A wedding party at Fern Royd on Edge Lane in the spring of 1914

There are always stories behind photographs.

Now I admit it is not a very original thought but it was one that I was reminded of today when Clare passed me this one of a family wedding in the garden of a house in Chorlton and told me that

“it was taken at my father's grandparents' house which was on Edge Lane opposite where it meets Wilbraham Road. 

The occasion was the wedding of my great aunt Eunice Pogson and Robert Wood, at some time just after the First World War. 

Her parents were Joseph and Bertha (nee Hancock) Pogson. Joseph was an entrepreneur who had a cotton business in Manchester.”

It is the sort of family picture that draws you in and makes you want to know more.

The wedding party are sitting in the garden of Fern Royd which was number 35a Edge Lane.  It was a large brick property dating from sometime between 1888 and 1893 set back from the main road with gardens on three sides.

And it is the side garden which I think is featured in the picture.  Sadly the property has gone now but I think I may just have missed it because it still shows up on maps from the 1930s and was most probably demolished to make way for Ashfell Court a very large block of flats which I think went up in the 1970s.

Now I am on firmer ground when it comes to the residents of Fern Royd.  These were Bertha and Joseph Pogson who had lived in Pendleton and Salford during the previous two decades.

They moved into the house sometime between the January and April of 1911. Now I can be sure of that because at the beginning of the year the house was unoccupied but by the time of the census in April they were there.

Joseph was a “Grey Cloth merchant” with offices at 17 St Ann’s Square and was in partnership with Basil Greaves Hogue or so I thought.  And it is one of those little inconvenient discoveries upon which turn a rethink.

Pogson and Hogue dissolved the partnership in 1913 by "mutual consent” with “all debts due and owing to the late firm, received and paid for by the said John Pogson who will continue to carry on the said business under the name of Pogson and Hague."

Now John Pogson is not Joseph Pogson although Joseph did have a son called John who was 22 in 1913.

Likewise in 1903 a Joseph Pogson was trading separately as a calico merchant at 26 Broad Street Pendleton while a John Pogson & Company was trading as grey cloth merchants at 67A Princess Street.  So all a little confusing.

So I shall return to the wedding party and the discovery that the wedding took place in 1914 sometime between April and June.

And that so far is the story behind this picture well almost because just as I was fininshing the story Claire got back to me with more intriguing leads to follow up,

"Bertha (mother of the bride) was part of the Hancock jewellers family - shop on King Street for many years.

My father's father was the John Pogson aged 22 in 1913. (My father is also John Pogson) 

We've just been discussing the John/Joseph situation but he says he's not sure what his father was doing at that time just before WW1. 

He knows that Joseph died soon after and when WW1 was over and John finished serving in army in Palestine, he took over the family business as the only son. There was also another sister Ethel"  

Which is all good history.

Picture; courtesy of Claire Jarvis, announcement of the dissolving of the partnership from the London Gazette, July 8, 1913, and map showing Fern Royd in red from the OS map, 1907