Who lived here in these houses in Christ Church Square in 1902?

Now I shouldn’t be surprised that the residents of Christ Church Square do not feature in the street directories of the early 20th century.

After all none of the occupations listed could be described as high on the income bracket.

Here was a window cleaner, some general labourers, a few charwomen and carters and an office boy.

None of which seem to have interested the compilers of those street directories.

In 1903 the place does not even rate a mention while eight years later the only two entries were for W.W.Buckley & Son, gear cutters and Dalton Lacquer Manufacturing Co.

So the 59 inhabitants of the 15 occupied houses are lost to history.

Well not quite because they all appear on the 1901 census which gets me closer to who was living in the houses in the two pictures but not exactly.

The houses can be seen on the OS map for 1894 but tracking them on the census return is less easy.

The caption on the photographs refers to numbers ?3 to 24 and these could be the three on the OS map and standing outside one is a man in a long leather overall while in the other there is that hand cart.

If pushed the man in the leather apron might just be Thomas Pollit, a 39 year old coal carter from number 24 or George Bough also a carter who shifted confectionery, and the lad beside the hand cart might Mr Bough’s son who was just 13 and worked as an office boy.

But all of that is just speculation.

Either way these three properties were back to backs houses and their mirror three houses faced on to Barrack Street which ran from Chester Road down to Queen Street.

The street directories are no more helpful on who occupied those mirror three.

And so that just leaves me to comment on the properties themselves in Christ Church Square.  They have that distinctive lime wash which I remember from my own home and which was less a way of brightening the yard and more a simple way of curbing infestations.

As for Christ Church Square it had seen better days.

Back in the 1840s the square faced out onto a burial ground and the “the Bible Christian’s Chapel called Christ Church and the Christ Church School (Day and Sunday).

By 1902 when our pictures were taken the chapel had gone and the burial ground seems to have become open land.

The school has expanded into the chapel and our house just faces it.

It’s a place and a story I will return to if only to establish that we are dealing with the same properties for one caption does also refer to numbers 25-35, Christ Church Square which do not appear on the census.

So confusion all round and perhaps a visit to Barrack Street and the mirror three.

We shall see.

But I shall  finish  with that outside lavatory which like the white wash walls I remember from my childhood.

Look very closely and you can make out the exterior door which night soil men would have collected the contents.

Pictures; Christ Church Square, A Bradburn, 1902, m25499, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and detail from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-1894 courtesy of Digital Archives, Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/