Now I never quite know where any of these stories will go when I first start them.
This one begins with a postcard sent to Hough End Hall sometime between 1910 and 1915 and ends with a mystery.
In between there was a wedding at Christ Church in Didsbury, a large hardware business on Shudehill and a death at the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital Cheadle.
Now the starting point was that post card sent by Marjorie to Ethel Lomas who lived at Hough End Hall.
It contains the usual set of messages, including the reference to a night out in Buxton, the news that she had been on holiday all week and that on the day the card was sent she had been “by myself all day.”
Ethel had been born in 1891 in Chorlton on Sandy Lane and sometime around 1895 her parents took over the tenancy of the farm and they moved into the Hall which had been in the possession of the Lomas family since 1849.
I say possession but that is not entirely accurate because the hall like the land belonged to the Egerton’s who had bought it in the mid 18th century.
It was a working farm and the hall had long ago been divided up into family rooms and Ethel her brother and aunt all worked alongside Mr and Mrs Lomas to make the place work.
I don’t know how much leisure time she had, or what she did in her free time and the only image I have been able to discover shows what I think is Ethel in the garden of the hall sometime at the turn of the last century.
So she remains a shadowy character which is not helped by the confusion over her age. So while she was born in 1891 she is down on the 1911 census as 22, and in 1915 when she got married age gave her age as 24.
She married a Harold Kitching whose father ran a hardware business on the corner of Shudehill and Mayes Street. But it was more than just a hardware business.
Both Harold and his father Robert described themselves as merchants and the building from which they operated went under the name of Kitchings Buildings.
The property is still there today but there are those first ominous signs that its days may soon be numbered.
They were married at Christ Church in West Didsbury and the service was performed by Edward Lomax, vicar of St Mary’s in Liverpool.
And that is where the trail ends for neither Ethel nor Harold can so far be tracked after that marriage.
I have every expectation that I will find them, but at present I have only been able unearth the death of Robert in 1924 in Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital Cheadle.
On his death he left effects worth £17987 and the business appears still to have been trading from 97 Shudehill.
Now I know there will be more, after all we have travelled from Hough End Hall and a farm to the busy enterprise of Shudehill and I have ever confidence that there is more still to come.
Pictures; Ethel circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection, the marriage of Ethel and Harold in 1915, courtesy of the National Archives and Ancestry.co.uk, and the map of Shudehill from Goad’s Fire Insurance Map, 1900, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
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| A young Ethel |
In between there was a wedding at Christ Church in Didsbury, a large hardware business on Shudehill and a death at the Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital Cheadle.
Now the starting point was that post card sent by Marjorie to Ethel Lomas who lived at Hough End Hall.
It contains the usual set of messages, including the reference to a night out in Buxton, the news that she had been on holiday all week and that on the day the card was sent she had been “by myself all day.”
Ethel had been born in 1891 in Chorlton on Sandy Lane and sometime around 1895 her parents took over the tenancy of the farm and they moved into the Hall which had been in the possession of the Lomas family since 1849.
I say possession but that is not entirely accurate because the hall like the land belonged to the Egerton’s who had bought it in the mid 18th century.
It was a working farm and the hall had long ago been divided up into family rooms and Ethel her brother and aunt all worked alongside Mr and Mrs Lomas to make the place work.
 |
| Kitching's Buildings, 1900 |
So she remains a shadowy character which is not helped by the confusion over her age. So while she was born in 1891 she is down on the 1911 census as 22, and in 1915 when she got married age gave her age as 24.
She married a Harold Kitching whose father ran a hardware business on the corner of Shudehill and Mayes Street. But it was more than just a hardware business.
Both Harold and his father Robert described themselves as merchants and the building from which they operated went under the name of Kitchings Buildings.
The property is still there today but there are those first ominous signs that its days may soon be numbered.
They were married at Christ Church in West Didsbury and the service was performed by Edward Lomax, vicar of St Mary’s in Liverpool.
 |
| Ethel and Howard's marriage, 1915 |
I have every expectation that I will find them, but at present I have only been able unearth the death of Robert in 1924 in Manchester Royal Lunatic Hospital Cheadle.
On his death he left effects worth £17987 and the business appears still to have been trading from 97 Shudehill.
Now I know there will be more, after all we have travelled from Hough End Hall and a farm to the busy enterprise of Shudehill and I have ever confidence that there is more still to come.
Pictures; Ethel circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection, the marriage of Ethel and Harold in 1915, courtesy of the National Archives and Ancestry.co.uk, and the map of Shudehill from Goad’s Fire Insurance Map, 1900, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
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