Walking the High Street in 1918

I am on one of those walks which I could have taken just a century ago along the High Street.

Looking east, 2014

Now this is not so difficult given that by 1918 there were plenty of commercial and amateur photographers snapping away and plenty of their efforts have survived.

And armed with the census records and street directories it is possible to name the businesses which ran up from Well Hall Road east down towards Roper Street.

The street directories were issued annually and while they only record the business or house owner they are a good start.

But it will always be the information from the census which offers the stories of the people behind the doors, and when you put them together that walk becomes a fascinating trip into our collective past.

Merlewood House, 1909

So roughly on the site of the Nat West bank were the homes of Mrs Dobell and Mr Joseph Rosselli followed by the show rooms of South Metropolitan Gas Company, the London Parcels Delivery Co, and Arthur Blackney, blacksmith who will no doubt have passed the time of the day with Mr St John the physician and Henry Hallett his immediate neighbours.

On one of those walks I might well have stood outside Mrs Dobell’s fine 20 roomed house and wandered what she did in such a big house given that there was only her and three servants.

Not of course that I would ever have been invited in or for that matter into that equally big pile known as Merlewood which stood next door.

This was the home of Mr and Mrs Rosselli who sat comfortably inside their impressive house of 18 rooms shared with three grown up children and five servants.

Now given that he was a stockbroker I guess I might have seen him waiting at the railway station for a train into London.

But it is more likely that his journey to work would have started many hours after mine.
After all I come from a long line of agricultural workers, silk spinners and itinerant tradesmen and may well have been working for Mr Blackney assisting him with his magical enterprising of heating and hammering.

That said given the date of 1918 it is more likely that I was either in some trench in France or clocking off after a shift at the Arsenal.

And I suspect I am now  in danger of sliding into silly speculation so I shall close.

Picture; looking east up  the High Street, 2014, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick and Merlewood House, 1909 from The Story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 

The Fletcher Moss ……… once the Albert and once a railway pub

The beer house which became the Albert and then the Fletcher Moss and had been owned by a railway company.

The Albert, 1970

The Fletcher Moss was not always thus named, and many will remember it as the Albert when it was a more modest pub, still divided into small intimate rooms.

It appears to date from 1869, when a William Armett who had a number of properties on William Street took a chance on the 59 years old Joshia Bethell to run a new beer shop in one of his houses.

And that was the start of the Albert Inn which took its name from the nearby street, and later became the Fletcher Moss, as a reminder of that interesting character who gifted his home as a museum to the people of Didsbury.

But there has been much written on Fletcher Moss, and so instead I shall stick with Joshia Bethell who was born in 1811 when Didsbury was still a small rural community. He will have been old enough to have remembered the rejoicing at the news of Waterloo, celebrated the coronation of the old Queen in 1837, and watched as the first railway train arrived in the township in 1880.

And his early life reflects that old rural Didsbury.  In 1841 he gave his occupation as “joiner”, a decade later as “coachman” and in 1861 as a “gardener”.  But with an eye to the future and his advancing age in 1869 he took up the job as beer keeper at the new Albert Inn.  That said, either because the beer shop was not yet paying its way, or because he was a cautious man, he chose to describe himself on the 1871 census as “Gardener and beerkeeper”.

The Albert, 1959

A decade later all seemed well and he was officially recorded as “a publican”, by which time his landlord status had changed and from 1879 if not a little earlier he was a tenant of the Midland Railway Company who had bought up the land on either side of the proposed new railway track.

In that portfolio of purchases came William Street, and no doubt Mr. Bethell reflected with his customers on the changes the new railway would bring to Didsbury, offering those who could afford it a swift route into the heart of the city, or out to the Peak District and the south.

As exciting as that might have been, the downside was a rise in the estimated annual rent and rates bill  due on the Albert, which rose by an extra 5/- in rent and 2/6d in the rates levied on the property.

The Fletcher Moss, 2013

Of course, we will never know just what Joshia Bethell made of that rise, the coming of the railway, or what he might have said about the Albert becoming the Fletcher Moss. But I think we can be certain Joshia knew of Fletcher Moss and may even have met him.  Afterall the family had moved back to Didsbury from Cheetham Hill and later moved into the Old Parsonage which along with the gardens and recreation ground were donated to the city in 1919.

It was a generous gift and I like the idea that countless customers might reflect on the history that the pub has to offer up.

And if you want to read more about Didsbury’s historic and much loved pubs, then there is no better book than our recently published, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson, 2019.  Available from www.pubbooks.co.uk and local bookshops.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; The Albert, 1970, A. Dawson, m49142 and 1959, J.F Harris, m50611, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Fletcher Moss, 2013, © Peter Topping

February sunlight ……….

On a Sunday morning.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; February sunlight, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

In praise of Central Ref ……

 It is a place I keep coming back to because it is a place that has been a big part of my life since I first walked through its doors aged 19 in 1969.*

Back then as an undergraduate I used the great Social Science Library with its long tables radiating out from the central hub, under that magnificent dome, with that intriguing echo which allowed you to hear a whispered conversation and amplified a book accidently dropped onto a bench on the other side of the room.

And then forty years later I trawled the archives in the Archives and Local history library, researching my first book.**

And in between I was a regular visitor to the Library Theatre, used the coffee bar as a meeting place, and held the launch another of my books.***

It was closed for four years from 2010-14 but reopened, after much essential maintenance and restoration with an exciting new layout.

So that is it.

Location; Manchester

Pictures, Central Ref, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Central Ref, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Central%20Ref

**The Story of Chorlton-cum-hardy, 2012

***Manchester Remembering 1914-18

On Angel Street with the "common lodging houses" in 1900

On Angel Street in 1900

We are on Angel Street in 1900.

Now I can’t be exactly sure where along Angel Street we are  but I think it will be around the middle and it is just possible we are looking down from St Michael’s Fields  towards Rochdale Road.

The Street still exists today and there is still a pub at what would have been number 6, on the corner with Dyche Street.

Back then it was the Weavers Arms although now it goes under the name of The Angel Pub which  I guess will have been an inspired piece of thinking by someone attempting to re brand the place.

In time I will go looking for how long there has been a pub on this site and when it may have changed its name.

I suspect it may have had some lean years given that until recently there was little in the way of anything on any of the surrounding streets.

But now new build has gone up off Angel Street and a little further down are the new Co-op offices.

That said Angel Street is just a shadow of its former self.

But back in 1900 it was alive with houses, businesses and a cotton mill.

Now I knew I would never be able to identify the woman in the picture sitting on the steps, but I am became curious about her and where she lived.

So as you do I hunted down the street directories and census returns.
I was expecting the usual mix of small terraced properties sandwiched between factories timber yards and engineering works.

What I found were lodging houses, not one but lots of them.

I counted nine on a street which listed only eleven properties but these numbers hid a more interesting discovery that many of these lodging houses were collections of individual house which had become larger units.

So number 9 Angel Street also included numbers 11 and 13, and this was replicated all along.

Here then was one of those places given over to cheap accommodation where the residents were crammed in.

In nu 44 Angel Street, a "common lodging house"

And there was a uniformity here, men and women of all ages mostly at the lower end of the income range and from across the country and over the sea.

At number 44 there were 32 people staying and by one of those odd strokes of luck just four years earlier a Mr Coulthurst had wandered down Angel Street with his camera capturing our woman on the steps and even more remarkably taking a picture of an upstairs room at number 44.

Now four years is a long time in the life of a rundown lodging house just off Angel Meadow but it could just be that some of the 32 men  sleeping there on the night of the census in 1901 might have been in 1897.

Most were either single or widowed but there were some married couples.

Theirs were the jobs that paid little, and were as uncertain as any.  So amongst the 32 were Thomas Reed, 74 from Ireland who gave his occupation as "hawker" and Frederick Mason a labourer from Scotland aged 34.

And there are plenty more which leads me to think that here there is a real opportunity to wander across the census returns and try to track some of these people across the city and across occupations.

Now that should be a fascinating journey.

Pictures; Angel Street, 1900, S.L. Coulthurst m85543 and Angel Street common lodging house, 1897, S.L.Coulthurst, m08365, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Of floods and weirs and floating hay ricks

"It was," wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”

It was for this reason that the weir was built.  Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

After a heavy flood in August 1799 broke the banks where Chorlton Brook joined the Mersey, there were fears that the Bridgewater Aqueduct across the flood plain could be damaged by flooding it was decided to build an overflow channel improving the course of Kicketty Brook and build the stone weir.

Not that it always worked.  Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heighted river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning.

Later floods proved to be even more destructive, destroying a bridge across Chorlton Brook and making for six major floods between  December 1880 and October  1881. The last time the weir took an overflow of flood water was 1915.

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it is possible to sense the importance of the weir.

Stretching out from the wall is a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants.

But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir.

Pictures; Higginbotham’s field in flood, J Montgomery 1963, painted from a photograph dated 1946, m800092, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, picture of weir in 1915 from the collection of Tony Walker

The telephone box …. the arch .. and a time before now

Now I won’t be alone in remembering this telephone box in St Peter’s Square, but I think it was tucked away at the start of Library Walk.

And if you can remember that kiosk you will remember also that old square dominated by the Cenotaph and surrounded by a mix of mid-20th century buildings and the odd one or two from when the old Queen was on the throne.

But there can be no one now alive who worshipped at the church which dominated the spot, gave its name to the square, and was demolished in 1907. *

Since then, the place has undergone a series of changes, welcomed by some and mourned by others, which have included the erection of the Cenotaph, the arrival of the first tram stop and then the remodelling to accommodate the Second City Crossing.

Along the way all the buildings around the square have been replaced with new ones, including Central Ref, the Town Hall extension, and the buildings to the east and southeast, leaving only the Midland Hotel, which opened in 1903.

Location; St Peter’s Square**

Pictures, a telephone box a box and the Town Hall Extension, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, St Peter’s Square, circa 1990s, from the collection of picture postcards of Rita Bishop  St Peter’s Square, Manchester, 1962 – 3664.5, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*St Peter’s Church, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=st+peter%27s+church

**St Peter’s Square, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/St%20Peter%27s%20Square

Back on Pound Place a long time before now

Pound Place was always somewhere I tended to walk past and looking down it now I can’t even remember what stood on the site of the Council Offices.

I have written about  it in the past not least because of its old cottages which once occupied the site and because part of it was the village pound or pinfold which was used to accommodate stray animals and.*

Now a few photographs of Pound Place from the beginning of the 19th century have survived, but today I thought I would feature another of those drawings by Mr Llwyd Roberts who was living in Eltham in the early 1930s.

During his stay here he drew many pictures and some of these appeared in the Kentish Times in 1930 and were reprinted in Old Eltham sixty-six years later.

Picture; Pound Court, Llwyd Roberts, circa 1929-30, from Old Eltham, 1966, courtesy of Margaret Copeland Gain

*Pound Place, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Pound%20Place

Discovering the story behind the photograph

Now sometimes a photograph just takes you over and you know you just want to find out as much as you can about it.

This is Alice Wareing who married Eric Kettle in 1922 at the Primitive Methodist Church on High Lane.

They lived on Buxton Avenue in Didsbury and during the 1930s performed in local amateur dramatic productions.

I don’t know which group but it will be local to south Manchester and there might be a clue in the picture with contains the word Didsbury, but that might just refer to the photographer.

It is also possible that they were with the Methodist players.

This group performed in the Sunday school beside the church on Manchester Road.

Their stage dates from the 1930s and given that I have stood in the hall on the stage I rather think it would be fitting if this were the case.

And that stage will soon be no more as the Edge Company who now occupy the old Sunday School are about to modernise the hall.

In time I hope I will be able to find out more.

The picture is one of two which was sent to me by my friend Ann along with a press cutting of Alice and Eric’s marriage.

This is equally fascinating providing those sorts of details which all too often are lost.

So I know who attended the wedding, the outfits of the main participants and the honeymoon destination of the couple.

All of which offers up a revealing insight into the lives of Mr and Mrs Kettle and opens up a shed load of research into the amateur dramatics societies of south Manchester eighty years ago.

Pictures, Alice and Eric Kettle, circa 1930s, courtesy of Ann Love

The bayonet … the man from Romania …. and the Chorlton mysteries

Now it’s one of those things about researching the past which is that you assume you will find the answers to the questions.

1907 Sword Bayonet

So, a few days ago my friend Glenys told me about the bayonet her father found in their house on St Annes Road.

At first, they thought it was a sword but later identified it as a standard British Army bayonet, which had first come into service in 1907 and was in use through both world wars.

And it is easy to see why it was mistaken for a sword, the blade is 17 inches [430mm] long with later models even longer, and to many people it resembles a sword, which I guess is why it was officially called the Sword Bayonet.  Over 5 million were made during the Great War and it was adopted by most Commonwealth armies and was made by Wilkinson Sword.

Inevitably I decided to go looking for a possible owner, or a story which might take me to why it ended up in Glenys’s old house.

But there were problems, the house doesn’t show up on either the street directories or census for 1911 and so far the first and only entry is from the 1939 Register which lists a Miss Ethel W Goulborn, who described herself as “unpaid domestic”, but appears to have lived alone.  

She was born in Harpurhey and her father gave his occupation variously as a “tea merchant” and "grocer", and by 1911 the family were living on Amherst Road in Didsbury in a large solid semidetached property.

And here is one of our mysteries, because Ms. Ethel Goulborn was born in 1896 but on the 1939 Register she said she was 35..  a small error perhaps, but an interesting one, as this would have meant she was 21 at the end of the Great War, which allows a little romantic speculation, which Glenys always “wondered if the bayonet belonged to a sweetheart or relative who may have returned injured”.

Alas for now we will never know.  But a trawl of the directories in Central Ref will tell us when she bought the house and if she was the first occupier, which may have been 1920.

She lived at the house till her death in 1954, leaving £5,700, but there is indication of who it was left to and as yet I haven’t gone looking for her younger brother.

The off license, 2013

But I did go looking her neighbours, Bernard and Bertha Krell who were running the off license at number 3.  

They had married in 1931, Bertha was from Didsbury and their son Adam Maurice had been born in 1946 in Blackpool.

Glenys remembered them and their son who was a little older than her.  They had stayed friends until he went off to live on a Kibbutz, but she also remembered that after his return he had married and lived in Didsbury.

I can track Mr. Bernard Krell back to Cheetham Hill, at the beginning of last century.  

It is a bit of another mystery because the family were called Solomon and were from Romania, where Bernard was born but had moved to Britain sometime just before 1901.

Now the mismatch between Solomon and Krell is a puzzle, but someone who claims the family on a genealogical platform mentions a name change to Krell which would explain why in searching on Ancestry for Bernard I kept getting brought back to Solomon.

They were in the garment trade, with Bernard’s father describing himself as a “Waterproof Garment maker”, in 1901 and a “Tailors Presser" a decade later” all of which promises much more research.

So, a bit of journey from a bayonet but that’s a history story for you.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; 1907 Sword Bayonet, 1907, courtesy of Auckland War Memorial, Collection of Auckland Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, W2508, from Pattern 1907 bayonet, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_1907_bayonet, and the off license at 3, St Annes Road, 2013 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Pictures with secrets ........ and stories

 Now I am always fascinated by pictures which challenge you to uncover their secrets.

They are usually ones where there are few clues to where they were taken with no date and often shed no light on the identities of the people who stare back at you.

And that is pretty much what we have here from a collection of images which belong to David Kennedy.

The originals were 4 by 5 glass negatives and date from sometime around the end of the 19th or the beginning of the 20th century.

Some are of street scenes, others of men and women at work and include a fair number showing life on board a selection of working ships.

They range from causally posed scenes to ones where the photographer has caught his subjects fully occupied and perhaps unaware that they are being photographed.

Amongst these are a few which may even be family members including this one which is a favourite of mine which is one of two.

In the first the mother is staring down at her baby and in the second she smiles back at the camera while in both the photographer is caught in the mirror.

There are no clues as to where they were taken but in one there is a reference to Ostend and a few carry the names of hotels and restaurants, added to which there is a very distinctive church  all of which should help.

And I am always reminded of "Shooting the Past" which was a television drama, by Stephen Poliakoff first shown in 1999.  

The plot revolves around a huge photographic collection dating back to the 19th century, which has been acquired by an American corporation as part of the purchase of a Victorian mansion.  

The executives have no interest in the pictures, but two of the custodians set out to save the images by persuading the Americans of the importance of the pictures.  

This they do by researching the stories behind the some of the photographs.

What the two uncover gets to the heart of how photographs can tell stories about the lives of people, which can be incredibly revealing and fascinating.

Pictures; by courtesy of David Kennedy

*Shooting the Past, Stephen Poliakoff, 1999, and staring,  Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan 

Collecting Co-op Societies ..... no. 7....... The Failsworth Industrial Society

Now I have just added another co-op society to my Co-op Hall of Fame.

Failsworth Industrial Society Limited, 2022

It is The Failsworth Industrial Society which was formed in 1859, with a co-operative grocery shop opening in Dob Lane on 28th March 1859. 

“Its first members were William Fletcher, James Taylor, Jock Whitehead, William Barlow, Charles Cordow, James Robinson, Robert Barlow, Thomas Hayes, Tom Taylor, Jonathan Taylor, Josiah Etchells, Ben Aldred, James Winterbotton and James Smith. Thomas Hayes played a prominent part in the establishment of the Failsworth Industrial Society and became the first Secretary of the Society. 

He drew up the rules for the Society based on those of the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society”*

The Graver Lane store, 2022

And in the fullness of time I think I will go looking for these fourteen co-op pioneers.  

For now I shall just reflect that “it set up a laundry business in 1908, which would join with 10 other local societies in 1913 and this federal enterprise would grow to be the United Co-operative Laundries. 

The Society was also a partner in the formation of the Manchester and District Funeral Association and in 1932 joined forces with four other retail societies and the CWS in establishing the United Co-operative Dairies”.*

Our shop was opened in the Society's Golden Jubilee in 1909 when it had nearly 10,000 members and operated 43 shops. 

And it easy to forget that co-op societies were not just trading organizations, but had a wide range of cultural activities, including its own political party. 

The Failsworth Society had opened a library in 1873 and in 1909 it's valuable collection of 20,000 books was passed to the local Council as a nucleus to the first public library.

All of which has come from a most interesting history of the society produced by Jisc Archives Hub, which offers up the full history of the society, along with links to where its archives can be found and a select bibliography.

The Graver Lane store, 1960

Leaving me just to thank Andy Robertson who took these two pictures of the Graver Lane branch as was in Newton Heath.

Location; Failsworth

Pictures; former Graver Lane Co-op store, Newton Heath, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1960, T Brooks, m35568, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* The Failsworth Industrial Society,  Jisc Archives Hub https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/e6180c09-f6ab-3211-9c51-d688f328f48f

The bike at the top of our road ……..

Now I could explain the presence of this yellow bike at the top of Beech Road, but someone else has done it better.

I have passed it many times over the last few weeks, but never ventured to find the story behind the bike.

And that pretty much is it.

Other than to say it marks a little bit of history, or at least will do at some point in the future.

No doubt Mrs. Trellis of Beaumont Road will have an opinion and in the way social media works she will express herself in a forthright and challenging way.

But at least she never resorts to that catalogue of swear words and pompous ramblings which along the way savage the innocent and well meaning and which are part of the way some like to interact with their community.

Well we shall see.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The bike at the top of our road, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Cargaroo, https://cargoroo.nl/en/cargoroo-cities/

Politics and the Bayeux Tapestry ....... one to listen to

Now who would have thought there were heaps of politics in that celebration of the Norman Conquest? 

The Battle

Added to which the programme, Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry, offers up so much more about the Normans, the English, and the woman who made it.

On BBC Radio 4, now and later to listen to again.

"The Bayeux Tapestry is coming to Britain in the near future. It’s among the world’s most famous works of art, but it's also a mystery: no one knows who made it. 

The stitching, though, is full of clues. Abigail Youngman seeks to reveal the truth about the lives of the women who stitched it, to unpick the secrets they left in plain sight, in the margins of the tapestry.

Bishop Odo

The Bayeux Tapestry records great historical events but its humanity is in the details: the little boy holding his mother's hand tightly as they flee their burning home; scenes of sexual violence; bawdy jokes at the Normans' expense. Scholarly opinion is divided, but some think it was stitched by Anglo-Saxon women who had experienced war and occupation first-hand.

The detail of the stitches

The main panels were probably designed by an Important Man (hence the focus on battles, on big sexy horses – surely the BMWs of their day – and political propaganda). 

But the margins of the tapestry may have been left to the imagination of the stitchers themselves: probably English women. This 'freehand' marginalia tell a different story, sometimes undercutting the message of the Norman conquerors in surprising ways. 

We can imagine the camaraderie and humour of the women sewing it, talking, about their personal tragedies, the terror they survived, the soldiers who were husbands and sons.

That comet

Read this way, the Tapestry becomes a tantalising portrait of a group of women who are largely unrepresented in history, speaking to us vividly from a thousand years ago.

Abigail Youngman uncovers fascinating and intimate details of these women's lives with the help of Dr Alexandra Makin, Dr Daisy Black, Dr Christopher Monk, Professor Gail Owen-Crocker and Dr Michael Lewis.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery"*

Pictures; detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, from the Bayeux Tapestry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry

*Women in Stitches: The Making of the Bayeux Tapestry, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001327r

What Andy saw at Clayton Bridge

Now I like Andy‘s picture of the Railway which is on Berry Brow at Clayton Bridge.

It is a pub I never visited, but I bet there will be someone who can offer up happy stories of the place.

I came across one advert offering it for sale which describes the property but has no mention of its history.*

In the fulness of time I will go looking to see if there are any requests for planning permission and see if I can find it in the rate books and track back to a date when it was built.

But then someone might be able to help.

Location; Berry Brow, Clayton Bridge

Pictures; The Railway, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The Railway, https://assets.savills.com/properties/FB8D486B-ABAB-4A39-A495-BA3D20F71D46/8389428%20-%20Railway,%20Manchester.pdf

It was 20 years ago today ……. an Arts festival … a bottle of wine …and a heap of good memories later

Now, it’s that time of year again when Chorlton prepares for its own arts festival.

It began when a teacher, a city councillor, and a vicar sat down with a bottle of wine and explored the possibilities of an annual festival of the arts here in Chorlton.

Fundamental to the concept was that it should be fun, and open to all and embrace all the arts.

And the rest is history, and that history is soon to be written.

So, with that in mind, this is the appeal for memories and memorabilia, from anyone, who took part, organized an event or just went along and enjoyed a performance.

You can leave a message, or an offer of something interesting at https://chorltonartsfestival.org/contact/

And the rest will be part of your contribution to our own Arts Festival.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; first Chorlton Arts Festival programme, 2002,courtesy of the Chorlton Arts Festival, and the opening night of the Chorlton Arts Festival, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Uncovering the story of Joseph Thomas of Chorlton born 1894, died 1917 on the Western Front

Joseph Thomas and men of the 2nd City Battalion 1914-1915

It began with this postcard and as so often happens it set me off on a journey which led from a small house in Chorlton to the grand offices of an accountancy firm opposite the Town Hall and ended on the Western Front.

The postcard comes from the collection of David Harrop and was one of a number I have been looking at.*

What caught my attention was that it was sent to Henry Thomas who lived at number 6 Fairhaven Avenue and was sent in the March of 1916.

Cooper Street, circa 1900

Now Mr Thomas was a chimney sweep and had grown up around the corner in Brownhills Buildings on Sandy lane.

These pre date 1832 and were once the property of Mr Brownhill who had been the wheelwright for the township.

That in itself was a fascinating link with our past but the postcard and its message drew me even deeper into the history of Chorlton.

It was from Joseph Thomas who was Henry's brother thanking him for the letter and Postal Order which “I was glad to receive [as] I was getting rather hard up” and announced that he was coming “home as usual on Saturday 2.15 at Victoria,” adding “send a pc if you are meeting me.”

17th Platoon, E Company 2nd City Battalion, 17th Manchester's 1914-16

Joseph had been born in 1894 and in 1914 was working for Richard Haworth & Co Ltd who had offices at 19 Cooper Street.

The building has long gone but it faced the Town Hall close to where the Cenotaph now stands.

Sadly his army records no longer exist but I know he enlisted in the 17th Manchester’s at the outbreak of the war and was stationed at Heaton Park before leaving for France in the November of 1915.

In time I will track his movements and the battles he fought in.

And we as these things go only hours after posting the story Stephen O'Neill replied identifying Joseph as the young man on "the top row far left" which is a powerful note to close on.

Sadly Joseph was killed on August 1 1917.






Picture, postcard dated, March 22 1916, and E Company 17th Service Battalion, the 2nd City Battalion, Manchester Regiment, from Manchester City Battalions Book of Honour,  from the collection of David Harrop, detail of 19 Cooper Street, 1900 from Goads Insurance Map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*David Harrop, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/David%20Harrop

A “divi number” …..and a lost shop …….. in Droylsden ……. with a bit of our Co-op history

Now, like many of my generation, I grew up with the Co-op.

It was a movement which offered good quality food, clothing, and a heap of other services at affordable prices and gave its members a “dividend”. 

So, you might well be kitted out in your first baby clothes from one of their stores, later hold your wedding reception in one of its halls, and finally be buried by its funeral department, which plays on that phrase from “cradle to the grave”.

In the early years there were shedloads of small local co-operative societies, catering for a clutch of villages, a small town, or parts of our big cities.

Ours was the Royal Arsenal Co-operative, which operated on the south side of the Thames.

And while many people can still remember their “divi” number, which had to be offered up with any purchase, I long ago forgot ours.  

That said we still have a few odd bits which were bought from the RACS store on Well Hall Road, and I loved the way that on a Saturday in the 1970s I could cash a cheque from my Co-op Bank account at the Arcadia store in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

All of which is an introduction to these two pictures of No. 6 Branch of the Droylsden Industrial Cooperative Society, Moorside Street, Droylsden, taken by Andy Robertson on a day out last week.

If I have this right the Droylsden Co-op was started in 1872, although I have seen an early date of 1861, and it  ran till 1963 when it merged with the Ashton Society.

This will explain why its records were “Placed on permanent loan by Mr. G.R. Bennett, Vice President of the Ashton-under-Lyne and District Co-operative Society Limited, Registered Office, 'Arcadia', Stamford Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 7NH. (October 1984).”*

On one level there is nothing exceptional about No 6, other that it has survived, and still carries a reminder of its origins which are there picked out in brick.

And here I cannot claim this short reference to the society is the first.  Others like Stephen Marland and Wikipedia have gone before me.**

Location; Droylsden

Pictures; No. 6 Branch of the Droylsden Industrial Cooperative Society, Moorside Street, Droylsden, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson

* Droylsden Industrial Co-operative Society Minutes and Reports. The records are held by Tameside Local Studies and Archives,  DD264, National Archives, https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/4fb568b3-f861-4359-9755-b61acbe5e585

** Ravensbury Street – Droylsden Cooperative Society Store, MOOCH, https://modernmooch.com/2020/05/07/ravensbury-street-droylsden-cooperative-store/ & Droylsden Industrial Co-operative Society, Wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Droylsden_Industrial_Co-operative_Society

Ghost streets …….. and the onward march of the cranes

Now it seems everywhere you look there are those cranes which relentlessly march across the city, leaving in their wake a mix of tall residential and commercial towers.

The onward march of the cranes, Travis Street, 2022

You encounter them on the main roads into the city, west into Salford, all over the Northern Quarter and now in ever larger numbers in the shadow of Piccadilly Railway Station.

And it is of that area around Fairfield Street, north towards Travis Street and the site of St Andrew’s Church, and south beyond the great railway viaducts that I want to write about.

But before anyone leaps to their keyboard to call down wrath on the cranes and the developers, historically this is but a new round of urbanization which had already covered the area with narrow streets, mean houses and a variety of industrial units from mills to foundries, and dyeworks, interspersed with timber yards.

My copy of Adshead’s map of Manchester from 1851 clearly shows the degree to which 19th century speculative builders had created a densely packed network of streets and courts, which nestled beside those factories and hemmed in by railway lines, canals and the river.

From the river to the Square, 1851

For over four decades I have been fascinated by their history and keep coming back to the stories of the houses and the people who lived there. *

Of course, they have all gone, swept away by a mixture of municipal house clearances over two centuries, further helped by Mr. Hitler’s bombs, along with the grand plans of the railway companies which cut a swathe through those streets with their giant railway viaducts.

To which we can add the deindustrialization of the centre of Manchester which saw the mills, dyeworks and foundries close to be replaced by small businesses, car parks and open spaces.

But with a bit of imagination and armed with old maps of the area it is possible to gain a sense of just how many houses existed because much of the street plan still exists.

When the old jostles with the new, 2022

So there are still a heap of tiny narrow streets branching off Fairfield Street,  St Andrews’ Square and Travis Street.  

They may have lost their buildings but the sheer number of them brings home the density of the area.

So there is the challenge, all you have to do is wander past Piccadilly Railway Station and plunge eastwards, but do so soon, because within a few years the cranes will have done their job.

Location; east of Piccadilly Railway Station

Pictures; between Travis Street and Fairfield Street, 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1851, 1851 from Adshead map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Fairfield Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Fairfield%20Street

Homer Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Homer%20Street

St Andrew’s Square, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/St%20Andrew%27s%20Square