On a wet grey day in the summer of 1840

It is one of those wet grey July days, which is miserable enough but somehow is made worse by the humid blanket of heat that hits you when you open the back door.

So a double whammy then, rain, heat and not a lot to do but watch the slugs munch the flowers.  But then I am inside looking out from our dining room window.  How different for those people who laboured in our township just 170 years ago.

It is as many of you know a preoccupation of mine given that I have spent the last few years researching the lives of the people who lived here in Chorlton in the first half of the 19^th century.

And so today given the weather I thought I would reflect on the work of those men who plied their way across the Greater Manchester, transporting everything that you might possibly want.

“These were the itinerant traders who might wander into the village selling anything from cloth to leather.  They would call at each house on the Row.   At the first hint of interest they would drop the heavy load and begin pulling out a variety of whatever they thought would sell to the customer.  The same well worn route was also tramped by the tinker who repaired pans and sharpened knives and scissors on a foot driven grindstone.

But a more regular and consistent visitor was the carrier.  He had evolved in the age before the railway, and could be relied onto carry almost anything anywhere.  Usually he worked the route from the villages and hamlets into the town and back.  He acted as a shopping agent taking orders from people and buying the goods in the nearby town.  He too dealt in the everyday household things but also the luxury ones like tea or coffee and even books and newspapers and he also took country goods into the town for sale, as well passengers.

A carter and his horse worked almost all the year round and each season brought its own problems for man and horse.  The cold winter months with the ever possible threat of snow and hard frosts might make any journey a trial but equally the long hot summer brought horse flies which hung around the horse and irritated all in close contact. 

But I suppose for me it would be those wet days when the rain came down as thin drizzle turning at times to just a wet mist.  The hedgerows and leaves would be full of the stuff and in places the spiders’ webs looked like so many tiny pearls strung out on fine necklaces as the water droplets clung to the strands.  All of which is fine but the drizzle gets everywhere socking into clothes which hang heavy and coat the horses with the same thin layer of moisture which becomes no less pleasant as the rain gives way to that sticky heat.  And in the narrow lanes it was next to impossible not to brush up against those hedgerows and coat your clothes with more of that accumulated water.”*

And at the end of the journey, back home, there would be no escaping the powerful smell of damp clothes which permeated the house and added a little more to the misery of wet summer days.

But enough of this, the weather will improve, the sun will shine, the slugs will be contained and I will be out again looking for the remnants of old Chorlton in the sunshine.

*extract from the book Chorlton-cum-Hardy, A Community Transformed due out in later in the year details available at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; “A wet July morning” and "The old road leaving the village for Stretford, a route used by itinerant traders, carries and villagers” from the collection of Andrew Simpson