Looking for the first carol singer in Chorlton-cum-Hardy

As titles go it is a bit daft even for a history blog, and I guess ranks with Carol Singer bites dog and the carol singers who started singing in Easter.

Singing on the green, 2022

But it sets me off on a story which touches on Christmas in Chorlton across the centuries.

To which I could drag from the collection the picture of Mr. Whitaker and his two assistants outside his grocery shop on the corner of Beech Road and Chorlton Green in the run up to a Christmas long ago.  

Or alternatively a picture postcard of Beech Road on a summer’s day over printed with “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year”.

Instead, I will return to carol singing, and the practice of singing around the tree on the green.

Just when that started or revived is lost but someone will know.  

Chorlton Christmas Carols, 2023

Instead, I shall just reflect on an appeal to “Help buy some Chorlton Christmas Carol Booklets, for the Christmas Eve Carol Singing, on Chorlton Green".

It is a crowd funding initiative and aims to do away with “the sad old scraps of paper and old booklets with Christmas Carols, which are getting tattier and tattier.

Christmas Eve, Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022

Now that attendance to the Chorlton Christmas Carols on Chorlton Green is reaching 100 people, we thought we ought to have some new Carol Booklets.

They will be a 12 page A4 Booklet with favourite 18 carols. 

All of which will need funding to design and print them”.*

And that is that, other than to say next year I can write about that bit of history when people in Chorlton came together to raise a bit of money for a community event.

In the meantime Jules Gibb who is a founder member and organizer of the Christmas Carol group remembers, "for  years me and some of my friends went all over Manchester in search of that magical Christmas feeling you get on Christmas Eve, when the Carols come out and a sense of belonging just might be a bit possible.

What with the drive and parking, and crowds it never quite hit the spot. We enjoyed it but it was hard work.

One of the choirs I was leading at the time was Golden Voices; Manchester’s older people’s choir. 

Back then many of the members lived alone or in residential accommodation. Christmas Eve can be a tricky time. I was minded to do something that anyone could come to on their own.

And so in 2009 a few of the groups I sang with, The Lovenotes, the Distractions and Picturehouse Choir and friends, gathered on Chorlton Green, on Christmas Eve and sang carols.

Then we decamped to the pub and made a night of it.

The next year we did it again. And again. I remember looking over the assembled throng one year and realising I didn’t know half of them.

The People of Chorlton showed up, and for a moment we all belonged".

All of which makes the appeal to fund the carol book so important.

So far, they have raised £115 in the last few days so it’s beginning to look a bit like Christmas.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; carol singing on the green, 2022, and the carol book design, 2023, courtesy of Peter Topping and Christmas Eve on Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton Christmas Carol, https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/chorlton-christmas-carols