When you are only just a picture away from a long time ago .......

You know you are old when a picture like this is not some funny old “gent” in silly trousers with a car that belongs in a museum, but a familiar friend and the man is your dad.

For our kids and grandchildren, the scene is not just old but ancient.

For me on the other hand, I have seen it lots of times, and it connects me with Dad before I knew him and before he became just Dad, the teller of silly jokes, the craftsman who could turn out the most wonderful Christmas toys made of wood and the man of mystery who in the summer was gone for months driving posh people on coaching holidays across the Continent.

So, this is that other dad, sometime in the late 1920s into the following decade when he was single with that glint in his eye, heaps of charm and a smile that instantly made you at ease with him.

Added to which there were the cars, and I mean cars, because across several pictures he is beside the wheel of some very sporty numbers along with cheaper but no less magic automobiles.

I have no idea how he came across them, whether they were bought, hired or borrowed, but he and they were companions along with a variety of other “companions” who always look happy in his presence.

I never thought to ask who these young women were, and I doubt Dad would have said, offering instead an enigmatic smile followed by a clearing of the throat and a change of subject.

Nor with the passage of ninety or so years are we ever going to know.

If there were tender letters of affection exchanged with these friends none have survived and now there is no one left to ask.

Not that I think I would ask, after all even your dad deserves a little privacy, as do we all.

But I do like the way that three very old pictures of cars that belong in a museum span the near century and are a direct line of continuity to me sitting in our house and a different historical landscape.

They are a cut down version of how we sometimes connect to the past. 

I remember asking one of my uncles about his memories of the General Strike of 1926, when he was living in Gateshead.  I was expecting accounts of workers at meetings, and of strike breakers driving lorries and railway trains, but instead I got the memory of just how clear the skyline was, freed from the smoke thrown up by hundreds of factory chimneys.

In the same way I was fascinated by two accounts of women from the 1940s.

In the first, a woman in her 80s recalled a conversation with an even more elderly woman who worked as a servant in the court of King George III, while another woman talked about her great grandmother’s reaction on hearing the news of the execution of the French Queen in 1793.

What I like is that in just two people’s memories we are back at the end of the 18th century, and that makes me wish I could have eavesdropped on the conversation between the philosopher Bertrand Russel and one of his relatives who had discussed the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832 with Lord John Russell who had campaigned for Parliamentary reform.

Or I could just have asked Dad where he got the cars.

Location; unknown

Pictures; Dad, a friend and three cars, undated from the Simpson collection

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 25 Ashley Lane ............. now even the name is lost

Now Richard’s picture of Aspin Lane as it runs under the railway viaduct is as atmospheric as you could get.

Aspin Lane, 2016

The wet stone setts, the lonely lane framed by that viaduct takes you back a century or more to another age when this bit of Angel Meadow was one of those places where “poverty busied itself.”

Like Richard I have spent many years wandering the streets around the old St Michael’s Rec and burial ground.  In my case it came after meeting the historian Jacqueline Roberts, reading her book on the area and using some of her material in classes I taught on working class housing in the 19th century.*

And it was she who first introduced me to the idea of using census material to engage students in exploring social history.  The unit focused on the streets around Irk Street, John Street and Back Ashley Lane in the 1851.

Ashley Lane, 1849

Here in just 16 houses lived 120 people, making their living from a variety of occupations from factory work, to cap makers, porters and that lowest of jobs, a brush maker.

Some like Mr and Mrs Shaw and their three children lived in the cellar of number 3 Back Irk Street, while round the corner at nu 3 John Street the eight members of the Riley family were squeezed into one of its two rooms.

So Richard’s photograph drew me in but as hard as I looked there was no Aspin Lane on the old maps, but that was simply because Aspin Lane was indeed Ashley Lane and an unknown photographer had got there before us and in 1910 took a picture from almost the same spot.

Ashley Lane, 1910

But all stories deserve a second look.

And after my old facebook friend Bill questioned me on my comment on the status of brushmakers I went looking for more on them. 

And the Working Class Movement Library offered some interesting detail, leading me to correct my assumption this was a precarious and low status occupation.**

Location; Angel Meadow

Pictures; Aspin Lane, 2016 from the collection of Richard Hector- Jones, and in 1910, m00218, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 142-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Roberts, Jacqueline, Working Class Housing in Nineteenth-century Manchester: The Example of John Street, Irk Town, 1826-1936 1983

***Brushmakers, Working Class Movement Library, https://www.wcml.org.uk/our-collections/working-lives/brushmakers/

The last of the unseen pictures of Chorlton-cum-Hardy

This the last of six picture postcards of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, marketed by Rapid Art Photography Company, sometime in the 1930s.

And of the six, this is the only one I have seen before.

The other five were all of familiar landmarks but taken from unusual angles, making them just that bit different.*

But this one of St Werburgh’s pretty much conforms to your standard image.

The foundation stone for the church was laid in 1899, and it opened three years later, and in the words of one of our historians was “to fulfil the spiritual needs of the people who had come to live in the new house built near Chorlton Station and Alexandra Park Station on the Fallowfield Line”.**

The full story of the church and all the other places of worship across Chorlton and West Didsbury can be found in Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples, A Synagogue And A Mosque.***

Which just leaves me to return to the choice of the six images for the picture postcards.  One was of Chorlton Park, a second was of Hough End Hall, and third looked out across Chorlton Golf course, leaving two of the River Mersey and Jackson’s Boat and this one of the church.

There is no logical theme underlying the choice, and while some fit together by virtue of their proximity to each other, St Werburgh’s sits alone.

Perhaps they were a random choice made by someone sitting in the headquarters in London or the favourites of the photographer, but what ever the reason for the selection they are different from the usual set of Chorlton images.

And that is it.  I thank Jennie Brooks for finding the six and Michael Billington for emailing them over to me.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; St Werburgh’s Church, circa 1930s, courtesy of Jennie Brooks

* Chorlton Pictures the unseen 6, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Pictures%20the%20unseen%206

**Templar, Nora, Chorlton-cum-Hardy Fellowship of Churches, 1988, page 12

*** Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples, A Synagogue And A Mosque, Andrew Simpson & Peter Topping, 2018

Looking for Dad at Eltham Fire Station in 1908

We will never know whether Lizzie’s aunt appreciated this picture postcard of our Fire Station.

But as she had been receiving regular such pictures of Eltham, I rather hope she did.

The added bonus was that there in the photograph was Lizzie’s Dad, which prompted Lizzie to ask “Do you recognise dad?

There is lots more detail but I rather think I will leave that up to you to search out.

Location; Eltham Fire Station











Picture; Eltham Fire Station,1908, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

Peck's Salmon paste ........ spread on bread and a meal in one

Peck's meat and fish pastes were something I grew up with.

They came in small glass jars and offered up a variety of tastes, from fish, salmon, beef and chicken and were spread on bread.

I had all but forgotten them until my friend Lois opened up the flood gates of memory with a story on her blog.*

I did go looking for the story of Peck's a few years ago but the research led nowhere and I gave up.

Now I knew there was an Australian connection because the jars arrived via a friend of mums who was given them at work and she said they were from Australia.

It never occurred to me to ask but I think B worked for a wholesale firm and these came as one of the perks of the job.

You were never quite sure what would arrive and I suspect that was also how it was with B.

I remember they dominated our lives and were a quick meal, although now I have no idea which I preferred.

Looking back now over fifty years I see they sit along with dripping, blancmange and tinned fruit salad as part of our basic diet and would only be replaced by the fish finger, beef burger and instant whip sometime in the 1960s.

Not that any of this helped with Peck's products.

The best I could do comes from the site of General Mills which is a food company based in Minneapolis and which has  factories still producing the pastes in Australia.**

It would appear that Peck's were making their spreads in Britain by 1891 and opened up in Australia in 1904 reaching their highest sales in the 1950s and 60s.

All of which fits and confirmed that I hadn't mistaken our Australian paste jars and of course offers up that simple observation that more often than not childhood memories are more likely to be true than imagined.

And in turn reminds me of that post war period when rationing had ended but the full impact of the consumer revolution had yet to arrive and in the absence of a cornucopia of instant foods, Pecks pastes on sandwiches did the job.

Pictures; adverts for Pecks product date unknown, taken from Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand

*Paste sandwiches anyone?  http://loiselden.com/2015/04/29/paste-sandwiches-anyone/

** Spreading the love for a vintage Australian brand, Taste of General Mills, March 2015, http://www.blog.generalmills.com/2015/03/spreading-the-love-for-a-vintage-australian-brand/

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 148 ….. winter on Beech Road

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Strictly speaking it is now 108 years but I am not counting.

And today the story is nothing more than a reflection on the return of an old fashioned winter's day on Beech Road.

It is cold, a pale and indifferent sun has done nothing to lift the temperature, but it ain't raining and that is a bonus as Nigel and Craig are setting about relacing the roof on the jutty out bit at the back of the house.

The tiles a builder used 40 years ago were too heavy, have cause some damage and we are going back to slates ..... the sort Joe would have used back in 1915 when he built the house.

And that is about it, other than to say at midday the evidence of the early morning frost is still there for all to see.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Winter on Beech Road, 20223 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Always make a record ……. Shudehill before a tram or the bus

How easy it is to forget the more recent changes to our city.

The tram stop, 2023

I don’t mean that time before the rise of the giant towers which now dominate the skyline in almost every direction and are very striking scene as you travel in by tram from Cornbrook into Deansgate Castlefield.

Or for that matter the journey in to the city centre along the Oxford Road corridor or Rochdale Road from the north.

I am thinking instead of the bits in between like the entrance to Victoria Station, and the tall development at Nicholas Croft.

Into the bus station, 2023

All of which is an introduction to the Shudehill Interchange, which happened while I wasn’t looking.

My Wikipedia tells me that is a “is a transport hub between Manchester Victoria station and the Northern Quarter in Manchester city centre, which comprises a Metrolink stop and a bus station.

The tracks through the site were opened in 1992; however, the tram stop did not open until 31 March 2003. 

The bus part of the interchange opened on 29 January 2006.

Construction had initially started on the bus station in 1998 and it was planned to have been completed and fully operational by 2000, but several disputes over the ownership of the site along with two public inquiries over the course of five years resulted in the construction work on the station being halted until 2003”.*

The lonely wait, 2023

Now given the date 1992 there will be those that matter I must have had “my eyes closed for a long time”.

Which is of course possible but in reality had more to do with the simple fact that during the 1990s I rarely went to Victoria Railway Station or Shudehill.

When two trams meet, 2023

But perhaps I just wasn’t that observant to the point that when our Ben talked about getting a bus from Shudehill bus station I was a tad puzzled.

All of which has now been rectified, and as an alternative to the Second City Crossing, I will take the tram from St Peter’s Square via Market Street through Shudehill and onto Victoria.

Earlier in the week Shudehill was my go to destination, which I used as the staring point for a wander up to the Rochdale Road across to Swan Street, Eagle Street and round to High Street into the heart of the Northern Quarter.

So that is it, leaving me just to post some of the “interchange" pictures and one courtesy of John Casey when the tram tracks were in the making on their way to Victoria.

That said I have to confess that there were buses on Shudehill before the Interchange and even a horse drawn mail coach service to Ashton Under Lyne at the start of the 19th century from the Hare and Hounds.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Location; Shudehill

Tram rails in the making, 1990s

Pictures; Shudehill Interchange, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and tram rails in the making, 1990s courtesy of John Casey

*Shudehill Interchange, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shudehill_Interchange

Hough End Hall …… from the unseen collection of Chorlton pictures

It is easy to miss Hough End Hall.

It is partially hidden by two rather ugly office blocks, has a school and carpark to the rear and can only be glimpsed from the main road which nearly caused its destruction.

Many people will automatically assume it is part of Chorlton, and it does lookout on Chorlton Park, but it was once the home of the Lords of Withington, it’s inhabitants were listed in the census returns for Withington and it was built by an Elizabethan businessmen who had bought up into the connection with Withington.

The hall was built in 1596 by Sir Nicholas Mosley, passed into the estate of the Egerton family in the 18th century, and from then on was variously a farmhouse, restaurant, set of offices, and after an uncertain period when it was empty and waiting a buyer, it became an Islamic Centre.

All of which brings me to the picture postcard, which is one of six, dating from sometime in the 1930s, and were marketed by the Rapid Art Photography Company.

The Hall in the picture is in its last phase as a farmhouse, and by the time the photograph was taken, the land around the farmhouse had shrunk from 250 acres in the 1850s down to just three.

By 1940, the tenancy passed to the Bailey family who were just across the road and worked the three acres in conjunction with their own farm.

In the 1960s, the bailey’s sold the hall and plot to a developer. And later in the century it became a restaurant.

Since the beginning of the 20th century the hall, has seen off plans to demolish it for a road widening scheme, been the centre of a series of creative idea to transform it into an art gallery and community hub and is now an owned by an Islamic group.

What I like about the picture, is not only the image of the hall, but the surrounding detail, like the farm cart casually left in the garden, the outhouses and the glimpse of the fields in the distance.

Which just leaves me to close with the book on the hall, which I wrote with Peter Topping back in 2015.

It tells the story from when Sir Nicholas splashed out some of his money made in London to replace a much older family home, which was no longer to adequate to showcase the family's success.

The book covers the tops turvey history of the Mosley family, its time as a farmhouse, spanning 250 years and its time as a restaurant, containing many old black and white photographs, a series of original paintings by Peter, and contemporary accounts as well as my stories.

Location; Hough End Hall






Picture; Hough End Hall, circa 1930s, from a picture postcard, courtesy of Jennie Brooks

*Hough End Hall The Story Andrew Simpson & Peter Topping, 2015

Treasures from adventures in Peckham and Greenwich .............

To this day I wonder what happened to the gas mask and the replica18th century cap gun we found on our adventures.

Andrew Simpson, 1959

They weren’t found on the same day and now almost sixty years after the discoveries I have no clear idea of when we actually came across them.

We found the gas mask in a row of derelict houses on Queens Road up past the station.

I always thought that the block had been the victim of the Blitz, but it is more likely they were just awaiting demolition having done seventy or so years and were too tired to be saved.

And on what was a grey indifferent winter’s day with the light fading Jimmy, me and John Cox went exploring in the houses.

I remember they were still pretty much intact and somehow we got inside, wandered around and came across a pristine gas mask, still in its box.

It had that shinny look as if it had just come off the production line, with not a mark or scratch.

The filter I remember was white and there was a green painted strip around the black nozzle and I have no idea what happened to it.

It will have been the prize of the day but who took possession of it or what they did with it is lost.

Walking the tunnel, 2017

I do know that the cap gun stayed with me for a while and may have lingered around the house till we moved out to Eltham.

It had been found on one of our regular walks through the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, somewhere midway when the incline ends and you start to see the other end.

As adventures go it was always one of the good ones.  Aged ten there was the slight thrill at being under the River with all that water above you, and more often than not you were almost on your own, making the place just that bit scary.

Looking down to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, 1977

Added to which there were the echo of your voices and then the sound of strange footsteps which would take an age before you could identify the person they belonged to.

Sometimes that led to the guessing game. Grown up or kid, male or female, old or young?  There were endless permutations and it lasted as long as it took for the mystery person to appear or how soon we bored with the game.

Finally there was the exit into that other place and having got there we felt obliged to stay in the small park and gaze out back across the river towards home.

But mindful that we were on someone else’s turf the stay was always short.

The Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1978

What I do find curious is that we never used the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, that had to wait until the family moved to Eltham, and with the counter attraction of the Ferry, walking under the Thames was never going to happen.

By which time my Peckham adventures were over.

But in rediscovering them I remembered one last find, which came from the old Gaumont on Peckham High Street.  It wasn’t one I often went in preferring the ABC on the Old Kent Road but it was there that I found a shed load of those old film cuttings, which were small but when held up to light revealed an image.

The trouble of course was that there was little chance of ever re-sequencing them and in a matter of months they were thrown away. Just when I had come across them is also forgotten but I do know that the cinema closed on May 15th 1961, bowing out with Norman Wisdom in the “Bulldog Breed”and “The Final Dream”.

Such are the discoveries made on adventures.

Pictures; the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson, Looking down to the foot tunnel, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons, Andrew Simpson, circa 1959 and the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Who remembers those long coach journeys out to Ewell for an afternoon’s sport?

Now if like me you grew up in one of the inner London boroughs the chances are that one afternoon a week you were bused out to Ewell in Surrey during term time.

I did four years and may have done a fifth although I rather think by the time I was in year 11 we could opt out.

And it was a mammoth undertaking, involving transporting a whole year group by coach from New Cross to the leafy outer suburbs which for me also meant a Saturday morning during the winter to play in the school rugby team.

It was not for me the highlight of the week, in fact it was an ordeal brought on by my inability to travel on buses, coaches and cars without feeling ill.

It began with the smell of those green coaches which the school hired which even now brings on that same uneasy feeling.

I suppose they were the newest of models and were pretty much the workhorse of the company ferrying school children to Ewell, works parties down to the sea coast and hired out to other companies.

And then as the journey got underway the heat from the engine and the smell of the leather seats mixed with an overpowering scent was enough to set me off, made no easier by the knowledge that this was it for 40 minutes only to be repeated again later in the day.

I won’t have been alone in feeling like that and I guess it was a small price to pay to get us all out to participate in a range of sporting activities.

But it does point to that simple observation that if you went to an inner city secondary school there weren’t going to be acres of green fields surrounding the school.

Back on home base we had the asphalt playground and another on the roof of the new block and that was it.

It was another of those little things that marked secondary moderns off from grammar schools.

But in that brave post War era the LCC and the Inner London Education Authority set about offering us out at Ewell something others took for granted.

Looking back I can see the wisdom of their actions even if the experience was an ordeal.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Miss Lydia William Falconar Grant ……… a nurse from the Great War

I never tire of the way that a chance picture of some one long dead sets off a story which goes off in a dozen different directions.

And so, it was yesterday when Tony sent over his photograph of one of the gravestones in Southern Cemetery with the comment, “knowing your interest in the Red Cross I thought you might find this interesting”, which of course I did.

The grave belongs to Miss Lydia William Falconar Grant, who died on April 1st, 1917 at the Ducie Avenue Military Hospital.  

The inscription reads “Lydia William Falconar Grant V.A.D. Member of the Red Cross Society of Australia, born at Falcon Hall, Morningside, Edinburgh and died at Ducie Avenue Military Hospital, Manchester, on the 1st of April 1917, Elder daughter of Peter G. Grant & Emily Grant of Brisbane, Queensland”.

She was born in Scotland in 1880, grew up in Australia, served at a military hospital just off Oxford Road, in Manchester, and died just a year after she was engaged by the Red Cross as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

This was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for servicemen in the UK and across the British Empire.

And this was the start of the story.

Falcon Hall was a very large 18th century mansion in Edinburgh, which according to one source belonged to the family.  Her father described himself as a “land surveyor”, and after returning to Australia in late 1880 he appears to have become a police magistrate.

Miss. Grant was educated at the Ladies’ Methodist College in Melbourne, and was living in Brisbane when she volunteered to serve with the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

She left Australia in September 1916, and after four days in London was posted to Manchester, beginning work in December of that year.

According to one press report she  felt the intense cold weather in Manchester but “she was always very happy, and keenly interested in her work.  Her letters showed also that she had met with great kindness from those with whom she came into contact, and found both in sisters and nurses engaged in the same hospital much congenial comradeship”.*

The hospital was the former Ducie Avenue Municipal school, which had been requisitioned in 1916, and consisted of 240 beds, of which 88 were specialists’ ones, and until 1917 it had an orthopedic section.

Sadly, she contracted measles in the late March of 1917, which developed into Septic Arthritis on March 28th, and by the following day she “became unconscious with very little hope of recovery”.

Her funeral was reported in The Searchlight, which was the monthly publication of Second Western General Hospital in May, reporting that "Miss. Grant was one of the first contingent of the Australian Probationer who came to us last November and during her short period of work here and also during her illness, bravely and patiently borne had greatly endeared herself to all she came into contact.

She was laid to rest in Southern Cemetery on April 4th, close to the grave of V.A.D., Nursing Member Pearce, whom we buried only a few weeks ago.  At the request of friends, the funeral was a private one, and the service, which was very impressive, was conducted by the Ven. Archdeacon Aspinall, assisted by Cap, Worseley.  

It was attended by Sargt. C Grant, 1st Australian Division, Capt. Brentnall, R.A.M.C. (T.F.) and a large number of Sisters and nurses of the Second Western General Hospital staff, including seven other members of the Australian contingent”.

I doubt I will ever get to see the letters she wrote home, and so have no way of knowing what she thought of Manchester, but I hope on her days off she got to see something of the city.

There will be more that will come to light about Miss Grant.

For now, we have a photograph, an entry in the book commemorating the work of the 2nd Western General Hospital,*** her Red Cross record card and a handful of other sources.

And I have to thank Bruce Terrell who is a relative and first alerted me to the photograph of Miss. Grant and to Bruce Anderson who gave me permission to reproduce pictures of the Ducie Avenue Military Hospital from his excellent web site, Rusholme & Victoria Park Archive****, and went off and did his own research and coming back with many of the other sources I used, from the Cairns Family History.

Leaving me just to thank Tony Goulding who sent me the picture of the grave and set me on  the story.

Location; Scotland, Australia, Manchester

Pictures; gravestone of Miss Lydia William Falconar Grant, 2020, from the collection of Tony Goulding, cover 2nd Western General Hospital, 1919, courtesy of David Harrop, photograph of Miss. Grant, Women in war, ANZAC Centenary Queensland, 2014-2018, https://anzac100.initiatives.qld.gov.au/remember/women-in-war/index.aspx, Ducie Avenue Military Hospital, 1916-1919, courtesy of Rusholme & Victoria Park Archive, https://rusholmearchive.org/rusholme-military-hospitals-1914-1918

* Cairns Family History, https://cdfhs.org/indexes/cairns-wwi-soldiers/grant-lydia-wilhelmina-falconer/

**The Late Miss Lydia Grant,  V.A.D., Cairns Post May 16th, 1917

*** 2nd Western General Hospital, Manchester , 1914-1919

**** Ducie Avenue Military Hospital, 2nd Western General Hospital, Rusholme & Victoria Park Archive, https://rusholmearchive.org/rusholme-military-hospitals-1914-1918

***** Cairns Family History, https://cdfhs.org/indexes/cairns-wwi-soldiers/grant-lydia-wilhelmina-falconer/

Don't grieve for me Tom Mix .... I remember you only as Hanburys

So, farewell

2023

That place on Barlow Moor Road.

To me you will always be Hanburys,

But for those newcomers you were just the Co-op

And for those whose memories stretch back beyond 1970,

You were Radio Rentals, Tesco and of course the Palais De Luxe.

I missed your glory days as the cinema of dreams

And while some have over the years called you

The Bug Hut, and Nitty Nora’s Home from Home

You were our first true picture house,

Opened in 1914 and lasted a few short decades,

Till television and a night in front of the box

1928

Finished you off.

I owe you this last picture from Peter Topping

Who snapped you on November 25th

And if now I wandered up to see you

1980s

I fear you will have gone,

Leaving only a pile of twisted girders, broken concrete

And heaps of celluloid memories.

As for those who ask what next?

I offer up  a link to the Planning Portal*

Where all will be revealed.

Location Barlow Moor Road

Pictures; Goodbye to my cinema dreams, 2023, Peter Topping, The Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, Hanburys shopping bag, 1980s, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill, 

*097667/FO/2011/S1, Erection of a part 3/part four storey building to form a commercial use on the ground floor and 13 self-contained flats above, with associated car parking (5 spaces) and cycle storage, following demolition of existing property, Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=LTKO3CBC06N00&activeTab=summary

The Manchester of soot lined buildings which oozed confidence

Now this is the Manchester of my youth.

I say youth but I was just turning 19 and many of the old Victorian and Edwardian buildings were still around.

They were soot covered and some had become very neglected but they oozed confidence and they were Manchester.

Of course Mr Hitler and Derek the Developer had done for many of them but there were still enough left to impress me when I walked the city streets in between lectures in the late 1960s and early ‘70.

It would be easy and a little cheap to mourn the passing of many of them which I suspect had been uncomfortable places to work when they were built.

And those modern developments do express that same mix of assertive self confidence and commercial drive.

This one on the corner of Princess Street and Mosley Street fascinates me.

I can’t now remember if it was still standing when I arrived and the site would later become the Peace Gardens before becoming the new home for the Cenotaph.

It was there by the late 19th century offering office space upstairs while the downstairs was occupied Alexander Thomson who were stationers, R.S Bayley who traded in cigars and on the corner Mr Sinclair who was a tobacconist in 1911.

Not much had changed by 1968 when our image was taken.  There was still the same range of small shops, and the one that caught my eye which was the “Wallpaper Shop”.

I doubt that such a shop would have much of a future in the city centre today.

And this last comment I have had to modify given the comment below from a someone who points out that there is a very impressive store on Deansgate.

The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".

And that only leaves me o include one I tool earlier from the Art Gallery looking out almost on the same spot.

Now what ever I have already said about liking grimy Victorian and Edwardian buildings I have to say that what they have done on the corner of Princess Street and Mosley Street is just so much better, affording a fine view of the entrance to the Town Hall.

But that last comment will no doubt be challenged.

We shall see.

Location Manchester






Picture; of Princess Street, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and looking at almost the same spot in 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542

A golf course a new park for south Manchester and a bit of a storm

Now someone will be able to place just where this picture was taken, although the passage of almost 90 years might be a challenge.

The photograph was one of six, marketed by the Rapid Art Photography Company, sometime in the 1930s.

By which time Chorlton Golf course had seen off a plan in 1914 by Manchester Corporation to appropriate part of the course for a new super park for south Manchester.*

Naturally the 450 members of the club opposed the scheme, but there was a recognition that the park would “benefit the entire southern side of the city [and] do more for that part of Manchester than Heaton Park does for the northside.”*

In addition, the Corporation  had proposed “a town planning scheme which means at least wide roads, better houses, gardens and tree planting” and offered up the possibility of following other big city parks with “playing fields for football and cricket and a lake for boating”.

And not for the last time looked to improving the road link between Manchester and Cheshire with a major road using “the track known as Hardy Lane and then over the Mersey by Jackson’s Bridge”.

To which some pointed to the total impracticability of the park and highway on what was a flood plain.

But I rather think what did for the park scheme in 1914 was the outbreak of war just five months after the plan was first floated.

Location-Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Chorlton Golf Club, circa 1930s, courtesy of Jennie Brooks

* Barlow Hall, a court case and the promise of a park for Chorlton and Didsbury on the banks of the Mersey; https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/11/barlow-hall-court-case-and-promise-of.html

*The Proposed new Park for Manchester, the Manchester Guardian, April 11, 1914 

That amazing Mr Banks ....... his pictures and other practitioners of his trade

Now I remain fascinated by what can turn up in an old cupboard, under the floor boards or in this case the family picture album.

And for what follows I have my old friend Oliver Bailey to thank, who having read the story on the photographer, Robert Banks, sent up a selection of the trade cards which accompanied some of the family pictures.

Oliver told me that "glancing through your blog on I saw the name Banks, which rang a bell as he was one of many that took photos of different branches of the family and I attach copies of mountings he used plus a list of all the practitioners of the art that the family used".

All of which was a find indeed.

Mr Banks was born in 1847, his father was a journeyman carpenter, and at fifteen he was employed as a woollen piercer in Upper Mill.  At the age of twenty he was an illustrated artist working for the Oldham Chronicle and in 1867 had set up as a photographer in the High Street at Uppermill.

From there he set up in Manchester, was employed to take family photographs, and went out on to the streets of the city to record what he saw.

He was commissioned by the Corporation in 1878 to photograph a series of pictures of the newly opened Town Hall and went on to compile sets of albums including the opening of the Ship Canal, the unveiling of Queen Victoria’s statue, and King Edward’s visit in 1909.

The mountings on the back of Oliver’s family photographs record the growing success of Mr Banks who by degree began opening studios across the city and beyond including Blackpool.

Along with these cards, Oliver provided a list of 35 other photographers, many of whom were working outside Manchester and include places ranging from Todmorden, Southport, Rochdale, Pendleton, Halifax and Burnley.

At which point I will have to go back to Oliver and enquire as to how so many far flung photographers were snapping the family.  I suppose the explanation for some like Southport, Hollingworth Lakes, and Douglas in the Isle of Man will be holiday opportunities, But Sierra Leone will throw up a story.

The list is a treasure trove, because it offers the chance to pursue the careers of each of these picture takers.
I know the Manchester ones will be there in the local directories which I have but the ‘out of town’ ones are all new to me and over time I will pursue them.

Just leaving me to thank Oliver, whose family farmed in Chorlton from the 1760s.

Location; everywhere






Pictures, trade cards from Robert Banks, late 19th, early 20th centuries, from the collection of Oliver Bailey

Private Ernest Francis Hahn from Australia, who was buried in Southern Cemetery in 1915 aged 22

It began with this simple grave stone in Southern Cemetery to a young man who died far from his home having crossed the world to fight at Gallipoli.

He was Ernest Francis Hahn who had been born in Redesdale in what was then still “the colony of Victoria” in Australia on June 23 1893, and left Melbourne in the December of 1914 ending up on the shores of the Ottoman Empire in the ill fated Gallipoli campaign.

He was wounded in early May with gunshot wounds to his chest and died here in Manchester at the General Hospital of enteric fever on June 25 1915.

It is a story that could be replicated many times but what marks this story out is that David Harrop posted the picture on a social network site in response to a request for information about Private Hahn's grave in Southern Cemetery from a relative and almost immediately he received a reply from Margaret Cooper in Australia, who supplied David with the story of this young man and concluded with that it was “nice to see the photos at Southern Cemetery and that he has such a peaceful resting place.”

And with Margaret's permission I was able to access a wealth of family material  which gave a context to the life of young Ernest who was the son of Heinrich Frederick Hahn who had been born in Germany in 1843, settled in Australia in 1865 and married Jane Rose in 1870.

Mr and Mrs Hahn had fourteen children had worked hard and were well respected in their home town.

Amongst the documents were Ernest's birth certificate, his obituary and his ANZAC medal along with much more about his brothers and sisters.

What also makes this new link with Margaret's family all the more fascinating is the sight of an Australian birth certificate which differs from those issued in Britain and which provided a wealth of additional information not included on our own.

All of which has added to my own knowledge and wish to go looking for my own Australian family.

So we all win and I shall close with Margaret's reply to my last email, "thank you for telling the story of Ernest Hahn in your blog. 

Gradually the stories of the occupants of the lonely graves are being told and it is nice to know people care and remember them and want to record who they were and something about their lives..............I think Australians are surprised at the respect shown by the English towards the war graves."

And here of course I have to mention David and his  unique collection of memorabilia from both world wars, some of which is permanently on show a in the Remembrance Lodge.

Picture; the grave stone of Private E R Hahn, 2015 from the collection of David Harrop, and Private E R Hahn's ANZAC medal courtesy of Margaret Cooper.

Additional material courtesy of Margaret Cooper

Looking into the future of Eltham High Street in 1975

The High Street in 1910

Now I don’t normally go in for then and now pictures but I have made an exception with these two images from a 1975 document issued by the Council.*

The book was part of a planning consultation and fell through the letter box after I had long left Well Hall for Manchester.

I am not sure what my dad and sister Stella thought of the process, or the ideas but now both the planning exercise and their suggestions  are as much a piece of history as any of the stories I usually write.

The High Street in 1971

So along with the 1970s pictures there is also an insight into how the planners were thinking back then and just how far the bold new world they suggested has come about.

And for me the images have a special connection. Our Stella worked at the library and from 1964 till I left Well Hall in '69 it was a regular venue, along I remember with Marks & Spencer's where I bought my first ever fruit yogurt.

Now that is not only revealing a secret but says so much on the new horizons which were opening up for a lad from south East London.

Pictures; from A Future for Eltham Town Centre, Greenwich Borough Council, Planning Department, 1975

*Of town plans and visions of a future that never quite happened, Eltham in the 1970s and Manchester in 1945.http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/of-town-plans-and-visions-of-future.html