One camera…...two pictures ……two brothers .... and Chorlton as it was in 1961

This is the view into Chorlton in 1961, and it is one of those rare photographs from the middle decades of the last century of where we live.

I say rare because while we have heaps of images taken between the late 1880s into the 1940s, similar scenes in the post war period are much harder to come across.

There will be plenty of reasons for this.  Chief amongst these is the demise of the commercial photographers who recorded iconic local landmarks and sold them on to picture postcard companies, while also doing a nice trade in selling pictures of individual streets and houses to residents.

To this can be added the arrival of the cheap camera, designed to take snaps.  But the snaps don’t often make it out into the public domain, and most have now been lost.

In some cases, they have been consigned to a photo album which with the passage of half a century or more is forgotten, or worse become the contents of bin liners consigned to the tip.

And today the practice of photographing “the moment” with you phone means that moment never gets beyond the mobile and rarely makes it to the “cloud”.  Either they are dependent on the technology not being updated or the owner deleting it forever.

All of which takes me back to this 1961 picture which John Anthony tells me was taken “by my brother Keith from Brantingham Road bridge looking towards Manchester Road. 

The second was taken by me and in my picture and is also from Brantingham Road. In mine there is some camera shake, but I like the detail of the telephone exchange yard. 

The fence (right) which was several steel wires on concrete posts with intermediate braces. Chorlton Baths in on the left. The light patch was the telephone exchange yard”.

In 1961 Chorlton Railway Station was still open offering a quick train service into Central Railway Station or out into Derbyshire and beyond, via Didsbury.

It is a scene which has yet to fade from living memory, but it would be nice to have more pictures of Chorlton in the 1950s into the 21st century which could compliment those on Manchester Library’s Digital Local Collection.*

The Library's collection of Chorlton images is large, but they are regularly plundered and posted on social network, but sadly are not accompanied by a date, a credit or an explanation of their significance.

Leaving me just to thank Tony who regular comments on the Chorlton stories and on occasion corrects my mistakes as well adding details of places and events.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the railway line in Chorlton, 1961, from the pictures of Keith and Tony Hewitt.

*Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A sightseeing trip to Woolwich and those old wooden prison hulks with their chained convicts

Now I had completely forgotten about those old 18th century prison hulks moored at Woolwich and also of the excellent little book by Mr Reg Rigden*

The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford, describes in detail those three festering and rotting former warships.  I long ago lost my copy and so was over the moon when my friend Jean sent me her copy.

They were one of those short term measures used to solve the prison crisis in between sending convicts to America and later Australia.

And as so often happens they became tourist attractions with enterprising businessmen offering up river tours which provided glimpses of the chained men in the hulks or at work on the nearby shore.

So numerous did these excursions become that eventually they had to be ordered to stop.

I suppose it is easy to see why so many found such river trips a fascinating part of any visit to London.

“By 1777 there were over 220 felons at work in Woolwich, each chained by the leg.”*

Nor did the resumption of transporting convicted criminals across the world in 1787 spell the end of our prison hulks.

They had become part of the prison system and would continue well into the middle of the 19th century with the last Woolwich ship being burned in 1857.

There had been three such ships moored at Woolwich.

These were the Warrior, Jusitia and Defence which originally under "contract to a private individual, Duncan Campbell who looked after the convicts and was paid by the Government”* who in the 1780s had paid £32 a year for each convict which was later reduced to £26.

All of which promises more stories focusing on the awful conditions on board and some tales of desperate escapes.

So more later, alternatively you could just read Mr Rigden’s excellent book

Picture; cover from The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford

*The Floating Prisons of Woolwich and Deptford, Reg Rigden, 1976 London Borough of Greenwich

The bits of Withington you don’t normally see…….

Never one to pick the obvious, here for no other reason than I can are a selection of pictures I took while wandering around Withington on a wet grim Monday.

No history, other than The Red Lion was a regular haunt in the 1980s and I was pleased I accepted the invitation of Cate and Elizabeth to take tea and cake in St Paul’s church which led to some fascinating stories.

Location; Withington

Pictures; The Red Lion and St Paul’s Withington, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

“I lost my garter …… while going to buy this card”

Now, losing a garter and telling the world is a pretty public thing to do.

Just how the sender lost the garter, or what happened afterwards is not included.

All I know is that the card was sent to an address in New Brighton, in the evening of August 2nd, 1917.

And that the sender might have lived in Ancoats.

The card was produced by the Corona Publishing Company of Blackpool, and according to one source produced a mix of Saucy cards with more conventional “view cards”*

Their Blackpool address was 48 Coronation Street, which is one of those roads behind the Tower, and a search revealed that in 2019 this was The Treasure Shop, established in 1943 and selling jewelry.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Bring the sugar, 1917, from the collection of David Harrop

*The Corona Publishing Company of London and Blackpool; http://www.hertfordshire-genealogy.co.uk/data/projects/FS/Publishers/Corona.htm

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 10 the school photograph

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

There is something fascinating about school photographs.

I suppose it is partly that it stirs the that pot of curiosity, leading me  to wonder who each of the children were, what their lives had been and what was to come.

We have shed loads and looking at the class of ’95 or those of our other children I sometimes catch myself asking the kids what happened to Clare, or John, and sharing the picture with their friends who in many cases still resemble that young 11 year old gazing out with a mixture of adventure and expectation for the years ahead.

Of course it is all that much more difficult when the photograph is almost a century old, and there is no one to ask the obvious questions of who they all were.

I am drawn to that lad on the back row beside the teacher with the big smile and wonder which street he lived in and what he went on to do, and also the girl in the second row on the right.

Unlike most of her class mates she is not smiling and instead looks back at me with a pensive expression.

These are the class of 1928 from St Andrew's, Homer Street School in Ancoats.

Homer Street disappeared in the Corporation’s slum clearance programme a decade later and I guess the group were dispersed across the city with some ending up in Wythenshawe and others in the north.

So far I haven’t been able to track down the admissions book for the school which might offer up some names and addresses, not that I would be able to match name to a face.

The picture belongs to Kath Kelly Hughes who has come across others from the same period and in many of them there appears that teacher on the right of the group.  Unlike his colleague he doesn’t smile instead affects a slightly detached almost weary stare.

But I suppose he will have posed in many such photographs, and still had many more to come.

So I shall leave the class of ’28 but reserve the right to return.

But there may be more.  Only today Angela got in touch to say that "in a couple of days I will be putting an old photo of the school on a photo website called Alamy. 

I acquired the photo on ebay in January of this year,form someone in Cheshire- sadly no details except what is written on the back (no names of pupils) 

These are infant children in the hall. Hope this helps. " 

Pictures; the class of 1928, form lll Homer Street School, 1928, courtesy of Kath Kelly Hughes

*Homer Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Homer%20Street

Woolwich in 1915, a Manchester soldier and a love letter from Chorlton

The Great War is now over a century ago.

Royal Artilery Barracks, Woolwich

During the four years of war  Eltham like the rest of the country saw its men go off and fight and learned to cope with the adjustments to everyday life which followed.

But nothing I suppose could ease the loss of those who never returned.  Some of those who appear on our war memorial are being honoured all over again as work is done to research their lives.

So with that in mind I thought I would rerun some stories of the experiences of those who lived through the conflict, starting with George Davison who passed through Woolwich in 1915 and wrote to his wife,

Arrived safely today. No settled address at present.  Best wishes George.”

Now at first glance there isn’t anything special about George’s message to his wife Nellie even given that it was sent from Woolwich to 146 Bedford Street, Hulme in Manchester.

A post card home  from Woolwich to Manchester, 1915

Thousands of young men every year leave the family home in search of work and until things are settled will not have a permanent address.

But what makes the card just a little more interesting is the date and time for George sent it on October 25th 1915 just in time for the late evening collection.

He was in the Royal Artillery and over the course of the next three years was to serve in Ireland and on the Western Front where he was killed in the June of 1918.

I can’t yet establish when he enlisted but Woolwich may have been one of the first posting after he left Manchester.

And just four days after our post card he sent another to Nellie with the request not “to send any letters to Woolwich until further notice.  Expect leaving this weekend for unknown destination.”

During those few days be bought a number of cards depicting Woolwich but never sent them and they now form part of the George Davison collection.

In all there must be a hundred postcards, letters and official documents from 1915 till 1955.  Many are from George to Nellie and after his death there is correspondence from the War Office, the pensions department and his commanding officer.

In uniform in Wolowich, 1915

There are also his school reports, details of his first job along with the social club he joined and his membership of the Independent Labour Party.

And if that was not enough there is a series of charming letters he wrote to young Nellie before they were married.

The first dates from 1904 when she was just 16 and talks of his recent proposal of marriage and his wish to meet her parents on the following day.

Others follow during the course of the next two years and are the usual love letters sent in the age before the telephone.

But it would be a full four years before they married and another three years before the birth of their son.

This is a wonderful collection of material spanning the last decades of the 19th century and well into the next.

And for me there is a very personal connection which links me to George.

During the years before he was married he lived just a few minute’s walk away at Barway House on Edge Lane here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the first marital home was close by in Hulme and we shared a similar political outlook.

All of which then just leaves Woolwich.  He was stationed there briefly in 1915 and I grew up close by separated by just forty years which in the great sweep of things is not much.

I suspect that the Woolwich he knew was still the one I was familiar with in the 1960s and which has now pretty much vanished.

The Royal Herbert

I doubt that he would recognise Beresford Square or Wellington Street any more than I can today, and I am sure would be equally hard pressed to make sense of the area around the Arsenal or for that matter the water front.

Odd that two people separated by those four decades should still have more in common than I would have thought.

But then that is sometimes how history pans out, which is less by grand design and more by a series of hiccups.


Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

Picking my way through a bit of Withington’s history …….

Today I am renewing an old association with Withington.

St Paul's, Withington, 2023

It is a place I have a fond spot for, given that it was where I first washed up as a student in 1969.

And over the next three years I spent time in a tiny bed sit overlooking Wellington Road, a bit longer in a slightly bigger bedsit facing the Old House at Home and finished with two years in Miss Finn’s house in Rippingham Road, with the Recreational ground as a sort of companion.

Back then I was less interested in the history of the township focusing more on the dive bar of the White Lion, the occasional visit to the Scala, along with the weekly attendance at the Launderette.

If there was a feature essential to my life it was possibly the telephone box beside the bank on the corner of Egerton Crescent, which in a pre mobile age, was the link with home, usually on a Sunday when time weighed heavy.

But enough of such nostalgia and instead a story of Withington Civic Society, and in particular their range of excellent books on the history of the place.*

I long ago acquired a copy of “A walk through the history of Withington” which looks to have been updated, and now courtesy of David Rydeheard  I have two more, which are "Wartime Withington”, and “A legacy of love”.

Wartime Withington rather says what it is but is written around a collection of memories from those who lived through the period, while A legacy of love is the story of the Harrison organ at St Chad’s Church in Ladybarn.

There are more in the pipeline and I look forward to reading these when they are published.

At which point I could delve into the three and write stories of pubs, churches, war time bombs and musical instruments, but that would be to steal the thunder of the society and the individual authors so I won’t.

Instead I suggest you follow the link and acquire your own copies.**

Pictures; St Paul’s, Withington, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and covers from Withington Civic Society’s publications.  

*Withington Civic Society,  withingtoncivicsociety.org.uk

**Buying the books at, contact@withingtoncivicsociety.org.uk

Leaving Salford part 3 ................... a new life and looking back

This will be the last of the stories on the Hampson family who left Salford for Canada and a new life sometime after 1849 and is part catch up on how their lives turned out and a reflection on what is left of the Salford they knew.

Railway posted, date unknown

James Hampson was born in 1816 and married Sarah Tildesley in December 1838 at the Parish Church of Eccles.  In 1841 he described himself as a cotton dyer and in that year was living in Pendleton.  Sarah’s father was an engineer and both James and his father were cotton dyers.

Before the 1850s the process still relied on natural dyes using the flowers, berries, leaves, barks and roots of plants and herbs.  As such the work would not have been as dangerous as it was to become with the introduction of chemical dyes.

But it must still have been very uncomfortable.  James would have constantly been exposed to hot and cold water and dyes which left his hands stained different colours.

The family lived on Ashton Street within a few minute’s walk from cotton mills, a dye works and a coal mine with the newly built railway and the slightly older canal close by.

Looking out from their home the Hampson’s would have been faced with a row of one up one down back to back houses which backed on to Miners Row.

Aston Street, Pendleton, 1848

Theirs might have been a slightly bigger house but the detailed 1848 OS map shows that their nearest water pump was some distance away.

Now bits of their new life in Ontario are still vague but their son Henry who had been born in 1839 worked on the railways, as did his son William.

William married Agness Beetham whose family were farmers from Albion which was just outside of Toronto.  Her family had settled in Canada in the early 19th century.

Which just leaves me to ponder on what is left of where they lived. 

Just a short 40 years after they left, their street had gone, replaced by a whole set of small terraced houses, and while by 1894 there were still textile factories close by I can’t say which he may have worked in or whether it still survived.

Pendleton, 1894

The railway is still there but he would be hard pressed to recognise the old Manchester and Bury Canal which ran alongside the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

He may of course not given that much thought to Salford.  

Certainly my great aunt who left Britain in 1925 and married into the family pretty much left the old country behind. 

She returned only once in 1968.  

Her brother who had been migrated as a British Home Child nine years earlier came back only one on his way via a training camp to the Western Front in 1916.

Fastest to Canada, date unknown

But that is not quite the end.  Just as I finished the story my friend Neil Simpson sent over these wonderful railway posters which were produced by the Canadian Railway company and distributed across Britain.  

They will post date the Hampson’s journey but are similar to those being produced by steamship lines in the 1850s. 

Neil came across them during a week touring Ontario while taking the train from Toronto to Vancouver and spotted them on a railway station in Jasper.

So there you have it.  The Hampson’s never returned to Salford but there is lots of evidence that some at least who went out to Canada, Australia and New Zealand in the middle decades of the 19th century made the journey more than once.

Pictures; 1848 OS map for Lancashire, Salford, 1894 from the OS South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and railway posters from the collection of Neil Simpson

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 9 what is and was

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.

Where Homer Street was, 2017

Now this is Homer Street today.

I say Homer Street but to be accurate it is where Homer Street was until sometime around 1938.

There were sixteen houses which had been built in 1837 and we are looking east along the line of where they had been.

They went in the Corporation’s slum clearance programme which pretty much wiped away all the housing directly around the church of St Andrew’s between 1934-38

2 Helmet Street in red and Phobe and Homer Street, 1894

The site was designated an area for light industry, although for a couple of decades Homer Street was left undeveloped.

By the 1960s it had been a sorting office, a bus depot and is now the warehouse of Amato Food Products.

There are no pictures of the houses and apart from the census returns and rate book entries little has survived to tell us much about the properties or the people who lived.

For most of the last two centuries they do not even feature in the street directories and when they do it tends only to be the businesses that are recorded like Mrs Elizabeth Beaver who in 1895 is recorded as “shop keeper” at number 3 Homer Street on the corner with Phobe Street.

2 Helmet Street looking towards Newton Square, 1897

But there are some photographs of properties

which will have been very similar to those of Homer Street.

This one is of number 2 Helmet Street in 1897, and we are looking north.

The street beside the lamp post is Newton Square and the house on the corner was the shop of John Summersgil while across Newton Square and hidden from view was the pub/beer house of James Berry.

And had you wanted to visit Homer Street from our house the most direct route would have been to turn right up Helmet Street past the Recreation Ground and then left on to Phobe Street which led to both Homer Street and the school.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; inside the Amato warehouse, 2017, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, back of number 2 Helmet Street 1897, H Entwistle, m11681, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Helmet Street in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Leaving Salford for Canada part 2 ............... the long journey

Now the Hampson family are not strictly family.  

Pendleton, 1848

They belong to my cousins from Ontario, but theirs is a fascinating story which is part of the story of both countries.

James Hampson was born in 1816 and married Sarah Tildesley in December 1838 at the Parish Church of Eccles.  In 1841 he described himself as a cotton dyer and in that year was living in Pendleton.  Sometime after 1849, James, Sarah and their children left for Canada which was a popular destination for emigrants.

Now I can be fairly certain of this because their last child was born in  England in 1849 and the Canadian census of 1851 records them as there.

Thousands of people, many of them from Ireland left these shores in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  Most hoped that a new country would mean a fresh start with new opportunities and a better life.

The 1840s were a hard time for all but the rich and there were schemes to resettle working families across the Empire. This was a policy that was actively pursued by the Poor Law Commissioners with parochial aid or assistance from local landlords.

The Commissioners reported that over 2, 000 had gone to Canada in 1841 which was an increase on the year before, and that assistance was also being given to move to Australia and New Zealand.

The main sea port for their departure was Liverpool.  In the hundred years from 1830 to 1930 over nine million emigrants sailed from to the US, Canada and Australia.

I don’t think we will ever know exactly why the Hampson's left and there is no record of when they went but they were part of a steadily rising number of people which  reached a high point in 1849.

Even today the decision to emigrate cannot be an easy one to take, but a hundred and sixty seven years ago the cost, the problems and the very real dangers must have weighed heavily.

A ticket for just one person travelling on the cheapest passage might be three to five times James’s weekly wage, and of course there were four of them.**

Then there were the ever present threats from unscrupulous dealers, ship owners and the crew who might cheat the passengers at every turn of the journey.

Lastly there was the sea passage itself, a trip of a month in a sailing ship at the mercy of an unpredictable weather on the open sea, crammed together with people some of whom were ill with disease.

So, taking that decision was as much an act of faith as it was a rational choice with a secure conclusion.
The ships might hold up wards of four hundred passengers although some like the Isaac Wright could carry 900 people.

The Hampson's could expect a fairly basic diet on the journey.  Each passenger was given a weekly ration of bread, rice, tea, sugar as well as oatmeal flour, molasses and vinegar and one pound of pork.   Passengers could however supplement this with their own provisions but there was an upper limit.

There are contemporary stories of passengers being cheated of their rightful ration either because it was delivered late or just not at all.

Conditions on board were not ideal.  Packed together there was the ever present threat of disease and death.

All the passengers were by law inspected by a doctor before they embarked but this did not always prevent the outbreak of illnesses.  In one month in 1847 twelve ships making landfall at Grosse Island reported a total of 198 dead passengers out of just over 3,000.

Some ships arrived safely with no deaths others like Bark Larch from Sligo lost 108 of its 440 passengers with another 150 reported ill.  The highest death rates seemed to be ships bound from Ireland escaping the effects of the famine some years earlier.***

Location; Salford, Greater Manchester

*The Eighth Annual Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, HMSO 1842, Page 37 Google edition page 58

** In 1847 a ticket might cost between £3.10/- and £5. From a newspaper article The tide of emigration in the Illustrated London  News July 1850

***Immigrants to Canada, http://jubilation.uwaterloo.ca/~marj/genealogy/thevoyage.html

Picture; detail of Pendleton from OS Lancashire 1841 courtesy of Digital Archives Association www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Walking Withington ……. on a grey indifferent June day ….. and throwing in a bit of history

I had hoped that the sun would being cracking the paving stones today.

Withington chimney's, the Red Lion, 2023

But June in Manchester can be as variable as any box of chocolates, and the hot sunny weather of last week has given over to one of those grey, grim days with just hint of rain.

That sort of rain which arrives without warning, trickles rather than falls and is never enough to warrant putting up the umbrella.

But in truth had Sammy sunshine chosen to brighten up Withington it would have been a distraction from a pleasant hour with David Rydeheard who shares with me a fascination for the history of Withington. 

David is a member of Withington Civic Society and as well as exploring a bit of the township’s story, we got an invite by Cate and Elizabeth to sample a bit of cake, at the weekly drop in at St Paul’s Church.*

St Paul's 2023, 

St Paul’s is I believe one of the only churches to have a war memorial to those who survived and came home as well as plaques recording those who died.  All three contain the names of those who left Withington to fight, and I think it shows originality of thinking to celebrate the living alongside the dead.**

Looking into the graveyard at St Paul's, 2023

At which point I could wander offer into a detailed story of the church but its web site says it much better than I could, leaving me just to offer up the link.***

And reflect that we had arrived too early to slip into the Red Lion which was a pub I frequented a lot in the 1970s and 80s and which saw the inquest in 1838 of Chorlton’s own Mary Moore who was brutally murdered on her way home from the Manchester Markets to Dog House Farm.

But that’s a story which has already featured on the blog.

Location; Withington

Pictures; wet days in Withington, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Withington shapes, 2023

*Withington Civic Society, https://sites.google.com/view/withington-civic-society

**St Paul’s Withington, https://www.stpaulswithington.org.uk/

***St Paul’s Withington Church History, https://www.stpaulswithington.org.uk/church-history/ 

The lost road names of Chorlton

Now there are a lot of lost road names in Chorlton.  

I say lost but most are just name changes.

I guess it was matter of eliminating duplicate names which appeared elsewhere in the city.

So Regent became Reeves, Crescent became Crossland and Oak Bank changed to Silverwood Avenue.

Now the most obvious moment to make the change was when we elected to join the city in 1904, but the old names persisted beyond 1911 and may have stretched into the 1960s.

It is one of these little puzzles that really can only be solved by sitting down with the street directories and working through them year by year until the changes appear.  Or waiting for someone to remember when the new road name went up.

So if there is anyone who wants to come forward please do.

In the meantime just possibly there might be an easier answer in this photograph from May 1959 of Oak Bank Avenue, which is now Silverwood Avenue.

Oak Bank may well have its got its name from a large house also called Oak Bank directly opposite on Barlow Moor Road.

It was set back from the main road and hidden in an extensive garden and orchard surrounded by meadow and arable land. Once the home of William Morton, by 1847 it was owned by the wine merchant Frederick Cope, who lived there from 1850 to 1855.

The estate ran from the junction of Wilbraham Road and Barlow Moor Road south down to Oak Avenue, then back following the line of Zetland Road to Corkland and up to what is Wilbraham Road.   

It may be that the name was changed to avoid confusion with Oak Avenue, either way the date seems to have been later than 1959 unless of course A.H.Downes who took the picture in the April of that year just read old “late road sign.”

And here is the challenge for people to collect and send  their own road name changes.  I can think of a few more but I bet there are even more.

Picture; December April 1959, A.H.Downes m17489, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

A pocket watch, a Canadian war veteran and a story of the power of international research

Now I grant you the above is not the most zippiest of titles but it delivers perfectly a turn of events.

The inscribed sentiment on the back of the watch

This is the watch of Earle C Duffin, born in Canada and served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force.*

He was born in 1886, enlisted in December 1914, and sailed for Europe the following August and by the April of 1916 he was in France.

He was demobbed in August 1919, having attained the rank of L. Col and married a Miss Mabel Ryan on July 20 1921 and the Winnipeg Tribune carried a wedding picture.

And that pretty much was that.  I had tracked his story around Canada and up to his marriages although I did have to admit getting his wife’s name completely wrong.

But I wasn’t giving up and made an appeal through the British Home Children facebook sites in Canada.

And almost as soon as Canada awoke a full five to seven hours after I posted the blog lots of people went off to look.

"An interesting wedding" .......... July 20 1921, The Wnnipeg Tribune

Bobby was first followed by others and Kevin came up with a fine wedding photograph, and obituaries on both Mr Duffin and Mrs Duffin.

The wait was worth it.  After the war Mr Duffin worked for the Daily Express, and Bowaters in New York before moving to Britain 1929.

In all he made eight ocean crossings between 1919 and 1946, and died in 1948.  Mrs Duffin survived him by another twenty years and according to her obituary  she died in London in the February of 1968.

Now I know that they settled in Britain I will go looking for more of the story.

Mr and Mrs Duffin had two children and there were  three grandchildren and perhaps that search will reveal how the watch made its way to eBay where it was bought by old friend David Harrop and will be part of his exhibition commemorating the Battle of The Somme on July 1 in the Remembrance Lodge of Southern Cemetery.

The watch

So a little bit more of the history of one family and a pointer to how with a bit of international cooperation a story takes a new turn.

And that is one in the eye for those who deride social media as just a vehicle to show off pictures of cats and offer up an update on which coffee shop is currently in vogue.

So thanks again to those in Canada.

We have come some way from a watch on eBay!

Location; Canada,the USA and Britain


Pictures; watch of Earl C Duffin, from the collection of David Harrop, picture from the Winnipeg Tribune researched by Kevin Laurence

*Surviving a century ........... the silver inscribed watch, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/surviving-century-silver-inscribed-watch.html

Celebrating our Municipal Town Halls part 3 .......... Woolwich Town Hall

It is all too easy to become cynical about public service and the achievements of local government.

Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries local government  more so than Westminster was at the cutting edge of improving the lives of local people.

As Sidney Webb said the “municipalities have done most to socialise our industrial life.”  And so a resident of Manchester, Birmingham or Glasgow could benefit from municipal supplies of water, gas and electricity, travel on municipally owned trams and buses, walk  through a municipally maintained park while knowing his children were being educated in municipally run schools.

“Glasgow builds and maintains seven public ‘common lodging houses’; Liverpool provides science lectures; Manchester builds and stocks an art gallery; Birmingham runs schools of design; Leeds creates extensive cattle markets; and Bradford supplies water below cost price. 

There are nearly one hundred free libraries and reading rooms. The minor services now performed by public bodies are innumerable.”*

And all of that was evidenced not only in the Corporation parks and schools and baths but in the town halls which were solid examples of both civic pride and local democracy.

So here is Woolwich Town Hall built in 1906 and opened by Will Crooks




Picture; Woolwich Town Hall, courtesy of Kristina Bedford*

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2014, Amberley Publishing,

Lessons from a stamp album …… no. 1 ….. this is who we are

Now I know it is stating the obvious to say that postage stamps can and are political.

Like coinage they aim to say something about a country, whether it is the leader, its system of government or its achievements.

I still have a collection of British postage stamps to commemorate the Battle of Hastings and the Battle of Britain.

Although some may ponder on why Britain wanted to commemorate a battle in which the Norman French were victorious, but some one will have an explanation.

And that leads me to a short series based on the collection of stamps from our Stella, who having salvaged my stamp albums of the 1950s, went on to make her own during the 1970s and 80s.

Like many of the family treasures they came north from Well Hall after father died, and for a while sat in the cellar which on reflection was not the kindest of places.

Forty years in a dry but cold cellar allowed some of the lose stamps to get stuck together, but others fared better.

And so here are some of those stamps which she bought from dealers, coming in small packs which retailed at 15p a sheet.

To start the series I have selected some from the former communist states of Poland and the USSR, which carry a very overt political message.

That said I do have to confess I went for the Polish stamps first  for another reason than our Julia is Polish and along with our Saul lives in Poland.

Enough said.

Location Poland and the USSR,, 1970s, 

Pictures; stamps from Poland and the USSR, 1970s, from the collection of Stella Simpson

Stories of steam .... the Fallowfied Railway Line ...... one to do today

Location; The Union Chapel, 2b Wellington Road, Fallowfield, M14 6EQ

Picture; LNER B17 Class No.1664 "Liverpool" storming through Wilbraham Road station with an east-bound express in 1946 or 47. Photograph by William Lees. This is at today's Athol Road entrance to the Fallowfield Loop.

Sun …. flowers …. heaps of history … and a thank you to the Friends of Chorlton Park

Yesterday over 30 people turned out for our first walk through Chorlton Park’s past.

History in the Park, 2023

It was at the invitation of the Friends of the park and this ramble through a bit of Chorlton’s history, covered the missing observatory, and racecourse, a sideways look at the historic Brookfield House and even more historic Hough End Hall and of course covered the story of the park.

Questions were asked about the open-air swimming pool, the bandstand and the wartime air raid shelter with a tad amount of speculation about the possible existence of Dig For Victory Allotments somewhere in the park.

Such are the stories about the place that Peter and I have decided to make it the next book in the series “nothing to do in chorlton”.*

And we invite you to offer up your own memories of the park, along with  treasured pictures which might be of a night in the air raid shelter, a carefree day in the padding pool or a magic moment in the pet’s corner.

Julie and the goat, circa 1970s

There may even be the odd “fascinating object” which was long ago discarded but which might have its own story.   In the course of digging some of the Friends revealed that they had come across fragments of clay pipe, broken crockery and “dark matter” which challenged them for an explanation.

During the walk Tony shared his father's memories of a barrage balloon and anti aircraft gun which were sighted in the park and of plying football and cricket on the pitches in the 1950s.

You can contact us at www.pubbooks.co.uk, where you can also see all the books by Andrew Simpson and Peter Topping.**

Location; Chorlton Park

Heaps of people listening to the park's past, 2023

Pictures; in the park listening to a heap of history, 2023, from the collection of Peter Topping and the goat and Julie in Chorlton Park circa early 1970s, from the collection of Julie Thomas

*Doing nothing in chorlton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20doing%20nothing%20in%20Chorlton

**www.pubbooks.co.uk

Postcard from Warsaw

Now, sometimes you just get lost in a story.

It seemed easy enough, or so I thought.  

The German on the picture postcard would be easy to translate.

But not so.  

The translation, if I have got it correct reads “Germans innocent in World War”.  The message on the back is undecipherable but I guess will not shed much light on the words on the front.

The post card was sent in the June of 1916 from Warsaw which had been occupied by the German army since the August of the previous year.

And would remain in German hands until November 1918.

I suppose we a dealing with a piece of propaganda but whether this was the message that was intended by the person who sent it is now lost.  

It may be that they were attracted by the lilies which according to one source “portray love, ardor, and affection for your loved ones”.*  An idea reinforced by the words above the portrait of the you women which reads, “Flower language: Lilies”.

Until I can work out the message on the back I am left with  the post marks, one of which appears to be a military one, referring to "Landstr Juf Batl. Burg IV 85", and the other carries the location “Warschau” with the date June 28th, 1916.

There is one last clue and that is the name of the picture postcard company who are listed on the back as R&K, and that this one was 2654/1.  But I fear trying to find information on a German/Polish company a century and bit after the event will lead nowhere.

Location; Warsaw

Pictures; message from Warsaw 1916, from the collection of David Harrop

*Lilies, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilium#Symbolism

When dialling a number meant just that, Graham's uncle's phone from 1968

In an age of mobile phones which can pretty much do everything you want this picture of a 1968 GPO standard issue household set brings back memories.

We have one here in our home and like the one in Graham’s picture it comes in one colour.

There were other colours, I remember ours in Well Hall Road was grey and the swanky people behind us had a white one.

There is something very reassuring about using a dial instead of buttons, and I only wish ours still worked.

But it was damaged long ago and now will only slowly complete its return half circle from the last number dialled.

Its successor the trimphone now looks less elegant and even more dated.  Ours was put in sometime around 1969, and I can’t say it was a success.

As I remember it was too light and had a tendency slide across the table when you were dialling and worse still could fall off the table as you moved around using it.

But at the time it came to represent all that was new and shinny and by the time ours arrived the GPO had become Post Office Telecommunications.

A decade or so later and I had my first push button set which was exactly like the one above but with of course a set of buttons, and finished in handsome grey.

Over the years new phones have come and gone including the revolutionary one which displayed the caller’s number.

More recently there has been a bewildering selection of cordless phones which we have bought and temporarily lost down the back of armchairs or on one memorable occasion in a pair of jeans.

So I am rather fond of the old sturdy dial a friend phones.  Graham assures me that the one installed in his uncle’s house in 1968 still works perfectly, “but no use if you call an answering machine” which I suspect is no bad thing.

Pictures; 1968 which I rather think is a GPO Telephone 711, courtesy of Graham Gill and the 1969 GPO 1/722F MOD Grey & Green Rotary Dial Trimphone Telephone by Diamondmagna