1951 ....... a Glenton Tour brochure and a window on a world we have lost

I was too young to remember 1951 but I know it was a year of promise.

It was after all the year of the Festival of Britain, the beginning of the sixth year of year of peace and for many a time when the Welfare State was offering care from the cradle to the grave.

And it was the year when Glenton Tours resumed their coach trips to the Continent.

The firm had begun in the 1920s when an estate agent settled a debt with a customer by accepting a coach and that started “Glenton Motor Coach Holiday Tours.”

Dad worked for them from the very beginning and finally retired in 1987 having driven their coaches around Britain and Europe from the early 1930s.

All of which I have written about already but today I came across their 1951 brochure advertising four, seven and twelve day tours Scotland, the Romantic West, Wales and the Lake District.

And it was on one of the Lake District trips that he met my mother who was working at the Queens Hotel at Matlock Bath sometime in the late 1940s.

The tours were all inclusive, offering “first class accommodation” and the “Chauffeur-Couriers have been chosen after exacting tests of their reliability and skill and give every attention to travellers.  

Nearly all of them were with Glenton Tours before the war and returned to the Company when we re-started in 1947.”

And it is this little entry which opens up the brochure as a wonderful record of that post war period.

Contained also in the “notes and information” is the advice that “Ration Books are not, necessary on any of our tours” and that passengers are advised take "a towel and soap in case some hotels are still unable to supply them.”

The cost ranged from 9 guineas for the “Special 4-Day Easter Tours to  58 guineas for the thirteen day trip to France, Austrian Tyrol, Italian Lakes and Switzerland.”

It is easy to get cynical of a holiday which in just under a fortnight took you through five countries and which you risked missing one if you fell asleep on the journey.

But this was before the internet, and before cheap air travel when even television was in its infancy and so the idea of visiting five countries taking in the views and the history while being catered for in first class style was very attractive.

Added to which as the brochure boasted “You do not have to bother about luggage, frontier, monetary or language difficulties” and “the inclusive charge provided for all food and accommodation, the sea crossing and gratuities to hotel staff."

Of course this was a holiday way beyond many working people but by 1973 many who two decades earlier would never have contemplated a coach trip abroad were signing up.

So in that year Glenton’s offered a total of 69 tours of which 24 were to the Continent.

It never appealed to me as a holiday but then I belonged to a different generation.

For those who the tour did go, many will have begun their holidays on train and coach excursions to seaside resorts taking full advantage of the paid holidays which were by the 1930s a bonus to the holiday trade.

And I won’t be sniffy at what gave dad nearly sixty years of full employment, put food on our table and provided a shed load of people with an experience they would not have otherwise had.

Location; Britain and the Continent

Pictures; from Glenton Coach Holiday Tours, 1951, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Rescuing five Manchester Radicals ……………"from the enormous condescension of posterity”

How easy it is to lose our history, and once lost how much more difficult to retrieve.

Alexander Somerville, 1848

This I know is not an original idea but is one that I have been wrestling with today, as I seek to uncover the lives of five radical working men all of whom were born in the 18th century and died long before Parliament extended the vote to include a section of the male working class.

They were, Peter Rothwell, George Hadfield, George Exley, Henry Parry Bennet, and James Wheeler.

I doubt I would ever have come across any of them, were it not that all five were buried beside the monument to Henry “Orator” Hunt, which stood in the burial ground of the Round Chapel on Every Street.

They were part of the committee responsible for that monument, and I suspect had been at Peterloo along with Mr. Hunt.

As yet, I don’t know what they looked like, the position they took on the reform of Parliament and where they stood on the broad spectrum of opinion within the Chartist movement.

To be honest I don’t even know if they were all Chartists, but I suspect they were.

Off Oldham Road, home to some of the "five", 1851

They may appear in the autobiographies of other radicals like Samuel Bamford and Mr. Hunt, and if I am very lucky, I might turn up a reference to the memorial committee.

I have trawled the database of the Working-Class Museum in Salford and gone looking for any reference in the newspapers to the five, but so far have only found them in the census returns, directories and registers of births deaths and marriages.

But I am confident that I have found all five in the official records, which list their occupations as cotton weaver, tailor, and baker, in fact three of the five were bakers.

Back Prussia Street, 1851

All lived in the northern part of the city in an area which was densely packed with rows of terraced houses which in turn were surrounded by textile mills, iron works and timber yards, bounded by the Ashton and the Rochdale Canals.

In the absence of anything on their politics, and their activities I am forced back on exploring just where they lived.

Henry Parry Bennet who was one of the three bakers lived with his wife on Bradford Street, throughout the 1840s and into the next decade, and died there in 1851.  And as you do, I wondered on the fate of his wife, who was 62.  But like so many working people of the period, she is lost from the records with nothing listed as yet after the date of her husband’s death.

Conversely in the case of Peter Rothwell there is bewildering choice of candidates, one of whom lived in a property which commanded an annual rent of £20 and would have entitled him to a vote in the reformed Parliament and another Mr. Rothwell, who in 1841 described himself as a cotton weaver and lived with his family and assorted others in Back Prussia Street.

Prussia Street, 1904

In all there were ten people sharing the house, four of whom along with Mr. Rothwell and his wife Ann were well past retirement age, but I suspect were still hard at it working in the nearby cotton mills.

Back Prussia Street was, as its name suggests directly behind Prussia Street, which ran from Oldham Road down to Jersey Street, and like the rest of this part of town was a mix of cotton mills, foundries, timber yards with the odd glass making works thrown in.

And to further complicate the picture, a Peter Rothwell in 1844 was listed in the rate books as living in the cellar of a property on Bradford Street which was close to where the Bennet’s lived.

It is all tantalizing and is a bit like looking through a dirty window, which reveals some detail but not much.

I suspect our cellar dwelling Mr. Rothwell will be the same as he that lived on Back Prussia Street and is a reminder that people moved around the city in a way that most of us don’t today.

I continue to trawl the records and might yet turn up the minutes of the committee which erected the monument to Mr. Hunt, and remain confident that there will be some reference to them, but in the meantime, they are just names.

Prussia Street, 1907

But not quite, because we know that the organization that went into the erection of the monument and the subsequent preparations for the day of its unveiling are impressive.

The committee had decided on charging a penny for admission to the event and set up platforms from which spectators could observe the speeches, for which they wee asked to pay an extra 6 pence.

And on the day the committee had to cope with an estimated crowd of 15,000 people, which would have taxed any group of marshals charged with making for a peaceful and dignified day.

So that is it, ………. Not much perhaps, but a step in uncovering the lives of five Manchester radicals who have been pretty much forgotten.

Does it matter?  Yes, I think it does.  In his ground-breaking book, The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson, wrote "I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the ‘obsolete’ hand-loom weaver, the ‘utopian’ artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity."*

And if it was good enough for him, who am I to stop digging for my five?

Pictures; cover page of Alexander Somerville's Somerville's autobiography, 1848, Back Russia Street, 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Harriet Street stables adjoining No.1 Prussia St, near Oldham Road, Bradburn ,A,  1904, m10109 and Portugal Street & No. 3 Prussia Street, near Oldham Road, Jackson, J, 1907, m10411, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class, 1963, 1968, 1980, page 12 from the 1980 revised edition.  My 1968 Pelican edition is all but falling apart and I suspect it is time for a new copy.

Henry Hunt ………. “and the Manchester Monument to Perpetuate His Memory”

I am back with Henry “Orator” Hunt who the Chartist newspaper described as the “one of the most bold, most strenuous , most disinterested and most able advocates of LABOUR’S CAUSE, that the cause ever had to boast of”.*

He was scheduled to speak at the “Manchester Reform Meeting” in St Peter’s Fields in the August of 1819, which was broken up by the authorities, with much loss of life, hundreds of casualties and which was for ever afterwards known as Peterloo.

What I hadn’t known was that years later a monument was erected in the grounds of Every Street Chapel in Ancoats.

It is a story  I have written about already, but until today had never come across an image of the actual monument which was demolished in 1888, and so I was more than pleased when Jon Silver, reproduced this one, which according to the Northern Star, “represents a monument, now in the course of erection Manchester, in the burial ground of the Chapel, belonging to the Rev. Mr. Schofield, in Every Street …..raised by means  of a subscription amongst the working people of England, to perpetuate the name and fame” of Mr. Henry Hunt.**

Jon found the image on another blog site, which referenced the Northern Star, and so as you do I went back to the collection of Northern Star editions, and came across the one for August 20th 1842, which not only carried the story of the monument but a detailed report on the events of Peterloo, including the names of the Manchester Yeomanry who brutally attacked the peaceful demonstrators.

Some of the Yeomanry, 1819

The list complements that of those who are recorded as casualties on the day long with those who were charged into the crowd.***

Most are from Manchester and Salford, with a few drawn from Stretford, Pendleton and Eccles with two are listed as “Foreigners”.

And while there are a smattering of the “gentry” and the professions, most were shop keepers, small businessmen and labourers, including Savage who is described as a quack doctor”.

All of which points to that simple truth that those who cut and sabered were little different in their class origins and occupations than the majority of the demonstrators who were their victim.

Now I am well aware that all the published names will have been trawled over by the eminent and the interested long before I got to see them, but that won’t stop me spending hours doing the same.

Leaving me just to highlight the link to online collection of the Northern Star, which makes fascinating reading.****

Such is research and the fun of history.

Location; Manchester, 1819, and 1842

Pictures; the engraving of the Henry Hunt memorial, the Yeomanry list and the front page of the Northern Star, from the edition of the Northern Star, August 20th, 1842

*Henry Hunt and the Manchester Monument to Perpetuate His Memory
Henry Hunt, The Northern Star, August 20th, 1842

**Henry Hunt, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=henry+Hunt


***What did you do at Peterloo? https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-did-you-do-at-peterloo.html

****The Northern Star, https://ncse.ac.uk/index.html

The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 42 ............ the not so rosy glow of memories

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

It’s odd what you begin to remember and even more how once you start there seems to be no stopping the memories.

Added to which once they are published they bounce off the collective memory confirming some and bringing forth new ones.

And so it was with The Family of One End Street** which I pretty much devoured at one sitting back in the November of 1961.

It was the story of a dustman’s family set in the late 1930s and told the story of Mr and Mrs Ruggles and their seven children.

Rereading it today bits of it appear a tad sentimental but it struck a chord as a way of life I was familiar with and certainly one my parents would have recognised.

Not that the book or the story is really the point, it is more that this was the year which set me as a serious reader, falling on everything from history to science fiction and the books of Ian Fleming.

I have Mr Rhodes who was my form teacher in my first year at Samuel Pepys to thank for that.

He and later Mr Berry had a simple approach to literature which was let them read what they want and bit by bit they will either move on from science fiction to Shakespeare or they won’t but either way they will have read some books.

In the case of Mr Berry’s class it was a battered old bookshelf at that back of the room filled with whatever he could pick up from second hand book shops.

And in that fourth year of secondary school in Mr Berry's class I worked my way through a lot of science fiction, a couple of ghost’s novels and the odd master piece.

But then not all my reading was the stuff mother would have approved.

For a short while I became hooked by PARADE a magazine I have since seen described “a magazine for men” which at a shilling was a lot cheaper than Playboy but worked on the same principle, mixing pin ups, jokes and “serious” article.  Not that the articles or even the jokes were of much interest to me, nor I suspect to any other young 13 year old back in the 1960s.

Recently I came across some of them on line with their distinctive yellow or blue banner which ran along the top and down the left hand side.

Briefly they had pushed the Eagle comic into touch but it was a short love affair because by the spring of 1964 we were on the move and while some at least of the Eagle collection went with me, Parade with its pin ups and dashing titles like “June is bursting out all over” were not destined to make the journey.

Some ended up behind the garden shed and others were slowly slid one by one through a space into a locked cupboard the key of which I lost.

It is one of the few memories which has never left me and one that even now makes me a tad guilty.

But no one was hurt, and I appear to have got away with it, which is more than I can say for those memories of Edmund Waller School and the class of 4a run by Miss Reeves.

I doubt that either of us would have chosen the other as companion on a desert island and that year of unmitigated failure and humiliation was pretty much laid to rest till Robert posted his school report from 4a at Edmund Waller.

Robert had followed me the following year and like these things are Miss Reeves had taken up the mantle to see another top year 4 class through.

Her signature was there for all to see and for once I rather wish the memory of that year had laid quietly in the past.

Robert went through the year after me but there was that signature of Miss Reeves, which brought back the dismissive words to a mother that "Andrew was not academically minded" a sentence which carried a judgement which had been weighed and delivered but in the long run proved as worthless as those piles of Parade.

Pictures; cover from The Family One End Street, Puffin Edition, 1976, The Great Invasion, Leonard Cotterell, Pan edition 1961and detail from the Eagle Comic, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
.
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**The Family of One End Street, Eve Garnett, 1937

What Elsie from London left on Beech Road …….

So, it’s amazing just what you encounter at 8 in the morning doing the litter patrol across the Rec on Beech Road.

All the way from the tram stop, 2024

Now I must be honest and confess the art of discovery is down to Declan and other Friends of the Park and not me.

But by way of encouragement, I will often cross the road and chat with him for a few minutes.

Today it started with that modest green box which appeared last week, and which has already begun to mellow with the application of some trellis.

By spring it will no doubt sport some “interesting climbing things” which in turn will start to grow leaves and flowers and so blend with the trees.

The conversation then drifted on to his discoveries.  These are the idly discarded items from people who think that the Rec is an appropriate place to leave the accumulated detritus of their personal possessions, or just maybe hope that what they drop will invoke a discussion about the origins of their litter.

Mellowing green box, 2024

But I wondered why anyone would walk all the way from the tram stop on Wilbraham Road to post their used ticket on a bench in the Rec.  Or even more bizarre why Elsie should think her London Transport ticket had any relevance to how we live here on Beech Road.

That said pride of place in this cornucopia of discarded treasures goes to a boarding pass for a flight from Buenos Aires to Manchester.

There will be some who question why these thrown away bits of someone’s life are worth a mention on the blog, but that is to miss the point.

Rubbish can be history, whether it be a hoard of Roman coins, a lost ring, or carefully preserved old newspaper from the 1930s.

All of them I have written about including bottles, a hand drill dating to the first half of the 19th century  and  items from a Masons regalia.

Ugly is as ugly does, circa 1980

So why not a London Transport ticket?

And to close where we began there will come a time when someone looks for the history of the green box, and compares it to that ugly and now vanished shelter which adorned the Rec until quite recently.

Alas the concrete base that helped tether the barrage balloon disappeared in the 1980s.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Metrolink ticket, green box, 2024, and shelter circa 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Down at Spinningfields …….. remembering an older time

This is the corner of Hardman Street and Byrom Street sometime around 1983.

Byrom Street, circa 1983

I can’t be exactly sure of the date, but it will be in the early 1980s when it seemed that almost every Saturday there was a march and demonstration.

They ranged for calls to stop further cuts in public spending, demands for the withdrawal of US Cruise missiles and those Anti Nazi rallies.

This one was about the arms race and in particular the siting of a new generation of delivery systems for nuclear weapons by the United States Air Force here in Britain.

The march began at All Saints, threaded its way through the city before ending at Crown Square.

And this image was taken as the demonstration came to an end.

Byrom Street, 2022

Apart from bringing back memories of the time and my own impassioned youth it neatly supplied a reminder of what was here before the new Spinningfields.

Spinningfields is one of those bright shiny “new bits” of the city.

I often wander down there to take pictures and try and remember just what it was like when I first washed up in Manchester over 50 years ago.

To be honest it’s a bit of a blur and back in 1969 I don’t think I thought much of it.  It was just a  network of streets and buildings which had seen better times waiting for something to happen.

And then as you do I took my eye off the area and only returned as the developers were filling the place up with tall glass and concrete buildings, some pretty soulless open spaces and heaps of restaurants.

Byrom Street, 1893

Occasionally I would challenge myself to remember what it replaced with little success. 

But here is the answer because what is now modern buildings “more glass than wall” is the old Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Throat”.

I will go looking for its history, but for now that is it.

Queue for my old Facebook chum Alan Jennings, to offer up some of his priceless memories.

But I can add that, "The Hospital was established in 1875 in St. John Street, Manchester. 

It transferred to new premises in Hardman Street in 1886. In 1885 an in-patients hospital was opened at Bowdon, Cheshire, and in 1904 the Crossley Sanatorium at Delamere, near Frodsham, Cheshire, was built, named after the Chairman of the Board, W. J. Crossley, a major contributor to its cost".*

Location; Byrom Street

Picture; Byrom Street, circa 1983, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  in June 2022, courtesy of Goggle Maps and the corner of Byrom and Hardman Streets, 1893, from the 1893 OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Manchester Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Throat and Chest, Manchester City Council, https://www.manchester.gov.uk/directory_record/212450/manchester_hospital_for_consumption_and_diseases_of_the_throat_and_chest#:~:text=The%20Hospital%20was%20established%20in,Chairman%20of%20the%20Board%2C%20W.%20J.

Home thoughts from aboard no. 5 .......... the view from the hill

Now sometimes it takes just one picture to remind me how long I have been away from home.

The scene will be all too familiar to many. 

From the top of the hill beside the Royal Observatory you have a panoramic view of the city.

To the left there is the bend of the River and off to the right the chimneys of the power station and directly ahead the tall blocks of the new commercial London.

And I say familiar but not to me, because the last time I gazed out from those benches beside the statue of General Wolf none of those tall blocks of glass, steel and buzzing enterprise existed.

The tallest building would still have been the Monument and I am pretty sure St Paul’s would also have been visible.

I was well aware at what had been going on but the change is still very dramatic given that I last looked out from the hill sometime in the early 1970s and while I have been back to the park and down into Greenwich I somehow never quite got to take the route from the gates at Blackheath to the observatory and look across London.

That last time had been a perfect autumnal day in 1971, the sun shone, the leaves were turning golden and I was home from Manchester with a group of friends proudly showing off my bit of London.

They were duly impressed taking in first that scene from the hill and then by degree descending into Greenwich, taking in the Cutty Sark, the foot tunnel and one or two of the local pubs.

It is a pity I never took my own picture but perhaps someone who did will share it so that I can compare our Jill’s picture with the past.

Location; London

Picture; looking out across London, July 2017, from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith

When you still sent your films off in the post ........... another of those lost ways of doing things

Receipt, 1979

It’s funny what you find on the cellar floor.  

I must have passed this receipt from Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd a dozen times and never bothered to pick it up.

It will have fallen out of a pile of papers long since deposited down there for safe keeping.

But now it is a little bit of history for I doubt that many people still send films off to be processed and await their return as 9 by 7 paper pictures.

Today the digital camera and the mobile phone have all but made the old fashioned process of using film and chemicals almost a thing as dead as the telegram and the VHS recorder.

I can’t of course now remember what the images were that Cherrytree Laboratories processed for me, but as they were black and white they would have been possibly the first I took using that old reliable camera the Pentax K1000.

Paris 1980

Already by December of 1979 I was beginning to develop and print my own black and white pictures but because I never got into the more complicated process of colour development this would have been left to the commercial firms.

And now like most people I use a digital camera, straight to the computer and all that wait to wonder if the pictures worked has gone, for in an instant it is possible to judge the quality of the shot and decide to take it all over again.

All of which has its advantages but there are of course downsides, not least that simple one that fewer and fewer photographs ever make it to become a paper image.

Instead they are locked in a computer seen by a handful of people and in time are just discarded or lost as operating systems move on.

Not that this is all doom and gloom, for the very technology that has made digital pictures so popular has also allowed people to post them on the net and social networking sites which will reach thousands in a click of the mouse.

So not all bad then.

Paris 1981

All of which brings back me Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd of Union Road, Sheffield.  I went looking for them but could only come up with one reference in the Gazette for 1980 which recorded that  the Health and Safety Executive had announced that the firm along with a string of others “during the month ending April 30th 1980, has made special exemption orders relating to the employment of women and/or young persons.”

The particular bit of legislation is dense and so I will leave it to others to work out what was meant.

As for the firm I couldn’t find another reference and a visit to Union Road revealed nothing which looked at all industrial.

Someone will no doubt put me right, but until them this is all I have for Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd and a way of making your snaps into pictures for the album.

But like so many new innovations the demise of the film led to the loss of many jobs.

And so I shall leave the last word to my friend Debbie who remembered, "the thrill when you came home from work and the bulky envelope was on the mat - with no idea what the photos turned out like.  

On the downside of digital, lots of British jobs lost printing chemicals etc no longer so necessary."

Pictures; receipt from Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd, 1979 and Paris, 1980 & 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The class of '68 part 5 teachers and possibilities

Poundswick High School Lower School, 1982

Now most of us can look back on teachers who were very special. 

They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, from the larger than life and eccentric ones who sweep you along to the quiet and thoughtful who radiate calm confidence and bring that out in you. 

And then there are all the variations in between.  True as the critics of state education delight in shouting there are a few who were unsuitable, some who had no idea how to communicate and one I met who was a downright bully.  But they were the real exceptions.  In thirty-five years of teaching in inner city schools and of course those years when I was on the receiving end all but a handful of the people who chose to stand in front of a class were all that you could want from a teacher.

Some of the Class of '68, 1968

I remember Norman Parry, who left elementary school, spent years in the Direct Works Department of Manchester Corporation before becoming a metal worker teacher at Oldwood Secondary School.  He was much loved by generations of students and by us younger teachers who marvelled at the way he drove his motorbike up and down the corridors of the school with little regard for authority.

Many of his generation who made such an impact on me as I began teaching were men and women who had seen active service in the last world war and were determined that they were going make a difference in the post world war. Men like Austen who had flown fighter bombers off aircraft carriers, ran a very successful part time optician’s business but made his main job that of teaching maths in Wythenshawe.

And a generation later we the class of ’68 were fortunate in having so many at Crown Woods.  My  three history teachers, all of my English ones and many others who came my way were excellent communicators, and caring individuals who unlocked the doors to new worlds and above all gave me a love of learning that I have never lost.

I remained in awe of Mrs Hussein whose rapid delivery of events of the 18^th and early 19^th century left us tired and desperate fearing not to look out of a window lest we lose fifty years of European history.  All of which was in direct contrast the slow delivery of Mr Levine who would sit and throw out the “big idea” about Gladstone or Disraeli and then seek to weave subtle arguments which while they were entertaining were also powerful examples of how to develop A level history essays. And in amongst all this was the equally powerful presence of Mr Naismith who managed to mix style and delivery with a deep knowledge which always ended with a flourish as he tore up his teaching notes at the end, as if to say “here another original and fresh lecture” which would not be brought out for another trip next year.

Michael Marland

And then there was Michael Marland Head of English and later Director of Studies. His was a dominant presence in my years at the school.  His quiet manner was as effective in one of those last classes with a bottom set Year 9 group on a Friday afternoon as when exploring the comic side of Shakespeare’s Henry IV with his lower sixth on a Tuesday before lunch.

Looking back what I treasure most was his sense that all of us were important and that however ungainly we expressed ourselves and “got it wrong” there was merit in what we said and his job was to take us forward and bring out our talents.

It was a quality which on more than one occasion led him to persuade me in to doing something “dramatic” that at best I was uneasy with and at worst just didn’t want to do.  Like the performance of Pinter’s “The Last to Go” which he and I did at one the evenings of prose and poetry hosted by the English Department.  Now being asked to do the five minute conversation between a barman and newspaper seller in front of an audience was daunting enough, but to actually have to do it with Mr Marland made you feel very special.

Some of the Class of '68, 1965

And when you had been chosen to be part of one these events there was a real sense that there was no way of getting out of it.  I well remember another such evening, which was to be a collection of 18^th century readings and music performed at Ranger’s House on Blackheath to  invited audiences.

There was the causal enquiry about  becoming involved, followed by an invitation to his office high up in the school.  The part was outlined to me which I politely declined using a variety of excuses all more desperate than the one before. These were listened to and quietly but carefully put aside with a mixture of humour and a little flattery, before I realised that this was truly what I wanted to do, and I left with script in hand, only to see that there on page one already printed out along with the rest of the cast was my name beside the piece Clever Tom Clinch by Jonathan Swift.

It was something I thoroughly enjoyed and one that I will always be grateful that he pushed that raw 17 year old to do.

But the degree of his standing in my profession only became apparent once I began teaching.  His book “The Craft of the Classroom: a survival guide to classroom management in the secondary school” published in 1975, offered me and many other young teachers the practical side to the job.  I was arrogant enough to think that I had as he said that mix of "a spirit compounded of the salesman, the music-hall performer, the parent, the clown, the intellectual, the lover” but it was the “organiser" that I was lacking.  Simple things like keeping a register and how to start and end a lesson were taken as read by my older colleagues but never imparted to me when I started in the September of 1973.

It is a reputation that went deep and so during a meeting with English teachers in the late ‘80s the fact that he taught me was met with a mix of envy and a series of questions about him.  I have to say I was less than modest and let slip he had once told me I featured in the preface to one of his books. 

Now for me that still ranks as something.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and  Anne Davey.  The photograph of Michael Marland courtesy of CATHERINE SHAKESPEARE LANE   PHOTOGRAPHER, http://www.csl-art.co.uk/index2.htm

Warm days in Ashton Market .... no.3

Now I don’t make any claims to the quality of the pictures.

They were taken in the days of smelly photography and sat as negatives in the cellar for 40 years.

This year I began to convert them into electronic images.

They were taken sometime around 1978 into 1980 and capture an Ashton which has changed.



Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; Ashton Market, circa 1978-80, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Sammy and Alice Dransfield of Mossley and their twisty turning story

Now, I have the postcard, a possible address for where it was sent and a family who may have received it but matching all three has not quite worked.

The card in question is one of those “silks” which were popular either side of the Great War.

Many were a product of a cottage industry based in northern France, and I guess that was why so many were sent home from the Western Front.

Often the cards feature the names and badges of British Regiments while others have a variety sentimental message.

And because they were made of silk and delicate, they tended to be sent in an envelope, which probably explains why this postcard bears no stamp.

That said “Sammy” who sent it provided the destination address, and Wyre Street still exists, although sadly the row including number 17 was demolished long ago.

But they were there in 1894 close to a school and the disused graveyard of St George’s Church.

I can’t yet match the house with a family from the census return but I am fairly confident that Mr and Mrs Dransfield who were living on Oldham in 1911, are our people.

His middle name was Samuel and in the middle of the Great War he would still only have been in his mid-40s and so within military age.

But and it is a big but, I can’t find anyone in the family whose first name might have begun with an S.  Mrs. Dransfield was an Alice, their two daughters were called Elizabeth and Alice and their son was a Joseph.

To which some will murmur “pretty much a non-story …. having taken us halfway up the hill you abandon us with no end to the tale".

And yep that is how it goes sometimes.

Location; Mossley

Picture; a silk postcard, date unknown, from the collection of David Harrop

Wattle and daub cottages in Chorlton

The story of how we lived here in the first half of the 19th century.


There may still have been upwards of fifty wattle and daub houses in the 1840s in our township.

They were constructed from a timber framework with walls made of branches woven together and covered with a mixture of clay, gravel, hay and even horse hair and topped with a thatched roof.

Samuel and Sarah Sutton brought up their 2 children in one of these cottages. Their home was one of two adjoining cottages situated on the Row and in every sense looked the rural part.

The white walls and wooden beams were partly obscured by ivy and the front door was approached through a small country garden. Behind the house and away from the view of strangers stood the privy and the back garden where the Sutton’s grew fruit, vegetables and flowers.

 There would be currant and gooseberry bushes, raspberry canes, rhubarb and mix of vegetables which made an important contribution to the family income and were often home to chickens and even a pig.

Such houses were easy to build and equally easy to maintain, but there could be disadvantages to living in them. The porous nature of walls meant they were damp and crumbling clay meant endless repairs.

According to a later Parliamentary report “Many of them have not been lined with lath and plaster inside and so are fearfully cold in winter. The walls may not be an inch in thickness and where the lathes are decayed the fingers may be easily pushed through. The roof is of thatch, which if kept in good repair forms a good covering, warm in winter and cool in summer, though doubtless in many instances served as harbour for vermin, for dirt, for the condensed exhalations from the bodies of the occupants of the bedrooms....”


Floors made of brick or stone were laid directly on the ground and were almost invariably damp, and in the worst cases reeked with moisture. Once the brick was broken, the floor became uneven and the bare earth exposed. This might be compounded where the cottage floor was below the ground outside or the floor level was uneven which caused problems of drainage. Even the proudest wife and mother must have been reconciled to damp and dirt which were the result of such floors.

The only heating would come from the open fire which might have been combined with a cooking range. On damp days when the coal or wood was wet the smell would permeate every room in the house. During the winter months the unheated bedrooms were particularly unpleasant places. On the coldest nights ice would form on the inside of windows.

Cottages of this design were often limited to four rooms, and some may have had only two, with the family living downstairs and sleeping on the upper floor. In some cases access to the bedroom was by ladder rather than stairs and in many cases bedrooms were left open. One surviving cottage in Chorlton from the eighteenth century did have a staircase which opened out to a big bedroom giving little in the way of privacy.

As for sanitation this would have been equally primitive. Nationally the rural picture was grim with privies often draining into open channels which themselves got blocked with refuse and so flowed too slowly to allow the waste to disperse.


Picture; Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895 in the collection of Philip Lloyd

The Southern Hotel and the fields to the south of Mauldeth Road West from the air, 1933

An occasional series dedicated to looking down at Chorlton from the air. Here is the Southern Hotel in 1933.

Despite the presence of fields and barns, the development of Corporation housing hints at the urban spread to come.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; aerial view of the fields around the Southern Hotel on Mauldeth Road West, by N. S. Robert, 1933 m72051, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Light the Darkness ............ today from 4pm ...... Holocaust Memorial Day

Each year people from across the UK take part in a national moment for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Imperial War Museum North,  lights the darkness for HMD

At 4pm on 27 January people across the nation will light candles and put them safely in their windows to:

remember those who were murdered for who they were

stand against prejudice and hatred today

Salford Quays Millenium Footbridge, lights the darkness for HMD

Iconic buildings and landmarks will light up in purple during this powerful national moment of commemoration and solidarity.

Follow the link for details.

Light the https://www.hmd.org.uk/lightthedarkness/

Picture; Imperial War Museum North,ights the darkness for HMD, photo Credit Emma Phillipson,  Salford Quays Millenium Footbridge, lights the darkness for HMD, photo Credit Emma Phillipson

Lost amongst the steam and vintage .........

Now I think this will be 1980 and so should be that wonderful day when the Steam Exposition came to town.

But given back then there were fairly regular events in Castlefield celebrating all the majesty of steam, it could have been another year.

Still, I liked this picture back then and still do today.

Of course etiquette demands I should have asked permission to take the picture and recorded the person’s name, which I didn’t.

I hope the passage of forty years will make that omission OK.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Lost amongst the steam and vintage, 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mrs. Beatrice Annie Bayfield another story from Tony Goulding

This is one of those stories which arise from an unintentional discovery while researching something completely unrelated.

I have recently written of this blog of the pioneering female journalist Madeline Alberta Linford; I have now discovered another, and in a quite remarkable coincidence she also lived on Claude Road in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester. Although perhaps not as illustrious as her fellow writer, Beatrice still has an interesting and important life story to reveal.

 Mrs. Bayfield was born Beatrice Annie Hodgson in the Hulme district of Manchester during October 1867 to   William Hodgson and Mary Ann (née Dawson). Her father was a Lancaster-born butcher who had, as recorded in the 1871 census, a butcher’s shop at 117, Stretford Road, Hulme, Manchester. The 1881 census record shows the family (1) had moved to 17, Moss Lane West, Stretford, Lancashire. A decade later in the census of 1891, William, by then a widower (2) and working as an "inspector of gas”, was living at 101, Crosscliffe Street, Moss Side, Lancashire with four of his children. Interestingly, while her older sister, Jessie Till, was recorded as a schoolmistress no occupation was entered for Beatrice Annie.

23, Beechwood Avenue, December 2023

An explanation of this is revealed by the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser of Thursday 21st September 1893 which advertised the commencement in its Weekly Supplement of an extremely interesting original story entitled “The Mystery of the Mervyns” by Miss Beatrice A. Hodgson - “a young and accomplished local writer”. 

Beatrice was also very active in the Pankhurst's Women’s Franchise League, addressing many meetings around the greater Manchester area and the West Riding of Yorkshire. She was also a member of the Women’s Liberal Association. Both her advocacy of Women’s Suffrage and her Liberal political persuasion would I hazard to suggest have hampered her having further stories published in the chauvinistic and right leaning “Manchester Courier ------”.

Beatrice married Herbert Bayfield a “buyer foreign shippers” in the Chorlton Registration District during the December quarter of 1897. Newly-married the couple settled in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where they remained throughout the next 40+ years. Their first home was number 29, Whalley Avenue (off Sandy Lane), but the 1901 census shows they had moved to another rented property, 23, Beechwood Avenue, further along Sandy Lane. 

With Herbert, however, having a successful career in shipping (3) by 1911 the couple were able to purchase this large house on the edge of the newly developed garden village of Chorltonville, “Fern Lea”, 61, Claude Road. 

61, Claude Road, December 2023

Meanwhile, Beatrice continued in her endeavours promoting the extension of the franchise and women’s causes generally. She began travelling more widely, addressing meetings in Worcester, Coventry, Leamington Spa, Warwickshire and elsewhere. In the afternoon of Wednesday 6th May 1908, she shared a platform with Margaret Ashton (soon to be elected as Manchester’s first woman councillor) at a meeting in Manchester’s Co-operative Hall chaired by Dr. Rhodes, of Didsbury, to discuss a proposal to provide Nursery Training Schools for the city. (4)  At this time Beatrice styled herself as Mrs Hodgson Bayfield.

     Beatrice remained a life-long Liberal. During the first decade of the 20th century, she had toured giving a series of lectures to local Womens Liberal Associations some of which included a lantern slide show.  

In the 1911 census in which she was recorded as a lecturer and journalist her employer is given as The National Reform Union a body with strong links to the Liberal Party. Later in 1929 she stood, unsuccessfully, as the Liberal Party’s candidate in the Manchester (Gorton) constituency in that year’s General Election. She was one of just 61 women candidates (25 Liberal, 28 Labour and 8 Conservative) to stand in this landmark election, the first in the U.K. in which both sexes had an equal franchise. Beatrice continued her writing career alongside her political one. 

Once women had gained equal franchise with men in 1928, she turned more towards how that should be used to improve women’s lives. In the late 1920s and early 1930s she contributed letters and articles to “The Vote” the Organ of the Women’s Freedom League with the: - 

She also wrote for The Manchester City News whose issue of 13th November 1937 reported that she had penned her first play and was going to produce it herself at St. Werburgh’s Hall, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. The two-act play was titled “Neptune and the Lifeboatmen” with the proceeds donated to the National Lifeboat Institution of which Beatrice was the President of its local Ladies Guild.

Mrs. Bayfield was a member of several public bodies. Amongst these were The Manchester Public Assistance Committee and the Board of the Manchester and Salford Co-operative Society. The membership of this latter body caused her some difficulty when she stood in the Liberal cause in the 1929 election for which she sought advice from the editor and owner of The Manchester Guardian, the fellow Liberal C. P. Scott.

Mrs. Beatrice Annie Hodgson Bayfield died of a heart attack at her home on 17th January 1939 aged 71. She was cremated at the Manchester Crematorium on 20th January. Her estate was valued £524-18s-10d 

Pictures: - Mrs Bayfield candidate for Manchester Gorton from The Vote, April 27th courtesy of British Newspaper Archive, and “Objects----” of THE VOTE, from The Newspaper Archive on Find My Past. Others from collection of Tony Goulding.

Notes: -

1) The Hodgson family consisted of Beatrice Annie’s parents, and four siblings an older sister, Jessie Till, 

2) Beatrice’s mother died on 5th November 1884 and was buried in Ardwick Cemetery, Manchester. In the same grave were interred three of her children who died young William Lincoln (died 5/3/1867 aged 11 months) Ernest Dawson (died 1/12/1868 aged 4 years) and Mary Adelaide (died 1/4/1878 aged 10 months).

3) Herbert’s career appears to have involved widespread frequent travel as for both the 1901 and 1911 censuses he is absent from home. He was at home for the 1921 census in which his occupation is recorded as Managing Director of a Shipping Merchants.

4)  As reported in The Manchester Courier--------, the following day. The sub-heading for their story “Utopian Scheme Discussed” was indicative of “The Courier’s” usual stance on such matters.

While writing about this lady I became aware of how few women had featured in my stories for this blog to date. I am glad that this and my recent telling of Madeline Linford’s story have at least addressed this imbalance.

Remembering ……. Holocaust Memorial Day

There will be many different ways people will mark Holocaust Memorial Day.

The 8th night of Hanukkah, Kiel, December 12th, 1931

One way will be to light a candle and put it in your window tomorrow evening  you can participate in the UK Ceremony for Holocaust Memorial Day 2024 which will be streamed online  by registering with the Holocaust Memorial Trust online.*

“The Trust encourages remembrance in a world scarred by genocide. We promote and support Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) – the international day on January 27th  to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust, alongside the millions of other people killed under Nazi persecution of other groups and in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

January 27th marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

The Holocaust threatened the fabric of civilisation, and genocide must still be resisted every day. Our world often feels fragile and vulnerable and we cannot be complacent. Even in the UK, prejudice and the language of hatred must be challenged by us all”.**

Chaya Hochrad

And for those who want to explore the human tragedy you can join The I Remember Wall which, “when you join, your name will be randomly matched to a Holocaust victim from Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names. 

This unique project allows you to remember a specific victim, learn their name, read their story, and see their picture. You can then share the story of a Holocaust victim with others, as we join together to spread Holocaust awareness on International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January27th). 

Together, we can ensure that the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered during the Holocaust is never forgotten".***

You can join online by following the link.

Pictures, The 8th night of Hanukkah, Kiel,  William Miconnet who wrote, “Rabbi Akiva Boruch Posner lit this menorah on the 8th night of Hanukkah in full view of the Nazi headquarters in Kiel, Germany, 12 December 1931” and Chaya Hochrad  Elaine F. Miller, who added “The young woman on the left was my father’s paternal cousin, Chaya Hochrad.  The National Library of Israel****

* Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, https://www.hmd.org.uk/what-is-holocaust-memorial-day/

** Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, https://www.hmd.org.uk/

***I Remember Wall, https://iremember.yadvashem.org/?p=1068&&utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter-english&utm_campaign=iremember-2022&utm_content=email-01

****The National Library of Israel, https://web.nli.org.il/sites/nli/english/Pages/default.aspx

Princess Road …. Chorlton-cum-Hardy …. two mysteries .. only one solved

Princess Road was off Neale Road and is now Pinewood Road.

Princess Road, 1933

I came across it while searching for something else, and it was one of those niggling little mysterious which needed solving. 

It is there on the 1901 census and  in the Rate Books for the 1870s.

So far so good, it just became a matter of tracking exactly where it was in  Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

The 1911 street directory recorded that it was off Neal Road, which was confirmed by later maps.

But what makes it a little more interesting is that its name was changed in advance of the big cull on repetitive street names across the city which saw Regent Road become Reeves, Church Road turn in to Chequers, and the demise of countless other old Chorlton road names.  

Most appear to have happened in the late 1960s or early 70s, but not so Princess Road which had bucked the trend and become Pinewood sometime between 1933 and 1956.

All I suspect a little nerdy which I fully accept, but for another mystery which is its appearance in the Rate Books for 1870s.

It appears just the five times in the Chorlton Rate Books, with just the one property which is owned by the Lloyd Estate and home to a Mr. Charles Chambers who paid an annual rent of £12.

Before 1875, Mr. Chambers was residing at Pitts Brow which was the was the slightly raised bit of land on the north side of where High Lane joins Edge Lane.

Six years later the 1881 census has him at Ash Tree Cottage which the census records as Wilbraham Road, but I think was more properly on Manchester Road, opposite the Lloyds.

Ash Tree, 1853

Maps from the 1850s show a collection of cottages at this point, which Thomas Elwood, our own historian, described in some detail.

They appear in one of his newspaper articles from 1885, in which he singled out Ash Tree Cottage which took its name from “a fine old ash tree which stood at the centre of Manchester Road, at the foot of which a man used to engage in prayer at a certain time every day”.*

But the cottage looks to have gone even before it appeared in his article, for while it is there in the April of 1881, it had gone by the time the Withington Board of Health published its map later in the year.

All a rad confusing, more so because on that map Manchester Road named as the road running up from High Lane to Wilbraham Road, which was cut in the late 1860s.

So, one Princess Road mystery solved but a second left to be explored.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Princess Road 1933, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1933-34, and Ash Tree Cottage, 1853, from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Ancient Wood and Plaster Dwellings, Chapter IV, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, South Manchester Gazette, November 28th 1885