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.*
We are early rises. The first coffee of the day can be at anytime between 5 and 6 am and the first out of the house will be up by the old tram terminus by half past six.
But some in the family depending on work patterns, will sleep on, vaguely hearing the noises being made but letting it sit as a backdrop before falling asleep again.
Now I have experienced both. Once a long time ago it would be dad stoking the fire, listening to the early news bulletin on the wireless, and me, being just aware of the start of his day but knowing I didn’t have to do anything, and that fairly soon all would be silent again.
Half a century on it is me, raking the ash, running the radio and just “clumping around”.
I suspect that my noises are almost a replication of Dad’s and probably also Joe and Mary Ann’s who
moved into our house in 1915 and were the first residents to call it home.
Their noises would have been very much the background to the early 20th century, with the sound of fires being cleared, coal collected from the cellar and noise of countless horses, from the milkman to traders calling with the items Mary Ann had ordered up the day before.
The Scott’s were very modern and embraced all the new consumer goods.
So by the early 1920s there would have been the sound of the telephone, followed by the wireless and in the mid 1950s the television, all of them marking the major shifts in the lives of people during the last century.
Against this were the loss of all those rural sounds including the cows being walked up the road, the call of the ploughman working the fields and the voices of the itinerant tradesmen who wandered into Chorlton carrying anything from brass buttons, to silk finery and the unglamorous but essential items from cooking pots to bars of soap.
That said, Joe and Mary Ann would have seen cows on Beech Road, called in at the smithy and perhaps bought the their eggs from Higginbotham’s farm on the green, or Mr Riley just yards away at Ivy Farm.
And the final transformation from a rural community to a suburb of Manchester would linger on across the last century while the memories of being sent to buy fresh milk from farms around the green are only now fading from living memory.
We are lucky in being able to track all four owners of our house and while in some cases what we know is sketchy it is enough to be fairly confident what noises would have been made during the last century and a bit.
Noises, which would have included the first time the music of Tamla Motown was played in the house, and the sound of John building his boat.
For me one of the most significant sounds has been that of children at play, because our kids were the first children in the history of the house.
But that as they say is another story.
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; from the collections of Lois Elsden & Andrew Simpson, 1974-2018, and Graham Gill
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
But some in the family depending on work patterns, will sleep on, vaguely hearing the noises being made but letting it sit as a backdrop before falling asleep again.
Now I have experienced both. Once a long time ago it would be dad stoking the fire, listening to the early news bulletin on the wireless, and me, being just aware of the start of his day but knowing I didn’t have to do anything, and that fairly soon all would be silent again.
I suspect that my noises are almost a replication of Dad’s and probably also Joe and Mary Ann’s who
moved into our house in 1915 and were the first residents to call it home.
Their noises would have been very much the background to the early 20th century, with the sound of fires being cleared, coal collected from the cellar and noise of countless horses, from the milkman to traders calling with the items Mary Ann had ordered up the day before.
The Scott’s were very modern and embraced all the new consumer goods.
So by the early 1920s there would have been the sound of the telephone, followed by the wireless and in the mid 1950s the television, all of them marking the major shifts in the lives of people during the last century.
Against this were the loss of all those rural sounds including the cows being walked up the road, the call of the ploughman working the fields and the voices of the itinerant tradesmen who wandered into Chorlton carrying anything from brass buttons, to silk finery and the unglamorous but essential items from cooking pots to bars of soap.
And the final transformation from a rural community to a suburb of Manchester would linger on across the last century while the memories of being sent to buy fresh milk from farms around the green are only now fading from living memory.
We are lucky in being able to track all four owners of our house and while in some cases what we know is sketchy it is enough to be fairly confident what noises would have been made during the last century and a bit.
Noises, which would have included the first time the music of Tamla Motown was played in the house, and the sound of John building his boat.
For me one of the most significant sounds has been that of children at play, because our kids were the first children in the history of the house.
But that as they say is another story.
Location; Chorlton
Pictures; from the collections of Lois Elsden & Andrew Simpson, 1974-2018, and Graham Gill
*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house
No comments:
Post a Comment