One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 58 ............ waiting for the film crew and thinking of a breakfast cereal

Planning a makeover, 1938

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 Joe and Mary Ann would have made of the letter that fell through the door last week from a film company showing interest in featuring the house in a television drama.

It appeared that “from the exterior your house looks as it may be suitable for one of our characters,” but alas it was not to be.

It would have been the first time the house featured in a film although we came close when a scene from Looking For Eric was shot in the Rec.

Had the actors moved a little further east we could have forever been part of Eric but such are the choices of location editors

Planning a makeover, 1938

Not that I think Joe and Mary Ann would have worried about that loss of fame.

Back then Chorlton  was a pleasant and quiet place which had grown quickly in the last two decades of the 19th century but there after had settled down and was perhaps most famous as the butt of comedians from the south who were always guaranteed a cheap laugh when referring to Chorlton-cum-Hardy in a poor northern accent.

That said there have always been gentler and even affectionate references.

According to my new friend Bevan who was born in 1926 whenever the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company came to Manchester they often contrived to insert Chorlton-cum-Hardy in to the chorus of one of the most popular Gilbert and Sullivan songs.

And in 1967 Flanders and Swann in that elegant and sad comment on the closing of so many passenger railway lines sang “No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street”**

For those with a keen sense of history there are quite a few other moments when the media have shone their light on Chorlton from cruel murders, to sporting events and of course  the Great Burial Scandal.***

Birds Eye, 1956

But until now Joe and Mary Anne’s house remained off limits leaving them to get on with everyday life.

And so I will conclude with a little bit of our recent history that I am confident they were involved in.

It may not seem much when compared with a TV drama  but the growing reliance on frozen and convenience meals was one that Mary Ann will have embraced and in its way was equally dramatic.

In the 1950s the growing reliance of frozen food would lift some of the drudgery out of preparing food.

Now I still like washing carrots, peeling potatoes and shelling peas but for sheer speed nothing beats opening the packet of frozen peas.

And sixty years ago the adverts for frozen foods focused on that simple message that they were quick to use and because of the way they had been frozen on the day they were harvested were bound to be fresher than the peas and carrots which had made their way from the field via the market to the small greengrocer, whose turn over dictated that the produce might sit for days before it was bought.

Birds Eye, 1956

Of course few people in 1956 had a fridge let along a freezer which was why the bags of frozen vegetables came in small sizes which were bought and used on the same day.

And in much the same way out went the old fashioned breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon and toast in favour of the breakfast cereal.

Now these had been around since the 1930s, and there are ads in the collection for Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies, but the 50s offered up a new and exciting range, often marketed with a toy or other novelty and clearly aimed at the young.

Sugar Puffs, 1956

Of course I have no way of knowing if Joe and Mary Ann embraced all these changes but some at least will have found their way onto the table and perhaps even onto a tray to be eaten in front of the television awaiting the film of the week.

Mother was quick off the mark to try the "new TV dinners  for one" which came out in the late 50s but equally died a death in our house as too expensive and not that nice.

Instead we reverted to simpler home cooked  food that we ate in front of that television which is where we came in.





Pictures; interior designs, from Ideas From Our Experts, My Home, July 1938, and adverts for Birds Eye Foods and Sugar Puffs, from Woman’s Own, January 12 1956

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

**The Slow Train, Flanders and Swann, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6OHD2uCpfU

***The Great Burial Scandal, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-great-burial-scandal.html