When Oldham had the lot …….

Who could not be enticed to Oldham with the offer a “pull on the Lake”, half an hour playing bowls, followed by a walk through trees and flowers ending with the promise of the Aviary?

Oldham Park, circa 1913

And to that enticement the picture postcard company featured all these and more on their Oldham Park card.

This particular one was sent in 1913, and was one of a pair sent to a Mr. Foster of 263 Back Market Street in Whitworth, and what makes the two that bit more interesting are the messages on the back which comment on the forthcoming visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Oldham.

I can’t be sure if the sender was Mr. Foster’s son or daughter, but they were concerned that if he did come he might struggle given that there would be no where for him to sit and he might not cope with standing for a long time.

The second card was posted at midday on July 12th just a few hours before the King and Queen arrived in Oldham from Ashton-Under-Lyne.  The visit was part of a month long trip through Lancashire which had started on July 2nd and concluded on the 14th in Manchester.

This Royal Tour was part of an extensive series of visits across the country including the Potteries and Cheshire.

The King and Queen in Oldham, 1913

And we know the detail of their Oldham trip which began with the Town Hall passed "through the Market Place, and down the steep descent of Manchester Road [before] the cars left the highway for a few minutes’ drive through Werneth Park ……. Where on the grass slopes were about 18,000 children [who] cheered enthusiastically and little Union Jacks over their heads”.*

From there the Royal Party “pad a visit to the great textile machinery works of Messrs. Platt Brothers, where some twelve thousand people find employment”.*

Now what intrigued me about this report is the journalist’s fascination for the fact that because the visit was on a Saturday, the mills, and furnaces were shut down “and there was no smoke drifting over the town from the high mill chimneys.  The King and Queen therefore did not see Oldham as Lancashire people know it best.  

In its brief intervals of rest and atmospheric cleanliness Oldham loses some of its impressiveness.  It ceases to convey the sense of force and energy and of a kind of mercenary romance which the visitor feels as, on a working day under a sky degraded and darkened by the smoke of a hundred factory chimneys he makes his way through streets, passing now and again some great shell of a building which hums and vibrates with machinery”.

Walking through Whitworth, circa 1913

Of course, those mills and the smoke of their chimneys were evidence that the town’s prosperity and the livelihood of the cotton hands was based on that “force and energy” as well as grime and noise, but I bet there were times when Oldham’s residents yearned for a quieter and cleaner place to live.

And that takes me back to the picture postcards because the author of the messages admitted she couldn’t go, leaving me just to wander off and look for pictures of that visit and wonder where the family chose to stand to see the passing royal car.

A search has so far offered up several Mr. Foster’s in the area for 1911 which means I have drawn a blank as to his identity.

But out there someone can help.

Leaving me just to thank Tony Goulding who came across the cards at the charity shop which reminds me of just how useful such shops can be for providing bits of our past.

Picture; Oldham Park, 1913, courtesy of Tony Goulding

*Visit to the Platt Works, Manchester Guardian, July 14th, 1913