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.*
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.
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.
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.
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
 |
| Popcorn Maker, Andrew James 2014 |
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 |
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 |
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 |
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
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