Yesterday I was exploring a collection of photographs from the Great War, which were recently acquired by David Harrop.
There are twenty of them and include soldiers and nurses, and while the quality is iffy, they are a remarkable set of images of men recovering from wounds and illnesses in a wartime auxiliary hospital, which is enhanced by the fact that they will have been taken by a nurse or patient.
The accompanying notes refer to Birchfield Auxiliary Military hospital in Rusholme, but at present apart from the name I have yet to come across anything about the place.
After it ceased as a hospital there is a silence in the records, although there is a suggestion that in the interwar years it belonged to the Co-operative Society and acted as a social club for employees, while sometime after that it became the new home of the Hollings Domestic and Trades College until it was demolished in 1959 to make way for the iconic Toast Rack building.
The original Birchfield stood in its own grounds on the corner of Wilmslow Road and Old Hall Lane.
I can track it back with confidence to 1865 when it shows up in the rate books, as owned by a Godfrey Gottschalk with an annual ratable value of £275, and an estimated rental value of £350.
Although there may have been an earlier property on the site or nearby which was rented by Mr. Gottschalk which was an altogether more modest, but still substantial house, which dates from 1856.
Just two years earlier the OS map for Lancashire shows the site as open land with a brick kiln at the rear.
There is however a Birch Cottage just south of the brick kiln on the other side of Old Hall Lane, which might be our more modest property.
But that is as far as we can go.
There will be someone who knows, and there will be others with pictures of Birchfield in its hey day, and so I shall await that call.
In the meantime we have those wartime pictures.
And a few of them show the interior which looks to have been lavish, as you would expect, given that when its owner died in 1934 he left £188.710 which one calculation puts at £13,160,000, or £35,560,000 when measured relative to the wage of the average worker, and a staggering £63,470,000.when measured against per capita of GDP.*
All along way from the lives of the men and women in the pictures.
Location Rusholme
Pictures; soldiers and nurse from the hospital, circa 1916, from the collection of David Harrop, and Birchfield, 1959, J F Harris, m42197 and H Milligan, m66420, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Measuring Worth, https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php
The accompanying notes refer to Birchfield Auxiliary Military hospital in Rusholme, but at present apart from the name I have yet to come across anything about the place.
The original Birchfield stood in its own grounds on the corner of Wilmslow Road and Old Hall Lane.
Although there may have been an earlier property on the site or nearby which was rented by Mr. Gottschalk which was an altogether more modest, but still substantial house, which dates from 1856.
Just two years earlier the OS map for Lancashire shows the site as open land with a brick kiln at the rear.
But that is as far as we can go.
There will be someone who knows, and there will be others with pictures of Birchfield in its hey day, and so I shall await that call.
In the meantime we have those wartime pictures.
And a few of them show the interior which looks to have been lavish, as you would expect, given that when its owner died in 1934 he left £188.710 which one calculation puts at £13,160,000, or £35,560,000 when measured relative to the wage of the average worker, and a staggering £63,470,000.when measured against per capita of GDP.*
All along way from the lives of the men and women in the pictures.
Pictures; soldiers and nurse from the hospital, circa 1916, from the collection of David Harrop, and Birchfield, 1959, J F Harris, m42197 and H Milligan, m66420, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
*Measuring Worth, https://www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare/relativevalue.php
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