Hermann Ree ….. that Chorlton memorial ….. and several mysteries

Now this is the memorial in the parish graveyard to Hermann Philip Ree and it is surrounded with mystery.

Hermann Philip Ree, 2011

He was born in Denmark but was a British citizen, lived for most of his adult life in Manchester, but died in Devon and was buried here.

And so far, I cannot find how he was connected to St Clements, or to the Township of Chorlton.

He was born just two years before the close of the 18th century, was living and working in Manchester by 1836, describing himself as a merchant and occupying various offices around the city until he finally settled at 27 Faulkner Street in 1845 where he remained until 1873.

But looking through the various documents there is an apparent elasticity to his date of birth which ranges from 1778, to 1800 and even 1808.

Along with the puzzle of what his association was with Chorlton and exactly when he was born, there is the question of what took him to Cheltenham where he married Catherine German in 1838.  

The Home,  Whalley Range 1894 , residence of the Ree family

She was just 19 and if I am being generous, he might have been 30, and if I am less generous, he was a full decade older.

That said the newly weds had four children between 1839 and 1842 and were leaving on Oxford Street in a fine-looking semi-detached property just north of the junction with Grafton Street.

The two houses were set in a large garden and surrounded by even larger and more impressive homes.

All of which suggests that Mr. Ree was doing well, which is evidenced by the even grander house in Whalley Range which they moved into in 1855, and which was simply called The Home.

It occupied a plot which ran back from Whalley Road to Carlton Road and was bordered on the east by Russel Road, and as well as the large house there were several greenhouses a large number of trees, several formal gardens along with some outhouses.

The property was large enough to have become in 1905 the home of an order of  nuns.  They were the “Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition [who had been] exiled from their native France and set up a non-sectarian nursing home at Whalley Range, Manchester [which had by 1930] grown considerably till it could accommodate 150 people”.

The Home, 1961

All of which meant that the hospital added a “wing containing twenty-five room, for private patients, a chapel connected with the main building by a gallery along which inform or poorly residents can be wheeled to attend Services”. *

And as late as 1966 adverts appeared in the Irish Press for “pre Student nurses [who were] offered excellent opportunities to gain practical experience of nursing in our Private Hospital, board and residence provided”.** 

The premise was later acquired by the Spire as a private hospital who have demolished the old buildings, for a new one.

Happily, a few pictures have survived of the Home taken in the 1960s which offer an idea of what the house might have looked like when the Ree family lived there.

And that takes me back to Mr. Hermann Philip Ree.  I still can’t square the disparity over his date of birth but am confident about the other mysteries.

The Home, 1961

I now know that his wife Catherine was baptised in Wigan and that her father was a coal master, and with a bit more research I shall find out the family connection with Cheltenham.  Suffice to say Wigan is a lot closer to Manchester and the father and husband may well have had business links.

I also know that she was buried in the parish graveyard in Chorlton in 1855, making it logical that her husband would also be interred there on his death twenty-two years later.

But why they should have chosen St Clements’s when they lived in Whalley Range is a puzzle but it may be that the parish boundaries extended that far, leaving to make a note to check that out.

Original location of all graves, and Mr. Ree's marked in red 1975

As for the memorial, I know some will ponder on the broken pillar which has nothing to do with vandalism but was symbolic of a life cut short.

It remains roughly where it was erected in 1877, close to the Lych Gate, having survived the cull of many of gravestones.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the memorial to Hermann Philip Ree, 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, The Home, Whalley Range, 1894, from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/, The Home St Joseph's Convent, 1961, A E Brown,m40903 and m40904, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Nursing Home at Whalley Range, Extensions Opened, Manchester Guardian March 20 1930

**Sligo Champion, 1965-66