One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 43, listening for the bombs

Looking at the balloon from Beech Road, circa 1941

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.*

Now I have no idea of what Joe and Mary did during the last war.

They were both in their 50s which would have made Mr Scott too young to have served in the Great War and too old for the Second World War.

He may have been in the Home Guard and she in the Women Voluntary Service, but if they were there are no records of their contribution and I doubt now that we will ever know.

As a builder much of his time I guess will have been engaged in making repairs to war damaged property.

There is no evidence that he was building new houses.

The one on the corner of Beech and Beaumont Road which he had begun work on just before the outbreak of the war was only completed sometime after 1945.

Like everyone else they would have endured the rationing, the shortages and the bombing.

From the bomb maps we know that Chorlton was hit with a mix of high explosives and incendiaries many falling on the night of the Manchester Blitz.

Just across the road on Beaumont and at the top of Beech Road firebombs had fallen along with others on the tram terminus, and down along Barlow Moor Road as far as the brook and a little beyond.

Manchester Guardian, December 24, 1940

Added to this there had been direct hits with high explosive bombs on the cinema and on Claude Road.

But as terrifying as these were it will also have been the nightly fear that another raid might occur which was reinforced by the presence of the barrage balloon in the Rec directly opposite the house.

I have often wondered if they took in friends or neighbours during the worst of the raids and I suppose there may be records somewhere in the archives.

Sadly there are no diaries, ration books or even old newspapers lurking anywhere in the house.
I suspect both Joe and Mary Ann were far too practical to have bothered with saving such material.

All of which leaves this chapter of the story of the house unrecorded and with the passage of time there are fewer and fewer people left who knew them and even fewer who might be able to tell me about their war effort.

Still I travel in hope and in the fullness of time will go looking in the archives.

Pictures; Barrage Balloon on the Rec, circa 1941, from the collection of Alan Brown 

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