That lost church in All Saints ......a place in Shropshire ..... and a connection with Africa

It is rare to get an exact date for when a photograph was accepted into the catalogue of a picture postcard company, and by extension the date the image was taken.

But in the case of this picture of All Saints Church in Grosvenor Square I can place it sometime in the year 1900.

And this I can do because the name of the company which marketed it was Valentine and I have their catalogue listings which means using the number on the bottom right-hand side I can track it to one of the 1,241 photographs which were placed in the catalogue for 1900.

More than this I know it will in all probability be at the back of the year, given that the last catalogue number is 34,736, and ours is 33,191, making in the last 545 to be added. 

The story of the church is well known, so I shall just record that it was “consecrated on April 12th, 1820.  The building consisted of a chancel, nave, aisles and a domed tower.  It was partially destroyed by fire in February of 1850 but was restored and reopened by Christmas of the same year, only to be badly damaged during the Manchester Blitz and demolition some years later” *.

There is heaps more which are available including maps and pictures by following the link.

For now, I am more interested in this particular card which as posted on May 12th, 1906, to a Miss. Biddle in Oswestry from someone living at 56 Richmond Grove East in Longsight.

The sender’s name is indecipherable, but I know that this was home to a Theophilus Beal who was there from at least 1901 through to 1929.  

He was a railway carriage cleaner was married to  Lydia and had three sons, none of whose first names resemble the one on the card.  But the Beales’s did have a lodger in 1910 and while he is not the sender of the card, it is possible that another lodger who was there in 1906 sent the card.

Alternatively, the clue maybe in part of the message which runs "I have just been here to see my cousin march to drill” and so we have be dealing with a relative of the Beale’s.

As for Miss Biddle, she was staying at an address in Oswestry, which is in Shropshire close to where the Beales’ came from.

That said the address also include the village of Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain which actually is in Wales, but to be fair very close to both Oswestry and more to the point Shropshire where the Beale’s came from.

So, there is more to play for.

Leaving just to point out the buildings in the background which include the old Art School and the Chorlton on Medlock Town Hall.

The town hall in 1945 was the venue for the Fifth Pan African Congress which was attended by 90 delegates, 26 from Africa. 

They included many scholars, intellectuals and political activists who would later go on to become influential leaders in various African independence movements and the American civil rights movement, including the Kenyan independence leader Jomo Kenyatta, American activist and academic W. E. B. Du Bois, Malawi's Hastings Banda, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, prominent Jamaican barrister Dudley Thompson and Obafemi Awolowo and Jaja Wachuku from Nigeria. 

It also led partially to the creation of the Pan-African Federation, founded in 1946 by Nkrumah and Kenyatta.

But that is another story.

Instead, I will finish by saying that the card belongs to David Harrop who thinks it is the only picture postcard to show the church.

Location, All Saints, Oxford Road, Manchester

Picture; All Saints Church, 1900, Valentine Postcard, courtesy of David Harrop

*All Saints Church Grosvenor Square, https://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/gone/allsaints.html