Back on Chorlton Green with a painting and a debate

Down on the Green, 2012

Now here is one of those simple lessons about our recent past.

This is the old village school on the green which along with the schoolmaster’s house was built by public subscription in 1878.

And when Peter showed me his painting it set up a discussion because Peter remembers painting it before it was converted into residential accommodation.

And yet I am not so sure.

Back in the December of 2011 I wrote about the planned change of use and even had a tour around the building with Emily from the Horse and Jockey just before it was completed.*

But the exact date of that visit is lost to me which is a lesson in always recording things and I think it is the same with our picture which must date from after the conversion because the windows in the roof and the brick wall and iron railings in front of the entrance were added during the change of use.

Miss Florence Elizabeth Renshaw, 1877

Now of course the first people who moved into the newly renovated building will know for sure, so perhaps I will just pop down and ask.

That said I am on firmer ground with the present building which replaced an earlier school opened in the 1840s.

There are a few pictures of the interior from the 1940s, and a handful of memories of the place both before and after it closed.

These include a VE day party and the regular meeting once a week of the Penny Savings Bank.

That said I do have a picture of one of those needlework samplers undertaken by a young Florence Elizabeth Renshaw, aged 10 and completed in 1877.

Now the Renshaw’s are an old Chorlton family and can be traced back to the mid if not early 18th century.

I have a copy of the legal agreement between James Renshaw and the Egerton’s from 1767 setting out the tenancy agreement for the farm on Beech Road and the family continued to be part of our history pretty much up to today.

Saving your pennies in 1934

And what is exciting about our sampler is that it will have been one of the last undertaken in the older school.

But and here is the second lesson for the day I have misfiled the name of the person who so kindly provided the image.

It is somewhere but as yet it eludes me.

However as a bonus and added since the story was first posted, here is an advert for that Penny Savings Bank which Sandra sent me after reading the post.

It dates from 1934.

Picture; sampler of Florence Elizabeth Renshaw, 1877 and the advert for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Penny Savings Bank, 1934 from the collection of Sandra Hapgood 

Painting; The school on Chorlton Green, © 2012 Peter Topping
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

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*Changing uses ................ the village school on the green, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/changing-uses-village-school-on-green.html