In search of a book ............... clues to the story of Chorlton in the early 19th century

An occasional series charting the research that led to Chorlton-cum-Hardy A Community Transformed

There will be those who mutter “get a life” when I admit that one of the types of research I enjoy is using street directories.

 They are a little like the telephone directory in that for 200 years they listed who lived where and came out each year. The other advantage is that they list the occupation of the named person. So it is possible to follow an individual, tracking their movements and sometimes change of job and status. This has a real value given that the census records were every ten years and much can happen in a decade.

At the same time it gives a picture of the other people in the street and so allows the historian to gain an insight into the area. Added to this are some wonderful adverts of the period and often a section not only for residential properties but for businesses as well, enabling the researcher to cross reference people with their trade.

And of course by merely counting up the number of beer shops pubs or tailors begin to get an idea of what the place was like.
Finally the directories give directions so it is possible to locate a street off a bust highway and compare this with maps both during the period and right now. Add google maps to the search and the historian can walk along the same path as someone a hundred years ago.

This has allowed me no only to get a feel for a place particularly if the buildings are still standing but because the directories were issued annually it is possible to track the when a road was cut and how it developed.

But there are drawbacks. First the directories only list the householder and so unlike the census will not reveal family members. And what you get is patchy. Cities and towns are better recorded than rural areas and earlier directories concentrate on those with money, status or trade and business. Little hope then of finding a farm worker here in Chorlton during the first half of the century.

Still the directories will provide fascinating clues and will often contain a brief history and general description of a location along with a list of public buildings and local government officers, elected representatives and information on canal, road and later rail transport.

Most central and local history libraries will contain the directories for the area, some like Manchester are on microfilm and some like Salford are still held as original paper copies. Many are now also available on line from Historical Directories which is a project undertaken by the University of Leicester with funding from the Lottery and Enrick UK,and can be found at http://www.historicaldirectories.org/hd/

Picture; an advert for spectacles from Slater’s Manchester & Salford Directory 1850, from Historical Directories