This is one of those pictures which you look at, think about how it has changed and pass on.
But that really doesn’t do it justice. The more I look at it the more I seem to see. It is a warm summer’s day in the afternoon and the green seems quiet enough. There are no children about so either school hasn’t finished or the holidays have yet to arrive.
Now I know it must date from sometime between 1904 and 1912. It can’t be any later than 1912 because this was the year the postcard was sent. Nor can it be any earlier than 1904 which was when the Pavilion theatre on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads was opened. It would have been an extra bonus to be able to use the bill board beside the Horse and Jockey to fix the date even more accurately but it is impossible to decipher the print advertising the forthcoming acts.
So it is all down to when Mrs Gertude Green moved in to number 5 Chorlton Green and opened her sweet shop. She was definitely open for business by 1909 and it is her name that appears on the sign in front of the house which also carries the advert for Rowntrees chocolates.
The delivery cart for Camwal may have been unloading mineral water and soft drinks to her shop. The firm had begun in 1878 as the Chemists' Aerated and Mineral Waters Association Limited and by 1895 had factories in London, Bristol, Harrogate and Mitcham. It can’t be sure but it is likely that around 1901 they changed their name to Camwal or were taken over. Those wooden heavy crates would still be used well into the middle of the century for transporting various soft drinks and beers.
Now number 5 looks small and in 1911 it consisted of just three rooms. Fine for Mrs Green who was a widow and lived alone but two decades earlier it had been the home of the plumber James Moloy his wife and four children.
Today the house is bigger but looking again at our picture back then some of number 7 appears to run behind it but just how the internal geography of the two works has yet to be revealed.
Having said that our picture has not yet given up all there is to learn.
Until late in the 19th century the pub was just the space either side of the entrance at number 9 and as late as the 1891 census there were families in numbers 11, and 13. And you might think that when the picture was taken this was still the case. The fence extends along the rest of the row and separates these properties from the pub.
But by 1901 all three were described as the Horse and Jockey which may have happened soon after the death of Miss Wilton who had lived at number 13 and died in 1896.
I would still like to know who owned the horse and cart in front of the Camel delivery vehicle, and whether the woman pushing the pram was the child’s mother or one of the many servants who were employed here in the years before the Great War.
Picture; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1904-1912
But that really doesn’t do it justice. The more I look at it the more I seem to see. It is a warm summer’s day in the afternoon and the green seems quiet enough. There are no children about so either school hasn’t finished or the holidays have yet to arrive.
Now I know it must date from sometime between 1904 and 1912. It can’t be any later than 1912 because this was the year the postcard was sent. Nor can it be any earlier than 1904 which was when the Pavilion theatre on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads was opened. It would have been an extra bonus to be able to use the bill board beside the Horse and Jockey to fix the date even more accurately but it is impossible to decipher the print advertising the forthcoming acts.
So it is all down to when Mrs Gertude Green moved in to number 5 Chorlton Green and opened her sweet shop. She was definitely open for business by 1909 and it is her name that appears on the sign in front of the house which also carries the advert for Rowntrees chocolates.
The delivery cart for Camwal may have been unloading mineral water and soft drinks to her shop. The firm had begun in 1878 as the Chemists' Aerated and Mineral Waters Association Limited and by 1895 had factories in London, Bristol, Harrogate and Mitcham. It can’t be sure but it is likely that around 1901 they changed their name to Camwal or were taken over. Those wooden heavy crates would still be used well into the middle of the century for transporting various soft drinks and beers.
Now number 5 looks small and in 1911 it consisted of just three rooms. Fine for Mrs Green who was a widow and lived alone but two decades earlier it had been the home of the plumber James Moloy his wife and four children.
Today the house is bigger but looking again at our picture back then some of number 7 appears to run behind it but just how the internal geography of the two works has yet to be revealed.
Having said that our picture has not yet given up all there is to learn.
But by 1901 all three were described as the Horse and Jockey which may have happened soon after the death of Miss Wilton who had lived at number 13 and died in 1896.
I would still like to know who owned the horse and cart in front of the Camel delivery vehicle, and whether the woman pushing the pram was the child’s mother or one of the many servants who were employed here in the years before the Great War.
Picture; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1904-1912
Looks almost the same today, only the fencing is a little higher (temporary security)
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