Two pictures ….. and more stories

I have Steve Casson to thank for these two picture postcards of the old St Clements’s Church and the Bowling Green Hotel.

St Clememt's Church, date unknown

I don’t have dates for either, but the battered state of the cards suggests we are back in the 19th century.

And that distressed state adds to their impact, offering up heaps of possible stories, of who originally owned them, how they survived and how eventually they passed to Steve.

But there is even more.

So, in the case of the church there are those steps leading up to the rear of the old Bowling Green Hotel.  

I say old because the pub was demolished to make way for the present building which dates from 1908.

All of which suggests that our photographer was standing roughly on the site of the new pub.

I had never realized that the old pub stood on a slight rise.

The image also gives a fine view of the church from an angle I have also never seen, and along with the details of the windows and great east window there is the pipe of the Arnott stove which was used to keep the church warm.

Bowling Green Hotel, date unknown

The picture of the Bowling Green Hotel is one I am familiar with, but never ceases to interest me.

Steve has also passed over a series of newspaper clippings covering the removal of the headstone memorial to PC Cock who was murdered in Whalley Range, and an act of vandalism to the churchyard when gravestones were toppled over.

PC Cook’s story is in itself a fascinating one offering up an insight into how some mistrusted the Irish, after suspicion fell on the Hebron brothers who were agricultural labourers from Ireland.

Luckily for them the real murderer confessed.

Mr. Casson in the former churchyard, 1978

The memorial stone to the policeman was removed in 1956 to the head quarters of the Lancashire Constabulary at Preston, and in its place is a modest stone inscription close to the Lych Gate.

For years there was also a wooden noticeboard above the bar in the Bowling Green which recounted the story of the murder, but alas it disappeared a long time ago.

But at least we now have this collection of material connected to the church and graveyard.

Steve told me that "I would be confident that the photos were at one time in the possession of Fred maybe through his connections as verger". 

Mr. Casson had been a verger at the church from 1930 till its closure in 1940, he served in the Great War in the Lancashire Fusiliers and was the local window cleaner. 

Location; Chorlton graveyard

Pictures; the old St Clements’s Church and Bowling Green Hotel, undated, newspaper clipping from the Journal April 13th 1978 featuring Mr. Casson, courtesy of Steve Casson