A scene now lost in time ............. looking out from the short lived cafe in Piccadilly Railway Station

Now that I grant you is not the most imaginative title but it does the business for this scene looking out across the city.

It was taken just after the railway station had its makeover.  Back then this space was a cafe and on a warm day I wandered in took a few pictures promised myself I would return only to discover it had become a supermarket.

Such are the ups and downs of the amateur photographer.
And I know I have featured it before and for those wanting to challenge the date I have to say I can’t remember.

Location; Piccadilly Railway Station

Picture; view from Piccadilly Railway Station, circa 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Britannia Brass Works Ashton Under Lyne ........... a ghost sign that passed me by

Now Hill Street was not a place I ever went to when I lived in Ashton, but we were walking back from the Portland Basin Museum and this was the route we took.

The Brass Works, 2016

I have to say I was impressed with the museum which “is housed within the restored nineteenth century Ashton Canal Warehouse in Ashton-under-Lyne. 

The museum combines a lively modern interior with a peaceful canal side setting. 

It is an exciting family friendly museum, with something for all the family."*

Walking back it would have been pretty easy to miss the Britannia Brass Works which doesn’t much look like the sort of foundry I am used to.

The Brass Works, 1899

So I am hoping that there will be someone out there who can offer up the story of the place and perhaps also something on S Parron.

I know that the Britannia Brass Works was established in 1872 and that just twenty seven years later “Mary Eastwood of Britannia Brass Works Ashton-under-Lyne trading as Walter Eastwood as a Brass Founder and Brass Finisher" had gone bankrupt.**

On a happier note the places was still turning out bits of brass in 1922 when it was "the JUNCTION IRONWORKS CO., Mechanical Engineers, Bentinck Street, Ashton-under-Lyne. T. A.: " Junction Ironworks, Ashton-under-Lyne." T. N.: Ashton-under-Lyne 435. Established 1902. Directors: Fred J. Reed and Harry Jackson.”***

And the rest from 1922 till now will I hope be revealed soon.

Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; The Britannia Brass Works, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Portland Basin Museum,  http://www.tameside.gov.uk/museumsgalleries/portland

**London Gazette, November 7 1899

***Whos Who in Engineering, 1922, Graces' Guide to British Industrial History, http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/1922_Who's_Who_In_Engineering:_Company_J

With Elizabeth Jane Hunt and three children in a two roomed house in Eltham in 1911

This is the White Hart on a summer’s day in 1909, and it was going to be the subject of the story.

Mrs Ann Nunn who ran the five roomed pub was 59 years old had been born in Suffolk and was a widow.

During the twenty or so years before 1909 she had run another pub on King Arthur Street a few minutes’ walk from New Cross Road.  Back then it was a densely packed part of south east London close to an iron works and in the shadow of the viaduct of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.

Now I don’t yet know when her husband died but I think it may have been in 1897.  Either way she was still in King Arthur Street in 1901 and will have moved into the White Hart sometime aftter the January of 1908 and had gone by 1918.  Now I know this because she does not show up on either the street directories for 1908 and 1918 but is there on the sign above the door of the pub in 1909 and fills in her census return two years later.

But as things do I was drawn away from Mrs Nunn and instead wandered a little further up the street, stopping first at Harry Harvey’s fruit and greengrocer’s shop next door.

It is one of those remarkable examples of just how many people can be squeezed into a small property.

Here in the two rooms above the shop lived Mr and Mrs Harvey their two young children and the 18 years old assistant Frederick Walter Saunders.

Nor were the Harvey’s the only family to juggle overcrowded conditions, for around the corner in another two properties with just two rooms each lived the Chapman family of four and Mrs Hunt and her three children.

And it is Elizabeth Jane Hunt’s story that draws you in.  Her three children were aged, 10, 8 and 6, and for her the juggling began with having to have her daughter in her bedroom leaving the two boys to share the downstairs room beside the scullery.

She had been married for eleven years and worked a charwoman, which was not an easy job.

The date of her husband’s death has eluded me so far but I know he was called Charles and worked as a “Steel and Grass Borer in the Gas Works", and in the April of 1901 Elizabeth and Charles were living on the Broadway in Bexleyheath not far from Gravel Hill.  There is a record of a Charles Hunt who died in 1907 which puts their youngest child at just two years old.

His death may have occasioned the move to 4A the High Street and those two rooms hard by the White Hart.

I don’t have a picture of the properties but they look to have been built with one room above the other and a lean to scullery or kitchen attached.

Alternatively they may have been part of number 4 which was the shop run by the Harvey's/  If so this makes that property a much larger one with six rooms which will have been subdivided.

Either way neither Elizabeth Jane or Mr amd Mrs Chapman appear on those street directories which either means the rooms were vacant or that they were not deemed important enough to be listed at number 4.

I am hoping that someone will have a picture, but in the meantime I am forced back to that of the White Hart.

Pictures; the White Hart in 1909, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

On Edge Lane with the Stretford Pageant sometime in the 1960s

I am back with another of those excellent photographs from the collection of Jack Kennedy.*

And this time we are with the Stretford Pageant sometime in the 1960s on Edge Lane just before the procession made its way into Longford Park.

Now there are many in Stretford and Chorlton who will have very fond memories of this event and I featured the memories of one Rose Queen from 1928 a few years ago.**

Jack’s picture perfectly captures the moment, so much so that there isn’t anything more to add.

Picture; Stretford Pageant, circa 1960s, courtesy of Dave Kennedy

*jack kennedy black & white photography https://www.flickr.com/photos/8188211@N02/sets/72157647573263194

**Memories of a Stretford Rose Queen in 1928 by Karen J Mossman, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/memories-of-stretford-rose-queen-in.html

From Whitechapel to Edge Lane in Chorlton …….. in the company of Mrs. Shevloff and Mr. Lazarus

Now, I never lose that sense of excitement of standing in front of a house which was home to someone I have been researching.

Leman Street, with 117, marked in red, 1874

And more so when the journey runs back from Chorlton  to Whitechapel in London.

The person in question was Julia Lazarus who was born in 1880, to parents who were from the Russian part of Poland.

Her father and mother had been here since 1874, and he sought and was granted naturalization as a British citizen just two years after Julia was born.

Back then they were living at 117 Leman Street, in the heart of Whitechapel, which was a three-story property on the corner with Hooper Street.

The building is still there and comparing the footprint with the same site from the OS map of 1874, this was where they lived.

Mr. Lazarus is variously listed as a grocer, hotel keeper, financier and running a loan office, all within a short distance of Leman Street.

He died in 1936, by which time his daughter was living in Chorlton, at 22 Edge Lane and that is the link to one of those fascinating research projects which never quite gets finished.

22 Edge Lane, 2019

Because 22 Edge Lane, keeps throwing up little gems which offer insights in to how we lived.

The house dates back to 1865, and for almost a century, was home to “the people of plenty” who were merchants, professionals, and employers of others.

And of these Julia’s husband is quite interesting.  He too was born in Russia, was naturalised in 1909 and had a flourishing business, in Sheffield and later Manchester,  selling “hosiery, blankets, quilts, sheets, towels, plain and fancy  linens, lace curtains”, and advertised himself as  “casement manufacturers and merchants”.*

The Lazarus family at 47 Leman Street, 1895

Like Julia’s parents he first settled in London, where he met and married Julia, moved to Sheffield and sometime in the 1920s set up business in the Manchester and moved into Edge Lane.

The romantic in me often wonders whether Mr. Lazarus took the train north from Whitechapel and visited his daughter, son in law and grandchildren.

I doubt I will ever turn up the evidence, but no doubt there would have been pictures of the house of Edge Lane which made their way south, along with stories of the Manchester business.

And while writing the story of Julia and her husband I encountered people who remembered shopping at Shevloff’s premises in the 1960s.

So, there is much still to research, and in the fullness of time I might get inside number 22 Edge Lane, and more pictures of the house along with those of Leman Street.

Pictures; Leman Street in 1874, from the 1874 OS of London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Edge Lane courtesy of Armistead Property Ltd**


*Shevloff E. B. & S. Ltd 23 High Street, Slater’s Manchester & Salford Directory, 1929

**Armistead Property, http://www.armisteadproperty.co.uk/

“Longing to tell you ‘the Tale’ at Eltham” ……. October 12th, 1917

Now sadly I doubt that the “The Tale” in the picture postcard refers to the short story written in 1916 by Joseph Conrad and published the following year.

Nor did the recipient live in Eltham.

She was a Miss Nell Goddard who lived in Wenhaston, which is a small village of 818 people in north west Suffolk.

The Domesday Book records that the village had a mill, a church and woodland sufficient to feed sixteen hogs.

Wenhaston, briefly had a railway station which was part of the Southwold Railway which opened in 1879 and closed in 1929 and today has a “thriving pig farm industry.” *

But it does have a pre-Reformation panel painting depicting the Last Day of Judgement, which Miss Nell would have known, because the panel was discovered during restoration work to the church in 1892.

All of which is a long way from Eltham and leaves me to think that this was one of those picture postcards produced in their thousands which were over printed with the names of different places.

That said I like it.

And given that we have the name of the manufacturer, who was a W & K Lonson along with a serial number, we might in the fullness of time find out more.

I hope so.

Location; 1917

Picture; postcard, courtesy of David Harrop

* Wenhaston, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenhaston

Walking the University ……… on an October morning

It will be a full half century and more since I regularly passed the University buildings on Oxford Road.

And even then, it was just a passing whizz on the bus which took me on to what was still the College of Commerce on Aytoun Street, or as we called it the College of Knowledge.

The 42 Corpy Red which passed the University at 8.30 was a tad too early for most of the students, but it didn’t stop the bus conductor shouting out “Lazy bones school” “loafers paradise" and other slightly more derogatory comments.

Fast forward 50 years and settle on midday and I was amazed at just how many students were walking in a purposeful way in both directions along Oxford Road.

Not one seemed over bothered by the twin towers of the Contact Theatre, and many were drawn to the food stalls along the way managing to mix breakfast and lunch into the same meal.

I toyed with exploring the history of the University and the Contact but both have been done and done better than I elsewhere.

So that is it.

Location; Oxford Road

Pictures; the Contact, breakfast and getting away from the crowds, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

What's in a postcard? ........ Chorlton in 1994

Now I came back across this postcard today and was immediately drawn into it, not least because as postcards go it is a very late one.

Look closely and much of the detail looks very contemporary.  And so it should because it dates from 1994.

Of course there have been some changes, Cafe on the Green in the top right hand panel has undergone many changes of name and owners while Richard and Muriel’s next door is now an estate agent nor has the Pot Shop on Wilbraham Road once home to a collective of potters survived.

All of which makes it the most recent postcard in the collection and quite a novelty given that the practice of sending this type of card had all but stopped by the 1990s.

As my friend Lawrence once remarked such cards are just not stocked in local shops anymore, added to which when you do find them the cost of sending them is prohibitive and there is no chance they will arrive on the same day.

And a hundred years ago people regularly sent such postcards so confident that they would arrive within hours of being posted that they were often used to arrange a meeting later in the day.

But this is not in fact a post card; it is an election communication reminding people that “If you want a poster for your window, a car lift to the polling station, or wish to join” contact the election agent.  I should have recognised it as I took the photographs and in those long far off days will have delivered some of them in the run up to the May 5th election.

I had all but forgotten it but it served to remind me that often we see what we want to see.  I assumed I was looking at a postcard and took this one at face value until I turned it over and instead had to smile at the ingenuity of choosing to combine such an old fashioned style with a pretty neat take on electioneering.

And the embarrassing postscript, I had posted it as 1988, and it was Lawrence who corrected me.

Some days even when you lived through it you get it wrong.

Perhaps to lift that 1960s throwaway comment "If you remember the 1990s you weren't there". Or dreaming of the 60s.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson from the original produced by Lawrence Beedle, 1994 and donated by Steve Henderson whose house I might have delivered it to.

The tram office ...... a mile of pennies ..... and the story of Sport Diving in Chorlton

So, who would have thought that the waiting room of the Corporation tram office would end up as the home of the Manchester Diving Group?

The door to diving, 2022

I have yet to find out when it stopped its connection with the travelling public, but it may have been in the 1950s when the Manchester Diving Group was set up or a tad later during a rationalization of transport facilities.

That building circa 1920s-30s

As far as I can remember it was no longer the Chorlton Office when I arrived in 1976.

But an email to the Diving Group may reveal the date.

For now, I enjoyed the history of “Sport Diving” from their web site and the story of how Diving came to Chorlton.*

Leaving me to look for when our building was erected, which will be around some time soon after 1914,when according to the Manchester Guardian "The Manchester Tramways Committee have bought a piece of land at the tram terminus in Barlow Moor Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, for the purpose of a siding, a verandah and shelter and other convivences"**

Interestingly in 1922, the waiting room of the building featured in a fund raising exercise for the Save the Children Fund in Russia organised by "a committee of Chorlton- cum-Hardy residents who planned to make a mile of pennies on Sunday October 30th."  

"A mile of pennies", 1921

The Lady Mayoress was "to place the first pennies on the line in the middle of our mile which we are making in the tram waiting-room, as we feel this is the most densely populated on a Sunday afternoon between three and four thirty. 

If we complete our mile, we shall be able to send through £220.  

Twenty four pennies will keep one Russian child for a week and so every step in that 'proposed mile' would bring hope and happiness where there is only despair."***

The appeal was made by a Mrs. Nicholson of Gilda Brook, on Edge Lane which I think may prompt more research.

Leaving me just to add that the tram office  the subject of a firebomb on October 9th, 1940

Location; Chorlton

Picture, the door to diving, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chorlton Office circa 1920s, 30s, from the Lloyd Collection

* Manchester Diving Group, https://www.manchesterdiving.org.uk/

**Tramway Shelters, Manchester Guardian, March 11th, 1914

***From Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the Volga Valley, Manchester Guardian, October 20th, 1921

Happiness is a sign on a University Building …………

Now I have taken this golden sign for granted across the decades.

But today I stopped and snapped away.

It’s the Williamson Research Centre, “which houses a range of research laboratories and equipment for investigating our environment and the effect of human behaviour upon environmental systems”.*

And that is about it.

Location Oxford Road

Pictures; the Williamson Research Centre, Manchester 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Williamson Research Centre, https://www.ees.manchester.ac.uk/wrc/about/

Looking for aunt Edna …… with help from BBC Two's ...... DNA Family Secrets with Stacey Dooley

Now during the last two decades there has been a huge increase in people researching the history of their families.

Mrs. Bux, date unknown

This is partly due to the vast number of official records which have been digitalized and are available on genealogical platforms.

So, when my sisters went looking for our family back in the 1970s it involved journeys up to the east Highlands, in search of parish records and family gravestones.

Just over 40 years later when I began looking for our mother’s story it was pretty much all done sitting at home at a desk with a computer, supported by the odd phone call to local history libraries.

To which I added long forgotten books, magazines, and Parliamentary Papers which had been rescued from dusty shelves in universities across Britain and the USA and presented as downloadable digital copies.

I still get a thrill at touching a 19^th century manuscript or the minutes of a local Poor Law Committee but recognise that I am never going to get easy access to material long ago deposited in a faraway place.

All of which has made Family History so much easier to do.

And in turn this has generated a series of television programmes.

Some like the celebrity based Who Do You Think You Are? have clocked up 19 series, explored the lives and family past of 161 individuals and has been replicated in 18 countries.

And then there is DNA Family Secrets with Stacey Dooley, which is “a factual series based on genetics and DNA”.

The programme is now into its 3^rd series and is “looking for people based in the UK with ancestry or heritage questions, or people who need help to find relatives (including relatives abroad). We have been looking into Britain’s home children and would be interested in representing this historical event through the series.

Samuel and Sarah Nixon, 2009

Inspired by the incredible advances in genetic/genomic technologies - and at a time when many of us will have either taken some form of genetic test ourselves or know somebody who has - our ambition is to create a public service series with science at its core, that would guide people as they seek to learn more about their DNA.

Led by a team of leading academic experts, clinicians and genetic counsellors, our series will follow individuals with specific questions they'd like to ask as they seek genetic testing for health, ancestry and relationships. 

If you’d like to watch episodes from our previous series, you can find them here on BBC iPlayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sthc ”

All of which leaves me to say the blog does sometimes do advertising but for the best possible reasons.

 * emma.bridgewood@minnowfilms.co.uk

Location; everywhere

Pictures;  Mrs. Bux, Cologne, date unknown, grave stone of Samuel & Sarah Nixon, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 2009 , place unknown

Under the gas lamp on High Lane in the summer of 1905

I can see why Cissie decided to send this postcard to her young brother in the August of 1905.

He was staying at the delightfully named Gas Works cottage, Ambleside in Westmoreland and it is more than likely that some of the children staring back at us were known to him.

On the other hand Cissie mentions her uncle so it is just possible the she was just staying in Chorlton at Richmond Road* and choose a picture which she thought would appeal to him.

And there is a lot here which I think would appeal to anyone looking at the postcard today.

We are at the point where St Clements Road, and Manchester Road join High Lane and Edge Lane and the children are gathered underneath one of original gas lamp posts which had been set up in 1875 by the Urban Sanitary Authority which within a year would become the Withington Board of Health with its own administrative headquarters on Lapwing Lane.

And for those really interested, our first domestic gas had been provided by the Stretford Gas Company in 1862 who piped their supplies along Edge Lane, while the following year Manchester Corporation extended its main from Seymour Grove.

All of which is more than a piece of historical trivia because on the promise of cheaper gas supplies from Manchester in 1904 turned the vote for our incorporation into the City.

This was part of “an attractive package” which the Withington Amalgamation League set up in 1902 argued would mean a fall in the rates, bring “libraries, baths, reduction in water and gas rates, lower cemetery charges, music in recreation grounds better fire and police protection more deliveries of letters, technical classes, shares in tramway and electricity profits and the prospect of Ship Canal and School Board rates decreasing.”**

This was for many an offer to good to refuse and one that was shared by the City Council.  At their October meeting in 1903, much was made of the assets that Withington would hand over to the Corporation, including the newly built “hospital to which attracted 20-30 acres of land, ....[and] beyond that land for a smallpox hospital, a field for the extension of the tram services and the sewage farm, 80 acres in extent.”

And as Fletcher Moss pointed out amalgamation would bring Alexandra Park “that large park into the hands of the Council” and furthermore “the Corporation was the largest ratepayer in the Withington district and by far the largest owner of freehold estate with the possible exception of Earl Egerton” which meant they would be no longer paying out rates to Withington UDC.

And it seemed only to get better.  Under the terms of amalgamation all existing staff of the Withington UDC were taken on by the Corporation and “the price and conditions of supply of gas, water and electricity to the inhabitants of Withington shall be the same as those of the citizens of Manchester.  That all future tramways in the district of Withington shall be laid as double lines along carriage ways not less than 32 feet wide between curbs.  That two free libraries and two swimming baths to be established in different parts of Withington within five years..... that for a period of twenty years the rate shall not exceed 4s in the £.”

This was a set of promises which proved enough to clinch the vote for incorporation by 4,086 to 805.

So in the summer of 1905 our children had been residents of the city for just under a year.

Now whether they were out from school at dinner time or a weekend gathering is a bit difficult to say, but the picture looks to have been taken in the morning so maybe it was just that usual gathering of children drawn by the magic of a camera.

But not everyone is that bothered at the presence of the photographer.  To our right the work of loading the carriage outside Stockton Range goes on unabated. I would like to know if the carriage belonged to the residents of number 2.  The property did have both a coach house and a stable, so it is possible that Mr Charles Edwards who lived there may have been planning a journey.

Meanwhile in the distance sitting in the sun in front of the church are a mix of what I take to be a mother, grandmother assorted children and babies in prams.  It is a detail I might have missed if it were not that one of the prams looks remarkably familiar and is very similar to the one that just under 90 years later we would use for our own children.

And all that form Cissie’s postcard.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; from the Lloyd collection and Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Withington Town Hall, October 16th 1906 m52133, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Richmond Road ran from Manchester Road to Oswald Road
**http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/heres-offer-you-cant-refuse.html

Down at the Portland Basin in Ashton-Under-Lyne admiring the Cavendish Mill

Now I collect old textile mills which I am the first to admit is not as easy as stamp collecting.

Cavendish Mill, © 2014 Peter Topping

More so because with every year that passes more of these monuments to our industrial heritage vanish although today there is a growing trend to convertt them in to residential properties which at least preserves them.

My own special haunt is Ancoats but as I lived in Ashton I had to add the Cavendish Mill to the collection.

By one of those rare coincidences we were down at the Portland Basin in the summer and not much later Peter Topping made the same journey and in the process painted this image of the old mill posting on a number of sites, with the accompanying comment that "the Cavendish Spinning Company Limited was registered in 1884 with the sole purpose of building the Cavendish Cotton Mill. 

Taking on a fireproof design it was the first mill in Ashton to have concrete floors and a flat roof. 

On the canal side it is 6 floors high, and 5 floors on the other sides. Its main feature is the octagonal staircase that... But wait a minute... What am I doing writing this!!! As local historian Andrew Simpson says he tells the stories and Peter paints the pictures. So I am going to have to stop there and leave you to look at the painting and soon after Christmas Andrew has promised to tell the story.”

All of which was a challenge I couldn’t refuse.

The mill continued spinning cotton until 1934 but remained in industrial use until 1976 and has now been converted offering a mix of residential commercial and community use.

All of which was information fairly easily available but as ever I wandered off looking for a something more.

And there it was in a directory for cotton mills in Ashton-Under-Lyne for 1891 which told me that had I been in the Royal Exchange in Manchester between 1 and 1.30 each week day I could have met with the agents of the company with a view to buying some cotton.

I may even go looking for the exact spot where I could have done the business because the entry listed them at “No., 10 Pillar” and no doubt I could also have listened as the agents proudly told me that they had "72,000 spindles, 328/408 twist and 168/468 weft.”

Now that is the sort of fascinating detail to add to my collector’s picture.

Painting; Cavendish Mill, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Looking for gold …….

So not the most original title, and one that may not be entirely accurate.

But if like me you are drawn to autumn, then the golden brownie colours as they turn from green to those gentle hues before falling, are quite magic.

And they are accompanied by temperatures which remain warm and come with that tired but mellow sunshine.

So, picking my time carefully and dodging the rain I wandered around the Rec and captured a few more images.

Although strictly speaking all I did was to cross the road from our house and snap away.

That said, the collection now encompasses the Rec across all four seasons.

Which may mean the Autumnal Friends of Chorlton will celebrate this most gentle bits of the year with a collection of poems from Eric Thistleweight, their resident poet.

Back in 2001 he was due to read his poem "Reflections on counting the falling leaves", which has those  memorable lines, 

"Come you golden tawny leaves,

And fall upon the grass

Carpeting yesterday's bright green

And hiding the precious harvest of conkers,

But fear not because Thistleweight and Son are at the ready

To sweep away the detritus of summer,

Uncovering autumns treasures.

Our rates can't be beaten

So come you golden leaves

Fall and fall and fall".

Alas the Council pointed out that their staff were already on the job, leaving Eric to recite his poem to an empty hall.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Autumn gold, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Tomorrow in Urmston ........ Mr Billington presents ........

 Now long before text messages Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter, there was the picture postcard.

For a small price our great grandparents, could write home to family and friends reporting on a holiday, passing on birthday wishes or just arranging to meet up.

And because they included a picture on the front the cards have become the stock of local historians to illustrate “how we lived”

All of which brings me to the new book, “Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme: A Postcard Heritage”, by Michael Billington.

The press release says“The Golden Age of postcard collecting, known as deltiology, was between the years 1902 and 1914, an era when collecting became hugely popular.

With regular and efficient collections and deliveries it was common to see messages such as “See you at 2pm this afternoon”; the text message of yesteryear? 

Also “Here's another for your collection” and “one more for your album”.

This book looks at the development of the publication of postcards in the Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme area. E. Mather of Flixton Post Office and J. Wride, who had a stationer's in Urmston, photographed the streets of the area as well as landmarks such as the pubs, churches, grand houses, parks, hospitals, railways, cenotaphs, canals and bridges.

"A Byeway, Flixton", date unknown

All are here in this book contrasted with more recent photographs taken by the author.

Michael Billington is an Urmstonian and this is his third book about the area”.

The official launch will be on Thursday October 27th at  7.30pm in Urmston Library and will be il-lustrated by a powerpoint presentation by Mike featuring highlights of the book.

Mike adds, “the guest of honour, who will say a few words, will be Joanne Harding, Labour councillor with responsibility for culture, leisure and strategic partnerships in the Urmston Ward. She also has responsibility for Trafford Poverty Strategy and Domestic Abuse.”

"You may expect me tomorrow", 1910

Free glass of wine and admission free but booking required at the Eventbrite link below.

Urmston, Flixton and Davyhulme: A Postcard Heritage Tickets, Thu, Oct 27, 2022 at 7:30 PM | Eventbrite

And that is it.

Location; Urmston, Flixton, Davyhulme

Pictures; from the collection of Michael Billington

30 years ago and bit more .......... Wilbraham Road

It is over 30 years since Tom McGrath took a series of pictures of Chorlton. 

Recently he returned to the same locations and photographed them all over again and it makes for fascinating stories. 

I have often remarked that it is our more recent past which we tend to ignore.

Look at any of those old black and white pictures of a century ago and you are prepared for things to be different.

But  just over a quarter of a century seems no time at all.  It spans the life of my eldest son, is well within the range of the music I still listen to and is redolent with vivid memories.

And yet it is in some ways as unfamiliar as the age of the gas lamp and tram.

Now I am not going off on one so there will be no reference to Mrs Thatcher, or that Back to the Future was the highest grossing film at $210,609, 762.

Instead I shall just comment on what 27 years did to this corner of Wilbraham Road.

We still had a night club at this end of Chorlton or though if memory serves me it was really just an opportunity to carry on late night drinking.

The burgar bar still retained that logo which I remember from a similar out let on Burton Road and I rather think the concrete stumps which had encased the old petrol pumps were still in place.

And for those pondering on what our houses sell for here in Chorlton, I have to say that the rising spiral of prices had yet to take off.

Pictures; by kind permission of Tom McGrath

Looking for "June" The Ladies hairdresser and Busy Bee Stores, sometime in 1930

Looking "June" the Hairdressers on Wilbraham Road

I never underestimate the power of a collection of old local adverts to offer up fascinating stories and pretty much take you all over the place.

So here in front of me are a set of those adverts which appeared on the dust jacket of a book lent out by Mr R. Greig Wilson who owned a newsagents on Sandy Lane and also ran one of our Circulating libraries.

Now circulating libraries were private affairs and existed alongside the local public library, and such was the demand for novels and lighter factual material that many of our newsagents went into business renting books out.

Busy Bee

At home in London mother was a regular at the local bookshop who also traded in lending copies and across Chorlton there were quite a few, from the one that operated on Beech Road, to Mr Lloyd’s on
Upper Chorlton Road and of course R. Greig Wilson’s on Sandy Lane.

It is a topic I have visited quite a few times over the years and no doubt will return to.

But for today my attention has been drawn to Busy Bee Stores  (W. Wellard, Proprietor) at 264 Upper Chorlton Road, and “June” The Ladies’ Hairdresser and Beauty Specialist on Broadwalk Wilbraham Road.

It will take some time to date the collection of adverts and that will involve trawling the directories but I think they will be from the 1930s.

Not that Mr Grieg has been much of a help for he was selling his “Stationary, Tobacco and Picture postcards” along with delivering his newspapers from at least 1911.

That said it will be after 1911 because down on Upper Chorlton Road at 264 was a Mr John Joseph Taylor who was a tailor.

Now Mr Wellard was trading as an iron monger at the shop by 1929 and Charles Slightman who also advertised on the dust cover was selling his newspapers and lending out his collection of over 1,000 books from his lending library on Manchester Road from 1923 through to 1935 so we are in the right decade and a bit.

"June"

And until those directories yield up a definite date I am settling for sometime in the 1930s for it was around then that “June” at the Broadwalk began Permanent Waxing by the Nestlé System which was the "Radione" system in which the hair was wound dry and inserted into hollow cellophane tubes sealed at both ends, but contained moistened paper”*

Long along Wilbraham Road circa 1930s

She was in her saloon at 523 Wilbraham Road by 1929 but Karl Nessler who had perfected his alternative method of curling hair in 1905 using a mixture of cow urine and water did not come up with the improvement which he called the Nestlé System until the 30’s.

“June” charged 20/- for the process and also offered "Tinting, Manicure, Face Massage , [and] all kinds of hair work carried out by experts.”

I have often wondered whether her customers were aware that Mr Nessler had arrived in Britain from Germany in 1901 and facing being interned when the Great War broke out fled to America, or that during his first experiments on his wife he managed to burn her hair off and cause some scalp burns.

That advert for an early perm, circa 1905

All of which is a complete digression but is one of the fascinating little journeys behind which there is a serious point because together the eleven adverts will reveal a little bit more about the Chorlton of just eighty or so years ago.

And in one of those nice little twist of coincidences, 264 Upper Chorlton Road is again a hardware store specialising in much the same stuff as Busy Bee which along with offering “Glass and China [as] a speciality offered “Electric Vacuum cleaners for Hire.”

But there the coincidences stop for now where “June" permed and manicured the present proprietor offers sweets and newspapers which I suppose has almost brought us full circle.

Pictures, adverts from the dust cover of a book courtesy of Margaret Connelly, Wilbraham Road in 2014 from the collection of Andy Robertson and an  early 20th century advertisement for Nessler's permanent wave machine, transferred by SreeBot, Wikipedia

*Perm (hairstyle), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perm_(hairstyle)

“Smash the dark away” ……..

 Now the thing about grandchildren is that they reignite memories of your own childhood and that of your kids.

"Play things" 2022

But more than that it’s their use of language which fascinates me.

At which point I have to say that this is not one of those stories about the magic of our own. 

He is of course special, but so are everyone else’s grandchildren.  To that end I don’t post pictures of him or our kids on social media and I keep the personal stories of all of them in the house.

No, this is about the evolving use of language, and the words he uses to express himself as he encounters new experiences and makes sense of the world around him.

He is just a tad over three, will soon start pre school and stayed over with his parents for the weekend.

It was early evening, and the light was fading fast, and as you do, we turned on the lights which prompted him to say that this would “Smash the dark away”.

I am no expert on the language used by children but this to me seemed perfect and more than a little poetic.

Although I do have to say the use of “smash” was a little violent, but then he spends chunks of his day charging about and bouncing off me, Nonna, and his dad.

Happily, Bisnonna just gets a passing hug and more often than not is asked to get him something more to eat.

Later while watching a carton of gyrating characters he repeated “Tumbling Tescos” which baffled me a bit but seemed to fit what was going on.  

Illuminating the gloom, 2020

No doubt someone with preschool kids will help me out on the reference to Tescos, but for now I liked the use of alliteration, which even as a doting granddad I know is not yet an indication of a future Wordsworth, John Donne or  Shelley.

If I wanted to over egg the moment I might explore how growing up in the 1950s I might have commented on the same event, or a child a century earlier, when candles illuminated the gloom.

So that is it, less the start of a seminal work on how children express themselves and more just a priceless moment I hope I will remember.

Location; our house

Picture, Play things, 2022, and Illuminating the gloom, 2020 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

That familiar row of shops on Wilbraham Road

I don’t have a date for this picture but I am guessing we are sometime in the 1920 or 30s.

Of course I am well aware that someone out there will recognise the make and manufacturer of the the single-decker bus and will be able to offer up a date.

In the meanwhile I am content to suggest that we are on Wilbraham Road on a bright and sunny morning in early spring.

If pushed I might say it was a Sunday given the absence of people and the fact that the shops are closed.

But that said  most of the shopkeepers have their canvas awnings in place so we may just have caught this bit of Wilbraham Road before anyone has opened for business.

Now all of this is a bit of speculation so instead I shall focus on what I do know.

The block stretching down from Albany Road was once a set of desirable residential properties which date from the 1880s.

They may have lacked large gardens but there was still plenty of open land within easy reach and each had a small “green" plot at the front.

But sometime at the turn of the last century the enterprising owner converted the lot into shops which mirrored a similar development opposite and another further down beyond the junction with Barlow Moor Road.

Look closely and all the clues are there, starting with the shops themselves which are clearly additions to the original design, and to the arrangement inside where in some of them there is a set of stairs which were once the steps leading up to the front door.

By the time this picture was taken Mr Burt and Mr Stevenson could proudly point to having been two of the first to set up there and  would continue to trade for decades to come.

And that just leaves me to thank Mark Fynn and point you to his excellent site of picture postcards.*

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester

Pictures; Wilbraham Road circa 1920s-30s, courtesy of Mark Fynn

*Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html

97 Beech Road …… the shop that did the lot

Now I must confess that over the years I have neglected no. 97 Beech Road.

In 2020

Looking back to the collection of photographs stretching back a heap of decades it rarely features and that is a shameful oversight.

I think I have just half a dozen from the early 1980s till today. By comparison pretty much all the other shops, bars, and pubs have been snapped multiple times.

And yet it deserves more.

I can track it back to 1886 when it appears for the first time, and in that long retail history it has been a butcher’s, a grocer, and more recently a fabric shop as well as a furniture dealer before beginning it’s erratic association with bars cafes and restaurants.

2022

I say erratic because in the space of the time since it embraced the café society it has been run by various people and traded under different names.

But it’s earlier history is intriguing, because in 1921 it was run by Miss Elizabeth Howard and was a “Millinery shop” to which it became again in the 1960s when it was Marcell Materials, and as a fabric shop it stayed into the turn of this century.

There are a few gaps to fill in in its nearly 140 years of trading.  I know that in 1939 it had reverted to a grocer’s, leaving just the 1950s to explore.

When it was brand new it was part of that commercial revolution which offered up all sorts of things you could buy along Beech Road, which 30 odd years before would not have been possible.

1980s

Back in the 1850s there were few shops trading in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and if you wanted a set of needles, or the latest Charles Dicken’s episode, you had to buy it in Manchester or order it up from one of iterant traders who would collect it and deliver it. 

So the construction of the shops either side of the Police Station mirrored by the other development opposite must have marked a consumer revolution, perhaps more significant for local residents than the present plethora of bars cafes and restaurants which have sprung since the mid 1990s.

And for those interested in Mr. Acton he appears in the Carlton House story, where he lived with his daughter and parents in law for thirty years.*

Location; Beech Road

Circa 1911

Pictures; no.97, 2020 and 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and circa 1980s from the collection of Tony Walker

*Carlton House …… the convent on High Lane and …….. the trail that led back to a Beech Road bar, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/carlton-house-convent-on-high-lane-and.html