With Reg and David on Chorlton station in 1925 and memories of a book stall in Varese

This is just one of those short little stories which feature some of the people and an unusual scene from the 1920s.

We are on Chorlton railway station beside the W.H.Smith’s bookstall and it is 1925.

On the right is David Ball who was the manager and on the left is Reg Croton who ran a taxi and lived on Sandy Lane.

By the time this picture was taken Reg was 36 and was running the family business.

His father would have made the move from horse drawn cab to motor car and was listed in the 1911 telephone book at Chorlton-c-H 481, CROTON, Chas, Coach Proprietor ...Sandy Lane.

And by another of those links with the past the family home had been a farmhouse and by the 1920s may have been a hundred years old.

But it is also the bookstall that fascinates me.  In their way these kiosks have changed little. To quote another famous retailer the simple approach was to “pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap.”  There is here everything the train traveller might want, need or just be seduced into buying.   So, there are piles of books, pencils, crayons, what look like paint brushes, and piles of books and magazines, including the latest issue of the Strand Magazine with a story by P.G.Woodhouse.

And as ever it is the adverts that draw you into the period.  Amateur Garden at 2d, with articles on "Bedding Plants, Dahlia Culture and Melons and Tomatoes" which underlines the growing leisure time that some of our new residents could enjoy.  But for me it is the WHS Pen in its smart case that intrigues me along with the ad “BOOKS WE’D LIKE TO BURN”

These old fashioned kiosks on stations have pretty much vanished as railway stations become just long empty and soulless platforms where even the waiting room is now a glass sided box.

But they live on in other places.

At the bottom of the road in Varese close by our usual bus stop is just such a kiosk where everything seems available, including English magazines and hard by the station is an even busier one which has the added bonus of a taxi rank next door.

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection and the collection of Andrew Simpson

Snapshots of Well Hall ……….. part 1 …….1873

Now this is Well Hall House in 1873.

And what I like about it is the detail showing the old 18th century house, the gardens to the south and the collection of farm buildings to the north, bounded by what is now Kidbrook Lane and assorted cottages beyond.

What interests me is the small water course which feeds into the moat and back in 1873 required a footbridge to cross it.

I must confess that I had never knew that there was a  watercourse or  given any thought to how the moat would have once been supplied.

Which is a huge omission on my part.

But following the stream east, the map shows it joins the River Quaggy.

And opens up that fascinating bit of speculation as to whether our water course was a feeder for the river, or if it had been dug from the Quaggy to fill the moat.

I rather think I must get in touch with the Environment Agency.

On the other hand, I bet there will be someone who knows and will gently point out the obvious to me.

We shall see.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; Well Hall House and surrounding land, 1873, from the OS map of Kent, 1858-1873, First Edition, six inch to the mile, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Ghosts ....... a different Camp Street

Now I am fairly confident that this picture of Camp Street will not chime with many people.

Camp Street, 1966

It is still there, running from Deansgate down to Lower Byrom Street, but the properties which stretched along it, and the streets to the south which included Severn Street and Eltoft, have all gone.

The area was redeveloped in the late 1960s and early 1970s and that consigned all of those streets as well as Dumville and Gillow Street pretty much to the memories of those that lived here, and on old maps, and pictures.

I often walk what is left, but that older network of narrow streets and old buildings was unknown to me.

Leaving me just to use the the OS map of 1951 as a guide.

Cam[p Street, 1951

Although I am confident that friends like Alan will soonoffer up their own memories.

Location; Camp Street, 1960, and 1951

Picture; Camp Street, 1960, and 1951  "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

200 Upper Brook Street ...... a life style choice and a mystery

Now I have become fascinated by the pictures from 200 Upper Brook Street which were taken in 1968.

I had hoped that I might be able to report on who lived there the year the pictures were taken.

That search led to the 1969 street directory which was the last to be published.

But alas by the time the list was compiled the last residents had moved out and the whole of the stretch of Upper Brook Street from Brunswick Street to Grafton Street were devoid of occupied properties.

So in the fullness of time I will return to Central Ref to explore the earlier directories and I suspect the property will have been in use as flats which were how Mrs Moseley was making a living back in 1911.

So for now it is the rooms and that living room.  I doubt that today there will be many houses which still have this heavy old furniture which were probably quite old when the picture was taken.

And I rather think the combination of the armchair; settee and table in an upstairs back room suggest that in 1968 our house was still in multi occupancy.

The room with its gas fire and period wall paper remind me of so many places I spent my early years in the city.

All very familiar but what puzzles me is the bathroom.  It looks pretty ordinary and the fittings could date back beyond the Edwardian period, with that bath panel hiding the claw legs of the cast iron bath with its solid taps which look to have received the “chrome treatment”.

But the lavatory offers up a mystery, because I see no pipe connecting to the tank which held the water to flush the thing.

It’s location under the window precludes one of those tall tanks, but then the more modern variation which would be just above the seat is also missing.

So dear reader how did it work?

And that seems a good place to close, leaving me only to thank Neil Simpson who has shared the images from a new project working on the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project in the Central Library, which currently is volunteer led and volunteer staffed.*

The negatives in the collection are dated from 1956 to 2007 and there are approximately 200,000 negatives to be digitised at three minutes a scan.

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

So that really is it, although I do wonder just what stories there are lurking in those rooms, but of course that I guess we will never know.

Stop Press:  And as ever Neil and Bill were on hand to suggest an explanation for the mystery which is no mystery at all.

Bill writes, "Simple stuff Andrew, the high level toilet cistern is up on the left hand wall and is connected to the toilet by a lead flush pipe that curves behind that washbasin to the back of the toilet pan, a very common practice where a window is above. 

The bath is not cast iron and neither does it have a panel. 

It is a pressed steel enamel coated bath, a cheaper and light weight alternative to cast iron and plastic of course was not available then. I have fitted and in later years ripped out many of these."

Location; Manchester

Picture; 200 Upper Brook Street, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester City Council Archives+ Town Hall Photographer's Collection Flickr Album, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/72157684413651581

April 25th 1945, a day of liberation and now a national holiday

I am looking at a picture posted by an Italian friend on facebook of a man in a train compartment in the rush hour.

Nothing you might think odd about that except that he has a  gun slung over his shoulder.  I missed it when I first came across the image and was drawn back by her comment and the date.

She wrote that she found “it fitting, [and] particularly laden with meaning,” because April 25th is a national holiday in Italy and marks both the end of what was left of Mussolini’s fascist state but also the end of the Nazi occupation of Italy on that day in 1945.

Senor Prigile, August 14th 1944

And so I guess the picture was a posed comment on the events of that day seventy nine years ago.

I would like to have used it but in the absence of copyright details for the present it will just have to sit on facebook and what ever Italian news agency issued it.

In its place there is this picture of Senor Prigile, an Italian partisan in Florence taken on August 14th 1944.

British troops had been ordered to avoid fighting the Germans in the precincts of the city of Florence but Italian Partisans, occupying the Fortress Di Basso exchanged fire with the German snipers that remained after the German forces evacuated Florence.

Now like many of my generation I was brought up on a diet of national stereo types and given the close proximity of the war the crude picture of Italians was that all they ate was  pasta and were all to ready to surrender.

It was an image much hyped by the propaganda of the war years and ignored the many brave Italians who opposed the Fascists both before and after they came to power in 1922.

It also ignored those that against their will were conscripted into the armed forces, to fight first in Abyssinia and Greece and later in North Africa and on the Eastern Front.  Nor is much said about  those who were held in Soviet prisons long after the war and those who never returned.

This I hasten to add is in no way a defence of the fascist regime which so brutally eliminated parliamentary democracy in Italy and did nothing to prevent the exploitation of working people.

Rather it is recognition that there were many Italians who opposed Mussolini and resisted as best they could.  And some who risked their lives to protect allied prisoners of war who had escaped and were  on the run from the German Army.

Corso Giacomo Matteotti on an April afternoon

And I often think of that opposition when we are in the Corso Giacomo Matteotti which is one of my favourite parts of Varese.

Here you can find posh clothes outlets, elegant cafes and wonderful food shops ranging from the expensive bakery to ordinary fruit and veg shops a fishmonger and a butcher.

It is named after the socialist MP who denounced the fascists in the Italian Parliament for election bribery in 1924 and was murdered by them just 11 days later.

So I shall be talking to our Italian family later this evening and asking them how the holiday has gone.

And no sooner had I posted this story last year, than Barbarella sent me this wonderful story of her grandmother.

"I am the grandchild of partisans. My grandmother was a “staffetta”, which translate into relay. 

Liberation Day, April, 1945

She was relaying messages amongst partisan groups who were fighting and hiding in the hills around Bologna. My grandmother was called Albertina (I gave this name as a middle name to my daughter), she used to put messages inside the metal bar handles of her bicycle, then putting the handle bit on top. 

Transporting messages between groups and risking her life. Sometimes she used to have some freshly made pasta for them, when she could afford to make it.

Memorial to the Partisan, 2018

What I woman, I am so proud of her. Passed away in 2006, at the age of 94. It is such a powerful story." of courage.

And this year Barbarello added a link to "Bella ciao", or "Goodbye beautiful"* which was originally an Italian protest song from the 19th century but my Wikipedia tells me "was modified  and adopted as an anthem for Italians resistance movement by the partisans who opposed fascism and the occupying German army.**


Location; Italy

Pictures; Corso Giacomo Matteotti from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Senor Prigile, August 14th, 1944. “This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs taken, or artworks created, by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that licence, which is considered expired 50 years after their creation and is in the public domain, Wikipedia Commons.",  Liberation day, 1945, courtesy of Barbarello Bonvento, and war memorial to the Partisan, 2018, Intra, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Bella ciao, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CI3lhyNKfo&vidve=5727...

**Bell ciao, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_ciao

When no trains ran from Chorlton railway station

Now I featured the story before of when flooding stopped the trains at Chorlton Railway Station.

But Andy Robertson just passed over this picture from his collection in 1954 and so here is a little of that story with this picture.

After “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

*When flooding stopped the trains, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/when-flooding-stopped-trains.html

**Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

Picture; Chorlton Railways Station 1954 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Walking through Eltham with Darrell Sprurgeon, ... Well Hall

Returning to the series featuring Discover Eltham.*

I am a great fan of Discover Eltham, so much so that I have two copies, and both are now battered and in need of tender care.

But that is what happens with guide books, if you use them it will show.

Sadly both the 1992 and 2000 editions are out of print and so here are short extracts from the book and the walks you can do.

Well Hall forms section F and is a gentle stroll from the Tudor Barn, up past the Coronet Cinema and the Church of St Barnabus through the Progress Estate and on to The Martyrs Church taking in the memorial to Stephen Lawrence.

Well Hall, 69, an attractive and fascinating building now called the Tudor Barn as well as the moat walls, a bridge and some gardens have survived from the grounds of the Tudor mansion of well Hall: all are now set in a pleasant park.

The state goes back to at least the 13th century.  In the early 16th century a mansion called well Hall was built by the Roper family on the moated site of an earlier house and some medieval structures may have been retained.  In 1733 the estate was purchased by Sir Gregory Page to add to his already extensive Wricklemarsh estate at Blackheath.  He demolished the Tudor house and built a large new mansion on the other side of the moat to the east.

The house was occupied by a succession of people some more famous than others and finally from 1899 to 1933 by the children’s writer Edith Nesbit.  

The house was badly damaged by a fire in 1926, and the whole site was acquired by the then Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich in 1929, to become the Well Hall Pleasaunce.

Nothing remains of the 16th century mansion bit the moat with its largely Tudor brick banks and the Tudor stone arched bridge to the east have survived.(69a)  There is a modern wooden bridge over the moat to the west.

Substantial sections of the original Tudor garden walls to the south have been preserved; in the westernmost walls five triangular headed niches (some blocked) which may have been bee-boles, can be seen.

The Tudor Barn (69b & 69c) now a pub, was part of the original Tudor complex of buildings.  Its original purpose is unknown but it was probably not a barn.  It is a well preserved redbrick building, facing the site of the main mansion across the north arm of the moat, an extension to the moat run along the west side of the building.  A coat of arms on the north side front bears the date 1568, but it is generally considered to date from earlier in the 16th century.

Original features include the patterned black brick, the chimneys stacks at the west end and the rectangular mullioned windows (some blocked) at the east end; the windows at the west end are 17th century.  On the east wall the monogram WR (William Roper) and Edith Nesbit’s bell can be seen.

The white column by the lawn facing the entrance is a sundial of 1941.

The interior is worth viewing especially for the Tudor fireplaces on both floors.  On the ground floor note at the west end an original Tudor brick fireplace, and a section of distinctive stone and pebble tiled floor (which was imported later).  The upper floor is dominated by the exposed rood timbers.  

Note the west end  an original Tudor red brick fireplace, and on the south side a wall a later Tudor stone fire place with fine carving.  

In the west wall is a stained glass window showing Thomas More and his daughter Margaret Roper, designed after Holbein’s portrait by Margaret Cowel 1949.

Next;  Coronet Cinema and the Church of St Barnabus through the Progress Estate and on to The Martyrs Church taking in the memorial to Stephen Lawrence.

* Discover Eltham and its Environ, Darrell Spurgeon, Greenwich Guide Books, 2nd edition 2000

Pictures; map from Eltham and its Environ,, remaining images courtesy of Scott MacDonald

200 Upper Brook Street reveals its story

This is the story of number 200 Upper Brook Street which I have to confess no longer exists.

It was one of block of houses which ran from Akers Street to Grafton Street and in time I will get an exact date for its construction.

But for now I know that it was built sometime between 1849 and 1894 and looks to be on the plans for demolition in the late 1960’s.

And with a bit more diligent research we should be able to find out who its last residents were and that is important because back in 1968 someone took a whole series of pictures of the place both inside and out and those photographs may will gives us a clue to the occupiers taste in wall paper and furniture.

So I am very pleased that Neil Simpson has shared the images which he became across while engaged in a new project working in the Central Library.

The negatives in the collection are dated from 1956 to 2007 and there are approximately 200,000 negatives to be digitised at three minutes a scan.

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

It is rare to see inside the homes of ordinary people and while these rooms are quite clearly almost empty there is enough to get an idea of the style of wallpaper, and the remains of some of the original features.

So over the next few weeks we will revisit number 200 Upper Brook Street and its secret.

In 1911 the property is listed to a Mrs Hannah Moseley and was described as apartments. Mrs Moseley was 70 years old and shared the house with her daughter Janet.

She was a widow, had been married for twenty years and out lived four of her six children.

Back in the April of 1911 she occupied five of the eight rooms, two more were rented out to a clerk with a Mr Habib from Constantinople taking the last room.

And that brings me back to the pictures.  

There will be many who remember the old gas stove, the enamelled cream and green storage jars along with the old cupboards and the doors with their ventilation twirls.

Leaving me just to add that Tony Petrie has unearthed that, "200 Upper Brook Street isn't listed in either the 1962 or 1954 versions of Kelly's. 

There is a listing for 1929.

Which may just suggest that I have got the house number wrong.

Picture; 200 Upper Brook Street, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Something is stirring down in Cornbrook .........

I say something but that stirring has been on the go for a decade and a bit and amounts to a sort of Renaissance for this stretch of Chester Road.

Coming into Cornbrook and on to the south and west, 2023

For many of course the name is just a stop on the Metro network, but a pretty important one given that it is a switching hub, where passengers can change for trams going into the city and then out to the eastern and northern ends of the complex, or alternatively choose destinations to south Manchester, Salford, Eccles, Trafford Centre and Altrincham.

At Cornbrook and onto Bury, 2023

And for those idly waiting for their connection the stop offers some fine views of the new residential developments which have begun to transform the area.  

Every year sees more rising from what were brown sites and echoing those earlier acres of terraced properties which vied with factories, a chemical works and the Ship Canal.

I only know the area after most of the houses and the industrial units had been cleared, leaving behind a mx of landscaped stretches which ran into just acres of wasteland, all waiting for something to happen.

And as I write I know that many of my friends will remember that older Cornbrook which fizzed  with business and have their own tales of nights in The  Railway and Pomona Palace or of stories about Pomona Docks.

New apartments, 2023

Not that there will be anyone today who can boast of visiting Pomona Gardens with its mix of attractions including “the magic bridge, Gymnasium, flying swings, bowling green, rifle shooting, romantic walks and a promenade for both adults and juveniles as well as boat trips on the Irwell.”   

 In the summer of 1850 it pulled out the stops with its “Splendid representation of the ERUPTION OF MOUNT VESUVIUS, as it occurred in 1849, the most terrific on record.”   Here was the “magnificent Bay of Naples, painted and erected by the celebrated artist Mr. A.F. Tait, and extends the whole length of the lake covering upwards of 20,000 yards of canvas and is one of the Largest ever Erected in England.” *

It had opened in the 1840s but couldn’t better its rival at Bell Vue and finally succumbed to a land grab by the Ship Canal.

All that was left of the Railway, 2003

The area takes its name from the Corn Brook which according to that excellent book The Lost Rivers of Manchester "rises in Gorton and follows a tortuous path through Manchester’s southern ‘inner city’ suburbs and empties itself into the Ship Canal at Pomona Docks”.

For anyone who as not discovered this gem of a book it is well worth reading, more so because it’s author Geoffrey Ashworth recently revised his 1987 book with additional material. 

And it will feature in the new book being written on The History of Greater Manchester by Tram which will explore that section of the network from Cornbrook via Deansgate Castlefield and onto Exchange Square. 

The first Trafford Bar to East Didsbury was published on Monday and is already proving a popular read.

It is available from Chorlton Bookshop, and from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk, price £4.99

Location; Cornbrook

Pictures; Bits of Cornbrook, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and All that was left of the Railway, 2003, courtesy of Andy Robertson

* Slater’s Manchester & Salford Directory 1850

**Ashworth, Geoffrey, The Lost Rivers of Manchester, 1987, updated, 2023

***A new book on the History of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram

Waiting for that fast service to Central ................ standing on the platform at Chorlton-cum-Hardy railway station

Now I am part of that generation that grew up with steam locomotives.

And I don’t mean those special heritage steam trains I mean the full on thing, when everything from the intercity express down to sedate suburban commuter links and the humble unromantic goods locos were all steam powered.

All of which makes this picture postcard of our station one to cherish particularly because there are very few of the inside of the station.

I don’t have a date for this one but it will be before 1926 when an aerial picture shows the station without the footbridge which the historian John Lloyd says was removed “to save the expense of maintaining it and the public had to use the road bridge.”**

So we have just 40 or so years to play with because the station was opened in 1880 and judging by  the quality of the picture postcard I am guessing we will be sometime in the early years of the last century.

And that quality allows you to focus in on the detail from the iron work under the bridge to the signs advising passengers to use the foot bridge to cross the tracks which proved particularly relevant after the death of Mary Jane Cockrill of Oswald Road in 1909 who was run down by "a fast train approaching the station."***

I don’t think you have to have an over vivid imagination to put yourself on that platform just over a century ago.

The place is empty save for the staff and the chap in the bowler hat who I suspect runs the kiosk, so we must be in one of those in between moments and given that there are no passenger either a train has just gone through or this is that long wait between the morning commuter rush and the evening return.

And for anyone who has ever been alone on a warm summer’s day waiting for a train the scene will be all too familiar.

There will be that silence punctuated by the odd noise from the road in the distance the clunck of a shutting engine and the sound of the platform clock.

And if you have timed it wrongly there could still be a hint of steam left from the departing train and the last solitary commuter making their way out up the approach path to Wilbraham Road.

Which means that you are left to idle the time away looking at the headlines from the newspaper posters, ponder on the promises being made by the adverts and perhaps spend a penny on that weighing machine.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, date unknown

Picture; Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station, date unknown, courtesy of Mark Fynn***

*Looking Back At Chorlton-cum-Hardy, John Lloyd, 1985

**Woman Killed at Chorlton In front of a railway train, Manchester Guardian, January 11, 1909 although to be accurate her death was a suicide

***Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html, 

40 years ago ……. Manchester pictures from the archive …….

It is a salutary lesson on the passing of time that four decades have passed since I took these pictures, with the obvious observation that heaps of those that were marching through Manchester will be retired,  and that those in the prams will have had their 40th birthdays.

A Conservative Government was presiding over a tide of rising unemployment, and was pursuing a policy of cuts in public expenditure, set against a hardening of the Cold War with the USA and the Soviet Union developing and deploying a series of new missiles capable of carrying ever more powerful nuclear war heads.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; 40 years ago ……. Manchester pictures from the archive ……. from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Tudor Barn in 1909, one for the album

The Tudor Barn in 1909

Now here is one for the picture album.

This is the Tudor Barn back in 1909 and that really is about all I want to say.

Although I find it hard to match this image with the building I knew.

It comes from Eltham Through Time.*

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford.

*Eltham Through Time, Amberley, Publishing,  2013

Ms Bedford also has an interesting web site, Ancestral Deeds, http://www.ancestraldeeds.co.uk/

Watching the unthinkable ……………….. Manchester 1960

Now, as unhistorical as it is, sometimes you have to speculate on the origins of an unknown picture.

In the case of this one, the information is limited to the date it was taken which was 1960.

Other than that, it is pretty much a mystery.

I don’t know where this group of people were, or what caught their interest.

Suffice to say, it is evening judging by the overcoats, a night in the cooler months of the year.

There are two shots of the group, but no caption, and so we are left wondering.

That said in the same batch, there are a series of pictures of what looks to be a staged rescue of an injured man from a tall building, along with a few of men in uniform.

And that takes us closer to a possible explanation, because in 1960 we were in the middle of the Cold War, which was that stand off between the Soviet Union and the USA, made more deadly because both sides were engaged in arms race, which included the development of bigger and more powerful  nuclear war heads along with the delivery systems.

Added to which both sides were engaged in proxy wars, across the world, any one of which had the potential to drag the two superpowers and their allies into a nuclear confrontation.

Just eleven years earlier there had been the Berlin Blockade, followed by the formation of NATO and later the Warsaw Pact, while in 1961 tensions were further exacerbated by the construction of the Berlin War, and a year later the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened to plunge the world into a nuclear war.

All of which brings me to the conclusion that our group of people are watching a Civil Defence exercise.

The Civil Defence Corps, had been established in 1949 and was a civilian volunteer organisation whose purpose was to mobilise and take local control of an affected area in the aftermath of a major national emergency, which for most people was an attack by the Soviet Union using nuclear weapons. 

There were the obvious links to how Britain had prepared and coped during the Second World War, when many of our cities, and towns came under regular bombardment by the Germans.

And looking at the faces of the men in Civil Defence uniforms, some well have served in the Home Guard, the Auxiliary Fire Service or as Air Raid Precaution Wardens, while others may been in the armed forces.

I was ten in 1960 and much of this passed over me. B

But I do remember the short television films that showed RAF bombers taking off in under four minutes with their nuclear payload , which those of my age and older will instantly recall chimed in with the “Four Minute Warning” which was the accepted duration of the time between detecting an incoming Soviet strike and its arrival.

All of which brings me to those two counter approaches to the unthinkable.  

On one hand there was the Government line reflected in this Civil Defence poster, and on the other the comic response of Beyond the Fringe which pointed out that when Britain  receives the four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes”.

All of which might not have been lost on the people watching the Civil Defence exercise on the streets of Manchester in 1960.

Location; Manchester, 1960

Picture; Civil Defence, Manchester, 1960, 1960-3179-1, -3179-51960-3179.8, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and a civil defence poster produced in 1957 by the Central Office of Information (INF 2/122)Civil Defence is Common Sense, National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/fifties-britain/civil-defence-common-sense/

When flooding stopped the trains

It might seem a last exhausted stab at stories about Chorlton and flooding but this one is interesting and set me off on one of those little historical adventures.

The picture is undated and could be anytime in the 20th century.

There are newspaper reports of flooding on the line in 1926 and 1954 and I rather think it might be the latter, given the style of the clothes of people on the platform, but I might be wrong.

But after “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* and from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, extract from the Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

*Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

To keep or throw away things ..... that tell a story

It’s one of those fault lines running through our house.  

I have a tendency to collect which if truth be known is just hoarding and there are others who relentlessly declutter.  It is that age old dilemma of which pieces of paper to keep to throw away?  Now I know it is easier now with paperless bills and emails but it remains a problem for me.

Not only do I have the entire collection of Beano’s from 1985 to 97, assorted runs of Look and Learn but during the 90s I went back and began buying whole volumes of the Eagle comic, which I first read in 1957.
More importantly there are the family documents, nothing I grant you as grand as a signed letter from minor royalty or the plans drawn up by Capability Brown for a new garden estate.  Ours are more down to earth.

They include wartime letters faded photographs and quite a few negatives which I reckon haven’t seen daylight for over 80 years and lots more.  Earlier I wrote about the family identity cards and today I want to share a medical certificate which I guess my father had to possess so that he could carry on working.

It is the International Certificate of Vaccination or Revaccination against small pox issued by the Ministry of Health.  Now I haven’t found out yet which European countries required it but as dad worked across Western Europe it could have been any one of many.  Or it may just have been that because of the outbreak of smallpox here in Britain in 1962 our neighbours naturally enough wanted to be sure he was free of the disease.

And smallpox was still a killer.  Today through the efforts of the World Health Organisation it has been eliminated, but in the early 20th century stretching back into time it was both feared and dreaded.  At best it could leave an infected person terribly disfigured and of course often proved fatal.

Now I remember the 1962 outbreak only because were vaccinated as were thousands of children across the country. Now like all these things there is a blog devoted to the outbreak http://smallpox1962.wordpress.com so I’ll let you go there to get the full story.

But had Dad not kept the certificate and had I in turn not stored it away there would be no record of the impact on the disease on my family.

Not perhaps great page turning history, but history.

Pictures; Certificate of vaccination, 1962, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Trafford Bar to East Didsbury by tram with a heap of history ……

As promised the first of our series on the History of Greater Manchester by Tram is in the book shops today.

A cornucopia of stories, 2024

It is one of those original ways of telling stories of Greater Manchester and fits in with that slightly quirky way that me and Peter Topping have brought you  the history of where we live.

So back to the new book.

The idea of telling the story of Greater Manchester by using the tram network has a lot going for it.

You can catch a tram from the city centre and go south, east,  north, and west and along the way each of the 99 stops will have a story to tell, and being the tram you can just jump off, explore this little pocket of history and move on. Or skip to the end destinations and discover interesting historical things about Didsbury, Ashton-Under-Lyne, Rochdale, Oldham, Salford and bits of Trafford, Altrincham and Bury.

Tram People, 2018

And this is the new project Peter and I have chosen for a series of new books.

Each book will wander along the network, taking in nine stops or so at a time, with original paintings by Peter, old photographs, and stories by me. 

The first book follows the line that takes you south to East Didsbury, taking in Trafford Bar, Firswood, Chorlton, St Werburghs, Withington, Burton Road, West Didsbury, Didsbury Village and ending at East Didsbury.

It is the novel and fun way to learn about the past.

The book along with the other thirteen we have written together are available from Chorlton Bookshop, and from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

South  to Didsbury, 2013

Pictures, a cornucopia of stories, 2024, Tram People, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Painting; south  to Didsbury,© Peter Topping 2013 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 

*A new book on the History Greater Manchester by Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram

On the High Street in 1873

I have moved a little south from Well Hall and am wandering the High Street sometime in 1873.

It is a scene we will return to in detail later.

For now what strikes you perhaps more than anything is the absence of Well Hall Road which today runs down from the High Street past the church and off in a straight line down to Well Hall.  This was to be cut much later.

In the 1870s this spot would have been dominated by  St John’s to the west and opposite the vicarage, while beyond this point heading east would have been a collection of fine houses, not so fine houses  and the smithy and National School.

Picture; the High Street from the OS map of Kent, sheet 08, 1858-73, First Edition