Looking out from Cross Lane ....... across the fields of Chorlton-cum-Hardy with Mr Samuel Walton

In the spring of 1877, Mr Samuel Walton would have had a fine view from his house on Cross Road out on to the fields which stretched down Beech Road.

Cross Road, 2018

He had moved in earlier that year and was the first occupant of the house built by a John Rhodes.

During that first year the annual rent for the property was £25 per year, which rose later in the next decade by three pounds.

By then Mr Walton had bought the house and moved out renting it to a succession of tenants.

I had always assumed that the houses on Cross Road dated from the early 1870s, but on being asked to do some research on one of them I discovered that they had been built in two phases.

The lower numbers were there by 1871 but the rest came along a little later.

They were some of the first new “posh” build in what was still a rural area.

Row Acre directly beside Cross Road, 1894

To the east of the long gardens of the houses on Cross Road was the large walled garden of Beech House which belonged to the Holt family along with a set of cottages which jutted out onto what we now called Beech Road.

The name Beech Road is relatively recent, before that and no doubt running back centuries it was called Chorlton Row, and by the 1840s, consisted of a few wattle and daub houses dating into the 18th century, two fine houses built in the early 1800s, a couple of farmhouses, a beer shop, the Wesleyan Chapel and the village smithy.

The Rate Books also show that Cross Road underwent a number of name changes, beginning with Cross Lane, then Cross Street and finally Cross Road.

Looking out from Cross Road, 1894, on all that was left of Row Acre

And for all those who never tire of telling the assembled crowd that Chorlton has no streets but only roads, this might seem a revelation, and one that I shall follow up with the fact that Acres Road was once Acres Street and the small stretch of road from the Chorlton Green past the Beech Inn to where there is a twist in the direction of the road was Lloyd Street.

And so back to Mr Walton and that house whose views out on Row Acre were changing.

By the late 19th century Row Acre was getting nibbled away till all that was left was a 2 acre patch bounded by Beech Road, High Lane, Cross Road and Wilton Road.

It was last ploughed in 1895 and was gifted to the people of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by the Egerton’s as a Recreational Ground.

And that is it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Cross Road, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, ploughing Row Acre, courtesy of Mr Higginbotham from the Lloyd Collection, and Row Acre, 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Sources; Census Return , Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1871-91, Rate Books, 1877-1900

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.

The lost Chorlton Bowling Green ..... Joseph Miller and the Lloyd Terrace ........Whitelow Road gives up its secrets ……….

It was a chance conversation outside the Horse Jockey.

Lloyd Street, 1854 marked in red

I was talking about the history of the pub when l was drawn into a conversation about Whitelow Road.

To be exact the question ran What do l know about Whitelow Road?

The short answer was not a lot other than part of it was once called Lloyd Street.*

This was in 1854 and instantly challenges that tired and well rehersed observation that "there are no streets in Chorlton".

Now, Lloyd owned a big chunk of Chorlton cum Hardy having bought into the township in the 18th century.

Back then Lloyd Street was a far more modest stretch terminating just beyond the Beech Inn where it ran into the 2 acre field called Row Acre which was owned by the Lloyd estate and farmed by Mary White.  In total she rented 77 acres stretched out across Chorlton and she lived at the southern end of Chorlton Green.

Whitelow Road, 2022

So back to the question because my new friend lives in one of the houses directly opposite the Beech and to stamp a bit more authenticity into the story high up in the wall is one of those stone inscription which usually offers up the name of the terrace and sometimes even a date.

Alas there is no date but the name Lloyd Terrace which is a nice connection to Mr. Lloyd.

In1891 my friend's house was occupied by a Joseph Miller who was 23 married to Emma and shared the house with three children, two brothers and a lodger.  

He was from Didsbury, she was from West Gorton and their eldest son, aged 5 had been born in Cheadle.  Within the year after he was born they moved to Chorlton and took up residence in the property by 1889.

Lloyd Terrace, 2022

Mr. Miller gave his as “coach man and domestic groom”  as were his brothers and the lodger.  At which point it is easy to speculate on who they worked for and whether all were employed by the same family. 

What is striking is the variety of birth places.  Along with Didsbury, West Gorton, and Cheadle, we can add three different parts of Shropshire as well as Chorlton.

I haven’t as yet got a date for when the terrace was built but a Frederick Fuller occupied another one of the houses in 1886 and by 1893 Whitelow Road extended all the  way to Wilbraham Road and all the buildings we now know and a few more had all been constructed.

So that just leaves a search of the rate books to push back to the moment when our terrace was built.  

All the evidence would suggest a date after 1881, when the land upon which the terraced is situated is shown up as Bowling Green.  

This must be the lost Bowling Green which had been connected to the Horse and Jockey where according to the historian Thomas Ellwood was “a number of gentlemen used to play bowls on the green then adjoining the Horse and Jockey.  For exclusive use of the green was reserved one afternoon in each week, in return for a small annual subscription, and the players generally partook of tea afterwards, and spent the evening together over a friendly game of cards."***

The lost bowling green 1881

In the 1840s the plot was owned by John Brundrett who rented it out to Thomas Cookson.

It was two acres in size which is roughly the same as the Rec on Beech Road. to and listed as "Garden"

The gentleman later decamped to Edge Lane where they formed a much grander club which limped on till 1950.

This may have precipitated the bowling green's change of use into residential because by 1885  Frederick Fuller was renting from the Brundrett estate in Lloyd Terrace.

As for those with a wider interest in Whitelow Road, it would appear that the stretch from High Lane had also not been cut by 1881, instead much of it is marked as a wooded area held by the Methodists.

So, from being a mystery road, Whitelow has started to give up its secrets.

Picture; map showing Lloyd Street from the OS map of Lancashire 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives,  http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Whitelow Road, 2022, courtesy of Google Mapsthe  map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Withington Health Board, 1881, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies

* It was still Lloyd Street in 1871

**Ellwood, Thomas Bowling Greens, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, number 26, South Manchester Gazette, May 15, 1886

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

Walking the Thames

Now I am the first to admit it’s a bit of a silly title but that is exactly what my friend Neil did, once under the river at Woolwich and then again at Greenwich.

It’s not my chosen way of leaving Woolwich for that other place, but Neil had never seen either of the foot tunnels and so it was an adventure.

I have to say that these are adventures I no longer want to do.

I prefer the ferry where I can see where I am going and know that the water is below me and not above me.

I still have vivid memories of that old illuminated sign at the Wapping and Rotherhithe  Underground Stations  announcing  “Men working on Pumps” when I used the Tube regularly in the 1960s to know that over is better than under, a feeling enhanced by one visit to Easington Colliery.

Kay’s father who was Chief Mechanical Engineer at the pit thought I would be interested in seeing how generations of the Baxter family had made their living.

There was no way I could say no to my future father in law, although a mile down and three miles out under the North Sea I wish I had done so.

I last walked the walk when I was ten and have never done the journey since.
I do remember it was exciting.

The floor slowly sloped down there was that echoing sound of your footsteps and the point where the other exist came into view.

So that is it.  I have thanked Neil for his pictures, which have made me a tad homesick but not enough to do that walk.

Location; London

Pictures, the foot tunnels, April 2017 from the collection of Neil Simpson

Living at 523 Barlow Moor Road in the 1940s

I am back with the memories of my friend Ann who grew up in a big house on Barlow Moor Road in the 1940s and 50s.

Her parents ran an undertaker’s business and along with descriptions of the house there are some wonderful insights into the work they did

"Like most houses in the 1940's, there was no central heating, and in winter, the only room which was warm was the kitchen. 

This was heated by the 'Range' a small open fire, which heated an oven, and a top oven for pans, and was covered in dark blue tiles. 

There was a trivet to stand the heavy cast iron kettle, and a coal scuttle which needed refilling several times a day, which meant going down the cellar for buckets of coal.  

Each side of the Range was fitted cupboards, and my Mum had her sewing machine in front of the window. 

She had trained as a dressmaker, and had worked in Manchester making and altering dresses, before she was married, and then had become a housewife’, as women did in 1928. 

She told me she had altered a dress for Tallulah Bankhead, (A famous actress at the time) and that it hadn't been cleaned, and smelt of sweat.

Entertainment at the time was the wireless, or the piano, or having friends round to play cards.

There wasn't a sink in the kitchen, but there was a small room at the side called a scullery, where the washing up was done. We didn't get a washing machine until about 1957, so all washing was done by hand, except for large things, like sheets and tablecloths. 

Our Laundry No was 1971, which incidentally became the year of our marriage.

Each Saturday evening at 5-o-clock, there had to be absolute silence, whilst my Dad checked his football pool results. He won 100 pounds one week, and bought my Mum a fur coat.

The workshop at the side of the house was the only room on ground level – all the other rooms were about 6ft above, and were reached by steps at the front and the back. 

There was a door from the driveway which led to a short passage, one side of which had a glazed partition, with the workshop to one side.

This was where Dad would varnish, or wax polish the coffins. Wax polishing was only done on the more expensive coffins, as it was very time consuming, and required several layers of wax being applied and rubbed in, until my Dad was satisfied with the finish. 

Then my Mum would line the coffins with kapok and taffeta.

When business was quiet, Dad would make spare coffins in different sizes, which could be stored in the cellar. They were stacked against the walls, and were perfect for playing hide and seek when my cousins came over to play.  

The door from the driveway was used for deliveries – we had bread, and meat delivered, once or twice a week.

The bread was from bakers opposite the Lloyds Hotel, but the butcher, called Frank came from  Heaton Mersey.

The internal stairs led up to a short corridor with two doors, one leading to the kitchen, and another, with stained glass panels led to the hallway.

In the hall were two doors which led to the front rooms, and a short passage, with a room under the stairs, called the pantry. This just held all the extra china that we used when we had visitors. 

My father had a box which held a most peculiar implement – he had been on a course to embalm bodies, (preserve them) and the box held a sort of pump to remove the blood and replace it with embalming fluid. I can't remember it ever being used, but it sat on a shelf in the pantry.  

The two front rooms were called the dining room, and the lounge. Just to differentiate them I think.

The lounge was used as a billiard room when I was very young, and had a full sized billiard table, but when my grandfather re-married when I was about seven, it must have been sold. and we used the room in the evenings, and when friends came my mother used to play the piano. I had lessons, but didn't get very far, I was much more interested in drawing.

The 'dining room' was used when people came to make arrangements for funerals. There was a large oak table covered in a brown chenille cloth with a fringe, and a carved oak sideboard.

Dad would take down details of the kind o funeral that was required and organize everything.

From the laying out of the body, the type of coffin, the white gown which covered them, the nameplate and brass handles, contacting a minister to take a service, the cemetery or crematorium for the disposal of the body, hiring of the hearse and cars, bearers to carry the coffin (usually the drivers of the hearse and cars) obituary notices in the newspapers, and finally a meal for those who had travelled a long way, often at the Southern Hotel."

© Ann Love, 2014

Pictures; by Ann Love

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.

The lost stories of Hatter’s Court ……..

You won’t find Hatter’s Court.

Hatter's Court, 1850

It went a long time ago and with it the stories of the people who called it home for a chunk of the middle decades of the 19th century.

It consisted of eleven houses facing into a court which was enclosed on three sides, with just an entrance on Addington Street and a dark and narrow passage which led out onto Marshall Street.

It was there by 1819 but just when an enterprising speculative builder chose to build some, or all of the houses is lost.

Five of the eleven were back-to-back and a search of the Directories has revealed the place didn’t warrant a listing.

Not that I am surprised, because Hatter’s Court and countless others were homes to the poor and as such didn’t get a mention.

Eight of the occupants are listed in the rate books for 1851, but despite having those eight names none have so far turned up on the census records for that year.

And it maybe they belong to those census records which were damaged and are now unreadable.

So, while I have the names of John Weston and Patrick Dowling both of whom were shoemakers it has been impossible find out anymore about either man or the families.

Growing old in Hatter's Court, 1841

But there are ways of delving deeper, and by a laborious process of working through the 1841 census applying a bit of imaginative searching and a heap of patience our court turned up.

There were 42 people recorded as living in ten of the properties, with some examples of overcrowding.  

Most of the households consisted of three or four people, but in one there were seven and in another eight occupants.  Added to which there is evidence of some subletting. In houses which at best consisted of 4 rooms and in the case of the back to backs just two rooms.

That said the 1841 census lacks the detail which comes on later census records.  

So, it is impossible from these entries to determine the relationship of the head of the household and the other residents. And while in some cases it is possible to infer a couple are married with young children, in other cases the names are not ranked by age making it difficult to know who was who.

Added to which the census is silent on exactly where people were born, preferring to list them as either from or not from Lancashire and providing a supplementary column to be ticked if they were born in “Scotland, Ireland or Foreign Parts”.

Of these “supplementaries” there were 15, which when combined with nine who were not from Lancashire means that in the June of 1841 our court rang out with accents which were not Mancunian and were the majority of the residents.

The census also offers up a snapshot of the jobs they did.

Working for a living, Hatter's Court, 1841

There were two weavers, five hat makers, a butcher, bookkeeper, two servants, three hawkers, along with a joiner, a porter and one seamstress.  

Of the remaining adult women, only one described herself as a “housekeeper”, although it is possible to infer that another seven might have been engaged in similar responsibilities.

What is certain is that almost half of the 42 were under the age of twenty and the eldest were  Patrick and Margaret Lannigan who were both 60.

In time I will go looking for all of our 42, tracking them as best we can back from 1841, and forward through the 19th century.

All that's left the line of the entry into the court, 2023

I doubt their stay in our court lasted long, looking at the tenure of stay in other courts I can be confident most moved on within a few years.

Nor did Hatter’s Court survive long after the 1890s, because while it is still there on the 1894 OS it looks to have disappeared sometime in the early 20th century, although even that bold statement may yet be qualified.

Location; Addington and Marshall Street, Manchester

Pictures; Pictures; the street with no name and little history, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1850 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

What did Chorltonville do in the last war?

South Drive, 1913

Now I always thought that Chorlton had by and large escaped the damage done to other parts of the city during the last war.

But that was not so and there is plenty of evidence that we got our fair share.*

Some of that evidence came to light in this edition of the Chorltonville News in the form of a compilation of extracts from the minutes of the Association for the war years.***

"In spite of its peaceful location, Chorltonville did not entirely escape the Second World War.  

Nell Lane, 1941

In June 1940 one of the estate workers, Pat Carly Jnr, was called up for military service and left.  An entry in 1944 records that he was then serving in Burma, and would like to take up his job “if he is spared to return”.  

Pat’s departure must have hit the family finances, because in July 1940 his father, also Pat Carly, requested a rise in his wages.  

The Committee agreed to an increase of three shillings and sixpence (about 18p) per week.  Mr Carly again applied for an increase in December 1941, due to war conditions.  

He was given an increase of four shillings (20p) per week, but granted it as a War Bonus – maybe so that it could be withdrawn after the war.

Also in 1940, the Committee was chasing up an application to Manchester Corporation for air raid shelters for the estate, “pointing out that no provision whatever had been made by the Corporation in case of emergency”.

Barrage Ballon on the Rec, 1941

Manchester’s Town Clerk was, apparently, not sympathetic.  He declined to provide the shelters, as the policy of the Corporation was to supply protection only for people caught by an air raid on the streets.  

The Clerk said that “each person who can afford to do so is expected by the Government to arrange for their own protection whilst they are at home”. 

The Committee accepted this decision, but protected their position by writing to the Corporation stating “that no responsibility can be taken by the Committee in the event of any unfortunate situation”.


The war evidently affected both finances and availability of people.  At the 1941 AGM, the Treasurer reported that the accounts were “as good as could be expected under current difficulties”, but still showed a deficit of over £37.  

The meeting voted a levy comprising a basic charge of 16 shillings, plus 3½d for each linear foot of frontage - under £1.50 for most houses.  

A deputy Auditor had to be found, as the elected Auditors were unavoidably absent.  The minutes do not say the reason, but one was still on “enforced absence” the following year, so presumably had been called up.

In May 1942 the Army erected Nissan huts behind Chorltonville alongside the cobbled lane by Brookburn School.  The Secretary wrote to the Royal Engineers (at Mayfield Rd in Whalley Range) asking whether the huts were for barrage balloons or gun emplacements, “as the Committee were most anxious that the presence of these things would render the Estate a target for the enemy”.

The Royal Engineers suggested he contact the balloon section, so the Secretary went to the local unit at the Recreation Ground in Cross Rd.  The corporal there had no knowledge of the huts and referred the Secretary to the Manchester RAF.  

The RAF replied with the enigmatic statement that the huts’ presence “does not increase the vulnerability of the estate to enemy air attack”.  The minutes do not say whether the Committee was reassured by this.

The Meade, 1913

The Committee was more successful in 1943, applying to the Corporation for extra street lights.  

Lamp posts were not in use because of the blackout, but they noted that the Corporation had introduced a modified form of lighting on some roads.  

They requested that these be introduced to Chorltonville, because of the danger to pedestrians using the roads and footpaths.  The Corporation agreed, and added dimmed lighting around the estate.

Interestingly, there is no note in the minutes recording either VE or VJ Day, but at the 1946 AGM, the Chairman tidily summarised:

“he spoke of the work of the past year, carried out under conditions as in the War, though happily the final Conflict had come to an end.  He continued that this Estate had been maintained under very fair conditions, and proposed that the levy stay the same.”

Pictures; Barage Ballon on the Rec, from the collection of Alan Brown detail from bomb damage at Nell Lane, 1940, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m09736, and pictures of the ville from the Lloyd collection

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20in%20the%201940s

** http://www.chorltonville.org/index.htm

*** reproduced courtsey of Chorltonville News

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

On the Trafalgar Road in 1968 …….. Austen’s ….. that record shop and a slew of ancient memories

This is Trafalgar Road in the spring of 1968.

It was taken by John King, and I am grateful that he has given me permission to use it, because it has set the memories going.

Two years earlier I knew this stretch well because I worked at Austen’s camping shop, which was a job at which  I didn’t crown myself with glory.

But then I was only 16, had big issues with adding up, dispensing the correct change and could never remember which tent was best for a back packing couple.

Even now the smell of canvas, and assorted plastic macs brings back the shop and the summer of 1966 on Trafalgar Road.

The shop has gone, and I think judging by the geography of this bit of the road, it is now an Iceland, but then the building that was the cinema no longer shows films and the old record shop just on from the church offers up all things plumbing instead of all things vinyl.

Not that I suspected any of these haunts of my youth would still exist.

It is after all 60 years since I spent my dinner hours in that record shop, but I still remember the collection of early Bob Dylan LPs I bought there, which are still in the collection.

And when I bring them out flashes of the Woolwich and Trafalgar Roads jump back.

All of which will bore some readers, provoke others to bring out their own memories, and yet more to take a wander down the two roads to do their own "then and now" comparisons.

I cant remember when the hospital was opened, but vaguely think it was being built in that summer I sold camping knives, and in turn bought the record Bob Dylan.

Incidentally that LP had been issued four years earlier, cost me £2.99 and retails now on some sites for £50.

So, all in all nostalgia was a lot cheaper then than now.

Leaving me just to add John’s comment to his picture, “People complain about traffic, but just remember if you are stuck in traffic you are part of the problem.

Ah the golden days of the 60s when traffic jams had not been invented. Think again, Woolwich Road, Greenwich seen in 1968. 

Something had happened in the Blackwall Tunnel, although the second tunnel opened a year earlier the approach road had not been completed.

The vehicles of a couple of old SE London firms can be seen. RACS and soft drinks firm Macintosh.

May 1968”.

To which I will add that L.P. Hartley quote  “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there,” from his 1953 novel “The Go-Between.”

And as John’s picture shows we did transport, and lorries very differently.

As we did cinemas, and here is the postscript, just a few hours after the original story was published.  Both John and I spent a bit of the morning pondering on that cinema.

I thought it was an ABC but john correctly identified it from an old map as the Granada, which led me to that wonderful site for cinema history which is cinema Treasures, and the entry for the Granada Greenwich at 234 Trafalgar Road.

"It was was opened by film star Gracie Fields on 30th September 1937 with Sabu in 'Elephant Boy' and Brian Donlevy in “Midnight Taxi”. Designed by noted American theatre architect C. Howard Crane, with interior decoration by Theodore Komisarjevsky. 

It had 1,924 seats in stalls and balcony and a rather plain auditorium, quite unlike the style of the opulent Woolwich / Tooting / Clapham Junction Granada Theatre’s. 

It was equipped with a Wurlitzer 3Manual/8Ranks organ which was opened by organist Donald Thorne. The Granada Theatre also had a fully equipped stage".

That said according to the 1947 Kinematic Yearbook it had by that year increased its number of seats to 2,772 seats.

But if you want more you will have to go to the site and find out for yourself, because I make it a policy of not lifting other people's research.

The added bonus is a picture of the cinema, pretty much as I remember it.

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Trafalgar Road, 1968, from the collection of John King

*cinema Treasures http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/3781