The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 11. ......... the start of a trend?

It is easy to pass glib comments about the demise of the traditional shops in Chorlton and the rise of the bar culture.

And there will be those who make the point that as I wrote a history of Chorlton pubs and bars with Peter Topping I may be a little biased.

But not so.  Long before we published the Chorlton edition of Manchester Pubs- The Stories Behind The Doors, I had been writing about the emergence of the “night economy”.  The coming of online shopping, the giant supermarkets and the Arndale have pretty much done for that tradition retail model I grew up with.

I am sad to see it go but with its disappearance there was a real possibility that across the township there would just be lots of empty premises which could not be filled with charity shops or fast food outlets.

Nor is this a recent phenomenon as the picture testifies.

As early as 1983 shops were becoming vacant, in a trend which was to continue into the next two decades.

So the shop which was Booker’s the butchers was briefly the campaign headquarters of the SDP before becoming part of the bank, while next door what had once been Robinson’s the bakers, had been trading as Villains and in ’83 was a charity shop.

Of course all high streets are in a constant flux but around the 80s some would argue that here in Chorlton we were on the tipping point.

I await comment.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Wilbraham Road, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*A new book on the pubs and bars of Chorlton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20pubs%20and%20bars%20of%20Chorlton

What was lost is found ...... family stories from a war.

I never expected to see my uncle’s war medals again.

The medals, 2018

They were entrusted to me by my grandmother and long ago I thought I had lost them.

But they have turned up as part of our family history in the possession of our Jillian.

As I write I am looking at the four and what I had never realized before is that only two belonged to Uncle Roger leaving the other two a mystery.*

Now in my defence I was only something like 11 when Nana handed them over, which for me at least was too young to appreciate their significance.

At the time uncle Roger was a name, a handful of pictures and a cause for great sadness.

Nana never talked about him and mother never lost her anger at the decision to send him to the Far East when she believed the Government knew he would be captured.

Uncle Roger, 1938

He had observed the Manchester Blitz, travelled by convoy to South Africa, and then through the Suez Canal where he witnessed the Fall of Greece and after a short spell in Egypt and Iraq was shipped out to the Far East where he was captured by the Japanese and died in one of their prisoner of war camps.

It took me years to piece together the story of his life and the more I learnt, the more I felt uneasy at my negligence at losing the medals.

But what I thought was lost is no longer but has led to a family mystery.

Of the four medals, two are the 1939-45 War Medal, one is the Burma Star and the last is the France and Germany Star.

Of these I can be fairly confident that one of the 1939-45 medals and the Burma Star are his, but the other two will be someone else in the family.

Mother, 1941

Now mother served in the RAF and so I am guessing the other 1939-45 medal will have been awarded to her, but that just leaves the France and Germany Star.

The only relative to have served in France and Germany was my uncle Fergus but his medals will have stayed with his side of the family.

All of which makes for that mystery.

And as these things do, the story points up the fragility of family memorabilia.

What was cherished by one generation becomes just “stuff” for the next and within another few decades is lost or discarded.

Uncle Roger and mother circa 1939

So I am pleased that I have been reunited with the medals, more so because it fulfils the promise I made to Nana.

Leaving me only to reflect on another promise I made to her, which was never to have a tattoo.

And while three of our children have chosen to have tattoos, I have steadfastly refused, less because of what is entailed but simply because of that promise I made sixty years ago.

Location; 1938-45

Pictures; war medals, 1938-45 and pictures of Uncle Roger and mother, 1939-43, from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*Which just leaves the mystery of the ribbons.  Two belong to the War Medals, but the ribbon in RAF colours belongs to the 1939-45 Star which is missing from the collection

Who took the ball away from the 150 women’s football clubs in 1921 and why?

 The story of women’s football is quite correctly becoming better known and regaining a prominence it lost for nearly a century.

The growing popularity of the national women’s football team along with those in the Premier clubs and countless other teams across the country have highlighted the history, as well as the struggle of women to play “the beautiful game”.

The ban imposed by the Football Association in 1921 which lasted for a full half century and the sometimes-virulent prejudice directed against women players is now fully catalogued in articles, books and TV documentaries, along with a heap of online sites.  Even the FA now is happy to tell the story.

To these I can add an interesting “reappraisal examining the politics and social history behind” the FA ban.

It is written by Dr. Clare Debenham, Honorary Research Associate at the University of Manchester and takes the story back to 1881 and the founding of Mrs Graham’s Xl by Helen Matthews in Edinburgh.  

It assesses the contribution of Nettie Honeyball who founded the British Ladies Football Club thirteen years later and the importance of Lily Parr who was the first woman to be inducted into English Football’s Hall of Frame, as well as “Emma Clarke the first black woman footballer to be identified in the UK”.

But what I found more fascinating was Dr. Debenham’s account of the women’s game during the Great War and the immediate post war period.  In 1921 there were 150 women’s clubs often playing to capacity crowds, many of which were drawn from women working in factories.

Equally interesting is her suggestion that there might an explanation for the FA ban in the link between some of these teams drawn from working class women and the financial support they provided to miner’s charities during the strikes in 1921. “Money raised by women’s football was used to support local miner’s charities after their own strike funds were exhausted”.**

She goes on to review the reasons trotted out by the FA for the ban and contrasts this with the atmosphere in Britain by the 1970s towards women’s equality referenced by the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act.

It is one of those works which comes at the story from a different angle and acknowledges that some companies were fully supportive, like that of Lyons Corner House which provided a training ground and changing facilities in north London.  There were at least four Corner House teams including one from its main restaurant on the Strand.

And for those wanting to pursue the story there is a useful bibliography.

Picture; cover from The ban on organised women’s football in England by the Football Association, 2021

*The ban on organised women’s football in England by the Football Association in December 1921 and its restoration by them in July 1971.  A reappraisal examining the politics and social history behind these actions”, Clare Debenham, University of Manchester Honorary Research Associate, 2021, revised 2022

*ibid Debenham, page 13

A day out in Castlefield ……….. August 1980

The picture has sat for over 40 years in the collection in our cellar.

It will have been in early August and having followed the procession of vintage steam vehicles down to Castlefield I joined in the mix of people enjoying the day.

Location; Castlefield

Pictures; A day out in Castlefield, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Voices from Chorlton ……… 175 years ago

 In the summer of 1847 Alexander Somerville had come looking for potato blight, that disease which had ravaged the crops of Ireland and had been reported just a little further south in Derbyshire and what he found were a group of farmers and labourers all too happy to show him we were blight free.  

Mr Higginbotham ploughing Row Acre, 1893

Here were many of the people I had come to know, including James Higginbotham, farmer on the green, Lydia Brown whose farm was just a little to the east of the Bowling Green Hotel and old Samuel Nixon, market gardener and landlord of the Greyhound just over the river.

It is a remarkable piece because Somerville reported and in places quoted what they said.  Nothing quite fits you for hearing their voices, talking of farming issues, joking about what newspapers publish and complaining about their landlords.  These are the authentic voices of 175 years ago.

Nor is that quite it.  For when Somerville and Higginbotham inspect the potato field I know where it was. 

Row Acre, Chorlton Row, and the village 1854

It is the strip of land that ran from the Row along what is now the Rec beside Cross Road, and when they stood admiring the Rose of Sharon apple trees and the Newbridge pears we are just behind the Trevor Arms on what is now Beech Road.

It doesn’t take much imagination to recreate that orchard scene with the smell of William Davis’s smithy hard by and perhaps even the noise of the children in the nearby National school on the Green.

Likewise I am pretty sure I can locate the large bank of earth with ash trees which Lydia Brown was so unhappy about and fully understand why she might contemptuously refer to George Lloyd the landlord as Squire Lloyd because of his refusal to allow her to cut the trees back.

Above all it is that calm and steady confidence of the farmer that shines through.

When Mr Somerville came to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1847

Along with Higginbotham’s pleasure that the weather has won out there is the certainty of a life time of experience that allows George Whitelegg to assert that he didn’t believe in blight. Whitelegg ran the Bowling Green Hotel farmed 36 acres and later would go into speculative building.

Mr Higginbotham was 'only afraid that the blight might come.  When it does come it will be time enough to raise the alarm'.

Mr Whitelegg, of Chorlton, told me that 'he was a potato grower, had heard of the blight, had looked for it, could not find it, and did not believe in it'.

Crossing the green meadows I was told at Brook Farm to go down a path under some trees and examine a field; 'for' said the workman who bad me to go, 'it is best for those who want to find the potato disease to look for it themselves and find their own disappointment.'

I told him that I did not want to find it; that I should be well satisfied to find that the blight was not there, to which he replied briefly, 'then, sir you get satisfaction.  The best grown potatoes in this part of the country are in that field, and never since the day that you and were born did the plants look better.'

Looking out towards the green from Mr Higginbotham's farmyard, circa 1880

I found them after close examination to be all that he described them. 

A large bank of earth with ash trees growing upon it – trees which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.

Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  Mrs Brown a widow is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must 'crop or lop top' a single branch from the deleterious ash trees.

Again I was in the green meadows, where the rain that had newly fallen, and the fresh wind that was blowing, and the luxuriant herbage on every side, and the wild flowers prodigal of bloom, all proclaimed that the insurgents now in rebellion against bountiful Providence must soon be defeated and humiliated.

The bridge Mr Somerville crossed to visit the Greyhound, 1865

At Jackson’s Boat where I crossed the Mersey into Cheshire by the bridge which has superseded the boat, the bridge keeper, Samuel Nixon also publican of the Greyhound,  said 'I have been a farmer all my days and never saw anything that can grow out of land look better.  It is only int paper; they must have something to say in paper.'**

Now that is what I call history.

Location; Chorlton


Pictures;  Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1896  Mr Higginbotham's farmyard, circa 1880s, from the collection of William Higginbotham, detail from the 1854 OS map for Lancashire by kind permission of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the old bridge across the Mersey, circa 1865

*Somerville, Alexander, A Pilgrimage in Search of the Potato Blight, Manchester Examiner, June 19th, 1847

**Chorlton Row, is now Beech Road

**The Greyhound is now Jackson's Boat

The picture and the demonstration ....... October 1981

This is the story of one photograph from one demonstration.

The march was called to draw attention to the new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems which were becoming operational at a time when relations between the two Super Powers were going through a turbulent period.

This one was held in the October of 1981 in Manchester and the route took the protesters from All Saints to Crown Square.

The lead banner is that of the Manchester City Labour Party, and quite a few people are carrying The “No to Cruise Missiles” placards.

I can’t now remember how many participated and given that the press at the time along with the Police tended to underestimate numbers I won’t bother trawling the records.

Suffice to say that looking at the collection of images I took on the day it was a big one.

Leaving that aside, and acknowledging that it is my picture, I do think this one captures the sense of what it was like to be on such a demonstration at that time.

And by extension pretty much what it would be like at any time.

What strikes you first is the range of ages, and while some of the youngest will have had little say in whether they were going to take part there are some teenagers present, who could have voted with their feet and gone elsewhere.

And even given the seriousness of the event someone has said something which has caused those closest to smile.

It is just the way that these things worked and often it would be the banter which lifted the spirits on a cold day which might also threaten rain.

This day seemed bright and warm and free from rain.

We are at a point in the march soon after the procession has set off and the paper sellers are conspicuous by their absence.

No doubt they were further back, near the beginning, hovering over those who were yet to set off.

And as yet there seems to be no shouted chant, which usually got the desired response, although just occasionally the shout would be ignored or got muddled in its execution, which led to a ripple of laughter down the line.

Looking carefully at the image I can name five individuals with certainty with an option on another five who I recognise but can’t call up their name.

But I remember we continued up Oxford Road and through St Peter’s Square into Piccadilly but after that I am unsure how we got to Crown Square, possibly down Market Street or Cannon Street, and then I am guessing along a bit of Deansgate.

Someone will remember.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Manchester Peace demonstration, 1981, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When comic strips don’t get any better ……… The Perishers

For Lois and Uncle Michael, 1949-2003

 I first stumbled across the Perishers sometime around 1967 or 1968.

They featured in a comic strip in the Daily Mirror, and had first appeared in 1959.

The central five characters consisted of four children and a dog.

Wellington was an orphan boy who lived alone with his large dog, called Boot who was a generally affable and mellow character, given to flights of fancy and daydreaming. 

Marlon was  amiable but not very bright. 

Maisie appeared on the surface as the girl next door but was domineering and a bully, with a tendency to become violent if she didn't get her own way, with a scream that could stun woodworm. 

Baby Grumpling always  spoke  entirely in lower-case letters.*

On the scene occasionally came The Crabs, Plain Jane, who was a friend of Maisie’s, Fiscal Yere: a millionaire's son who always complained about the problems of being rich, and a wealth of other bizarre and funny kids and animals.

And as so often happens with long running comic strips there were a series of catch phrases, of "Go-faster stripes", "Need any help with that paper bag ?" and "Yeuk!!" have remained with me and often fall off my lips at the appropriate moment.

So "Go-faster stripes", were the additional features Wellington attached to the buggies he tried to sell to Marlon, while "Need any help with that paper bag ?" was Maisie’s opening words when ever anyone opened a bag of crisps, all the more annoying because she could detect the sound of the bag opening from incredible distances.

And lastly "Yeuk!!" was always Marlon’s response when Maisie attempted to kiss him.

And armed with these, and a few more catch phrases, our heroes encountered countless adventures, which appealed to a 17 year old, who also followed the Magic Roundabout.

The five followed me north from south east London to Manchester and were quickly embraced by my close friends, to the point where Lois was often seen as Maisie, and Mike as a brighter version of Marlon, and John as the savvy and technically minded Wellington.

All of which left me as Boot, a role I assumed with weary resignation, but which was not without an element of accuracy, given that I like Boot have always been prone to flights of fancy and daydreaming, which in Boot’s case included the conviction that he was in fact an 18th-century English lord enchanted into a dog.

The strip was created by Maurice Dodd, drawn  by Dennis Collins and later by Mr. Dodd and Bill Mevin.

Once I had a whole collection of Perisher’s books made up from the newspaper cartoon strip, alas many have not survived the passing years, although a few have sat gathering dust in a corner of the cellar, and this 1978, 21st edition is one of them.  

Helpfully it also offered up a biography of my five pals, reminding me that Boot’s response to many situations was “By the Lord Harry”, Marlon liked inch thick ketchup sandwiches which invariably burst out of the bread to cover anyone close by, Wellington had been named after his own footwear, Maisie first encountered Marlon because he was too slow to "even get out of the way of an on rushing tortoise” and Baby Grumpling who regularly helped himself to the Sunday collection at church explaining “Why do they keep handing it round if they don’t want you to take it?**

So that is about it, but as I close I am reminded that Uncle Michael would sometimes refer to one of my sons as Baby Grumpling, but my lips are sealed as to which of them he referred to.

Location the Daily Mirror

Pictures; the famous five from The Perishers No 21, Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, A Mirror Book, 1978

*The Perishers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perishers

** The Perishers No 21, Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, A Mirror Book, 1978

The Lost Adventure ......... the eight year old and the disused railway line

All I have left are some vague memories, but they have persisted with me for nearly sixty years, and I can’t shake them.

We will have been no more than ten and maybe younger, and as we all did in those days we roamed free over our bit of south east London.

It might be east towards Blackheath and Greenwich or out beyond Peckham into Dulwich.

Back then the extent of our adventures were governed by how far we could walk, although within a few years that had become the whole of London and beyond with the help of a Red Rover and Southern Region.

On this particular day we had come across a disused railway track which I think was somewhere around Nunhead, and the game was to walk along the stone parapet of the road bridge over the line.

I chose not to do the walk of chance, but we were all so close friends that no one thought the worse of me for declining.

For a while that disused railway track became our playground and we would walk along its bed, climb up the slope of the cutting and look for discarded treasure.

But time is cruel to such hidden hideaways and within a few months it was all but forgotten and we had moved on.  Partly I suspect because it was some distance from where we lived and in my case I was never quite sure how to get there on my own.

And anyway even a gang of lads in short trousers, dirty knees and torn jumpers, eventually tire of a long straight piece of ground.

Now sixty years on I have wondered where it was and so todayI roamed over google street maps, carefully scrutinized the OS map for 1872 but found nothing.  Neither did an online search for the disused railway lines of south east London prove any more fruitful.

Of course the line may well post date 1872 and it may now be lost under redevelopment.

Here in Manchester many of our old abandoned tracks have become the route for the new tram network.

But I won’t give up looking and next time I am home I might try and track that adventure of sixty years ago.

And within ten minutes of posting the story, Kathy Penney wrote to me, "Try at the top of Athenlay Road. As you turn left in to Merrtins Road there are the remnants of a stone bridge and if you take the next right it leads you in to Brenchley Gardens. I think the line there ran all the way up to Crystal Palace, but sadly was axed by Beeching. 

There was a time you could walk the route up to Crystal Palace but I think there are a few new developments in the way now.

I think if you look at the London, Chatham & Dover Railway or LCDR who established the Highline railway at Crystal Palace in, may have been the 1850's, you should be able to see the route it took. Good luck".

And this I will do!

Location; south east London

Picture, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Emilie Bux..............a German bride in post war Derby in the summer of 1923

I remember my grandmother as a stiff, serious woman who rarely smiled and got cross at what she thought was frivolous spending.

Nana, date unknown

These are childhood memories and people I talk to remember her differently. To them she was a warm funny woman who was very intelligent.

But she had a lot to contend with. Emily née Bux Hall was born in Germany moved here in the years directly following the end of the First World War.

She came from a prosperous family, grew up in a large timbered house and settled in a two up two down terraced house on Hope Street in Derby.

She faced the prejudice of people who had suffered during the long years of war, lost loved ones and could not quite understand how my grandfather would want to marry a German.

All their frustrations and anger settled on my Nana, who had her washing smeared with mud. There were the mutterings behind her in the shops and perhaps worst of all there was the way they took it out on her children who had been born in Germany.

Nana and Uncle Roger, 1929

Mother was beaten with an ebony ruler across her knuckles for speaking German in school and my uncle was called names in the playground and constantly had to defend himself in the street. It upset both of them but also filled them with a desire to do well. In the case of Uncle Roger this led from Traffic Street School to a scholarship at the Bemrose School.

12 Hope Street was a traditional terraced house with two rooms downstairs and two up with a small lean to at the back, beyond which was a shared yard and the outside lavatories.

You stepped off the street into the front room. 

The fireplace was off to the left and on the same side on the far wall was the door to the kitchen. The staircase to the bedrooms was at the back of the kitchen. It was a steep and enclosed staircase and I remember it as very gloomy and a little scary.

Nana, 1934

During their thirty years or so living there my grandparents softened what was a simple and basic place. They personalized the yard adding flowers and herb borders, but it was a small area and was overshadowed by tall buildings at the back.

Nana also had to live with the knowledge that her own family back in Germany had not been happy at the marriage. But she was a woman of immense resilience and she bore this with a stoic determination to make the best of whatever life threw at her.

Nana and grandad, date unknown

Early in the marriage she had to make her own way from Germany to England with a newly born son and a two year old daughter. Grandfather was demobbed in Belfast in 1922 and there are no records to suggest the army brought her and the children home as well.

This would have been no easy journey involving a train to a German sea port, and after an arduous sea crossing, an equally long train trip in a foreign country with two little children. But she met the challenge.

She faced up to the long periods of my grandfather’s unemployment during the 1930s, when news of a job ten miles away had him walking to the site only to discover a long queue of men already patiently waiting for the chance of employment.

Mother and uncle Roger, 1938

Somewhere along the line, possibly after the second war, she managed to scrape together some capital, and either bought or rented a tiny corner shop.

I have no memory of the shop, or when she gave it up and nor do I now know exactly when she and granddad left Hope Street for a grand semi, in the village of Chellaston, and now there is no one left to ask.

Mother, 1942

No one who can fill in the gaps in my memory and the research I have done in the last decade.

But one abiding piece of knowledge is that for all the prejudice she faced in the communal backyard in Hope Street in the 1920s, she saw both mother and father serve in the RAF in the Second World War, and had to be reconciled to the death of her son in 1943, aged just 21 in an enemy Prisoner of War Camp.

Pictures; Emilie Bux circa 1918, with Roger Hall, 1929,  walking through Derby in 1934, in the backyard of 11 Hope Street, date unknown,  mother and uncle Roger, 1938, and mother, 1942, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The uncomfortable side of steam travel ....... part one

Sometimes to quote that historian “the past comes back to bite you on the bum” and so it was when I uncovered a selection of pictures I took back in 1980 of steam locomotives.

And the images were not the bit that did the biting, it was the realization that I am old enough to have travelled on trains pulled by steam locomotives which were in regular service.

So not for me the trip on 3 miles of track lovingly restored by steam enthusiasts on a line that died under the direction of Dr Beeching.

No, these were main line expresses hurtling north to Derby and Manchester, which places my youth in the 1950s which to quote an equally imminent philosopher means that "I have fewer years ahead of me than behind".

But putting all of that to one side the pictures are of the Steam Exposition from 1980 .

And it was a day of fun.

Down at what is now the Science and Industry Museum a huge collection of people had gathered to watch, drive or ride on a variety of steam driven machines, from railway locomotives to steam  tractors with more than a few vintage cars and buses thrown in.

So here was the day.

And over the next few weeks a few more of the pictures will make their way on to the blog.

Location; Manchester




















Pictures; The Steam Exposition, 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking the northern boundary of Rent Meadow in the summer of 1848 …………

Now, it is always fascinating to take a spot you know well, and try and think it back to a time before now.

Looking out towards Chorlton Brook, 2020

So here we are on that footpath that stretches from Barlow Moor Road, down to Nell Lane, with the allotments and park on one side and those roads that run off Sandy Lane on the other.

It is an ancient footpath, and is clearly visible on the OS maps of the mid and late 19th century and shows up in the 1847 tithe map.

The western end ran alongside Lime Bank which was a fine looking house and dates from at least the late 18th century.  At this point the path was more a road, but as it made its way east down to Nell Lane it pretty much petered out becoming quite narrow.

Trees, and bushes, 2020

Walk it today heading towards Barlow Moor Lane, and you get glimpses of the bank of Chorlton Brook, with its dense vegetation and it is easy to think it was always such.

But not so, because back in the 1840s, the land from the path, on either side of the brook and stretching across what we now know as Chorlton Park was fields.

Rent Meadow, [1] and Lime Bank, [3], 1847

The biggest of the two was Rent Meadow which covered 4 acres and was farmed as meadow land.

Its neighbour was Lime Bank, consisting of just 1 acre and was given over to arable farming.

Had you stood on the footpath looking south towards the brook, there would have been a clear view, down to what is now Mauldeth Road West.

But bits of that scene would have been obscures by a belt of trees and bushes which followed the line of the water course.

Beech House, 1853

Both fields belonged to James Holt, who lived in Beech House.

His grounds covered all of the land from Beech Road to High Lane, and down from Barlow Moor Road, almost to Cross Road.

Added to this he owned 17 acres of prime agricultural land in the township.

But his money and that of his family had been made in town in a factory at the bottom of Deansgate, where he made the wooden engraving blocks for calico printing.

Such was his wealth that he also owned a considerable portfolio of properties around St John Street, including the only double fronted house on that street.

As befits a man who had “made it”, he retired early, moved to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and settled in Beech Cottage which he  redeveloped into a grand property which he renamed Beech House.

The Holt's town house, 2010

His son continued to live in the city centre in St Johns Street, managing the business, and in the fullness of time followed his father and moved into Beech House.

Now, none of this is romantic conjecture, but based on maps of the 19th century, the Rate Books, Tithe schedule and a series of legal documents belonging to the Holt’s.

Together they offer up a detailed picture of the Hot’s business along with the lie of the land by our footpath.

I would love to know who worked Rent Meadow and Lime Bank, but alas that is lost to us.

But there are the odd little glimpses of who might have laboured there.

One such clue, comes in the form of of clay pipes found on the allotments.  It is just possible that they were refuse from night soil spread over the fields which had been bought in from Manchester.

A clay pipe, 2020

But I like to think they may have been discarded by an agricultural labourer on the edge of Rent Meadow sometime in the 19th century.

And as unhistorical as it might seem I would think that the resident of the house known as Lime Bank might have taken a stroll along the footpath on a summer’s evening.  He was a Charles Morton, but more of him another day.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Rent Meadow, 2020, the Holt's town house, 2010, and clay pipe, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1847, from the Tithe map, Beech Cottage in 1841, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Memories of Billingsgate Market, that fishy smell and the promise of the Tower

Now we are on the Lower Thames Street in 1927, and it didn’t look that different when I was regularly wandering along it in the late 1950s.

We usually got there around 10 on a Saturday by which time all the fish had been sold and apart from the odd porter there were just the men sweeping up.

That said there were still the odd bits of ice and discarded fish in the gutters and of course that all pervading smell of fish.

Had we been there a few hours earlier and the place would no doubt have been as busy as the scene in the picture postcard.

I always preferred walking down the Lower Road just because there was still so much more to see.

It started with the descent from the northern end of London Bridge down an impressive flight of stone stairs to street level and then the walk to the Tower of London.

This was one of those regular Saturday excursions which occupied most of the day and was pure magic.

Before you got inside the Tower there

were those smaller roads one of which of course had the Monument which was in  itself a pretty neat place to visit with what at the time had one of the best views across the City from its observational platform.

I can’t say I ever took much notice of St Magnus the Martyr which is clearly visible in the distance.

And now taking that route is to be amazed at the transformation of the road, but that along with Andrew’s stories of the Tower is for another time.

So I shall just close with a thank you to Mark Flynn who kindly lets the odd image from his postcard site and whose prices are very competitive.

Picture; Billingsgate Fish Market, 1927, courtesy of MARK FLYNN POSTCARDS, http://www.markfynn.com/index.html

An arch and a heap of gravestones .... April in Chorlton

Location; Chorlton Green

Picture; An arch and a heap of gravestones, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The picture ….. the school …… and a forest

So, when two of your kids own and run a school in a forest outside Warsaw, there are always pictures.

“Pines is a British Forest School based on the Scandinavian all weather school model and pioneered by British OCN trained Forest School practitioners. 

Our ethos is bred from the belief that risk taking and independent led learning are necessary to successfully support the development of young people. 

Our core principle places community at the centre of everything we do. 

We focus on the relationship between our learners and the natural world whilst promoting holistic learning. 

This approach guides our learners toward becoming knowledgeable, creative, intelligent, independent, confident, resilient and compassionate individuals who care for the world around them.

Pines offers learners the opportunity to take supported risks appropriate to themselves and the environment, safely at our inclusive Forest site. 

We use a range of learner centred processes to create a base for development and learning. 

We spend 100% of our time outside, working closely with individuals across a range of abilities and age groups, creating a community that cares for environment as well as each other.”.*

Location;  Gmina Żabia Wola, Poland  

Picture; Fire, 2023, courtesy of Pines Forest School

*Pines Forest School, https://www.pinesforestschool.pl/

**Pines Forest School, https://www.facebook.com/pinesforestschool/

The Warsaw Ghetto: History as Survival ....part 1...Oyneg Shabes ... one to listen to

Yesterday, today and all week.

"The extraordinary archive that secretly recorded daily Jewish existence in the Warsaw Ghetto – brought to life 80 years on from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Umschlagplatz Memorial on Stawki Street, Warsaw, 2006

Through the Warsaw Ghetto's short, terrible life, historian Emanuel Ringelblum led a group of writers to secretly chronicle life for its inhabitants. 

The project became history as survival. Anton Lesser narrates this new 10 part series. Episode 1-Oyneg Shabes. How the archive began. With Elliot Levey as Emanuel Ringeblum.

In the middle of Europe, in the middle of the 20th Century, a half million Jewish men, women & children were herded into a prison city within a city. Walled off & surrounded by the German occupiers. 

How do you tell the world about your life and fate? Historian and activist Emanuel Ringelblum devised & directed a clandestine archive- codename Oyneg Shabes (Joy of the Sabbath) chronicling every aspect of existence. 

He recruited over 60 'zamlers' or gatherers to write, collect & compile thousands of pages-diaries, essays, poems, photographs, statistical studies, art, ephemera -a historical treasure that was buried even as the Ghetto was being extinguished so that the world might read and understand. Listen to their stories

Episode 1-Oyneg Shabes. In 1943, with most of the ghetto's inhabitants already murdered historian, Emanuel Ringelblum looked back on the history of the history.

And Markers in remembrance of where the Warsaw Ghetto wall used to stand 2018

Narration by Anton Lesser with Elliot Levey. Featuring the voices of Lily Fair, Leah Marks, Alfred Molina, Andy Nyman, Carl Prekopp & Tracy-Ann Oberman Translation by Elinor Robinson. Historical adviser Samuel Kassow. Written & produced by Mark Burman.

For more information on the Oyneg Shabes/Ringeblum archive go to the website of the Jewish Historical Institute,  https://cbj.jhi.pl/ *

Pictures; Umschlagplatz Memorial on Stawki Street, Warsaw, Cezary Piwowarski, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses: GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. 

And Markers in remembrance of where the Warsaw Ghetto wall used to stand in German-occupied Poland, 2018, Samotny Wędrowiec, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license: w:en:Creative Commons attribution share alike. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

*The Warsaw Ghetto: History as Survival ....part 1...Oyneg Shabes, BBC Radio 4  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001l94l

Standing "on the threshold which leads into the palace of justice”

It was a slow day on Beech Road yesterday, and with little interest in sitting in the garden or watching yet another box set I took to reading a collection of historic speeches.*

Liverpool, 1980

Now, if you want to get out of a low mood, brought on by a combination of the virus, and the political scene, a couple of hours with Dr King, J.F. Kennedy, Betty Friedman, Abraham Lincoln, and Dolores Ibarruri Gomez, [La Pasionaria] and countless others, is guaranteed to set you up.

Of course, you have to be aware of the context in which the speeches were made, and if I am honest I gravitated at first to those whose politics I shared, and remember  watching.

Added to which some of those speeches were made by people who whose political record on certain issues might at times be a little flawed.

And finally, I take the possible criticism that sitting reading a speech is just armchair politics and the real test is going out and making a difference.

But at 70 with a lifetime of political activity which began when I was 16, I think I might be allowed to take the armchair.

What surprised  me were the speeches by politicians who I have always regarded as pariahs, like Enoch Powell who made that infamous “rivers of blood” speech made in Birmingham in 1968, but nine years earlier had condemned the treatment of Mau Mau detainees in the Kenyan detention camp at Hola, insisting that prisoners wherever they were held under British jurisdiction were entitled to the same rights of treatment.

Birmingham, 1983

The beatings of many of the prisoners and the deaths of ten of the men he argued was the responsibility of the Secretary of State, brushing aside the alleged crimes and their place of confinement as not relevant to  justice, concluding “We cannot, we dare not, in Africa of all places fall below our own highest standards in the acceptance of responsibility”.

That said, the speeches which I enjoyed rereading were those of Lincoln, Kennedy and Dr King, and staring with Colonel Rainsborough who in 1647, uttered, the powerful, statement of democratic principle “I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly, Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under”.

His was a contribution to the Putney Debates when the victorious Parliamentarian army sat down to discuss the future.

Manchester, 1984

And while that democratic statement was defeated by the Army Grandees and the forces of the establishment it still rings out.

As does the speech of Gideon Hausner, the Attorney General of the State of Israel at the trial Adolf Eichmann, responsible for the management of the Final Solution.

In a speech which lasted ten hours Mr. Hausner, opened by saying, “When I stand before you O Judges of Israel, to lead the prosecution of Adolf Eichmann, I do not stand alone.  

With me here are six million accusers.  But they cannot rise too their feet and point their finger at the man in the dock with the cry of ‘J’ Accuse on their lips.  For they are only ashes- ashes piled high on the hills of Auschwitz, and the fields of Treblinka and strewn in the forests of Poland. Their graves are scattered throughout Europe.  Their blood cries out but their voice is stilled.  Therefore, will I be their spokesman”.

What marks out many of these speeches is the power of the rhetoric, which makes us remember, the memorable lines, like those  from J.F. Kennedy’s  “The torch has passed to a new generation of Americans", “ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man”. “Ich bin ein Berliner”.

Birmingham, 1983

But sleek phrases are themselves not enough, they must arise from a very real need for change which Betty Friedman encapsulated in a speech on women’s rights in 1969 at the first national conference for repeal of abortion rules, when she talked about women being invisible and having to have “a full say in the decisions of their lives and their society”.

And of all the countless ones I read yesterday, and which still sit with me, it must be Dr King’s address on the centenary of Abraham’s Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation, made at a gathering of 210, 000 people at the Lincoln Memorial.

It is a powerfully written speech drawing on the language of the bible, shot through with the injustices of Black Americans and calling for action.

I  tried to pick out key sections, but in truth the whole speech is a mastery of rhetoric, leaving me to fall back on the oft quoted lines,

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

Birmingham, 1983

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with".

Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1981-87

*The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century Speeches. Edited by Brian MacArthur, 1992, & The Penguin Book of Historic Speeches, edited by Brian MacArthur, 1996