Discovering the secret of a day out on a wet August day in Heaton Park

Now a holiday in August in my experience is usually a disappointment.

I suppose it comes partly from the fact that as a teacher I remember too many sweltering days in June supervising exams as the sun cracked the paving stones, only to watch the rain come down like stair rods during August.

I was reminded of this a few days ago when I was exploring a photograph in the collection.* It shows a party of girls on an outing.

There was neither date, nor a place but given that there were a lot of children who had been transported in a convoy of “special” trams I argued it  must be one of the big parks, of which Heaton best fitted.  As to a date well I thought was “in the early years of the last century” which as we all know is really a code for saying I don’t know.

If pressed I would have said that the clothes worn by the girls placed them in the 1920s, but those of the women dated from an earlier period.  My mistake was to ignore the possibility that many of the older women may have been happier with the clothes that had been fashionable much earlier in the century.

So a date in the 1920s seems more likely and it was at this point that I sought help from the Manchester Transport Museum and in particular Mr Turnbull.  They too had the same photograph but theirs had the date August 2nd 1922 with the description that this was a “child’s outing.”  And yes it was Heaton Park and that
“the tracks on which the trams are standing now form part of the route of the preserved tramway operating in the Park – the tramway originally ran into the Park from a junction on Middleton Road and terminated near a large shelter, which is out of shot to the left.  This shelter now forms the depot and museum building for the preserved tramway.”

And as you do on search quests I had trawled the records for the weather on that August of 1922.  It had been a bad summer with July and August “cool and unsettled with much rain and little sun”** Which is confirmed by the number of girls carrying umbrellas and an article in the Manchester Guardian of August 1924 bemoaning the bad summers of the last few years and citing 1920 and 1922 as pretty bad and no better that 1924.  So no change then in just over 90 years then.  And for those who really want to know it was a Tuesday.


So perhaps not the most earth shattering piece of historical detective work but nevertheless one that closes a puzzle, and although I am no nearer knowing what the occasion was, I am sure someone will be able to help me on that score.  On the other hand I am pleased that the next time I am up in Heaton Park that stretch of tram line will allow me in a sort of way to touch an event 90 years ago, and bring that photograph of those young girls a bit closer.

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tram-excursion-on-wet-summers-day.html
**Stratton, J.M., Agricultural Records 1969

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

And a thank you to Mr Turnbull of the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester www.gmts.co.uk   
And for details of the museum in Heaton Park, contact The Manchester Transport Museum Society at  http://www.heatonparktramway.org.uk/