Making that list of Didsbury’s houses ……………

I went looking last week for a list of Didsbury’s old houses.

It is the sort of thing you would think was readily available.

I asked a few people, thought about trying the City Council Planning Department and emailed the Didsbury Civic Society.

The fun solution was trawling the two well known history books, which offered up a comprehensive list.*

But both are over 40 years old, and a lot can happen in that time.  Some properties will have succumbed to the schemes of developers, while others were no longer fit for purpose.

Added to which, even historians are not always objective about what they record.

So that left me with Historic England, which has a database of “The most important historic places in England “ including “buildings, battlefields, monuments, parks, gardens and more”, and a visit to the site offered up eighty-two results.**

But if I have this right, the list is of buildings which have been listed, and that requires some one to make an application, which is matched against the criteria, and a judgement is taken.***

So, one cottage of three on a quiet lane in Didsbury was listed in 1952, but the other two were not.

Sadly, the details of why that particular property was listed are no longer available, and so it is impossible to conclude what special merit the other two failed to possess.

At which point I hear people mumbling “so what?  All houses have something about them, and the logic would therefore dictate that every house in Didsbury should be on the list”.

And even if you apply the broad criteria used to consider an application there are problems. So, “to justify special historic interest a building must illustrate important aspects of the nation’s history and / or have closely substantiated historical associations with nationally important individuals, groups or events; and the building itself in its current form will afford a strong connection with the valued aspect of history, which is fine, but what constitutes an “important aspect of the Nation’s history”?***

A decade ago we might have thought a statute to someone involved in the slave trade was distasteful, but reflected part of our history.  However, the recent continuing revaluation of how we view the slave trade, and who we should single out as worthy of positive recognition has changed.

And in the same way history books, historians and opinion makers have not always seen the importance of recording the contribution made to our collective story by the working class, by women or by ethnic groups.

Which in turn has meant that humble back-to-back properties have been swept away or left to fall down, while the accounts of the lives of a whole mix of people who were not judged important enough to be part of our History.

And that brings me back to the start, and a desire to record those houses from the 18th and 19th century which were not owned by the great and the good, or the not so good, but were homes to those people who history has only recorded as “walk on parts” if at all.

Or have I missed something?

Picture; Warburton Street, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Knight Street, 2021, courtesy of Andrew Simcock

*A History of Didsbury, Ivor R. Million 1969, & A New History of Didsbury, E. France & T.F.Woodall, 1976

**Historic England, Didsbury, https://historicengland.org.uk/sitesearch?searchType=site&search=didsbury&page=1

***Principles of Selection For Listed Buildings, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, 2018, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/757054/Revised_Principles_of_Selection_2018.pdf