The picture that missed the bus ....... sometime in the Great War

Now I say missed the bus, but to be more accurate it was the book.

Just weeks after we finished Churches, Chapels, Temples A Synagogue and a Mosque,* Chris Griffiths showed me this photograph of a group of soldiers outside the McLaren Baptist Memorial Church on Edge Lane.

I don’t have a date, but as the church hall was used as a Red Cross Hospital from 1914 until the end of the Great War, it could be any time during those four years.

There may be a clue that I am missing, but for now that is it.

The Sunday school hall was converted into “a ward of 31 beds, kitchens, mess room, bath room, dispensary, pack stores, linen rooms, matrons’ room and office all of which were on the ground floor”.** 

The original plan had been for 25 beds but in May 1915 an extra six beds were added.

During the first two years the hospital catered for a range of wounds from shrapnel to gunshots along with infectious diseases and the effect of gas and the troops came mainly from the Western Front and the Dardnelles.

And thenywill have come from different regiments and different parts of the country, as the soldier in the kilt testifies.

Now because our book is about places of worship in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the  McLaren Baptist Memorial Church made it into the book even though it was demolished in the 1970s.

We devote quite a bit of space to its role as a Red Cross Hospital, along with the hall of the Methodist church, it is just a shame our picture never made it in to the book.

That said, you can come and discuss the picture and the book at the book launch on December 3rd at Chorlton Library.

We will be there from 7.30 with some festive food and drink, some of the people who helped us and of course a heap of stories.

You can obtain your copy  from us at http://www.pubbooks.co.uk/ or Chorlton Book shop, 506 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 9AW 0161 881 6374

Location; Chorlton & Didsbury

Picture; The McLaren Baptist Memorial Church, date unknown from the collection of Chris Griffiths

*A new book on the places of worship in Chorlton-cum Hardy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20places%20of%20worship%20in%20Chorlton-cum-Hardy 

Gone in Gatley ……. The Tatton Kinema which became the Major and Minor and then the Apollo

I never went to the cinema in Gatley.

I wasn’t born when it opened its doors as the Tatton Kinema, on October 14, 1937, with Dorothy Lamour in “Jungle Princess”.

It had seating for 900 in the stalls and 300 in the circle, and included an 18 foot stage, six dressing rooms, and a restaurant.

I could just have visited in 1971, when the restaurant was converted to a 111-seat cinema known as Tatton Minor, opening on February 4th of that year 1971.

“The original cinema became Tatton Major which closed four years later, when it was twined with the larger stalls area becoming the 647 seat Tatton Major, the former circle the 247 seat Tatton Minor, and the restaurant cinema the Tatton Mini.

It was an extremely successful cinema – one of the most profitable in the North West and was eventually bought by Apollo who renamed it Apollo Cinema 1,2,&3.

A multiplex opened about a mile away and the Apollo Cinema closed around 2000. The cinema has recently been demolished except for its facade, which flats have been constructed behind”.*

And now as Andy’s pictures show it is about to go through another change.
According to the MEN, "the Housing association Stockport Homes has bought the site. 

Planning permission for the Gatley Road site was granted in 2017 - two years after the application was actually submitted. The iconic cinema facade will be kept.

Stockport Homes, which manages the town hall’s housing stock, bought the building last month from previous owner Dickens Property Group”.

The new development is for 7 apartments for shared ownership and 26 apartments for rent for the over 55 age group.

And that is all I have to say.

Location; Gatley

Pictures; The Tatton, 2018, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*cinema treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2536

** Tatton Cinema finally to be transformed - after closing its doors in 2001
Work is set to begin next month, Alex Scapens, April 10, 2018, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/tatton-cinema-finally-transformed-after-14511240

The not so different bits of where we live, part 5 ............. Woolwich

Now I am always intrigued at those more recent photographs of where we live.

So while pictures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are fascinating often everything is so different that it is almost looking at a different landscape.

But those from say the 1960s onwards are often almost the same but not quite, and with this in mind here over the next few days are some from the camera of Jean Gammons all taken in the late 1970s.

And that is all I shall say,

Picture; Woolwich, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

The unique exhibition on Manchester and the Great War finishes this week

The exhibition commemorating Manchester and the Great War at Central Ref comes to an end this week.

It has lasted since September and has been an unqualified success, and occasioning a visit from the Lord Mayor.

To single any one comment out from the words of praise would be unfair, so I shall just urge you to come along and view it.

The entire exhibition is drawn from the collection of David Harrop and is a mix of official documents, letters, pictures and medals, along with personal items some of which were sent back from the battle fronts.

David also maintains a permanent exhibition at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

In Flanders Field is at Central Ref in Manchester for the rest of this week.

Location; Central Ref, Manchester






Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

Out on Manchester Road at No. 105 ..... from tobacco, stationary and gift tags to CBD

Now Manchester Road is old.

Manchester Road, 1894

It will have been one of the routes our people used when they were leaving the village and traveling the three and bit miles into Manchester.

Later of course there would be the attractions of the Duke’s Canal, and later still the railway from Stretford, but none of these would have pushed out Manchester Road.

And for most of time, travellers would have encountered little to see as they left the village green, made their way across High Lane and out of the township at Martledge, passing the old Royal Oak and Redgate Farm before plunging off across open land to Seymour Grove.

As late as the 1890s that was how it was, with Redgate Farm as the last lonely outpost on the edge of Chorlton.

But developers abhor open spaces, and so within a decade, stretching out from the newly cut Longford Road, there were rows of shops and houses snaking up towards Clarence, Kensington and Cheltenham roads.

By 1909 the space between these three roads had been filled by a brand new set of shops, selling everything from cycles, and shoes to vegetables, fish, sweets and draperies.

Pads, 2016

And in the middle of the parade was Mr James H. Heys, stationer, and tobacconist, and in one of those odd bits of continuity number 105 Manchester Road remained a purveyor of all things tobacco and note paper into the late 1960s and beyond.

Back in the 90s to the beginning of this century I rarely wandered down this bit of Manchester Road, and so missed the slow transformation of the shops and particularly the change from traditional retailers to bars, and restaurants.

I also failed to clock that 105 had become Pads, which sold gifts and stationary, and its more recent rebirth as CBD Coffee Lounge.

CBD Coffee lounge, 2018

But Peter Topping had noticed the changes, and decided to follow it up with a painting of the newly opened coffee shop.

He told me “Until a few days ago I hadn't realised that Pad, (across the road from Unicorn), had closed down. 

So as is my wont, and in a quest to paint whatever shop had taken over the premises, Mrs T and I sidled down to take a look. 

Well, who would have guessed that Chorlton now has its very own CBD cafe? 

Oil, capsules, Gummy Bears and you can even get a tea, coffee and a cake. After a large pot and a sublime chocolate cake, I had made my mind up that this had to go into my 'Moment in Time Paintings Series'"

And for those uncertain about CBD, of which I am one, I shall just suggest you either look it up, or pop in to the cafe.

Location; Chorlton

Painting;  Painting, CBD Coffee Lounge © 2018 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures.

Photograph; Pads 2016 © Peter Topping

Map; Manchester Road in 1894, from the OS of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

The silly bits of Chorlton’s history

Now I never turn down an invitation to talk about our past.

The story, 1904

And yesterday was one such invitation, which was part of Chorlton Book Festival which closes today with Superhero You!

In all there were 15 events ranging from the literary to the historic, with plenty of practical activities and of course the Manchester Poets and the ever popular Pub Quiz at the Beech Inn.

And having started the Festival with a walk around Chorlton’s past we were back at the end with a mix of silly objects, more than a few stories of how we used to live and because it was the Book Festival there was a session on 

“When Art met History and became a book”.

The Earth Rod

It was a change to the advertised event and pretty much took up the afternoon with a break for tea, coffee, cake and biscuits.

In the two hours we explored the joys of darning socks, remembering old 78 rpm’s, while extolling the merits of the iconic Nokia 3310, and puzzled over a 45 cm brass bar which in the 1920s was used as an earth rod to aid the reception of an old wireless.

And finishing off with a genuine Viking oyster shell.

Followed by a romp through the Chorlton of 1904 and the story of how art and history combined with modern technology turned my friendship with Peter Topping into six books, which may seem outrageous self promotion ..... which it was.

All of which just leaves me to thank Beverley Smith and her colleagues at the Library, who have made the Book Festival such a success, and to thank Kay Luxon and Peter who recorded the event in pictures and to the 40 or so members of the Grand Day Out group who turned up on a cold dismal November afternoon.

The audience

And for any one wondering about the silly objects, the Viking oyster shell came from the Jorvick excavations in the 1970s. 

The 3310 was my trusty phone for years, a mobile, which you could drop, and it just bounced, had a battery which didn’t run out in half an hour and played snake.

The silly objects

While the earth rod was one of 60 found in my Dad’s shed in south east London which had been made by Frederick Smith at the Anaconda Works in Salford.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, the event, 2018 courtesy of Peter Topping, & Kay Luxon and from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Superhero You!..... for all “incredible families to come along to Superhero craft day at Chorlton Library between 11am-4.30”, part of Chorlton Book Festival, www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk

Today ......... the bits of our past we forget ....... in Chorlton Library at 2pm

Now, the easy bit is to name each of the four objects opposite.

Less easy, may be dating each and suggesting what they were.

Those, born in the first half of the last century, will get some, but perhaps not all.

And that is part of the challenge if you come along to Chorlton Library this afternoon at 2 pm, and participate in the Great Chorlton History Experience ...... less a talk and more away of remembering what you have forgotten.

So along with a snapshot of Chorlton in 1904, there will be a selection of old things to smile at, and a chance to converse with Peter Topping who is the other half of the Simpson and Topping team who have produced six books on as diverse topics as, Hough End Hall, historic pubs, Churches, Chapels, Temples and a synagogue and mosque and the aptly named Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

And to show we have wider horizons, there is also a detailed study of the historic drinking places in city centre Manchester and tour of Didsbury past and present.

What these six books have in common along with the other two I have written is that they all  “tell the stories behind the doors”.

So whether you come to demonstrate your knowledge of the recent past, learn about Martledge and a few dark deeds from the 19th and early 20th centuries or are just curious about the title “When art met history and made a book” all will be revealed at 2 pm in Chorlton Library.

The event is part of Chorlton Book Festival, is free, and is accompanied by a break for tea, coffee, cake and biscuits.*

This is an alteration to the existing advertised event.

Location; Chorlton Library

Picture; things from our past, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

A place called Martledge, a dark deed on Wilbraham Road and a lot more Chorlton history .... tomorrow at Chorlton Library

Now that’s a zippy title.

Due to unforeseen circumstances the history afternoon with the author Steve Dikens has been altered.

Instead I shall be in the meeting room of Chorlton Library talking about the history of where we live.

And because it lasts from 2 till 4pm, I will be throwing in the story of two young Chorlton residents who went off to fight in the Great War and the art and fun of writing local history books.

Added to which at the half time interval there will be tea, coffee, cake and biscuits and if all that is not enough, there will be an opportunity to meet our own local artist Peter Topping who has collaborated with me on books, exhibitions and that 80 meter installation which told the story of Chorlton from the 19th century through to the 21st.

So come along and ask Peter about his paintings  and how he designed and produced the six books we have written.

And I will be happy to share stories, and answer all sorts of questions about Chorlton's dark deeds, its swift growth and the distinction between old and new Chorlton with more than one reference to Kemp's Corner.

The event is part of Chorlton Book Festival and starts at 2pm on Friday November 23rd at Chorlton Library.

Location; Chorlton

Picture, St Clement’s Church, circa 1880, from the collection of Tony Walker & Wilbraham Road circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection 

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

Unlocking the history of Elesmere Road South

We are off on the northern edges of the township and a little beyond, on that area stretching north from the railway line and east from Wilbraham Road.

It is roughly the area along Egerton Road South towards Withington Road and those roads running off at right angles up to Kings Road and it’s somewhere I have rather neglected but it has much to tell of how this part of south Manchester developed in the early decades of the last century.

During the three decades before the Great War much of Chorlton was developed by small time builders and developers, who cashed in on the good tram and rail links with the city centre and the fact that there was still much open land which made this an attractive place for people who worked in Manchester but wanted to live on the edge of the countryside.

The Egerton and Lloyd estates* released parcels of land on favourable terms which allowed the developer to take possession in return for promising to pay a chief rent in perpetuity rather than a cash purchase.  This freed up capital for the developer to build the properties and the chief rent was then passed onto the new owner of the house.

Both estates were mindful of developing the area as a pleasant suburb of Manchester and did not fall over themselves to over develop the township too quickly and at the same time prohibited industrial development.
So apart from the brick works on Longford Road and the aerodrome the land was used exclusively for housing or left as farm land. “Egerton” according to The Manchester Evening News in 1901 was in “no due haste in painting Chorlton red – with bricks and mortar.  Here and there builders have been encouraged and a vigourouse enterprise has been shown in extending along Wilbraham Road towards Fallowfield, but there are countless eligible plots still tempting the speculators.”

A fact that the Evening News reported upset some developers who “knew that £30 an acre would be refused for a field which maybe earning now as little as 50s from the farmer.”**

But the same paper was confident that the future would involve more development specially given that the Lloyd Estate was pushing ahead with “cheaper semi-detached kind -£25- to £35 a year..... The clerk no less than the merchant must be catered for.”

Which brings me back to the area bounded by Egerton Road South and in particular Ellesmere Road South, which were fully developed in the 1920s.  There were some Edwardian properties here but in the decade after the Great War the existing open spaces were built over with those “cheaper semi-detached kind.”

One of the newly built properties on Ellesemere Road South was bought by Herbert Mitchel Taylor and his wife Elizabeth Taylor from Derbyshire.  They bought the house in the year it was built in 1924.  He was a railway official working in the “Goods Department” a job he still held at his death in 1951.

I rather suspect that the other occupants of these new houses will have been drawn from the same occupations, neatly reflecting the premise of the Evening News.

Now in the absence of the 1921 census we will have to fall back on the street directories and the deeds to the properties some of which I have recently seen.

Deeds are a wonderful source, as they give you the name of the original landowner, when the land was sold, who developed it and the succession of property owners, and if you are lucky other documents as well.

They also allow you to track how the chief rents have passed from one owner to another, often ending in the hands of property companies.  Today the values of these have not kept pace with inflation.  In the case of ours we pay just £2, in two yearly instalments while the chief rent for the Taylor’s house was £28.  The instalments fall on the two traditional points in the year when for centuries farmers and tradesmen settled their rents and other debts.

So deeds help unlock the history of an area and remain a valuable insight into what was going on, which leads me to the plea.  If anyone would like to show me their deeds or the details of them I would love to see them.

Picture; detail from the deeds of the Taylor family, courtesy of M and J Pickering.


*There were also Frederick Reynard, Guy St Maur Palmes and Sir Humphrey Trafford
**Manchester Evening News 1901

Pictures from the event ........ Manchester Retold

Now the event was billed as “Manchester Retold ....... A City’s Journey Through History”, and was hosted by the History Press, who brought together six historians to talk about some of “Manchester's pivotal moments in history”.*

Manchester Retold

Those pivotal moments ranged from, Peterloo, through to the Great War, and the Manchester Blitz.

But that is to short change both the event and the historians who were, Graham Phythian, Joanne Williams, Michala Hulme, Sheila Brady, Andrew Simpson, and Michael Billington.**

Joanna Williams,talked about Abel Heywood.

“Known in his day as the man who built the Town Hall, Abel Heywood was a leading Manchester publisher who entertained royalty at his home and twice became Mayor of Manchester".

Joanne Williams & Andrew Simpson

Michala Hume, whose book, A Grim Almanac of Manchester "collects together 365 of the darkest tales from Manchester’s history – terrifying true tales of riot, assault, murder and crime, of slums, disease, death and disaster.

It is filled with amazing historical horrors ranging from the bizarre – such as the night a poisoned cake caused a sickness to sweep through Ancoats – to the horrific, like the tragic time twenty-three people were crushed to death attempting to escape a fire in the overcrowded Victoria Music Hall".

Mike Billington, has written the Story of Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme which was published earlier this year, and is the first substantial book on the area since 1898.

It draws on a variety of sources to tell the story of these three areas.

Graham Phythian explored the controversy around the massacre at St Peter’s Field in the August of 1891 and went on to describe Manchester Blitz, finishing with music from the period.

Shelia Brady

Shelia Brady spoke about Chapel Street, in Altrincham which was “was a row of old Georgian terraced lodging houses in Altrincham, home to some 400 Irish, English, Welsh and Italian lodgers.

From this tight-knit community of just sixty houses, 161 men volunteered for the First World War.

They fought in all the campaigns of the war, with twenty-nine men killed in action and twenty dying from injuries soon after the war; more men were lost in action from Chapel Street than any other street in England.

As a result, King George V called Chapel Street ‘the Bravest Little Street in England’”.

Andrew Simpson in conversation with Bill Leader

And as we were  in Central Ref in the heart of Manchester it seemed only appropriate  feature the book Manchester Remembering 1914-18, which draws on official reports and newspaper accounts as well as letters and photographs and a multitude of other personal items.

Much of this material has never been seen before and some of it is unique in that it allows us to follow families through the whole conflict challenging many of those easy and preconceived views of the war.

Michala Hume talking to a member of Central Ref staff

And many of the items in the book have been supplied from the collection owned by David Harrop, who is displaying some of that collection upstairs on the first floor of the Library.

The exhibition is called in Flander’s Fields and will run till the end of November.

So that just leaves me to thank Zara Davis from the History Press who organized the event and the packed audience, who laughed at the right moments, asked pertinent questions of the authors and bought some of the books which were brought along by Urmston Bookshop.***

Four of the authors

And to add it gave all six of us the opportunity to meet and talk to the audience about our books.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Manchester Retold, November 15th, 2018, from the collection of Peter Topping

*History Press, https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/

And some of their books

**Manchester's Radical Mayor is a biography of Abel Heywood,Joanne Williams, A Grim Almanac of Manchester, & Manchester Bloody British History, Michala Hume, The Story of Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme, Michael Billington, Manchester At War,  & Manchester & Salford Blitz Britain,  Graham Phythian, Chapel Street, Shelia Brady, Manchester Remembering 1914-18, & The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson


***Urmston Bookshop, http://www.urmston-bookshop.co.uk/

Celebrating Chorlton ...... puncturing a few silly myths ........ and enjoying our own Book Festival

Now you do come across a lot of tosh written about Chorlton in the media.

Starting the 2018 Library History Walk

Back in the late 1990s, one national newspaper compared Beech Road with bits of the then trending Islington, which no doubt was a surprise to a Metropolitan audience who couldn’t find their way across the river to south east London, let alone comprehend that the sun rose above anywhere past Watford Gap.

But even here, our own press can at times misunderstand Chorlton, with articles about the bohemian lifestyle, and the collection of independent traders, even leading to an intense debate on social media about the arrival of one national company and the possibility of a multinational business opening up on Beech Road.

All of which is quite unhistorical, because like most places we have always had little independent shops, which have sat beside companies like Wallworths, Liptons, the Maypole and of course the Co-op.

Chorlton, curca 1900

And it is the Co-op that has caught my interest, partly because they are opening a store on Beech Road where I live, and because its opening will mark just a return of the Co-op which traded just opposite in the building on the corner of Beech and Stockton roads from the early 20th century.

But I suppose if the media did want to run a story about the distinctive character of Chorlton, they could reflect on the cultural side of the place.

In the last two decades it has been home to the Big Green Festival, hosts a Beer and Cider Festival, has the Edge Theatre Company, and boasted an 80 meter installation which  was called the History Wall telling the story of Chorlton from the 15th to the 21st centuries.

Along with these, there is the very successful Chorlton Book Festival, now in its 14th year, which starts today.*

There will be the usual favourites, from the Family Fun Day, and Storytime, to a night with our own Copeland Smith and the Manchester Poets, and a series of events featuring authors like Ruth Estevez, Phaedra Patrick, and a spot of drama with the play “Snowed In” written and directed by Nakib Narat.

About to discover our own Ice Rink and brick factory

And it started yesterday with the ever popular annual Library history walk which is the seventh I have done for Chorlton Book Festival.

This year we returned to walk that bit of Chorlton once called Martledge, but which became known as New Chorlton.

I am pleased to say that nearly 40 people walked the walk, which started at the Library and ended at the Edge Theatre on Manchester Road.

In between we discovered that  the first plans for the construction of the  Library went down with the Titanic, heard about  the  vanished Ice Rink and pondered on more than one “dark deed”, including the “Great Chorlton Burial Scandal”.

Of pubs, Martledge and some dark deeds

And that is all I am going to say other than to thank Beverley from the Library Service who commissioned the walk, and did the admin, the staff at the Edge Theatre who put on a fine meal for everyone, and lastly those who joined me including Trevor who left us to drive home to Scotland.

The full list of events of this years Chorlton Book Festival can be found on the link, and there are lots of programmes available on old fashioned paper in the Library.

Making a point, 2018

I have already got my events marked.

Location Chorlton






Pictures; on the walk from the collections of Peter Topping and Andy Robertson and Beverley Williams, 2018 and Chorlton in the early 20th century from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 19-24th, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

Commemorating the Great War in Central Ref ....... till the end of the month

Now the Great War ended just over a century ago, and I rather think now that the centenary has passed the media will also move onto other things.

And that is as it always has been, but the events commemorating the four years will continue, and I am pleased that the exhibition at Central Ref entitled in Flanders Fields will continue for a few more weeks.

It is perhaps wrong to say that the display has been a success because that is to trivialise both it and the War itself.

But there has been a steady stream of people who have come to see it and left comments in the visitor’s book.

Its appeal is that it encompasses the full extent of the war, focusing on events, people and the memorabilia that the war generated.

So along with official documents, there are letters and picture postcards sent from the battle fronts, to medals, and items of crested porcelain, each with a war theme.

And because the war touched every community, its organizer, David Harrop has not limited the exhibition to Greater Manchester.

One of the cabinets David told me is “a tribute to the people of Scarborough when on the 16th December 1914 the sleepy North Yorkshire Town was bombarded by the German navy resulting in the deaths of 18 people. 

Numerous postcards of the carnage are displayed plus china tanks and an ambulance showing the Scarborough coat of arms. 

I wanted to commemorate this area because not many people know about it, and was home to Wilfred Owen for a short time. 

It also shows that the war was not just about the Western Front and that ordinary people going about their daily tasks also suffered”.

All of the material is drawn from David’s own personal collection which makes the exhibition quite unique, more so because so much of it is related to Manchester.

His permanent exhibition in the Remembrance Lodge at Southern Cemetery includes material of men buried in the cemetery and while in Flanders Fields will close by the end of November this display is open all the year round.



Location; Central Reference Library, Manchester

Pictures; from the exhibition, courtesy of David Harrop




In Flanders Fields will run till the end of November

Today ......... at 2 pm outside the Library walk ...... our past

Dark deeds, silly stories and Martledge ...... discover Chorlton's history.

Now you have to have a ticket ...... but there may be some places left.

This is the seventh in the history walks commissioned by Chorlton Library as part of the Chorlton Book Festival.










Location; Chorlton

Picture, yesterday in Chorlton library, courtesy of Peter Topping

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

Our tram terminus

It’s a personal opinion but I don’t think our tram terminus has fared so well.

The lavatories are permanently closed the office building looks a little knocked about and it is the sort of place that you hope the bus leaves promptly and you are not waiting there for long.

All of which is a contrast to when it opened back on May 14th 1915 which according to one book was built as "a double track stub-terminal siding, complete with an office building, shelter and toilets,[when it] was opened on the west side of Barlow Moor Road between Malton  Avenue and Beech Road.  Trams entered and all left from the north end; not until 1929 was the south end linked.”*

Now I am not one to wallow in nostalgia but looking at this 1928 picture of the tram terminus, complete with gas lighting I rather think I will wallow for a short while.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1920s-30s

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

* Yearsley, Ian  and Groves, Peter, The Manchester Tramways : 90 years of progress 1988, p 80, information supplied by George Turnbull, http://www.gmts.co.uk/

Dark deeds, silly stories and a place called Martledge ...... tomorrow walk our past

Now there may still be time to book a ticket to stroll Chorlton’s past.

As part of Chorlton Book Festival we will be meeting outside the Library on Manchester Road.

And in the course of an hour we will discover dark deeds, silly stories and just how the tiny hamlet of Martledge became New Chorlton.

Along the way we will recreate that lost place, encounter some historic Chorlton individuals, uncover an awful murder and learn about the first Sedge Lynn, the place called the Isles, and our own Ice Rink.

The walk will start from the Library on Sunday November 18 at 2pm and take about an hour, after which we will relax in The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road

Beverley at the library informs me that “tickets are £7.50 including soup and a roll at the Dressing Room café, The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road, M21 9JG after the walk. Booking is essential for this popular event. 

Please visit Chorlton Library or call 0161227 3700.

Sunday 18 November 2 - 4pm “

Location; Chorlton

Picture, The Isles, 1880s, courtesy of Miss Booth and Wilbraham Road, date unknown, from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

On Wilbraham Road ....... looking for the Four Banks

Now I am perfectly aware that this picture predates the Four Banks, or as we now know, them, the  Three Banks and maybe a Bar.

In fact it predates the moment when Mr Harry Kemp opened his chemist shop on the corner of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road and ushered in that earlier name for the spot.

This was Kemp’s Corner and as such, from the early 20th century through to the 1960s, the present site of the HSBC was a popular meeting place which became known as Kemp’s Corner.

A meeting place made all the more convenient, by the big clock above the shop door allowing people to check how late their friends were.

And I suppose remembering it was Kemp’s Corner marks you out as an old resident of Chorlton in much the same way that people of Beech Road refer to the “Rec” not the Park.

I don’t have an exact date for the photograph, but the detail yields some fascinating things, starting with the former RBS building which was called Sunwick and was a private residence, along with the observation that in front of the shops on Wilbraham Road there were gardens.

These and many more interesting snippets of our past will be part of the history walk, this Sunday, when we will stroll trough  Chorlton’s past and discover dark deeds, silly stories and just what this area was alike when the newcomers called it New Chorlton and everyone else remembered it had once been called Martledge.

The walk which is part of Chorlton Book Festival, will recreate that lost place, and along the way we will encounter some Chorlton individuals from the past, uncover an awful murder and learn about the first Sedge Lynn, the place called the Isles, and our own Ice Rink.*

The walk will start from the Library on Sunday November 18 at 2 pm and take about an hour, after which we will relax in The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road

Beverley at the library informs me that “tickets are £7.50 including soup and a roll at the Dressing Room café, The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road, M21 9JG after the walk. Booking is essential for this popular event. 

Please visit Chorlton Library or call 0161227 3700.

Sunday 18 November 2 - 4pm “

Location; Chorlton

Picture, Wilbraham Road, date unknown, from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

In celebration of Central Ref reflecting on the day it reopened

The Social Sciences Library, 2014

Now amongst all the new and exciting additions in the newly reopened Central Ref it was still nice to come across some familiar scenes.

This is where I spent most Saturday mornings from September 1969 till June ’72 and it remained a place of serious study for the next forty years.

I always got there early no matter where the Friday night had taken me and always chose to sit on one of those tables close to the central admin hub.

And over the years the spot rather became a special one from where I could gaze upward at the dome and out across the vast room.

I have to confess I did do a lot of staring out both from underneath and over the top of the reading lights over the years.

This was partly because of the tedium of some of what I had to read and also just because there was so much to distract me.

It would start with that sudden bang as a book was dropped on a table and carried on as you picked up  whispered conversations somewhere around the hall and continued as long as there were people walking past.

The same place, 1938

Looking at Neil Simpson’s picture of the renovated Social Sciences Library is to be taken back a full four decades and it compares well with Kurt Hübschmann’s 1938 photograph of the same spot.

Now I am a keen admirer of Mr Hübschmann’s work much of which featured in Picture Post. He left Germany in 1934 and was one of founders of the magazine which started up in 1938 and ran to 1957.

I grew up with Picture Post which regularly came through our letter box but it was also available to flip through at the doctor’s and some even made their way into our school.

So I am not surprised that Mr Hübschmann should have been on hand to snap the Central Ref in the October of 1938 just four years after it had been opened.

Nor was he alone in wanting to capture something of the Ref.  The first exhibition staged in the Library was photographed by Stewart Bale Ltd who perfectly recorded the simple beauty of the building’s design.

The Exhibition of Library Treasures, 1934

I think we are in the area which became Archives and Local History and as much as the area was a second home to me over the last decade I have to say this picture showing the “Opening Exhibition of Library Treasures” makes me wish I had known it like this.

And that neatly brings me to the appeal for memories of the Ref as it was.

There will still be people who will have visited the library as students and those who accompanied their parents to Christmas shows in the basement theatre which opened its curtains in 1952 and perhaps like me also remember the light displays which played over the safety curtains in the interval.

Now the basement is home to Archives and Local History and so is one of those new developments which sit alongside the original design, and if I am right has freed up the space on the first floor to once again become an exhibition area.

And in doing so has taken us back to what the architect Vincent Harris had planned.

Pictures; the Social Sciences Library, 2014 from the collection of Neil Simpson, the same in 1934, Kurt Hübschmann, m51687, & Opening Exhibition of Library Treasures” Stewart Bale Ltd, m81672, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass