There is nothing more exciting to anyone interested in the past than the memories of people who were there.
You can trawl through official documents, scan the maps and pictures of a period or place but the oral testimony of someone who experienced the event, touched the building or just passed through that moment in time is magic.
And if they are still alive it gives you the opportunity to quiz them, asking questions and revealing much that would otherwise never be revealed.
So I am always pleased when my old friend Oliver Bailey offers up more memories of Hough End Hall which he knew as a boy and young man.
Here are the priceless details which will never show up in the census returns rate book records or street directories, and I doubt will ever have been recorded elsewhere.
"The name of the Suffolk Punch plough horse was Bonnie and the crop that was grown in the field she used to plough was Kale. There were also to corrugated iron sheds in that field at the time.
Another horse in the field was in livery and belonged to the greengrocer at the corner of Wilmslow Roadd and Barlow Moor Rd in Didsbury
In the early to middle fifties there were several plans to develop the Hall itself, as my father was trying to dispose of it and the council didn’t want to take it over.
One of them was to turn it into a sort of motel with the hall itself as a restaurant and some accommodation with a bedroom block in what used to be the orchard and so would be shielded from both Nell Lane and Mauldeth Rd.
Included in that plan was a service station on Mauldeth Rd but a leap too far for the thinking of the time.
The old original entrance to the Hall was the main avenue through Chorlton Park from Barlow Moor Rd.
There used to be two Beech trees, one in each corner of the front garden as well as a Weeping Ash on the right lawn and a Yew on the left.
And then there was Bomb Crater Corner
This happened on the night of the Manchester blitz* and another bomb fell in the orchard.
It is also rumoured that two or more fell in the bog at the side of the Chorlton Brook as there were craters but it is not known if they exploded. The target of course, was the railway line to London.”
©Oliver Bailey
*December 1940
Picture; the hall from the south east, 1945 T Baddeley, m47846, and in 1952, T Baddeley m47851, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?
And if they are still alive it gives you the opportunity to quiz them, asking questions and revealing much that would otherwise never be revealed.
So I am always pleased when my old friend Oliver Bailey offers up more memories of Hough End Hall which he knew as a boy and young man.
Here are the priceless details which will never show up in the census returns rate book records or street directories, and I doubt will ever have been recorded elsewhere.
"The name of the Suffolk Punch plough horse was Bonnie and the crop that was grown in the field she used to plough was Kale. There were also to corrugated iron sheds in that field at the time.
Another horse in the field was in livery and belonged to the greengrocer at the corner of Wilmslow Roadd and Barlow Moor Rd in Didsbury
In the early to middle fifties there were several plans to develop the Hall itself, as my father was trying to dispose of it and the council didn’t want to take it over.
One of them was to turn it into a sort of motel with the hall itself as a restaurant and some accommodation with a bedroom block in what used to be the orchard and so would be shielded from both Nell Lane and Mauldeth Rd.
Included in that plan was a service station on Mauldeth Rd but a leap too far for the thinking of the time.
There used to be two Beech trees, one in each corner of the front garden as well as a Weeping Ash on the right lawn and a Yew on the left.
And then there was Bomb Crater Corner
This happened on the night of the Manchester blitz* and another bomb fell in the orchard.
It is also rumoured that two or more fell in the bog at the side of the Chorlton Brook as there were craters but it is not known if they exploded. The target of course, was the railway line to London.”
©Oliver Bailey
*December 1940
Picture; the hall from the south east, 1945 T Baddeley, m47846, and in 1952, T Baddeley m47851, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?
No comments:
Post a Comment