and 70s

Pictures;  from the collection of Roger Shelley, https://www.flickr.com/photos/photoroger/

*Baker, Shirley, Without a Trace, Manchester and Salford in the 1960s, 2018

On walking along Academy Road out of Woolwich in 1906

Just occasionally I slide into nostalgia and this 1906 postcard of the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich does it for me.

Now given that I was born in 1949 and first saw the Academy in the summer of 1965 it is not in a strict sense a trip down memory lane.

But more of that later.

This was one of a series of six cards marketed by Raphael Tuck and Sons in 1906 under the title of Woolwich.

I suppose what strikes you first is the close similarity between this image and what you can see now.  True, I doubt any one today would be able to stroll so easily across Academy Road and the military have long since gone.

But otherwise early on a Sunday morning in late September it might just be possible to get close to what we see here.

And I rather think that is what I remember on warm summers evening on the way back from Woolwich to Well Hall.

Best still was when you walked it at a slow and even pace fully appreciating the buildings to your left and the open spaces stretching east down to Hornfair Park.

Now I don’t think I passed that many people in the entire length of the walk from Woolwich up to Shooters Hill and then down along Well Hall Road.

All of which allowed you to wander in your own thoughts and more than once to ponder on an unmade piece of pathway which naively I thought might be Roman.

Take the same journey on one of those evenings heavy with the promise of a thunderstorm and you might well be rewarded by the magnificent sight of lightening streaking across the sky over Shooters Hill followed by the roll of thunder.

But this is so much indulgent tosh, so I will leave you with a second Tuck postcard dated a year earlier from the set entitled Woolwich Town and City.

The company issued two of the same scene one like this which had been tinted in colour and a monochrome copy.  I rather prefer the grey and black card but this coloured one has the advantage of a message on the back and unusually the sender added her address in Plumstead.

But it is the message itself which draws you in.  HP of 34 Charlotte Street sent the card on July 27 1905 with the news "that Mr Coventry died last Tuesday afternoon, was buried on Saturday.”  And with that classic understatement added “Mrs Clarke and her mother came to tea on Monday all quite well.”

Such are the rewards and insights of reading old postcards

Pictures; 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

Chorlton Brook

It winds its way across Chorlton from the border with Withington, having traversed the city, taking on different names in that journey, and runs out into the Mersey.*

In its time it was an important source of water to the people of the township, and by the late 19th century was notorious as a polluted waterway.

This is one of those views most people seldom see, and requires the curious and members of The Friends of Chorlton Brook, to peer over the Brook Bridge on Barlow Moor Road without falling in.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton Brook, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Brook, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Brook