A story that has yet to have a conclusion... Simon Robino from Italy

Marshall Street is one of the those places that is ripe for development, and the only puzzle is why it has not yet been filled with prime new flats, show rooms or a well known supermarket.

It joins Oldham Road with Rochdale Road, and is dominated by car parks, some tired looking warehouses and the green tiled entrance to Marsden Harcombe & Company Limited which until recently was home to the Greater Manchester County Records Office.

Great stretches of it lie open on either side and standing on Oldham Road you have a clear view not only all the way down to Rochdale Road but pretty much across to the two parallel roads of Addlington and Goulden Street.

All of which as I said makes it ready for something to happen to it.  The Hat and Feathers which had served beer for more than a century is boarded up and  large parts or are car parks.

But just over a century ago it was a densely packed place which boasted two pubs, a factory, and the Cosy Workman’s Home on the corner with Chadderton Street which had once been a school.

And just around the corner was the huge police station built like a fort and designed to both make a statement about law and order and serve to be easily defended.

There were no windows at street level and the entrance out on to Goulden Street was by a single set of gates.  It had been opened in 1870 and like many of our police stations was also home to the local fire brigade.

And at number 8 Marshall Street lived Simon Robinao, his wife, Toussaintes  and their five children in a four roomed house.

His is a fascinating story and was one that I first came across when my new facebook chum Marie wrote to me from Canada.  He was “my great granddad, who had a business making barrel organs.  He came to Manchester around 1897, was born in Italy but studied music in Marseilles.  He wrote a lot of music.  Sadly despite his music being popular at the time none of it was published.”

So as you do I began to crawl over the records looking for something on the family.  Simon was born in 1866 in Italy. Sometime possibly in the mid 1880s he arrived in Marseilles to study music and this may have been where he met his future wife who had been born in Ajaccio on Corsica.  Now the date of their marriage is a bit of a guess but their first son was born in 1887 so I suspect it will be around that date.

A decade later and the family ha settled in Manchester and Marie’s suggestion of date of “around 1897” fits quite nicely.  Their youngest daughter was born here sometime in the November or December of 1900.

Now I can be fairly certain of that because the 1901 census was taken in April when she was just six months old.

All the older children were born on Marseilles with the last of the four having been born in 1895.

Sometime after that date the family arrived in Manchester and set to work
making barrel organs which was the trade he had been taught by his father and grandfather.  Now the directories list a number of these factories in the area and at present which one he may have worked for is a guess.

The Antonelli family had a factory at 59 Great Ancoats Street and Peter Varetto was making “mechanical organs”at 87 Oldham Road.

By 1911 Simon owned his own business and was doing very well given that he was listed as a “mechanical organ maker, 14 and 16 Portugal Street and 85 Oldham Road, resident 81 Oldham Road.”*

I had thought that by cross referencing the business addresses from earlier in the century there might be a clue as to whether he set up new enterprises or bought in or took over existing ones.  And it does rather seem he set up from scratch.  Just two years earlier the property at number 81 was occupied by a wireman, while number 85 was selling beer.

I have yet come across a picture of either place from the beginning of the last century and so far the best there is dates from 1962 and like so many of the buildings around the area they have long since gone.

Which is pretty much where we started.  Their home at 85 Marshall Street is now a car park and numbers 81 and 85 Oldham Road are underneath the Wing Yip Chinese & Oriental Groceries Supermarket and just about a century separates the Italian family business from the Chinese family business.

Even given the gaps it is a remarkable story and one that I suspect will have more to tell.

In 1901 the family of seven were living in a four roomed house, a decade later and three more children they had moved to a much larger property around the corner.  The rest as they say is yet to be revealed.

Which just leaves me to ponder on the fate of the green tiled entrance to Marsden Harcombe & Company Limited now that the archive has moved to Central Ref.

 Pictures; Corner of Marshall Street and Oldham Road, T.Brooks, 1961, m36668, Cornwall Street, May 1899, m01700, corner of Thompson Street & Oldham Road, J. Jackson, January 1916, m36556, Pump Street which ran off from Oldham Road by number 87, H. Entwhistle 1898, m01700, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


* Slater’s Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory, 1911