That other White House ………..

Mid-day on a Sunday on the Green.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; That other White House, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Bob Potts ……. the generous historian

Now there will be many who are better placed than me to write about Bob Potts.

Bob with his Reminiscences of a Flixton Boyhood

I only really got to know him about a decade ago, but during those ten years his visits on a Sunday were most welcome, as were our chance meetings in Morrisons, where over a basket of shopping we would exchange news of each other’s projects.

Bob was one of those generous historians, who was most happy when he could offer up pictures and information from his vast collection of material.

Added to which he was equally keen to proffer advice and the occasional correction which I always accepted from a man whose local historical knowledge was boundless.

So, when I was writing a book on Manchester and the Great War, Bob provided me with some fine picture postcards of Red Cross nurses, and even more generously lent me his records relating to the history of Manchester pubs.

These pub records consisted of the dates when the pubs were first granted a license, included the names of breweries as well as the date when the houses closed.

Bob's pub book on the pubs of Hulme and Chorlton-on-Medlock

And they were collected the old fashioned, way from the records held at the Greater Manchester County Office as well as the Archive and Local History Library in Central Ref,  involving long hours with huge musty volumes, which few had ever used.

Anyone who has trawled such documents will know that mix of excitement and tedium, as the day rolls on broken by the odd coffee break, in lonely seclusion punctuated by some fascinating discoveries.

Bob sharing happily his knowledge

Added to which when Bob undertook this bit of research it was done pre computer, so the records were handwritten and the process of ordering them was done without the aid of an electronic database to sort, edit and represent the information.

These records were invaluable to me, and of course were the basis for three books he wrote on Manchester pubs, written in the early 1980s and published by Neil Richardson.

But his historical interests and writing extended way beyond public houses.  

According to Michael Billington, who was his friend and co author he “started writing in 1970 when he wrote an article about the Roman road from Manchester to Ribchester for The Ribchester Archaeology Group’s magazine” and going on to write for other publications about his passion for digging up old Victorian and Edwardian bottles which had been discarded in ash pits.**

This in turn led to that interest in pub history and marked him out as a historian rather than just a collector.

Bob in his 20s

He was also active in local history groups and was a welcome guest speaker, especially when he gave talks on the Red Cross.

He had been born in Flixton in 1936 but spent most of his life in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, where along with his wife Joyce he raised a family of two sons and two daughters and was blessed with two grandchildren.

During the time I knew him, he was still working, and often would divert from his delivery rounds to drop off some “interesting thing” from his collection, and the presence of Bob on the doorstep, bicycle clips in hand often on a Sunday morning was always a welcome surprise.

The visit was never a short one as Bob described the object in detail, offered up a context to the piece and then slid off on several fascinating anecdotes, before suddenly closing the conversation and disappearing on his bike.

And that more than anything is how I will remember him …… a historian who was keen to share his knowledge and passion.

Sadly Bob died in February 2021, just before the publication of the book he co wrote with Michael Billlington.

Pictures; Bob, courtesy of Michael Billington 

* The Old Pubs of Hulme 1983, The Old Pubs of Chorlton On Medlock, 1984, The Old Pubs of Rochdale Road, 1985, & Reminiscences of a Flixton Boyhood, 1986, are available from Neil and Sue Richardson publishers, 01204 578138, wattywalton@btconnect.com  

**Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme, A Collection of Antiques and Curios, Michael BIllington and Bob Potts, Epona Publishing, 2021, www.eponarerecords.com and is also available from Urmston Book shop, https://www.urmston-bookshop.co.uk/ 0161 747 7442

The story of one house in Lausanne Road .... number 52 ..... the neighbours

 The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Our house and the one the Pott's lived in, 2017

Now even though we left Peckham almost 60 years ago, I can still remember our neighbours.

Some I admit are now shadowy figures, whose names I had completely forgotten until recently, while others like those who lived in the police flats do occasionally pop back into my memory.

Of all of them it is the Potts family who lived next door who still invade my thoughts from time to time, and that is mainly because three of the children were just a few years younger than me, and in those long hot summers which seemed to stretch on for ever we played together.

They were triplets and if I have got this right were called Susan, Brian, and Robert. There was an older sister, Helen who already was too old to mix with us, although I guess she will have not been more than five years older than me.

I have a few pictures of us together and can remember that they kept chickens and finally moved out to run The Earl of Derby on Dennett’s Road sometime in the late 1950s.

And then a couple of days ago someone posted on social media a picture of the triplets from the Associated Newspapers with the caption, “Circa 1952: Four-year-old Potts Triplets - Robert Susan And Brian - receiving their birthday mail from the postman at their Peckham London home”.** 

Me and two of the triplets circa mid 1950s

It was of course my friends, and it set me off looking for them.  

At first this was only to establish that the date was correct which seemed a little too early, given that I had been born three years earlier, and in 1952 I would only have been three.

So far, I haven’t been able to find a record of when they were born, but the search did lead me to their mum and dad who were married in 1934 in Lewisham.  For a while they lived in Lewisham before settling in Orpington sometime around 1939.

By 1947 they were in Mr. Pott’s old family home on Lausanne Road where he had lived in the early 1930s.

This I now know because he and then later his wife Ellen appear on the Electoral Registers which were compiled every year which allowed me to track them around southeast London.

Added to this there is the 1939 Register which was a mini census, carried out at the beginning of the Second World War.  It remains an invaluable document given that the 1931 census was destroyed and the first post-war one cannot be accessed for another 30 years.

Along with information on dates of birth and occupations it also offers up information on the voluntary activities of people, including their participation in Civil Defence roles.  

Mr Pott’s gave his occupation as a “Bus Driver for London Transport”, and along with Ellen and Ellen’s sister three others are registered.  But these three have been redacted which I suspect means that they were children who might still have been alive when the Register first went live earlier this century.

One of these may have been Margaret Potts who shows up on the 1957 electoral register and may have been one of their older children.  I vaguely remember her in their kitchen from sometime in the mid 1950s.

Me and Helen, circa 1953

All of which is fascinating and has brought me closer to our neighbours.

But the electoral registers also throws light on the dire housing conditions in the immediate post way years.  The houses on Lausanne Road were big and many appear to have had their share of lodgers.  

Our house did, with at least two couples sharing the property at certain periods. Likewise number 28 also had what appear to be non-family members, and while this isn’t the case with the Pott’s house I assume that is because of their larger family.

And that is it ….. I would like to have included the photograph which set me off on the journey but alas I don’t hold the copyright.

Leaving me just one slight niggle, which is that the photograph doesn't quite match with those houses on Lausanne Road, ..... a mystery which someone will offer an explanation

Location; Peckham

Pictures; me, the Pott’s children circa 1950s and our house on Lausanne Road, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**I grew up in Peckham, https://www.facebook.com/groups/49819382463

Lonely tables ………..

Mid-day on a Sunday on Beech Road, waiting for a customer.*

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Lonely tables, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* I should just point out that this is the very popular San Juan on Beech Road just before the restaurant opened, and a little latter in the day all the tables wee full with hungry customers waiting for the chance to enjoy the excellent food.

Smoke across Manchester …………1963

Any picture today looking out across the city’s skyline will reveal a forest of cranes.

Back in 1963 there were not so many, but they were there, building a brave new Manchester, some of which arose from bomb sites and others from areas whose Victorian and Edwardian buildings were judged old and beyond their sell by date.

So, here is what became Piccadilly Hotel and its neigbouring buildings boldly climbing into the sky.

But look more closely and for cranes, read tall factory chimneys, marching off into the distance, all still delivering tons of smoke.

Location; Manchester

Picture; a Manchester skyline, 1963,  "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection",
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

A bridge, a toll and illegal prize fights, all by the Mersey

You might be forgiven for passing quickly over the photograph of the bridge over the Mersey by Jackson’s Boat.  

I have seen better pictures, but as you would expect there is a story. The caption records “Looking down Rifle Road from the footbridge after the gate had been removed and the toll abolished.”

Now there is no date on the photograph but the reference to the abolition of the toll must place it sometime in the late 1940s, although I don’t have an exact year.

The right to charge goes back to before there was a bridge, when anyone wanting to cross the bridge at this point had to be ferried across by row boat, and as late as the 1830s long after the first wooden bridge had been erected the landlord of the pub retained the right to charge a fee to take people.

It was the enterprising Sam Wilton sometime publican who built the first wooden bridge in 1818 with a mind no doubt to cash in on the illegal sport of prize fighting which attracted huge crowds and took place on the meadows.  His pub was well placed to benefit from the trade of the thirsty spectators, who might also use the bridge to escape into Cheshire should the authorities turn up to affect arrests.

"And so it was that in the summer of 1848 Samuel Warburton was twenty minutes into a fight watched by two to three hundred spectators when the police turned up.  They had been alerted by Samuel Dean of Barlow Farm who had been alarmed at such a large gathering at 5.30 on a Sunday morning.    The crowd and the boxers duly escaped but a little after seven the same morning Samuel was arrested in the Horse and Jockey," but that is another story, which is told in the book.*

*Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the story of the township in the 19th century, due out later in the year, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Picture; by Thomas Turner from the Lloyd collection

35,000 feet flying home from Greece and remembering Dad and Glenton Tours

Crossing the Alps

From 35,000 feet the geography of Europe is plain to see.

We are heading north from Greece following the coast of Italy from Bari up towards Venice and the Dolomite Mountains.

The land below is a patchwork of yellow and green fields with small hamlets and numerous rivers glinting sliver in the sun.

All of course in direct contrast to the landscape of the Greek islands at the height of the summer with their mix of sparse vegetation and burnt brown earth.

Below us the land is more fertile; the fields are greener and the villages larger and closer together. And in a few minutes the countryside around Venice gives way to the mountains.  But these are not the rugged empty mountains of Greece but all together different.

Dotted across them half hidden are a succession of lakes and there is the hint of snow on the highest summits.

On route for Asos

This remains a wonderful way to see our continent, but there are limitations, so while you can see vast stretches in a matter of minutes, it is from a great height and dependent on a lack of cloud which so often obscures the view.

All of which makes me reflect on that more gentle way of seeing Europe in the 1950s and 60s. which for  most this was the coach tour.

And my dad spent his whole working life in the holiday trade taking people of modest means on sightseeing tours of Britain and mainland Europe.

In the age before cheap air travel this was the holiday for those who didn’t want sun and sand or a week at a Butlin’s.

These were all inclusive trips which offered “Your own reserved seat in a special Glenton touring coach, a tour of your choice, hotel accommodation including dinner and breakfast, gratuities to hotel staff, services of an experienced chauffeur-courier and a specially written guide book.”*

The tours lasted for anything between 7 and 15 days.

For £45 Tour C7 in 1965 offered nine days to the Swiss and Italian Lakes, leaving London on the Saturday, staying in Brussels on the Sunday night and travelling on to Lake Lucerne on the Monday, then later in the week to Lake Maggiore and then in to Switzerland and back via Burgundy to London.

Of course it is easy today to sneer at an experience where everything was provided and if you failed to look out of the window you might miss a country, but in an age before the internet with television still in its infancy this was a relatively cheap way to see places which would otherwise just be a picture in a book.

And this was value for money given that the national average wage in 1965 was £26.

There are still plenty of travel companies offering this sort of holiday but back in the late 1940’s and ‘50s this was an experience just opening up for thousands who were beginning to enjoy the first taste of consumer prosperity.

They are as much an indication of that new Britain as the washing machine, television and motor car.

Asos

All of which may seem a long way from a flight across our continent in the early August of this year but I think not.

For despite the countless times I have travelled south to Italy and Greece I never tire of what I see passing below me in just the same way that fifty-nine years earlier Miss J P Bass recorded her pleasure at seeing the Swiss Alps in the summer of 1954 with Glenton Tours

*Glenton Tours Brochure 1955

Pictures; the Greek Islands, the Italian Dolomites and a page of the 1965 Glenton coach cruises Britain and the Continent brochure from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking a bit of our history ..... out by the Duke’s Canal at the Cut Hole Bridge

We have started walking the Meadows again after a break of nearly two decades.

The old railway bridge with the canal beyond, 2018

And of course much has changed.

Those vast areas of open land have been colonised by a mass of undergrowth, bushes and trees and where once there were clear views across the grass, the land has been closed up.

All of which makes many of the familiar walks, less familiar and just that bit different.

When I first began exploring this area I had no idea that once it had been farmed as meadow land which required the farmer to carefully food and drain the land regularly in order to grow the first grass of spring to feed the livestock.

Careful attention had to be given to how long the land was flooded and a watch kept for a hard frost which would damage the growing grass under its mantle of water.

Sadly the age of Corporation tipping raised the level of the land destroying all the old drainage ditches, and the subsequent creation of the Mersey Valley changed forever a landscape which had been familiar to generations of Chorlton farmers.

The Duke's Canal, 1854

That said what we have now is different but still a pleasure to walk.

And so on Sunday we set off through one of the old brick channels built as part of the sewage works, headed on through tall grass to the pond by the river which I remembered as open but now is surrounded a mass of foliage.

From there we followed the Mersey round to the bend and took a footpath north, which by degree brought us to the Cut Hole Bridge which carries the Duke’s Canal over the Old Road.

Well I call it the Old Road, but it has had many names, and originally ran from Hardy lane down past the Brook through the village before snaking off across Turn Moss and ending in Stretford.

But more of the Old Road another time.

For most our walk we had been in the old township of Chorlton but I fancy for a little while had crossed into that other place, before heading back along the Old Road, past the cemetery and the weir and taking a diversion which by degree brought us to Chorlton Brook.

Location; the Meadows

Pictures; heading towards the Cut Hole Bridge, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and and the meadows in 1854 from  the OS map of  Lancashire,1854,  courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Who stole Poland?

 Now this is a programme I will be listening to today.

Obliterated from the map. The Invention of...Poland Episode 1 of 3, BBC Radio 4.*

Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, 1778

“Long before Putin tried it on, long before the Soviet Union as well, Ukraine was controlled by somebody else - the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In the first of a new series, Misha Glenny and Miles Warde travel to eastern Poland to find out more.

It's a tale of terrifying power politics, when an ancient European kingdom was sliced up like a cake. Beginning in Krakow, they travel by train and tiny bus in an arc around the south east to the Renaissance city of Zamosc, near the border with Ukraine.

With contributions from Norman Davies, Adam Zamoyski, Professor Natalia Nowakowska, Bartek Ziobro of Krakow Explorers and Olesya Khromeychuk of the Ukrainian Institute in London.

Official Coat of Arms of Poland

This is the latest in the How to Invent a Country podcast series which has previously travelled to Germany, the USA, Scandinavia and Brazil.Presenter Misha Glenny is a former BBC Central European correspondent and the author of McMafia.

Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Miles Warde"

And more Polish stories by following the link.

Pictures; Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, 1778,Bernardo Bellotto, and Polish - Lithuanian Commonwealth at its greatest extent in years 1619 - 1621, 2018, Praca własna na podstawie, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Poland-Lithuania_1714.svg  author Tonhar,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license and official Coat of Arms of Poland

* Obliterated from the map. The Invention of...Poland Episode 1 of 3, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015v82

**Poland, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Poland

Left on Beech Road ...... the street furniture collection

Street furniture takes many forms ........... two from Beech Road, yesterday.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Left on Beech Road ...... street furniture, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Crossing the Mersey at Jackson’s Boat

Now I am pleased the bridge over the river has survived, despite plans to demolish it.

It dates from the 1880s, replaces an earlier wooden one built in 1816, and saved travelers having to call out the landlord of the pub who would ferry them across the water for a small fee.

Not that the erection of the bridges deprived him of the lucrative service of acting as the ferry man, because both bridges could only be traversed by paying a toll which was only abolished in the late 1940s.

I remember being told by a friend that his grandmother had evaded the toll by climbing on the bridge and working her way along by holding on to the girders.

This picture of the bridge is new to me.  It was taken in 1960 and I smile every time I read the notice.

Location; The River Mersey,

Picture; the bridge over the water, 1960, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

A pair ………

Together on Market Street

Location; Manchester

Pictures; a pair, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Back with the 81 …….

Now this is another of those pictures of the 81 Corporation bus, which  George Cieslik, has given me permission to use.

We are on Barlow Moor Road, sometime in the early 1960s, and it perfectly captures a world I remember very well.

There is a distinct period feel to the picture, which is partly that it is in black and white, and because of the now old-fashioned looking clothes people are wearing and the equally dated appearance of the bus and cars.

All of which is to state the obvious, but there is more.

Over to the right is the old Palaise De Luxe cinema, which had opened in 1914, changed its name to the Palace in 1946, and closed in 1957, with Jack Palance in "The Lonely Man" and Fernando Lamas in "Lost Treasure of the Amazon"*

It is a cinema I often write about, and I know plenty of people who remember it with fondness.

It became a Tesco supermarket and later was a Hanbury’s before becoming a Co-op, and now has an uncertain future as the Co-op has decided not to renew its lease.

But its post cinema life was even more varied because in the early 1960s it was the service centre for Radio Rentals, which was a chapter in the cinema’s history which until recently I was not aware.

And I have a confession, which is that I got the date the picture house  opened wrong.

I had always assumed it dated from 1915, but it appears it first threw open its doors in the May of 1914.  Such is the continuing unfolding of scholarship!

Leaving me just to note the old-fashioned bus stop with its route display, listing 11 bus numbers and carrying the logo of the Manchester Corporation, the original cast iron and glass shop canopy, and over in the distance the bus office.

Finally there are those tall cast iron poles which feature on both side of the road, and which at first I thought were the old support pillars which carried the cables powering the trams which had finally vanished in 1949.

But I rather think these would have been dismantled and what we have here are disused street lamps.

To which I leave that last thought to be shot down by an expert.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Picture; the 81 on Barlow Moor Road, circa early 1960s, from the collection of George Cieslik

*Palace Cinema, Kevin Roe, cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/33844

Piccadilly Gardens ....... the early years nu 4 on a warm summer's day in 1956

Now this just captures a carefree summer’s day in Piccadilly Gardens back in the 1950s.

It was taken in 1955 and pretty much has the lot.

The two stylish young women attract some but perhaps not that much attention.

For whatever reason the two  men in suits stare away while the chap next to them is lost in his newspaper.

So it is down to the woman in the hat and two others to glance at the passing of those stylish young women.

There will be many who remember sitting in the sunken gardens during their break from work, and when I washed up in Manchester in 1969 this was still a popular way of passing the hour on a sunny day.

My friend Sally came across the image in the digital archive collection but when I went looking for the picture the site had gone down which is a shame because I would like to think thee may have been some extra information.

And as ever it is the tiny detail that draws me in.

My Nana had a hat just like and mum had the identical sun glasses which also reminded me of her usual spectacles which were pink plastic with wings at each corner.

Thinking back they were exactly like the fins on those ever so large American cars that sum up the style of the 50s.

As were those big while plastic ear rings designed to look like flowers.

Which brings me back to those two elegantly dressed young women.

In time when I can access the Manchester collection site I may discover that this was a fashion shot but it is equally likely that it was just a random shot on a hot summer’s day.

Either way it is one to treasure.

Picture; courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

With farmer Higginbotham on the meadows collecting in the hay around 1890

This remains one of my favourite pictures of that time when we were still a rural community.

We are on the meadows in a field farmed by the Higginbotham family sometime around 1890.

Now I can be fairly confident of that because the picture comes from the Higginbotham collection and the boy on the horse might well be the last of the family to have farmed this land and live in the farmhouse on the green.

Much of their land was concentrated out to the west of the village hard by the river and was meadowland and we are out there with them as the cut grass is being collected.

After it was cut, stacked and left to dry it was loaded onto the wagon with rakes and pitchforks which required a large amount of skill and hard work.

Each person had a specific job.  Some were employed to lift the hay up to the men on the wagons.

On top of the wagons these men would take the hay and build it into a square load.

To get some sense of the sheer hard work and skill that was involved, we only have look at the photograph of hay making around 1890.

To lift the hay from the ground to the height of the stacked wagon did indeed require strength and stamina.

And great care had to be taken in building the hay load. There was no rail on the wagon and if the load were not evenly distributed the hay might fall off once the horses began to pull the load.

Even the best stacked hay load might have an accident.

And just such an accident happened to the farmer John Joseph Briggs during the “harvest home”  which was the old custom where the last wagon loaded with the harvest would be decorated and escorted back accompanied by wives workers and children some of whom sat on top.*

But when the load overturned he abandoned the practice.

Hay making was an intensive period and there was often extra work for the casual labourers and it also attracted village children.  Some may have come to watch while others will have tarried after bring food from home for their fathers.

They are there in many pictures of hay making and harvest time and this day on the meadows is no exception.  They are sitting close to the wagon amongst the hay.

But I rather think given the date and the clothes of some of the children in the picture old Higginbotham has caught the interest of a group of the newcomers whose parents had been settling down in the properties around Martledge and the station in the last decades of the 19th century.

Unlike our village children the daily routines of the agricultural world was both different and exciting.

And so being allowed to hold that broad wooden rake and stand beside the hay maker was something to talk about that evening.

But despite the idyllic scene this was hard work and wages reflected that fact.

In the middle years of that century wages at harvest time ranged from 15s a week to 18s, 21s and even 24s, which compared well with task work which might pay between 14s and 21s and special work like drainage bringing in 5s for men and 7s 6d for boys.

So there we have it, hay making on the meadows sometime in the 19th century.

Picture; collecting hay from the Higginbotham collection

* Briggs, John Joseph, Melbourne 1820-1875, edited by Philip Heath Melbourne Historical Society 2005.  John Joseph Briggs farmed Elms Farm just south of Derby and kept a diary

The Chorlton Post Office ……. a café with the same name ….. that box ...... and a new place to eat

So, the title pretty much has the lot, and will stir memories of happy meals and a controversy.

The Post Box Cafe, 2014

There will be plenty of people who remember when the new Post Office was opened in the early 1960s. 

It stands on the site of residential properties which had been destroyed in the Manchester Blitz, and is located close to our main Post Office which had been damaged during the same attack.

It was and still is an unprepossessing building which can best be described as a box.

But in 2013 part of it was converted into the Post Box Café which attracted a lot of customers, as well as supporters, hosted some exciting events both outside and inside, and was the venue for some of my history talks.

One of the History Talks, 2014

That box, 2018

After its closure there was that controversial structure which was added to the forecourt, and was eventually demolished.

It presence generated a lot of debate, with few if any supporters.

And despite an instruction to take it down it lingered on for quite a while.

And now we have gone full circle with a new eating place, which goes under the name of “The Post Box Café & Shawarma”.

The rest as they say is history.  The Facebook site for the original Post Box Café  still exists and all my stories about the old and new Chorlton Post Office can be read by following the link.*

The Post Box Café & Shawarma”, 2022

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; “The Post Box Café & Shawarma”, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the box, 2018, courtesy of Andy Robertson, and Peter Topping’s painting of the Post Office and the Chorlton Post Box Café, 2014

Paintings; © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures, www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

*Chorlton Post Office, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Post%20Office

Somewhere in Chorlton in 1929

I doubt that many of us could identify the road at first glance.

It is 1929, and the houses have been up for about forty years and are still in that first relatively  new phase before the roof and brick work need serious attention and before these family homes were divided up and given over to multi-occupancy.

Of course because it is 1929 there is not a car insight and on this sunny morning little seems to be stirring, all of which is a little deceptive as we are directly opposite the railway line  with frequent trains into Central Station and the heart of the city.

And also along this opposite side were the goods  yards where many of our coal merchants had their businesses.

All of which means it might not have been so quiet, but on this sunny morning it is hard to see what might disturb the peace and equally hard to see how today Albany Road could be left to a small boy a passerby and a woman on her knees cleaning the stone by the front gate.



Picture; from the Lloyd collection

The grimy ones ........ our River

Now here is another of those short series taken from the family archive.

All were taken around 1979 and offer up scenes of the River which we knew but most tourists seldom saw.

Location; the River

Pictures; the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A ghost sign and a Didsbury family

The Spann family whose ghost sign still adorns this building were part of Didsbury’s history from the early part of the last century.*

The Didsbury ghost sign, 2022

Thomas Spann described himself variously as a “cabinet maker", “joiner" and finally a “master builder”, who occupied 35 & 37 Wilmslow Road from at least 1907 and possibly from the year before when this fine building was constructed.

By the late 1920s the business was listed as specialising in “House Furnishings” and no doubt Mr. Spann made some of the products sold in the shop assisted by his wife Laura who described her occupation as a “Curtain Specialist”.  

All of which was proudly advertised on the gable end of the building, which originally read “TEL, 234 DIDSBURY, SPANN'S, BLINDS, REMOVING, CARPET LINOLEUM & BEDDING WAREHOUSE”.

Added to this they also owned property in the area which they rented out.

So, they were a notable Didsbury family who are also remembered in other ways.

"BLINDS, REMOVING, CARPET LINOLEUM & BEDDING WAREHOUSE” 2022

Mrs Spann, volunteered as a Red Cross nurse in the December of 1914, just months after the outbreak of the Great War and worked at Lawnhurst on Wilmslow Road.

The building was owned by the Simon family and was turned over to the Red Cross as an auxiliary hospital for wounded soldiers. **

The work of the Red Cross volunteers was varied as well as vital, and while some were nurses, others worked in the kitchens, performed clerical and cleaning duties, and many also raised donations across the community providing extra comforts for the recovering servicemen.

And in the case of Mrs. Spann we also know that in the September of 1914 she was one of the “Didsbury Ladies” raising money for the Relief Funds.

The Didsbury Ladies, 1914

The Manchester Courier carried the story under the caption “Didsbury Ladies are making a special two days’ efforts to raise money for the Relief Fund.  

The photo shows Mrs. Braithwaite, Mrs. Spann, Mrs. McWilliam, and Mrs. W. Merrill, with their organ”, outside Didsbury Railway Station.

A National Relief Fund had been launched a month earlier and within a week had received a £1 million in donations, which by the end of the war would total over £7 million.

Here in Manchester just a week after the launch contributions amounted to £7,854 ranging from Rylands and Sons Ltd who had given £5000 down to Mr. Thomas Parker who donated £10.***

These were matched by sums coming from factories and other workplaces, leading the secretary of the Manchester Relief Fund to record his thanks to the workers in Didsbury, West Didsbury and Withington for their kindness in assisting in raising locally the “magnificent sum” of £162 2s. 5d.****

Lawnhurst, 2022

By 1939 Mr. and Mrs. Spann had moved to Cheadle and appear to have been still active in the business. Their eldest son had followed them into the furniture trade but is best remembered as Tommy Spann who was a motorcyclist racer during the 1920s and 30s, notably competing in the TT Races on the Isle of Mann and part of AJS racing team.

Another son was a respected academic who worked first at Manchester University, and later in the USA before settling in Australia.

And at 81, Laura Spann sailed first class to Australia in the October of 1957.  

She had recently become a widow and it would seem she chose to make Australia her home, where she lived until her death in 1960.

In the next few decades her children had settled outside the city, and now I doubt there is any permanent record in Didsbury of the family’s life here and their contribution to the community other than the ghost sign.

So, it is perhaps fitting that the Didsbury Civic Society has been active in the preservation of the sign.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Manchester Courier, September 1914, courtesy of Sally Dervan, the ghost sign, 2022, and Lawnhurst, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Ghost signs are the names of companies or products most of which no longer exist.  In a simpler age they were painted or picked out in coloured brick on the sides of buildings and date back well into the past.

**100 Halls Around Manchester Part 69: Lawnhurst, Didsbury, https://100hallsaroundmanchester.wordpress.com/2021/10/22/100-halls-around-manchester-part-69-lawnhurst-didsbury/

*** Manchester Donations, Manchester Guardian, August 13, 1914

**** Mr. H H Bowden, Correspondence, Manchester Guardian, October 8, 1914

Research on the family, and their business by Carol Wilkinson