The Iron School Room …… a nod to the Manchester Exposition ……. and a lost bit of Whalley Range

 I am looking at a book from 1907, celebrating 50 years of the Chorlton Road Sunday School and I am as fascinated by it as is my neighbour who lent it to me yesterday. *

The Iron Room 1857

Now I don’t know his name, but in the fulness of time he will get back to me, because he is a fan of the blog and then I can include him in the story which is just as it should be.

Front piece, 1908

There will be some who seeing the title of the book will quickly move on, either because of a lack of interest in all things Sunday School, or they are unfamiliar with  Chorlton Road.

And that would be a mistake, because there is a lot here that says much about this bit of south Manchester, and the people who lived here when this stretch of land was still quite rural.

The book is of its time and can be dense in places and is full of religious references, but put that aside, here is a detailed account of a Sunday School and its church from 1857 through to 1907.

Some will still be remember the church which stood a little off Chorlton Road and down Ayres Road, bits of it were still there in 2013 but it has now gone.

As has its Sunday School which the book describes as “the Iron School Room” and has its own claim to fame.  

For 142 days it was the refreshment room for the Manchester Art Exhibition of 1857.

My Wikipedia tells me that “The Art Treasures of Great Britain was an exhibition of fine art held in Manchester, England, from 5 May to 17 October 1857.

It remains the largest art exhibition to be held in the UK, possibly in the world, with over 16,000 works on display. 

It attracted over 1.3 million visitors in the 142 days it was open, about four times the population of Manchester at that time, many of whom visited on organised railway excursions. 

Its selection and display of artworks had a formative influence on the public art collections that were then being established in the UK, such as the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Iron School, 1857

After the exhibition ended, the exhibited works were returned to their owners, and the temporary building and its contents were auctioned. Glass display cases were bought by the new museums under construction in South Kensington. The building was entirely demolished by November 1858. 

Having cost over £37,000 in all, the materials comprising the building sold for little more than £7,000; internal fittings and decorations that cost £18,581 sold for £2,836.”.**

Which leads me neatly to the Iron School Room which was purchased by the Congregational Church for "the sum of £600, and in the month of October was promptly removed to the site awaiting its reception”. ***

The building was later replaced by a stone one, and I think in the fullness of time I will return to write about this later building.

But for now, I shall just reflect on what the book says about the surrounding area which included Brook’s Bar in the year the “Iron Room” appeared.  

The spot “was more than semi-rural [with] nearly the whole of the west side was open country, pastures, corn, and meadow land, almost as far as the eye could reach, interspersed with clumps and rows of tall trees. 

 

The area, 1854

One remembers that opposite the iron edifice itself there flourished a cabbage field, where in the red and green sorts  grew in abundance.  

Moss Lane was a winding way flanked on the south with high turfy banks and lofty poplars, and in its course trended by Flint’s farm, a white secluded homestead nestling on the spot, approximately where Alexandra Road now commences.

The new Sunday School, 1907

Behind, westwards was Whalley Range somewhat pristine, and the fashionable quarter of the city’s merchant princes.  Attached to ‘Banker Brooks’ house was a considerable park where in antlered deer disported themselves.

Brook’s Bar or Bars, for there were two gates, one barring Chorlton Road and another Upper Chorlton Road, swung in a very different neighbourhood from what we find today.  

Where now stands the hotel [the Whalley Hotel] there formally rested, embosomed among trees, a white gabled farm.  The building now used as ‘Tram Office’ was then the toll house, the keeper thereof being a Mrs. Dennerley, a personage who combined the office of toll keeper with vendor of snuff and tobacco”.****

All that was left in 2013

There is more but for now that is it.

Pictures; The Iron School Room and front piece from Chorlton Road Sunday School , 1908 the Chorlton Road Congregational Church in 2013  from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the area in 1854 from the OS for Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Chorlton Road Sunday School, Manchester, Burgess, W.V., BA, 1908

**Art Treasures Exhibition, Manchester 1857, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Treasures_Exhibition,_Manchester_1857

***ibid, Chorlton Road Sunday School, page 16

****, Chorlton Road Sunday School, page 20-21