One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 34, no more milkmen

Mr Riley and milk cart at Ivy Farm on Beech Road, circa 1920s

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Milkmen have pretty much vanished from our streets.

Having said that I did see one yesterday morning.

It was about 4.30 and his quiet float was making its way up Beech Road in the dead of night.

It is something you rarely see today and yet well into the late 1990s it was how many of us still got our milk, along with the eggs, the butter and those glass bottles of orange squash.

It also led to that practice of “following the milkman home” after a particularly late night and to “catching the milk train” which were those fist trains of the day carrying the milk from outlying areas into the cities and towns.

In yard of Ivy Farm, circa 1920s

Now when Joe and Mary Ann set up home on Beech Road in 1920 I guess they got their milk from one of the local farms of which there were still quite a few, including old Higginbotham’s on the green, Ivy Farm on Beech Road and the Bailey farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane.

The memory of being sent to collect milk or butter from these farms is only now fading from living memory.

Mary Ann will have had hers delivered, first from a horse and cart, later by milk float still drawn by a horse but with those giant rubber wheels and only later by the familiar electric powered float.

Mr Riley with number 59 Beech Road behind him circa 1920s

And over the years the production of milk will have passed from the local farmer and Creamery to the big dairies with their yards around the city.

Our own one on Brookburn Road only closed a decade or so ago and that of Herald’s in Didsbury a little later.

Living in rural Chorlton was to get your milk fresh and relatively clean.

For those living in the city during the 19th century this was less certain.

There were plenty of small dairies and creameries in the heart of all our big towns and cities supplied by cows which lived beside the business.

In 1911 there were 462 dairymen listed in the city.  Some were very small concerns while others like Burgess of Gartside Street between New Quay Street and Bridge Street spread over four properties with another branch in Hampson Street Salford

Milk float at Acre Top Farm, 1930

The development of railways made it possible to bring milk in from the surrounding countryside and so while the dairies remained the city cows vanished from the scene.

But there were many at the beginning of the 20th century who felt unease at the milk we drank.

In 1907 one correspondent to the Manchester Guardian had asked that simple question “Can the present system of milk supply be improved?”** 

It was an issue of public safety for what was wanted “is milk which is clean and free from pathogenic germs and which is rich in fat.”

Delivering the milk with a Burgon Company cart, 1926

But given the often poor level of scrutiny on the farm and during transportation there was no guarantee of its purity for “milk is a mysterious fluid which tells no tales of its manipulation.”  

Moreover it was also at the mercy of “crowds of filthy shops in which milk is exposed side by side with firewood and candles.”

At every stage there was the danger of contamination.

“The difficulty on the farm is to secure cleanliness in the milker, the atmosphere, the cooling plant and the churn.  The difficulty in the town dairy is largely in the dust laden atmosphere, which alone shows the need of bottling.  The difficulties in the home are dirty jugs and other vessels in which the milk is exposed until it is required.”

Milk churns, 1920

And so not for the first time there had been a call for the involvement of the municipal authorities in the production, supply and provision of milk.

This was after all a period when in the interests of public health local government was getting more and more involved in everything from transport and education to housing, sanitation along with clean drinking water, gas and electric supplies.

But by the time I was born supplies were safe and that familiar delivery every morning was  a mark of a civilized way of  life along with the newspaper on the door mat and the return of the postman with the second delivery later in the day.

Milk float 1985

And all three are almost no more.

First the home fridge and then the supermarket reduced the need for a daily pint to be delivered to the door.

Here on Beech Road the deliveries lingered on till the turn of the century, but you got that sense that like the rag and bone man and the knife grinder their day was numbered.

Pictures; Three pictures of Ivy Farm on Beech Road run by Mr Riley, circa 1920s courtesy of Bernard Leech, Milk float at Acre Top Farm, off Heaton Park Road Blackley, 1930, donated to the collection by Mr Roy Jackson, m80514, Milk cart from Burgess Creamery, Gartside Street Manchester, 1926, m60091Milk cart from Burgess Creamery, Gartside Street Manchester, 1920, m60098, milk float, 1985, m 48820, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**James Long, Municipal Milk, Manchester Guardian, November 20th, 1907