A story of British Home Children in 20 objects .... no. 2 ... Grace Ruth Sillett, from Susan Hillman Brazeau

Grace Ruth Sillett, born June 19, 1892, in Bungay, Suffolk, England, was one of 8 children of Harry Charlish Sillett and his wife, Margaret Ann (Mallett).  In 1898, Harry died of cancer, leaving Margaret financially destitute. 

Grace Ruth Sillett

Grace Ruth Sillett, born June 19, 1892, in Bungay, Suffolk, England, was one of 8 children of Harry Charlish Sillett and his wife, Margaret Ann (Mallett).  In 1898, Harry died of cancer, leaving Margaret financially destitute. 

Although she received assistance from the church, Margaret was unable to care for her children.  Refusing the workhouse, she permitted four of her daughters to be removed from her care.  

Grace, the only daughter sent to Dr. Barnardo’s, was admitted on May 7, 1900, age 7 years, 10 months. She was described as 3 feet, 5 inches; 44 pounds, shy, quiet and polite. She had brown hair, brown eyes, and a dark complexion. Months later, she went to live with a couple in Thorndon, Suffolk for two years. 

In 1902, Grace set sail for Canada on the Colonian. Days after arriving at Hazelbrae Receiving Home in Peterborough, Ontario. she went to Brighton, Ontario, where she resided for the next 12 years with 4 different families. 

When she was 14, Grace asked if she had family in England and Barnardo’s helped her make contact with her mother. In 1965, after 65 years of separation, Grace returned to England and reunited with siblings.

Submitted by granddaughter, Susan (Hillman) Brazeau

Location; Suffolk and Canada

Picture; Grace’s Admission photo to Barnardo’s

A story of British Home Children in just 20 objects nu 1 ..........a report on a Home Child

A report on a home child, 1915

A story of British Home Children in just 20 objects which are in no particular order, have been selected purely at random and will reflect one of many different stories.

Anyone who wants to nominate their own is free to do so, just add a description in no more than 200 words and send it to me.

This is a report on my great uncle, shortly after he was placed by the Middlemore Home with S.V. Griffiths who farmed in New Brunswick.

Such reports were supposed to be completed on each child and sent back to  the charity or Poor Law Union which sent the young person.

This did not always happen and concerns were raised by the socialist Guardians on the board of the Chorlton Poor Law that no reports had been sent back to Manchester on children in their care.

In the case of my great uncle two such reports have survived, neither of which is complimentary about his behaviour, but given his background before he left for Canada I doubt we should be surprised.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

What was lost is found .....

Now a little bit of my childhood has just come to light.

I say mine but it is actually a collective bit of the history of me and my sisters, and it is all the more exciting because I had thought the manuscripts that mum wrote during the 1950's and 60's had been lost.

During that period she wrote a series of one act plays which were specifically aimed at women’s groups and given the nature of such groups had more parts for women than men.

This I suspect added to the skill she brought to the task.

I never read them which, was more to do with that simple fact that at 11, plays, reading and books were for other people.

But now as I engage in writing myself I have often wanted to read mum’s work.  We have a few short pieces she wrote in the 1940's and an unfinished novel of life in south east London.  But that is it.

I have on occasion searched the British Library but was never sure which name she used and as I had none of the titles the quest never got anywhere.

But now our Theresa has found one of the published plays and our Gillian has another and what was lost is found.

Later in the month we will all meet up here in Manchester and Theresa has promised to bring the play.

The discovery of course prompts many memories.  I vividly remember the Olivetti typewriter she used which was metallic light blue in colour and was slim and stylish, and nothing like those giant office models which were all black and gold and took over the table.

And the table she used had been bought specially for the job, and sat in the front room of the old house in Lausanne Road with draws filled with paper; typewrite ribbons, boxes of carbon sheets and those special erasers.

We thought nothing of what mum did and just took it for granted as the thing that all mums do between the washing, cooking and the myriad of other household chores.

And yet now I am in awe of someone who looked after the five of us which was made all the more onerous as dad was away for great chunks of the year.

Reading the fragments that have survived I can hear mum in those manuscripts from over half a century ago.

There is a light wit to much of it, underscored with a darker more melancholy side and both of these were mum.

All of which just leaves me with that simple observation that all of us have stories to tell and deserve the opportunity to share them.

In the past that was difficult, requiring the time and confidence and then the perseverance to slog out approaching publishers who of course would take a cut of whatever money was to be made.

But now social media offers an audience for not only stories but photographs, many of which are as good as those in the galleries, and offers people a chance to showcase their work in a way never before possible.

Knowing mum I rather think she would have embraced those new forms of communication and perhaps once we have all read the lost plays we will offer them up.

We shall see.

Location; London

Picture; cover of In the Mood, date unknown, from the collection of Theresa Simpson Hall and mum and the girls, 1959 from  the collection of Andrew Simpson

Visions of that better world........ reflecting on what I owe to my parents and grandparents

Uncle George and friends, 1918

I am part of that generation which was born directly after the Second World War and is now coming to retirement which gives you a degree of perspective.

For my children both those world wars are just history as remote in a way as the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Battle of Waterloo or the death of Nelson at Trafalgar.

Now there is nothing odd about that.  The eldest was born in 1984 and the youngest in ‘92 by which time the young men and women who had endured the Blitz, fought their way across Europe and the Far East were themselves preparing to receive their State pensions.

But for me those conflicts were still real events.

Nor could it be otherwise.

The tenth anniversary of the end of the last world war coincided with my sixth birthday and the reminders of that conflict were still very visible from bomb sites to surplus military equipment which could be bought for next to nothing.

Mother and friend, 1941, Lincolnshire

And that earlier world war was still all round us.

The war memorials and the Cenotaph were little more than 30 years old when I celebrated that sixth birthday and those that had fought in the Great War were still relatively young men and women.

Many were yet to be grandparents, and most were still active and not yet thinking of retirement.

Indeed it is a salutary thought that back then in 1955 many were younger than I am now.

All of which draws me back to my child hood and how my parents and grandparents dealt with those war time experiences.

By and large they didn’t talk about them in fact were reluctant to do so and when pushed made some flippant remark which hid deeper and perhaps darker experiences.

And for that I am grateful.  I grew up in a household of rising

Father with a hospital unit, 1941, North Shields

material expectations set against a period of prosperity not known to my parents or grandparents.

Their lives in the first half of the twentieth century had been pitted against that long period of economic stagnation culminating with the Great Depression which had been sandwiched between those two world war.

Uncle Roger and mother, 1939

But like most parents of the late 40s and 50s they made every effort to make our lives secure, comfortable and above all ones which were lived out with a sense of the progress made and yet to be made.

True there was the shadow of the bomb and some nasty little wars but they were kept at bay.  And I know that all parents through all time have tried to do their best for their children, but for me those generations who went through the two world wars did their bit not only to fight but to win the peace.

And that for me is well worth remembering.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The lost adverts ….Stephens ink 1959

I rather think you will have to have been born in the first half of the last century to remember Stephens ink.

And along with the ink, will be fountain pens, inkwells, and those school pens which were no more than a knib, attached to a handle, and had to be frequently dipped in the inkwell.

Which in turn will bring back floods of memories of the ink monitor, and ink stains on books and clothes, and of course ink pellets, which were made from chewed up bits of paper soaked in ink and flirted across the room with the help of a ruler.

Few at school aspired to a fountain pen, which was a neat contraption, allowing you suck the in up into a small tube.  

These were later replaced with ink cartridges, and did away with that powerful smell of ink which even now stays with me.

A world replaced by of biros and Word processed documents.

Location; the 1950s

Picture; Super Stephen, 1959, from the Eagle Comic, May 30, 1959, Vol. 10 No.22

Poster corner ……… advertising on the Rec

Now the railings of the Rec offer up several uses.

And one of those is to advertise Chorlton events, from the Arts Festival, to the annual visit of the Fun Fair.

Along the way I have spotted small posters for missing animals, the occasional pop-up jumble sale, and a long time ago the banner celebrating all things Chorlton.

So, for months now, we have gazed out at the Arts Festival, which has been joined by a giant poster for the Children’s Fun Fair in that other park.

It went up sometime on Wednesday, and pretty much obscures views across the Rec to the swings.

So, not one of the most discreet adverts, and I wonder what will be next?

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; posters on the Rec, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When campaigning for peace …… just becomes an empty gesture …on a historic Chorlton landmark

So …. here is a mindless bit of empty protest.

I have no problem with the sentiments, but what does a piece of graffiti on a well known historic Chorlton building achieve?

The blue fingered warrior for peace, would be better employed joining CND, or a political party, or just engaging the local population in a dialogue, but I suspect that will involve a degree of thinking out a more convincing set of arguments.

All that will happen now is that the Council will have to clean it off.

And the makers of blue spray paint will have advanced their profits.

Still our blue fingered warrior for peace can rest easy knowing that they are a million miles behind Dr. King, Bruce Kent of CND, and the countless millions around the world who have faced down military regimes, and totalitarian governments in the cause of peace, and often have suffered the consequences.

Perhaps emboldened by their act of defiance, they could step things up, and send a picture postcard to Mr. Putin, and a suitably different picture postcard to the Chinese Government calling out its Human rights record.

The possibilities are endless.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; the empty gesture, 2021 

Shakespeare's Sonnets .... one for today ... on the wireless ... at 9am

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the collection of poems published in 1609 by Thomas Thorpe: Shakespeare’s Sonnets, “never before imprinted”. 

Yet, while some of Shakespeare's other poems and many of his plays were often reprinted in his lifetime, the Sonnets were not a publishing success. 

They had to make their own way, outside the main canon of Shakespeare’s work: wonderful, troubling, patchy, inspiring and baffling, and they have appealed in different ways to different times. 

Most are addressed to a man, something often overlooked and occasionally concealed; one early and notorious edition even changed some of the pronouns.

With, Hannah Crawforth, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at King’s College London, Don Paterson, Poet and Professor of Poetry at the University of St Andrews, and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture;  Shake-Speare's Sonnets, quarto published by Thomas Thorpe, London, 1609,

*Shakespeare's Sonnets, In Our Time, Radio 4, In Our Time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x6tr

The one we have all forgotten ...... in the Square in 1978

I say the one we have all forgotten, but for many it will be a scene they have never experienced.

We are in St Ann’s Square looking towards Exchange Street with St Mary’s Gate beyond on a warm sunny day in 1978.

Back then you negotiated your way around parked cars, and waiting taxis while in the distance was that parade of shops which stretched down from the old Marks and Spencer’s with its bending canopy.

Today that building has gone, as have the parked cars and taxis and from our vantage point there is a clear view across New Cathedral Street which was cut when the area was redeveloped after the bomb.

Location; St Ann’s Square

Picture; St Ann’s Square, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Saturday in Didsbury

Location; Didsbury

Picture; To let, Wilmslow Road, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When in Didsbury? ..........

So, when in Didsbury, why would you want to take a journey out to Chorlton, Fallowfield or beyond?

Location; Didsbury

Picture; why would you want to take the a journey out of Didsbury? 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Volunteers wanted …… Saturday in Didsbury

 Location, Didsbury

Picture; Volunteers wanted …… Saturday in Didsbury, June 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When not following the science is easier than thinking things through

Who says everyone carefully weighs up the evidence, before making a judgement?

Location; Stockport

Pictures; the unthinking response to the science, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Shock revelations about London's poor ......the state of the capital in 1889 ..... on the wireless

Now, the story of the poor in London in the late 19th century is well known.

And that is in part due to the work of Charles Booth, who is the subject of another in the series on In Our Time, on Radio 4.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's survey, The Life and Labour of the People in London, published in 17 volumes from 1889 to 1903. Booth (1840-1916), a Liverpudlian shipping line owner, surveyed every household in London to see if it was true, as claimed, that as many as a quarter lived in poverty. 

He found that it was closer to a third, and that many of these were either children with no means of support or older people no longer well enough to work. 

He went on to campaign for an old age pension, and broadened the impact of his findings by publishing enhanced Ordnance Survey maps with the streets coloured according to the wealth of those who lived there.

With, Emma Griffin, Professor of Modern British History at the University of East Anglia, Sarah Wise, Adjunct Professor at the University of California, and, Lawrence Goldman, Emeritus Fellow in History at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Location; London

Pictures; from an earlier work on London's poor ...... the Kitchen Fox Court Gray’s-Inn- Lane and the London Costermonger, from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

Booth's Life and Labour Survey, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wsxf

Travels with the Kickety Brook ………..

 If there is one thing all the guides agree on, it's if you walk the Kickety Brook out beyond Chorlton  you should wear wellies.

 

“Access is off Hawthorn Lane, or Chester Road, Stretford. Popular with walkers, cyclists and horse riders alike. Be sure to wear boots or wellingtons if you are on foot. 

The path goes through a good mix of habitats for spotting a wide range of wildlife”.*

 I first came across the brook while researching the weir by the Mersey, which had been built to protect the Duke’s Canal in the 18^th century and rebuilt in the 1840s after it had been damaged by flood water from the river.

 With that spectacular disregard for the environment the engineers constructing the Bridgewater Canal had commandeered the Kickety Brook to act as a channel for possible flood water from the weir, thereby reducing the surge of water and protecting the canal.

Over a decade ago I walked the short section of the Brook with my old botanist pal, David Bishop, following its path down under the motorway.

 And this week Andy Robertson walked the same walk and took a series of pictures which testify to the advice on suitable foot wear.

 I remember that back in the 1970s the stretch of land in front of the weir often appeared to be dried out but more recently there has been a significant pool of water stretching back from the stone wall.

That said the last time the weir saw action was back in 1915 which I guess would have meant that the Kickety Brook took the overflow off the fields in front of the canal.

Since then the Brook has been tampered with again and the bit under the motorway has been forced into a concrete channel.

 But the Brook and nature do not easily recognise such a attempts to fiddle with it, and lumps of the artificial channel have suffered over time, while the surrounding vegetation threatens to soften and hide  the work of the motorway engineers.

After a bout of rain, stretches of the Kickety can still look like a respectable water course, but suddenly it becomes just a muddy, shallow and sluggish reminder of its former self.

 

It always amazes me how with in just a few yards the Brook can undergo such a transformation.

So I am grateful to Andy for capturing the different sides of Kickety in what was a warm early summer's day.

Just whether he chooses wellies, stout walking boots or trainers has yet to be revealed, but I hope he didn't get his feet wet in the process of revealing this stretch of water.

Leaving me to hope his pictures will spark a flood of memories from people who payed along it in their youth or who once explored it's route.

We shall see.

As the guide* suggests the brook can be approached down Hawthorn Lane, where it goes underneath the Cut Hole Aqueduct.

 But for those that prefer their stretches of water broader and deeper, the aqueduct gives access to the canal and the tow path from which the serious walker can head off in one direction towards town or out to Sale, Timperley and rural Cheshire.

And yes, on my trip with David, once we had passed under the motorway and left the noise of speeding traffic, the seemingly remoteness of the route presented us with other sounds, from the occasional bird, to the lazy buzz of bees, and the sights of the odd butterfly.

 Location; The Kickety Brook

 Pictures; the Kickety Brook, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Mersey Valley Kickety Brook, Stretford, Things to do in Manchester, https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/searchresults?sr=1&name=kickety+brook

Six ways to leave a story about Ancient Rome ……. Edward Gibbon on the wireless

Now, I am looking forward to listening to the story of Edward Gibbon from the series In Our Time on Radio 4.

A bit of Rome a bit knocked about

I missed it yesterday when it was broadcast and will catch up with it today.

Mr. Gibbon is of course best known for his account of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

To my shame I have yet to read the six volumes of how work which mother bought for me back in 1961.

To be fair I was 11, and despite being fascinated by the Romans I was daunted by the expanse of reading.

So I will start with the wireless programme. 

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of one of the great historians, best known for his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (published 1776-89). 

According to Gibbon (1737-94), the idea for this work came to him on 15th of October 1764 as he sat musing amidst the ruins of Rome, while barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter. Decline and Fall covers thirteen centuries and is an enormous intellectual undertaking and, on publication, it became a phenomenal success across Europe.

Edward Gibbon, 1779

With David Womersley, The Thomas Wharton Professor of English Literature at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, Charlotte Roberts, Lecturer in English at University College London, and Karen O’Brien, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson”

Pictures; a bit of Rome from after the Fall of the Empire, 2010, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Portrait of Edward Gibbon, 1779, Joshua Reynolds

*Edward Gibbon, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x0v2

Mrs Martha Thorpe, the slaughter house and a new row of shops on Beech Road

Now when Mrs Thorpe opened her “slaughter house” in 1879 on Beech Road I doubt she thought that she would still be there selling cuts of meat, mince and tripe at the dawn of the next century.

Looking down towards the "slaughter house" circa 1900

But that is just exactly what happened and in the process will have been visited by countless customers in what is now Elk, which given its name is an interesting turn of events for what was originally a shop dealing in dead animals.

Until recently I had no idea of the date of the building and it was only as I trawled the rate books that its age came to light.

The rate books will tell you who owned the property and if it was rented and the estimated annual rent along with its rateable value.

And by slowly tracking back year by year it will be possible to arrive at the date the building was completed and first assessed for rates.

In our case this was 1878, not long after Chorlton Row and been renamed Beech Road, and when there were still farms, and smithy within a few minute’s walk of Mrs Thorpe’s business.

Beech Road, circa 1900

The discovery of the “slaughter house” was not an accident and came out of the research on the bars of Chorlton for the book Chorlton pubs and bars.

The book is the story of the 33 Chorlton pubs and bars and while some of our pubs date back to the late 18th century the bars are relatively new.*

And that poses a problem when you are writing about their history and the stories behind their doors.

So as you do I went looking into their earlier history which was as varied and interesting as the bars themselves.

But for more you will just have to buy the book.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Beech Road circa 1900 from the Lloyd collection

You can  order the book at www.pubbooks.co.ukemail Peter at peter@pubbooks.co.uk or the old fashioned way on 07521 557888 or from Chorlton Bookshop

**A new book on the pubs and bars of Chorlton,https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Chorlton%20Pubs%20and%20bars

Losing Sugar Puffs and remembering Attins on Queens Road

Yesterday I went looking for a packet of Sugar Puffs.

Now this was not out of a sense of nostalgia, but because Tina who is Italian fancied some.

It was seven on a Sunday and with no wish to trudge up to the Co-op and knowing that Morrisons  would still be closed I settled on the corner shop.

Ours began as a newsagents which ran a successful lending library in the middle decades of the last century and then diversified in to everything you might want for breakfast but for forgot to buy.

I guess this side of the business developed as the traditional grocery shops on our road closed down.

That said the shop has traded as a newsagents since it first opened a century a bit ago.

Of course back in the 1950s when we were still on Lausanne Road it was all much simpler.

We got papers from the newsagents on Mona Road, wandered down on to Queens Road to the strip of shops that ran from Lausanne to Dennetts’s  road where there was the butcher's, and from memory two grocer's shops, although the first was limited and really came into its own  on a Sunday when it would sell the things that you needed but couldn't in theory buy because of Sunday trading laws.

So having been sent down for butter I was under strict instructions from the shop keeper not to tell anyone what I was carrying which for added measure had been double wrapped in brown paper.

All of which made me think we were a bit disloyal because for most of the week we fell back on Attins, which was a more up market grocery store.

It had one of those shiny plastic shop signs which was an off white colour with the their name picked out in black and all of the staff wore those old fashioned white coats and in the case of Mr Attins a white hat.

Added to which they had one of those big freezers and it will have been from here that I had my first frozen fish fingers and maybe even one of those TV dinners  which made their way into households at the beginning of the 1960s.

Mother was always up for innovation but the TV dinner phase didn't last long.

If you got it wrong during the reheating bit it offered up warmish veg with roast potatoes which were still cold in the middle and gravy which burnt the mouth along with thin slices of beef which at best tasted bland and at worst were like eating  strips of leather.

But at least you could buy Sugar Puffs at Attins.

Sadly I was unsuccessful down the road,

I was told they were on order and the box the shop had sold an hour before but worse than that it was that the cereal of my youth has been rebranded as Honey Monster Puffs and while the box still shouts out the latest offers and prizes the absence of the little train on the front left me thinking that breakfast cereal was best left alone.

Not that Tina was over bothered by a name change or the loss of the little train.

They tasted she told me like they always had, which I suppose is one up on the Wagon Wheel which seems smaller but which I am told has remained the same size.

All of which just leaves me to reflect that nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

Pictures; Sugar Puffs carton, circa 1956 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and adverts for Pecks product date unknown, taken from Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand from  Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand, Taste of General Mills, March 2015, http://www.blog.generalmills.com/2015/03/spreading-the-love-for-a-vintage-australian-brand/

When prejudice stalks Chorlton and ignores the historical reality

It is that time of year when yet again someone posts a question about Chorlton, which the prejudiced and ill-informed leap on.

From the 1851 census of Chorlton-cum-Hardy

So, the post was about Chorlton and culture, and sure enough we got a heap of answers, some of which repeated that old idea that today the area is full of people who were not born here. 

I suppose some were attempts at being funny and at best displayed a degree of ignorance, and at worst slide into prejudice.

The easy response is either to say nothing or to reply with “so what”.

But, it comes up so often that it is worth exploring the assertion, and pointing out that Chorlton has always seen a lot of people from elsewhere coming to live here.

In 1851, the census records that there were 760 people here in the township.  Discounting ten whose places of birth are undecipherable, 346 were born in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and 404 from elsewhere.

Now the elsewhere did contain some pretty local places, like Withington, Didsbury and Stretford, and a bit further away in Hulme, Manchester and Salford.

But there were a fair few from Yorkshire, Cheshire, Warwickshire, the Home Counties and Scotland.

The Chorlton Brass Band, 1893, 

All of which meant that walking the lanes of the village and surrounding hamlets, there would have been a mix of accents.

The answer partly lies in the practice of employing servants from outside Chorlton, there by reducing the possibility that the secrets of “the family” would become known in the homes of the locals.

Thirty years later and the housing boom of the 1880s, which lasted into the next century, brought a range of people from all over Britain, whose occupations were far removed from farming.

And there are plenty of examples.

The Chorlton Brass band dated back to the 1820s, but by 1893, the majority were either born elsewhere, or first generation.

Joe Scott who built many of the smaller houses in Chorlton during the early decades of the 20th century may have been born here, but his father who was a plasterer moved up from London to benefit from that housing boom.

And in the 1830s, the Holt’s escaped city centre Manchester to settle in their fine house on the corner of Barlow Moor Road, and what is now Beech Road, and after their death, their place by one of their children.

All very different from the assertion that “Chorlton culture is real people who left and outsiders who moved here because of trends and the beegees then claimed it as their own” or that "Original Chorlton people were great it’s all the new people that have turned into what it is now, old Chorlton was great”.

Added to which for almost a century we referred to the Old Chorlton and New Chorlton, or the Old and New Village, to distinguish those who lived in the old rural centre around the village green and Beech Road, and those in the new developments which occupied the area around Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road.

To which I would just point out that in the early 19th century original Chorlton people engaged in bull baiting, dog and badger fights, and the public humiliation of residents whose partner had left them, and others who the moral populace thought had offended the common good.

Still, why let history get in the way of a good rant?

And if any one wants further evidence, there is the book The Story of Chorlon-cum-Hardy, which is a study of the township in the first half of the 19th century, or if that is too much like a conspiracy theory why not go back to the census returns and read what the residents of Chorlton themselves said.

Pictures; Chorlton Brass Band, 1893, from the Lloyd Collection

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012

A Country Park ……. a big bit of history …….. and the village of Compstall

The village of Compstall, between Marple and Romiley might well have once been called a one-man town.

Expanses of water ....... 2021

In the 1820s according to one source a chunk of the surrounding land was part of the Andrew’s estate incorporating a mine, a cotton mill and a lake.

“Mr. George Andrew originally built the mill and made the artificial lake, and built houses along with a church and school for the work force who were employed in his mill”*.

Compstall, 1900

And like so many one-man towns, many of the streets were named after the family, including Andrew Street, George Street, Montague Street and Thomas Street, and the pub the Andrew’s Arms, which I think was a late addition.  

To which can be added the Compstall Print Works, which was part of the family empire.  

In 1850, the Manchester Guardian reported that a division of the family assets had led to the dissolving of the partnership “between George Andrew, the elder Thomas Andrew, George Andrew the younger , and Charles Andrew, as calico printer, cotton spinners and manufacturers and carried on at Compstall, and at Manchester, under the firm of ‘George Andrew and Sons’ was dissolved by mutual consent.  The manufacturing establishment will in future be carried on by Messrs. George Andrew, senior, and Charles Andrew, and the printing establishment by Mr. Georg e Andrew, the younger.”**

Twisty walks

George Andrew had been born in 1799, and died in 1854 and was buried in Compstall Church.  

On the 1851 census he described himself as “Justice of the Peace, Cotton Manufacturer, employing 472 Males and 598 Females.”

His father had died in 1821, and George then began a major expansion of the textile business, which involved the construction of the North Mill between 1839 and 1847, and the enlargement of the mill office. The Albert Mill and a range of riverside buildings, including the mechanics shop were extended followed before the business was sold off in the 1890s.***

For those wanting more, there are a series of family and business documents which are listed by the Marple Local History Society.****

I don’t suppose I would have come across Mr. Andrew, ofr Compstall had we not taken ourselves off to Etherow Country Park, on Sunday, and as you do I became interested in the place.

The park was created in 1868, and was one of England’s first country parks, which now attracts over a quarter million visitors a year.

More water

It is situated in the Etherow-Goyt Valley, and is the start of The Goyt Way, which is a 10 mile walk to Whaley Bridge.

The River Etherow flows through the park which is the source for the lakes and was originally used as a reservoir to power the water wheels for the mill. 

Now, none of this will be a surprise to the residents of Stockport, or Compstall, but I am confident that there will be plenty for whom Mr. Andrew, his family business and the Park will be a revaltion.

Location; Compstall

Pictures; the Etherow Country Park, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Compstall in 1900, from the OS Map of Cheshire, 1900, courtesy of Digital Archives, Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*HISTORY OF ETHEROW COUNTRY PARK; https://www.etherowcountrypark.co.uk/

**Manchester Guardian, September 21st, 1850

***Compstall, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compstall

***COMPSTALL MILL / ANDREW FAMILY, Marple Local History Society Archives,http://www.marplelocalhistorysociety.org.uk/archives/collections/show/104

****Compstall, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compstall

A library in your garden ……………

Now, I say in your garden but  over the last few years I have come across these little popup libraries, outside shops, beside car parks, and pretty much anywhere, where lots of people pass.

This one is in Chorlton, and is part of the  Little Free Library.*

And as you do I went looking for more information and as ever Wikipedia had the lot.  “The  Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that promotes neighborhood book exchanges, usually in the form of a public bookcase. 

More than 90,000 public book exchanges are registered with the organization and branded as Little Free Libraries. 

Through Little Free Libraries, present in 91 countries, millions of books are exchanged each year, with the aim of increasing access to books for readers of all ages and backgrounds. The Little Free Library nonprofit organization is based in Hudson, Wisconsin, United States”.**

There is more, but I have a policy of never representing other people’s research, so you fill have to follow the link to get the full story.

The purists will quibble and say that they are not true libraries, which offer a host of other resources, but that is to mis the point that anything which advances reading and a love of books has a part to play.  After all I am of an age to remember those private libraries which for a small fee lent books.  Ours in New Cross was in a bookshop, but many were part of newsagents. And they were always a supplenet to those eager to read.

Mother went to our public library twice a week and also used the one on Queens Road.

Location; Chorlton

Picture,  the Little Free Library, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Little Free Library, https://littlefreelibrary.org/

**Little Free Library, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Free_Library, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Free_Library

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton …. part 121 ....... at the cutting edge of kitchen appliances

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since. *

Now I can be fairly confident that the Scott’s had one of these in their kitchen.

Long before the Kenwood mixer, the electric blender, and several other modern kitchen tools, the humble mincer took pride of place.

This one belongs to my friend Christianna Franck, who sent over the picture, adding “Look what I picked up for a fiver in a charity shop”.

Ours which did the business in both the house in Peckham and later Well Hall in Eltham, was lost a long time ago, although dad was till using it to make his forced meat balls every Christmas well into the 1990s.

I had thought production of this simple tool had ceased decades ago.  But not so, because they are a neat way to mince food.  The device is study, washes easily, and just clamps to the side of a table.  

Of course, this will present a problem in many kitchens whose work surfaces do not admit to having a device clamped on to them.

But when I was growing up the kitchen table was the work surface, which was perfect to attach the mincer.

And in a time of “waste not”, the mincer could process the remains of the Sunday joint offering up heaps of meals based on the humble minced meat.

Which was always preferable to the shop bought variety which cost 2/6d for a pound of raw meat.

All of which leaves me to include a recipe from The Ministry of Food from 1946, which I guess would have been about the time Mary Ann used her mincer.  

The same leaflet also offered Hamburgers, Hamburgers in Brown Sauce and Savoury Meat Pudding, .... so more than a few meals to enliven that post war period when rationing and shortages were part of everyday life.

Picture, the mincer, 2021, from the collection of Christianna Franck, and Mince in the Hole, 1946.**

*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**Mince in the Hole, from Making the most of Meat, Ministry of Food Cookery Leaflet, Number 16, October 1946, from the collection of Mrs. Piggott

Who were these unknown men of the Great War?

This is another of those pictures whose story I doubt I will ever know.

It is from the collection of David Harrop, and is undated and comes with no clue as to where it was taken.

Now there will be somebody out there who can help.

The men are wearing spurs and bandoliers which suggest they were a cavalry unit or from the Royal Artillery.

There may also be something in the design of the train carriages which I think varied from railway company to railway company.

So find which company and we may be able to identify a location.

The original photograph was in a poor state but with the help of David’s friend Bernard we have a clearer image and so it would be nice to know more about these men and their eventual destination.

Picture; unknown unit of British soldiers, sometime during the Great War somewhere in Britain, courtesy of David Harrop

The bottle …… the stillman ..... and a mystery

Like all good stories this one began with the discovery of some treasure by Declan Maguire.

The bottle, 2021

The treasure was an old glass bottle which he told me  “is green tinted and very thick, and written in raised glass is the names ‘Thomas Edge Trade Mark T E Thomas Edge Registered Manchester’, and  on the back, ‘Redfern Bros. Bottle Makers Barnsley’. 

Strange what you can find just a few inches down. I wonder how long it’s been since that bottle last saw daylight, perhaps dropped into and during some long ago bit of building work”.

The bottle is undated, but I know that Redfern Brothers were engaged in the business of bottle manufacture from 1862, until they sold out to a Swedish company in 1967.  

And we can limit that near century down to sometime between when they started and when they moved out of Barnsley in 1946.*

Which still leaves a heap of time, but here Thomas Edge steps into the story, and reduces that chasm of time to just 25 years.  

In 1891 he described himself as a Stillman and Dye Worker, a decade later he had become a “Foreman in a Chemical works” and by 1903 was listed in the directories as a stillman, and that suggests by then he may have struck out on his own.

How he raised the capital to purchase the bottles and distilling equipment is an intriguing question, but I know he died in 1936, leaving just £127 to his niece.

All of which offers up a timeline for our bottle of something like 33 years.

Not much I know, but so far it’s the best we can do.

So instead, given that history is messy the story takes a few twists.  

Thomas was born in 1862, married Annie in 1885, and they settled in Blackburn Street in Hulme that year, and were still there in 1914.  Just how successful he was and what he put into that green bottle is as yet unknown to me.

8 Blackburn Street marked in red, 1894 home to Mr. and Mrs. Edge

But it does suggest we have a man who the Victorians would have approved of, and a man who had taken to heart the writings of Samuel Smiles in Self Help, and had raised himself “to social eminence and even wealth”.**

Of course, I might just have got this last bit wrong.  His business career may have been short, and carried out on the edge of impending disaster.

And so there is a lot more research to do, including why he left his money to his niece who in 1936 was 73 years old and not his married daughter.

I can think of answers but that would be unhistorical with out the research, so research I shall, leaving me just marvel at what can come out of the ground, long after they were discarded.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the bottles, 2021, from the collection of Declan Maguire, and Blackburn Street, 1894, close to Chorlton Road, from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives, Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Redfern Brothers https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/RedfearnBros.pdf

**Samuel Smiles