Never throw away the negatives ....... part 2 .... The Talmud Torah School ....Bent Street

Now keeping the negatives never really seems worth it, but when the original prints get lost or damaged those negatives can prove very important.

All of which just points up how pleased I was that I found the set which I took of the streets around Cheetham Hill Road in the mid 1980s.

Not only have the prints gone but so have the notes I made of the research into the area.

This is the old Talmud Torah School opened in 1880, for “the teaching of elementary education in
Hebrew, the Scriptures and the Talmud and in the principles of the Jewish faith and practise. Talmud Torah schools were traditionally for boys only. Girls were admitted in modern times. 

The School was founded in 1880 and established in purpose built premises at No. 11 Bent Street, Cheetham, Manchester. In 1958 the Bent Street school was sold and in 1959 the new headquarters of the Manchester Central Board for Hebrew Education and Talmud Torah was opened in Upper Park Road, Salford. It closed in 2005”.*

I had half expected that the building would no longer exist but it does, still in commercial use as it when I came across it, but looking a lot better.  All but two of the big signboards have gone and these are neat and discreet.

Added to which a fair amount of the school’s records have survived, including account books payments and registers of contributions and a description of the damage done to the building during the Blitz.

Location; Bent Street, Manchester

Picture; The Talmud Torah School, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf