That ghost sign on Beech Road, a painting and a plasterer

Now here is one of those ghost signs which have yet to pass out of living memory.

And if you have lived in Chorlton for as long as I have you will remember when it was called Sunflowers, was run by George and traded beside the launderette.

Back then we still had a greengrocer, a post office and two butchers while just two decades earlier you could call in at the grocers, buy paraffin and a candle from the shop next to Wilkinson’s and choose to get your fresh cakes from Richardson’s or the Oven Door.

So this is a ghost sign for a business which has been around while Beech Road moved from an ordinary little shopping centre serving the old village into the “quirky" hub of small traders offering everything from Victorian antique lace, reproduction wooden crates and original glassware.

Not that we have completely shaken off that older Beech Road.

Look just below the ghost sign and there is one for Gazelle Plasterers which have been trading from the side of the Wholefood shop since the 1980s.*

Leo who runs the business is an excellent craftsman.

We used him back in 1983 and again only earlier last year.

He specializes in fine plaster mouldings and was engaged in restoring some of the features in both Central Ref and Sunlight House on Quay Street.

All of which brings me back to Chorlton Wholefoods which sadly closed recently.

There will be those who remember this stretch of shops as the home of strippo and perhaps even a few when the entire block all the way round on to Stockton Road was the co-op.

But most will have fond memories of that corner business where you could get your organic veg, interesting qourn products and a vast range of food from good wholemeal bread to Tivall sausages.

So here when all that was still possible is Peter’s painting which captures the last period of Chorlton Wholefoods.

The interior had been redone, the frontage given that distinctive black and yellow appearance and the business gave this end of Beech Road a bit of class.

Picture; Beech Road ghost sign, 2015, from the collection of Peter Topping

Painting; Chorlton Wholefoods, Beech Road, 2013 © Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

*Gazelle Art Plaster, Beech Road, 07760 461259

Passionate about local history

Eltham in 1909

Now I collect local history groups, in fact I hoover them up, avidly signing up to their newsletters mentioning them on the blog and where practical going to the meetings.

And it is because I just don’t think you can get enough local history.

After all when it comes down to it for most of us where we live is important and making sense of what happened  in the past helps understand how the place has developed.

Of course there are  the sniffy historians who mumble on about parish pump events and the need to see the bigger picture, but the bigger picture always ends at the bottom of your road, whether it’s the closure of the local factory during a depression, or the very real and personal conflict of conscience when them at the top decide that it would be better if we followed a Protestant Prayer Book and attended a church devoid of holy pictures.

And it is the local and the family historians who often unearth the evidence that either confirms or rubbishes the great sweep of history theory.

North Cray, © J.D.Gammon

So all of this is to introduce two new ones, the Eltham Society and the North Cray Residents Association.*

Now I rather suspect the secretaries of both will rightly say “we have got on very well for the last x number of years without this Northern chap writing about us,” which is perfectly true but won’t stop me.

The Eltham Society was founded in1965 which was the year after we washed up in the place, although I have to confess with a hint of embarrassment that I only joined this year.  But in my defence I was 14 in 1964, left Eltham for Manchester five years later and only felt that I could start writing about its history recently.

North Cray beat it by 21 years having been set up in the March of 1944 which strikes me as a bit odd given the titanic sweep of history that was going on at the time.  But then the very idea that people could be thinking about the future at such a time appeals to the optimist in me.

The Tudor Barn, Well Hall © Scott MacDonald

And takes me back to that simple idea that if you like somewhere you will want to keep it nice, watch carefully the developments a foot and judge those changes by what has gone on before which fits with Eltham’s  “Preserving the Past, Conserving the Present, Protecting the Future.”

Often the history side grows out of what was a residents association or in our case a Civic Society.

All too often I chose to dismiss them, falling back on the ignorant prejudice that here were a group of penny pinching hard faced zealots unwilling to spend for the common good or wrapped up in arcane practises.

Nor is this so far from the mark in the late 19th century.  Our own Chorlton Residents Association was quick to scrutinise the profligate actions of local government, but then they also campaigned for the provision of better education, sanitation, public libraries and street lighting, all of which I approve of.**

So yet again history is messy, which just leaves me to suggest you explore the history sections of their web sites.

* The Eltham Society http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/ and the  North Cray Residents Association http://www.northcrayresidents.org.uk/

** “exercising a rigorous protest against extravagance” ......... The Chorlton Ratepayers Association 1877-?
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/exercising-rigorous-protest-against_12.html

Picture; The Kings Arms from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/ Footscray courtesy of J.D.Gammon, and the Tudor Barn, courtesy of Scott McDonald

Bringing out the board from the glory hole.... another story from Sally Dervan

Sally is a regular contributor to the blog and also has a wonderful collection of images of Manchester from the past.*

This photo of my mum, in her ballet dress, aged about five, is one of a number of dance related photos of her that I used to enjoy looking at when I was a child.

This one, taken at Oxford Road Studios in Manchester, is the only photo from that group that I still have.

It was a nice collection; all related to ballet and tap dancing triumphs when she was a little girl. The collection included some newspaper clippings where my mum (sometimes alongside her sister Hazel) would be shown putting on a show or winning a prize.

The collection was proudly maintained by my Nana, who kept the memories safely in a shoe box and would bring them out at my request.

The newspaper clippings had been carefully glued to a cardboard backing to help them withstand the years of re reading and reminiscing.

As a talented seamstress with two daughters close in age, my Nana was kept busy producing outfits for her dancing girls and I remember the photos showed a whole range of clever and inventive costumes.

All of these produced at a time when resources were scarce and old clothes were not discarded but adapted and made into something new and a bit special.

When I was born in 1964, with her dancing days by then just a memory from childhood, my mum gave up her secretarial job and stayed at home to look after me.

In common with many young people of her generation, there was no question of my mum and dad immediately getting "a place of their own" so we lived for a few years at my Nana and Granddads house on Princess Parkway , close to the Mersey Hotel .

I was born in the back bedroom of that house, and some of my earliest childhood memories are from there.

Our house had just two rooms downstairs, the front living room and the big back kitchen with the downstairs toilet in a little passage by the back door.

There was also the "glory hole”, the cupboard under the stairs that housed a variety of weird and wonderful objects and was often visited because it was also home to the bucket of coal for the fire in the front room.

There was one Item that lived in the glory hole that always made me smile when I saw it.

A large board that had been kept in there for years, it was kept specifically for tap dancing on, so that my mum and her sister couldn't be blamed for damaging the kitchen linoleum when they were kids.

As an adult, my mum would sometimes bring this board out and attempt to show me a few steps. Her talents far outweighed mine; I was more interested in sticking my nose in a book.

Nevertheless, I loved to watch her feet as she danced and I think these experiences explain my lifelong love of dancers such as Syd Charisse, Rita Hayworth and The Andrews Sisters, (who, although much better known for their singing were also a mean trio of tappers !)

Although I could only watch my Mum and wonder, talent can sometimes skip a generation and my own daughter has studied Musical Theatre to Masters Degree level and includes ballet and tap in her range of skills.

In the early 1970s, I remember feeling a sense of pride when neighbours had house parties and the floor would be cleared for my mum and dad to jive.

On one occasion, I remember a neighbour’s mantelpiece also being cleared, of ornaments, as their living room was really a bit cramped, not much bigger than the board from the glory hole, and certainly too small for the enthusiasm of this jiving duo!

© Sally Dervan

Pictures; from the collection of Sally Dervan

*Sally Dervan, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Sally%20Dervan

Debates which never go away, ......... the story of our public library

Who could think that a gift of £5,000 in 1914 to help finance a library here in Chorlton could cause a stir and still have people debating the issue years later? Now the gift came from the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and was only one of 660 which he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.

From humble beginnings he had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects. Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.

But there are those who would argue the money was not his to give away having been made by the men who toiled in the steel plants and who were increasingly denied the right to organise collectively in his work places. But that is another story.

Here in Chorlton the charge against the Carnegie gift was led by Councillor Jane Redford, who “was not infatuated with the Carnegie gift” expressing “a feeling of disappointment that the Chorlton ratepayers were not to get a library through the ordinary means of municipal enterprise.”*

The issue of a free library for Chorlton had been bubbling below the surface since we had voted to be incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1904. In January 1908 the Ratepayers Association had written to the Town Clerk asking for the Corporation to honour the agreement which they did in November of the same year.

It was something of a temporary measure as the library was in a rented house on Oswald Road. But it began with the provision of a thousand books a reading room and a meetings room and was a runaway success. During the first two months the membership climbed to 1,100 and the number of books was doubled with a promise of another 1,000.

More than anything it proved the need for a library on a more permanent footing and by 1911 the negotiations with Carnegie were underway. These gifts from the steel magnate were hedged with conditions, and in our case that the site “should be made over free of cost to the Corporation” ** and the cost of the building shouldn’t exceed £5000.

There is a story that the original plans for the library crossed the Atlantic with the Titanic and were lost, but whether true or not the building was finished just a little later than scheduled and was opened on November 4th 1914. The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which]if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”


In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”***


There was already a cinema of sorts just around the corner on Wilbraham Road, just over the bridge before the junction with Buckingham Road. It had been opened in the early years of the 20th century and would later be part of a chain of picture houses across the city. Alas no such venture was to enter the library.

And now the debate over the future of the library and the question of the degree to which the council should go into partnership with private enterprise is again a live issue. But like the story of the bioscope, and the Chorlton Pavilion on Wilbraham Road it is a topic for another day.

Picture; Chorlton Library from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of Mrs Jane Redford from her election address by kind permission of Lawrence Beadle 

* New Library for Chorlton, Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
**ibid Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
*** A New Library, Manchester Guardian November 5th 1914

All you ever wanted to know but never knew where to look ........... LANCASHIRE: MANCHESTER AND THE SOUTH EAST

Now there are some books which act as an essential guide and I couldn’t do without them.

One of these is LANCASHIRE: MANCHESTER AND THE SOUTH EAST, by Claire Hartwell, Matthew Hyde and Nikiolaus Pevsner and its companion which concentrates on specifically on Manchester.*

These two books are often a starting point when I want to follow something up and use an old fashioned book rather than the internet.

To try and pick any entry is a bit like choosing one favourite Italian dish over another to give to a friend, but the extract on Hough End Hall is fascinating for the intriguing plan of what the original Hall might have been like.

One to read.

Picture; LANCASHIRE: MANCHESTER AND THE SOUTH EAST

* LANCASHIRE: MANCHESTER AND THE SOUTH EAST, by Claire Hartwell, Matthew Hyde and Nikiolaus Pevsner, Yale University Press, 2004

What was Mrs Lomax doing in Hough End Hall in 1931?

Now I wonder what Mrs Lomax was doing in Hough End Hall when this picture was taken in 1931?

By then she was 68, a widow, and had another nine full years ahead.

The Hall had been a farmhouse from the late 18th century and her family had run the farm and lived at Hough End Hall since the 1840s.

And she was still working although the farm had shrunk from 220 acres employing 13 labourers to just over 3 acres.

A decade or so before she had advertised for a young lad to live in and help with the milk round and after her death those 3 acres along with the Hall were rented out to the Bailey family who continued to work the land.

I like this picture which comes courtesy of my friend Sally from the City Council’s Annual Review which is a cornucopia of hidden treasures.

In the fullness of time I will ask Sally if there was a story attached to the picture, but for now I will leave you with the hall in 1932 at a moment when it still looked as it had done for a century.

Picture; Hough End Hall in 1931 from Manchester City Council’s Annual Review, 1932, courtesy of Sally Dervan

Lost images of our industrial past ........... no 5 the construction of the Petrograd Boot Company

Now I know there will be a story here and more over someone will come back with a full account of the history of the Petrograd Boot Company.

But for now all I have is this picture collected by my friend Sally from a book including many other pictures of Trafford Park from the first half of the last century.

The only other reference comes from the National Archive which took me to the Greater Manchester County Record Office, now with the Manchester Archives at Central Ref and lists  what I guess will be the same image, “Workers, or builders, or both, at the Petrograd Boot Company warehouse (Russian) in Trafford Park during World War I, reference 580/3, negative sheet number K1/29” with a date of 1914-18.

And I guess this may be the same image but of course this short description does not do justice to what will be a fascinating piece of history.

The starting point will have to be a directory for Trafford Park during the war and a visit to the Trafford Local History Centre.

But in the meantime I am full of questions, ranging from who owned the company, was it originally a Russian business and that obvious one did it survive the Revolution?

All of which will have to wait a tad bit longer.

Picture; the construction of the Petrograd Boot Company Trafford Park, during the Great War from the collection of Sally Dervan

Downgrading to a Nokia 3310 and stepping back into history

Now I am minded to change my mobile but unlike most people I am down grading.

For years I have been happy with my old Nokia 6310.

It does the biz, allowing me to phone and text people, with a battery which doesn’t run out by dinner time and most importantly if you drop it just bounces.

I did try a smart version but discovered I was not smart enough to use it.

And now it is time to change so as Tina’s dad has just upgraded I am the proud owner of his Nokia 3310.

It was a model I once possessed and I rather think it will become my new phone,

It is even more robust than my current one and has two added bonuses which are that it is from Italy and it plays Snake.

At which point I could reflect on the massive changes in telephones and mobiles but that is for another time.

Picture; Nokia 3310 circa 2000 from the collection oof Andrew Simpson 

"See better days and do better things" ............ that ruin you see from the tram at Cornbrook

It’s the ruin you spot from the tram at Cornbrook.

Once it was the Railway Inn, pulling pints and offering a bit of cheer on a drab corner.

I have been interested in it for years, have written about it in the past and featured some of Andy Robertson’s pictures of the place.

It still clings on although now there is little left bar a few walls.

Andy has gone back and here are a few more of his photographs along with one in happier times.

It stands on the corner of Cornbrook Road and Dover Street and in 1911 Jonas Barraclough dispensed the beer and the cheer.

It was a densely packed area of terraced houses and industry.

So walking down Cornbrook Road from Chester Road to Dover Street the causal visitor would have encountered the homes of a chimney sweep, a postman and stevedore along with factories making tinplate, paint and cut glass in between the premises of

Joseph Bradley Herbalist, Arton Snowden, fried fish dealer and a printing works.

All very different from today.







Pictures of the Railway Inn today courtesy of Andy Robertson, and the Railway Inn in 1958, E Stanley, m 50339, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Looking down on Cornbrook and the ruins of the Railway Inn, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/looking-down-on-cornbrook-and-ruins-of.html

There is a lot happening down at Chorlton Central Church on Barlow Moor Road.

There is a lot happening down at Chorlton Central Church on Barlow Moor Road.

And the awful thing is that I have just pretty much ignored it,  I have written about the church in the past* and was a tad curious about the work being done but just assumed that it was a bit of twiddly work.

Of course there is much more as I saw when I went past on Saturday, but even then I did not go looking for an explanation.

But rest assured because Andy Robertson has done just that and here is one of pictures taken yesterday which with those I know he will take will provide more evidence for the way Chorlton is changing.

So as he has put me to shame all I can do is provide a much earlier picture from the collection and a link to one of those stories.






Picture;  Chorlton Central Church January 2015, courtesy of Andy Robertson

*A church on Barlow Moor Road and a missing hall in Greenfield, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/a-church-on-barlow-moor-road-and.html

Lost images of our industrial past ........... no 4 munitions workers at Westinghouse Works Trafford Park, during the Great Wa

Now this began as a one off showing pictures from a Derby foundry sometime in the 1930s but given my friend Sally’s wonderful collection of pictures from Trafford Park in the first half of the 20th century it has become a series.

This was featured recently by Sally on that excellent facebook site Greater Manchester History, Architecture, Faces and Place

More to follow.

Picture; munitions workers at Westinghouse Works Trafford Park, during the Great War from the collection of Sally Dervan

*Greater Manchester History, Architecture, Faces and Places, https://www.facebook.com/groups/646597565403712/

Two ghost signs for one story ........ the Swan in Stockport and Vaux the brewery

Now there is more than a little irony in this picture of the ghost sign on the gable end of number 37 Shaw Heath in Stockport.

The Swan closed a long time ago but as if to add insult to injury  its sign is just above an advertising hoarding for another brewery boldy announcing “NEW YEAR, NEW START, BE YOUR OWN BOSS, RUN YOUR OWN ROBINSON’S PUB."

And given the large numbers of pubs that are closing every month across the country there may be something a ironic in that offer.

But I suppose the brewery couldn’t miss the opportunity to promote themselves along with their pub the Armoury which stands close by at number 31.

They may even reflect that not only have they seen off a rival pub but a brewery as well because like the Swan Vaux which supplied the beer has also vanished from the scene.

I have fond memories of Vaux which dominated Sunderland where I spent some happy summers a long time ago.

It was founded in 1837 and for 170 years was a major employer in the town.

In the 1990s the company expanded into hotels and in March 1999 closed their two breweries but continued to run the pubs until the firm was taken over by Whitbread in 2000.

And that I suspect was when the Swan closed, although I am not completely sure.

But someone will help me out.

Today the old pub is home to a pawnbrokers who themselves advertised on that hoarding below our ghost sign.

So two ghost signs for the price of one story, not bad I think.

Picture; ghost sign on Shaw Heath, 2015 from the collection of Graham Gill

*Vaux Breweries,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaux_Breweries 

A year in the story of Oswald Road School

Now anyone who missed that short series on Oswald Road School’s new building, this is for you.*

Just over a year and a bit ago Andy Robertson started recording the construction of that new bit of the school.

At the time I had mixed feelings wondering whether it would detract from the style and appearance of the old school but fully accepting that schools are about children and have to adapt to meet growing intake and changes in how they are taught.

I wasn’t alone in experiencing those thoughts but I suspect in a few years such considerations will have been forgotten.

So for those who have already forgotten the start of the build or for that matter its completion in September 2014, here are two that Andy took pretty much at the beginning and finish of the project.

And it highlights the important work Andy has done to record how where we live continues change.

Which just leaves me to make that simple appeal for more photographs from our past, be they picture postcards, snaps of granny in the back yard or stylized portraits from the studio of the professional photographer.

Pictures; Oswald Road School in the January and September of 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Oswald Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Oswald%20Road

Lost images of our industrial past ........... no 3 engineers in Trafford Park in 1925

This is one of those pictures which I guess will never off up its full story.

I know that these were a group of men employed by Redpath and Brown Engineers in Trafford Park and the photograph was taken in 1925.

In time I will find out the exact location in Trafford Park and perhaps something of what the firm made here in Manchester.

But what I have found out so far is interesting enough and by one of those bits of historical coincidences links me to the company.

They started as ironmongers in Edinburgh in 1802, moved into structural ironwork and from 1896 having sold the ironmongery side of the business and later the firm's boiler business they became structural engineers.

A Glasgow office of the firm was opened in 1885 and in 1897 a new factory was built at Albion Road, with new bases established in London and Manchester during the 1900s.*

And that of course brings the link, with me because the London factory was built in East Greenwich not that far from where I grew up and where my father finished his working career.

Nor is that all for in 1911 “the Company had constructed, for a Manchester office building, a framework containing over 7,000 tons of steel, the first 2,000 tons of which was erected in 8 weeks! “**

And in time I think I might even be able to locate that building but for now I shall  just leave you with that photograph.

And one last thought which focuses on that man with the pipe and just what had caught his attention as the picture was snapped?



Picture; men employed by Redpath and Brown Engineers in Trafford Park, 1925, from the collection of Sally Dervan

*Source: Slaven, A and Checkland, S (eds.), Dictionary of Scottish Business Biography 1860-1960, vol 1, (1986, Aberdeen) quoted on the University of Glasgow Archives Hub, http://cheshire.cent.gla.ac.uk/ead/search?operation=search&fieldidx1=dc.subject&fieldrel1=exact&fieldcont1=construction%20engineering,

**Redpath Brown brochure text, taken from, Greenwich Peninsula History, https://greenwichpeninsulahistory.wordpress.com/2013/08/05/redpath-brown-brochure-text/

Tracking that ghost sign on Range Road in Stockport

Powhall and Hovis 2015

Well I went looking for Powhall the name on this ghost sign in Stockport and came up with a blank which confirms that simple conclusion that this ghost sign has passed into history.

It belongs to a house on Lowfield Road, and is unusual because it was painted on the back of the house and not on the gable end.

The property has undergone a fair bit of renovation.

Range Road &Lowfield Road, 1910

The entrance that once faced out on to Lowfield Road has been bricked up as has the shop window which ran along Range Road.

Now painting the sign on the back made sense given that Range Road was once a busy thoroughfare.

At the turn of the last century just a little further along the road there was both  an engineering and hat factory with another hat works almost opposite on Adswood Road.

So plenty of hungry people wanting a Hovis sandwich or the odd cake at dinner time.

And even today I think Range Road will gets a fair bit of traffic and I wonder how many people clock that faded sign.

I am rather glad Graham did and that he then posted it on to me.

I can't exactly be sure when the sign was painted or when Powhill was in business but I bet there will be someone who does.

Looking down Range Road, 2015

Well we shall see.






Picture; Powhall and Hovis, 2014, from the collection of Graham Gill and detail of Stockport in 1910 from the OS for Cheshire, 1900-1910, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

The Essoldo, Blockbusters and plans for a new Morrisons on Barlow Moor Road

The cinema in 1959

Now when Mr Stanley wandered down Barlow Moor Road and snapped his picture of the Essoldo Cinema in March 1959, he pretty much set up the confusion which still exists today and allows some to mix up what was the Blockbusters store with the picture house.

And you can see why because the two were very close together.  Moreover the shape of the old Blockbuster is similar.

But that is about it.

Looking along to KFC and Blockbusters, 2014

The building was once accordling to Mr Stanley a  “public market place” which closed sometime before 1939 and then reopened as "E.Boydell and Co. Ltd, painting and finishing department, agricultural machinery.”

The OS map for 1934 shows the site with a building which conforms to the present footprint but with no name or explanation of its use.

In the fullness of time I shall wander off to the archives at Central Ref and work my through the street directories to establish when the market place was opened and closed and the dates of its change of use.

It was still operating as E.Boydell and Co. Ltd in 1959 because it was the next in Mr Stanley's collection of pictures of Barlow Moor Road, and though I should remember it back in the 1970s I don’t.

E Boydell & Co. Ltd in 1959

And it won’t be long before any such confusion between the old cinema and Blockbusters will be gone forever, because plans are in to demolish the building and in its place, the

“erection of three-storey mixed use building comprising 3no. retail units of (Class A1) retail space (762 square metres total) at ground floor with 12no. two bed apartments on above two floors following demolition of existing retail store”* and interestingly enough something of the history of the site including where the Essoldo once stood can be seen as well.**

All of which I suppose takes us full circle to that market place which I guess was constructed with an eye to the new estates which were opening up south of the Brook and out beyond Mauldeth Road West.

An empty Blockbusters, 2014

So there you have it, the much talked of Morrison’s new store looks to be on the cards and if you didn’t know of the plans now you do with a little of the story of the site before now.

As ever it was Andy’s picture of the old Blockbuster’s which set me off and yet again there he was with his camera recoding what will soon be gone.

Pictures; the empty Blockbuster’s 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Essoldo Cinema m09200 and  E.Boydell and Co. Ltd, m m17528,  March 1959,  R E Stanley, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester City Council Planning Applications, 105734/FO/2014/S1 http://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=N5T7KZBC6K000

** Manchester City Council Planning Applications, http://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/simpleSearchResults.do?action=firstPage

Back along the Rochdale Canal in the heart of the city

I have decided to revisit the Rochdale Canal.

It is a place that has held a special fascination for me ever since I first discovered it in the early 1970s, and as foolish as it sounds thought of it as somewhere which was pretty much all my own.

Of course back then it was very neglected and not that well known, despite the fact that it ran through the heart of the city from the Dale Street Basin near Piccadilly down to Castlefield.

And so back then I had it almost to myself, although I now discover that friends like  Eileen Blake had also discovered it at the same time.

To start the series off again I thought I would post one of the pictures I took just two years ago when I was showing the canal off to my sister’s partner.

This spot is always one of my favourites, and just as I started the post Andy Robertson sent me his own picture of the same lock keeper’s house today and a reminder that back in 1972 H

Milligan had recorded the same building.

Now I could go into a deep historical account but will just leave it there for now.

Pictures; the canal by the Deansgate Bridge, 2012, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  the same spot in 2014 by Andy Robertson and back in 1972, H Milligan, m05522, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*The Rochdale Canal, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Rochdale%20Canal

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 54 ............ a pop corn maker and the kitchen range, and everything in between

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.*

Popcorn Maker, Andrew James 2014

I wonder what Jo and Mary Ann would have made of our popcorn maker or for that matter any one of the numerous electrical gadgets which have found their way in to the house since I moved here in 1976.

Some like the Hoover, electric iron and kettle will not have struck them as odd, and they would have taken the television and telephone in their stride.

All were around before or soon after they moved into the house in 1915 and even that television was in its way only an extension of the wireless.

And given what I know of them they would have been the first to embrace new household machines.

Manchester Corporation Electrical Works, 1915

By the mid 1920s they had a phone, and Joe was advertising that all the houses he was building including the garages had electricity through out.

Indeed the house finished in 1915 was powered throughout with electricity relying only on gas for cooking, which was in direct contrast to the new estate of Chorltonville which had been built just four years earlier and still had gas lighting.

If Joe had fitted a cooking range it had gone by the 1970s and judging by some pictures of the houses they had opted for a television by the mid 1950s.

But I wonder about the popcorn maker and I doubt that they would have given all those games consoles a home.

Of course you can never be sure and it is easy to make assumptions about people in the past.

And of these the worst is to conclude that they would have had trouble with the changes that tumbled past them during the last two centuries.

Household appliances, 1955

More than once I have pondered on my dad and my uncles who were all born on either side of 1900 and drew conclusions about how they adapted to a world which went from horse drawn carriages to jet aircraft in a handful of decades.

I suspect they took it all in their stride much as I have done.

I may have grown up with the television, the motor car and the telephone but the mobile and the smart variations of the mobile along with the computer, the internet and all that follows from online shopping are both new and exciting.

And what follows from that is that equally misguided belief that the time we live through is unique in being a period of change.

Now it is true that the speed of technological innovation seems to be quickening but each generation has had to cope with profound change which has been has challenging as anything I have come across.

The copper in the cellar, Mary Ann's first washing machine, 1915

So as I wander through the
house there is not that much that I think would surprise Joe and Mary Ann.

Perhaps the number of power points in the kitchen which currently stands at eighteen but you can never have enough power points, and Mary Ann would I think have seen the logic of more over less.

And as much as I am impressed with the opportunity the internet presents of instant communication with Canada, and Australia their telephone already did the business.

So in their way each of our gadgets is pretty much just an extension of what Joe and Mary Anne already took for granted.

As for the popcorn maker, well if they had discovered the pleasure of eating the stuff I am sure they managed with a saucepan and a bit of oil.

Pictures; popcorn maker 2014, household appliances 1955 from the collection Graham Gill and the rest from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 53 ............ rediscovering curtains and respecting the original design

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 if there is one thing I can be confident about it is that Joe and Mary Ann would not have gone in for stripped floors, window blinds and open plan.

Good quality carpets, thick heavy duty curtains and individual rooms made sense back in 1915 and as I know to my cost still do today.

When John bought the house on the death of Mary Ann he got rid of the carpets, sanded the downstairs floors and replaced the curtains with blinds.

And I followed suit when I bought the house a couple of years later.

It all fitted with that Habitat life style my generation embraced but made for a house of a thousand draughts.

At which point someone will proffer advice on how to seal the gaps in the floorboards, suggest a call to their favourite double glazing company and remind me of the value of wearing  another jumper.

All of which may have some merit but ignores the simple fact that Joe and Mary Ann had the right idea as I can testify now that we have gone back to curtains.  

They are heavy wool lined and while they have cut the bay off from the rest of the dining room at night have made the place so much warmer.

And the point is less about saving on the fuel bill and more about respecting the original design of the house.

It is a theme I have reflected on in the past but one which it won’t harm revisiting.

This house has a simple lay out which works.  There are two largish ground floor rooms, a smallish kitchen and pantry all leading off from the hall which means that different things can be going on at the same time in different rooms with little danger that one activity will intrude on someone else in another room.

Now had we knocked through from front to back that flexibility would have been lost, like wise running the kitchen into the dining room would have left us at the mercy of anyone coming in late from work and wanting to cook while we were watching television.

And it has to be said that the whole history of house design over 5 centuries has been to move away from one large communal living area to smaller more intimate spaces.

It is all very nice to open up the house so everyone can feel part of the family, but if 30 years of bringing up children has taught me anything it is that kids pretty much like to be on their own for large chunks of the time and there is nothing wrong with that.

I grew up having to endure the television choices of my parents, wishing that there was somewhere I could take friends and above all have those private telephone conversations well out of ear shot.

In our small house that meant hours in cold bedrooms and trips out to the telephone box at the end of the road.

So despite the atrocious things I have done to the house over the last 38 years, if Joe and Mary Ann walked in through the front door today the place would not offer up to many surprises.

Pictures; from the collections of Lois Sparshot and Andrew Simpson

*The story of a house,

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

Discovering something new about Victorian Churches at Furness Vale on February 3rd

Now I was pleased when Neil told me he had made the long journey by bike to Furness Vale to hear one of the talks put on by the history society and even more that he enjoyed the presentation along with the nearby restaurant I suggested he tried.

So I hope that he will be suitably inspired to catch the next one which will be on Victorian Church Buildings in the North West on February 3rd.

But if like me that will not be possible I recommend their newsletter.*

*Furness Vale Local History Society, http://furnesshistory.blogspot.co.uk/

The ghost sign that has survived another year .......... the Overbridge and Springfield Mills in Salford

Sometimes a ghost sign doesn’t get any more dramatic than this.

We are on Sherborn Street yesterday afternoon in the company of Andy Robertson who shot a series of photographs of all that is left of the Overbridge and Springfield Mills.

He was last there in February 2014 and the remnants of the mill are still standing although I guess only just.

When I wrote about it a year ago I didn’t hold out any expectations that it would survive but here it is.

That said any one who likes ghosts signs and old mills I reckon you get down there soon.

There is something very impressive about this relic of a once proud mill caught in the fast fading sunlight of a winter afternoon.

It was a listed building, appears as one of the 51 Salford mills and in time I will discover its history.

I know that in 1951 it was owned by Halls Threads Ltd because I have come across an advert for the firm and the Mill.

Added to which there are a number of references on the net to it.

So not just a ghost sign but a bit of a survivor.

Pictures; the Overbridge and Springfield Mills in Salford, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Who remembers working at the Overbridge and Springfield Mills in Salford?, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/who-remembers-working-at-overbridge-and.html