Looking for the lost parents ............. and the work of a children's charity

Now as an idea the project to search out the parents of children admitted to a children’s charity in 1870 seemed a good one.

Poverty caused by the Cotton famine, 1862

After all if you want to get a better understanding why young people went into care looking at their parents seemed to have merit.

These parents would have been born in the 1840’s and 50’s when Manchester was still a city being transformed into what one historian has called the “shock city of the Industrial Revolution.”

So it followed that just possibly by tracking the lives of the parents we might get an insight into how those changes affected them and what if any was the impact on how they brought up their children.

The impact of the Cotton famine, in 1862

It was of course always a project on the edge and on reflection I should have been prepared for the fact that there would be many dead ends.

But the first few case studies proved encouraging.

In one case I was able to track one set of parents back to Ireland in the 1820s, follow them to Liverpool and then onto Manchester.

In another case the search led to number 8 Back Richard Street which was a closed court and entered through a narrow passage from Richard Street which was off Cupid's Alley.

Back Richard Street just east of Richard Street, 1849

Here in 1861 the family of four shared the house with the Lindsay family which consisted of Mr and Mrs Lindsay and their four children and another four boarders, making in total fourteen people in the one house.

Next door was almost as equally crowded with ten people, while the surrounding properties ranged from four down to one occupant.

I can’t yet ascertain the size of number 8 which may have been larger than its neighbours but this was still overcrowding.

And the area was densely packed with over 100 properties and 11 courts in a small area bounded by Cupid’s Alley to the north and part of Little Quay Street to the south.

Added to which on the opposite side of Cupid’s Alley stood a Soda Works, Hat factory and Silk Finishing Works.

Not I think an environment which offered much hope for its inhabitants, and in the case of our family at number 8 things were only going to get worse.

In 1870 when our boy was admitted to the charity his mother had deserted the family leaving her disabled husband to look after the two children.

McConnel and Co Mill, 1820

By which time they were living in Wrighton Street which it would appear was so mean that it didn’t warrant an inclusion on the street directory.

But the trail which I hoped would take me back in time to learn more about the mother and father went nowhere.

And not for the first time I had that feeling that the poor do not willingly share their secrets.

Of course the reality is that it is seldom a deliberate decision and more that history has stubbornly ignored not only their secrets put pretty much everything else about them.

Some never made it on to the census records and for those living as sub tenants or boarders they would never be included in the rate books.  Some never married and others may not even have been registered at birth, making the search very difficult.

At home during the Cotton Famine, 1862

A search for the parents of the first twenty to be admitted to the charity in 1870 was pretty much a failure, and where there was an evidence trail it petered out in most cases somewhere between 1861 and the 1850s.

That said there were a few which proved fruitful and at least two boys who we can track into the early years of the twentieth century.

And with patience and by widening the number of boys I look at I think we will get somewhere, and that will help the book which is the story of that charity which began in 1870, was known as the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge and is now the together Trust.

The book covers the full 150 years of its existence and was published in 2020

Location; Manchester

Pictures; suffering amongst cotton workers in 1862, from the Illustrated London News, m10038, McConnel-And-Co's-Mill, 1820, Ancoats, m52533, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass
  and Back Richard Street, Richard Street, 1849, from the Manchester & Salford OS, 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

A Chorlton secret ……. the demolished cinema …….. and Mr. Shaw’s superior garage

 Unless you were in the know I doubt you would ever have realized that behind the shops on Barlow Moor Road between the former Co-op and Coriander there is a large building which specialises in MOT’s and car repairs.

A garage revealed, 2024

But then you would either have to be a customer or wandered down the alley from the main road and found the place.

Shaw's Motor Garage, 1959

Today it is clearly visible from Barlow Moor Road but for a century and more the garage was obscured by that Co-op store, which was once our first purpose, built cinema which opened as The Palais de Luxe de Luxe in 1914.

That relic of the picture age, and the store which once traded as a Tesco, Hanbury’s and Co-op was recently demolished and the open space reveals the line of the garage.

Back in the second decade of the last century it was Shaw’s Motor Garage which had  the first kerb side petrol pump in Chorlton.

The garage was still there in 1959 when Mr. A H Downs took a picture of the building which pretty much matches an earlier one from 1912 which shows Mr. Shaw and a large crowd admiring the petrol pump for the photographer.

Mr. Shaw and his garage, 1912

And not to be out done some time in the 1980s I clocked the same spot when part of the original signage was briefly on show.

The ghost sign, 1984

Mr. Shaw was one of those enterprising men who seized the “motor car moment” at the start of the 20tth century and may even have rented out space to the company which built the Chorlton cars.

All of which I have written about.*

At some point the open space of the former Palais de Luxe de Luxe will be filled with new build, leaving me just to pin down just when the front part of the garage became shops and renew my search for Mr. Shaw.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Pictures; the space wot was the cinema revealing the garage, 2024, row of shops and ghost sign, circa 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Shaw’s garage in 1959, A.H. Downes, m17515, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 1912, from the Lloyd collection

**When Chorlton made cars ………..https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/01/when-chorlton-made-cars.html

The not so different bits of where we live, part 2 ............. Greenwich

Now I am always intrigued at those more recent photographs of where we live.

So while pictures from the late 19th and early 20th centuries are fascinating often everything is so different that it is almost looking at a different landscape.

But those from say the 1960s onwards are often almost the same but not quite, and with this in mind here over the next few days are some from the camera of Jean Gammons all taken in the late 1970s.

And that is all I shall say,

Picture; looking down Greenwich, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Highfield …. another story by Tony Goulding

My last story was something of a marathon, this on the other hand should be more of a sprint.

“Highfield” 1935 A.H. Clarke 

“Highfield” refers to that row of shops, now mostly take-away food outlets which lies opposite the Post Office on Wilbraham Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy. 

I have been curious about this terrace for some time and have always planned on writing a story on it. 

It was this intriguing feature observed recently while waiting at the bus stop opposite that provided the catalyst.

My initial thought was that it was the remains of an old shop sign but looking along the row, there appeared evidence that each property had at one time had an identical feature. 

This is confirmed by A.H. Clarke’s 1935 photograph.

From the area’s rate books Highfield was built in 1883/4 by a local farmer, William Mee of Hobson Hall (1), and was originally a row of residential properties as evidenced by their entries in the 1901 census. However, Slater’s directory of 1910 indicates that they had been converted for commercial use.

This row of shops on Wilbraham Road on the other side of the junction with Barlow Moor Road were also originally residential properties built at the same time as Highfield as Chorlton-cum-Hardy expanded rapidly following the opening of its station in 1880.

Wilbraham Road 1959

Comparing the two rows I think that it is possible that Highfield originally had bay windows on the upper floor too and that these were removed when the conversion to shops was undertaken.  Such work could explain the intriguing feature  

It would be great if there was a photograph of “Highfield” from pre-1900.

Pictures; Wilbraham Road (1935) by A.H. Clarke and (8/3/1959) by A.E. Landers – m18231 and m18266 respectively, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information, and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass "Intriguing feature" from the collection of Tony Goulding.

Notes: -

1) Hobson Hall now serves as the pavilion for South-West Manchester Cricket Club, Ellesmere Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Walking in our historic graveyard ……. and news from the Friends

It’s been a few weeks since I have been in the graveyard beside the green, and so I am not quite sure when the tree came down.

It is a sad sight and given the degree of rot at the base of the trunk I think it can’t be saved.

But then I am not an expert and so quick as a blink I contacted Mathew Benham one of our city councillors and a Friend of Chorlton Graveyard asking who I should tell.

And Mathew did one better by contacting the neighbourhood team on the same day and just two days later came back with “It’s with the ground maintenance team. I’ll chase if it’s not removed.”

Now you can’t do better than that.

Which is a good outcome for the newly formed Friends of Chorlton Graveyard which has  a Facebook Friends site.*

And you can read more of the work of the Friends by following the link.** 

Location; Chorlton Graveyard

Picture; fallen tree, Chorlton Graveyard, 2024 from the  collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Friends of Chorlton Graveyard, www.facebook.com/groups/chorltongraveyard

**Friends of Chorlton Graveyard, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Friends%20of%20Chorlton%20Graveyard

When Crown Woods went vinyl ………………..

I will always be grateful to Crown Woods.

Being 16 and turning up at Crown Woods, 1968

It took a raw sixteen-year-old newly arrived in the September of 1966 and offered up an exciting new world.

My previous five years had been spent at a secondary modern school in New Cross which was the end result for all of us who failed the eleven plus and were judged academically unsuited to the world of Shakespeare, John Donne, and Shelley.

To be fair many secondary moderns did punch above their weight, put students through O and A levels and suggested some of us could walk the hallowed corridors of universities.

That said I had an indifferent five years and was ready for Crown Woods.

And what a revelation it proved to be, from the teachers to the assumption that we would get involved in the drama, and musical productions, while encouraging us to cross the city in search of plays and films just because they were being performed.

crown woods at southwark, 1966

These jaunts included nights at the Old Vic, and Joan Littlewood’s theatre in Stratford as well as tiny amateur presentations of the classics in small smelly venues over the River in obscure parts of north London.

Musical night, 1966

All of which complimented the big inhouse drama productions from the Price of Coal, Crown Woods at Southwark, heaps of music nights and the small intimate evenings hosted by the English Department.

Over the years I have written about those experiences but until yesterday I wasn’t aware that Crown Woods had gone vinyl.*

It was in 1978 and consisted of selections from a series of concerts performed in 1977/78 school year, and the magic is the variety.

Crown Woods went vinyl, 1978

From the classics to items from popular musicals and jazz, and as befitted a comprehensive school the participants were drawn from all age groups.

The magic was in the variety, 1978

My only regret is that I wasn’t there although there will be people who remember those three magic nights and my have participated in one of the concerts. 

But by 1977, I was doing my bit for education in an inner-city Manchester school trying to emulate the spirt of Crown Woods.

That said I came across a copy on ebay for sale at £24.**

It is listed as "CROWN WOODS SCHOOL IN CONCERT   L.P.  EXCELLENT CONDITION. CATALOGUE NUMBER:  SPS130

This brilliant album by Crown Woods was released on a private pressing back in 1979. This copy is in great condition (as described above).  Along with some truly timeless music it has a great sleeve!  RARE !!"

Now I am intrigued that it was a private pressing, and wonder just how many were made.

I am tempted to make a bid but that would involve repairing our record deck, but that might just be the incentive I need.

A different sort of musical event, 1968

For now I will just reflect that Crown Woods did allow me to stage a folk concert which I guess at 17 was something given the artists who turned up.  

With that passage of time I have no idea how much they were paid.

Leaving me just to thank Chris Mentiply for permission to reproduce his copy of the LP and make a story.

And to conclude where I began that Crown Woods did really offer up the lot.

 Location; Crown Woods, Eltham

Pictures; That raw 16 year old, 1966 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Musical nights at Crown Woods from the collection of Ann Davey 1966, crown woods at southwark, 1968, Margaret Copeland Gain, and Crown Woods, the vinyl from Chris Mentiply

*The class of 68, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20class%20of%20%2768

**Crown Woods in Concert, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/112343918748

Stories from a demonstration ....... the waiting

Now, there is a lot of waiting about during a demonstration.

It’s the bit you usually forget, in favour of the noise, the good humour, the big crowds and that sense that you are doing something with a purpose.

And yes, even the most serious of demonstrations have their lighter moments.

Sometimes it will be a witty slogan shouted out by someone which is picked up and ripples back through the long line of protesters.

Or the loud chant which doesn’t get a response leaving everyone to burst out laughing.

Then there is the banter between paper sellers all trying to offload their group’s newspaper onto the crowd, but often ending up buying each other’s.

All of which long ago led to the theory that rather than increase their revenue, all the groups did was redistribute their wealth between them.

Of course some marches and demonstrations can be confrontational, and turn ugly and unpleasant, with a lot of nasty name calling, some arrests and people getting hurt.

But amongst all of that, there is that simple fact that you stand about a lot.

It can take ages for a march to set off and then there are the stops at road junctions which can seem to go on forever.

So here for all those who have suffered are two pictures of the waiting side of demos.  I can’t be sure when they were taken, but it will be between 1984 and about ’85.

We are in Manchester and the clue to the march is there in the last picture, where far away at the back of the line there is placard with the slogan "Victory to the Miners".

I have no memory of the march or from where we set off or our final destination.

But someone will, and I hope will add a comment or even share a picture.

Location; Manchester





Pictures; a demonstration, circa 1983-86, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mrs Lomax's box mangle at Hough End Hall sometime in 1940

I can remember confiding in someone recently that I knew more about Hough End Hall in the 19th century than I did about the place in the last sixty years.

A box mangle

All of which is now being turned around as people come forward with their memories along with some photographs and a suggestion of where to go looking for the documents.

Chief amongst those with memories is my friend Oliver Bailey whose family rented the hall and the surrounding land from 1940 before buying it from the Egerton estate in the early 1960s and selling it on to a developer later in that decade.

Oliver not only has provided a set of vivid descriptions of the hall and farm buildings along with a plan and the names of some of the men who also worked there but has helped make sense of the place at the end of its time as a working farm.

I was fascinated by the mangle room which shows up on the 1938 Egerton survey.

It was on the first floor to the south of the main entrance and in the middle of the room was “an old mangle that was basically a large box full of cobbles that rolled back and forth on rollers on the wooden base when it was worked by turning the handle.”*

And recently Oliver was “at Mottisfont in Hampshire and they had a box mangle so I thought I would send you a photo.”

It is  one of those wonderful little bits of history that helps bring me closer to the time when the hall was a working farming inhabited by the Lomax family who were there from 1847 till Mrs Lomax died in 1940.

All of which now pushes me on to search for photographs of the Lomax family.

At present there is one picture which I think will be their children in the garden of the hall in the early 20th century but I am confident that in time someone will unearth an image.

After all until yesterday I had no idea what a box mangle looked like.

Picture; box mangle from Mottisfont in Hampshire courtesy of Oliver Bailey

*Oliver Bailey

Adventures out of Peckham ........ the park, General Wolf and a song by Mr Como

The sun is shining and while it might not yet be hot enough to crack the paving stones, there is a promise of a fine day ahead of us.

Greenwich Park, 2017

And on days like this when you are ten, adventures just happen.

We had met up mid way between all our houses and immediately fell out about what to do.

None of us had much in the way of money so Red Rovers which offered unlimited travel across London for 2/6d was not going to happen and it became a matter of where we hadn’t been and how far it would take to get there.

All of us agreed that whatever we did it had to be out of Peckham and so for the second time in a week we headed off to Greenwich Park.

River, 2017

This was not entirely such a good idea as all three of us had been in the dog house for our last adventure which had involved us exploring the beach by the foot tunnel.

We could have chosen that sandy strip in front of the Naval College but instead opted for a spot down river by three beached barges, and that led to disaster as each of us sank up to our ankles in oozy, oily Thames mud.

That was terrifying enough, but having been rescued by a bargee who pulled all of us free, there was the long walk home caked in that mud and a series of almost identical interrogations about what had happened. To my eternal shame I blamed John and Jimmy.

But undaunted by such an ordeal we went back, although this time we kept to the park.

That long walk, 2017

Once through the gates, and having made the long walk past the water fountain to General Wolf, and faced with that steep slope we rolled down it.

Now that was fun but daft, given that the grass was newly cut and stuck to us, and then took ages to fall off while we played amongst the trees and explored the courtyard of the Royal Observatory.

Then, as the sun climbed higher in the sky we sat on the bench by General Wolf and like him we gazed out across park and the river to that other place, north of the water.

From General Wolf, 1978

Back then the river was still a working river and the tall blocks of flats and offices had yet to be built leaving a vague memory that we could see the Monument but sixty years separate me from that adventure and I dare say I have got that bit wrong.

But never underestimate the power of a sunny day and cut grass to throw you back into your childhood.  Or the delights of warm lemonade from a glass bottle that we shared.

We were the master of all we surveyed and to the bafflement of passersby recited a rhyme which contrived to name all the TV Westerns in a story.  I can no longer remember the details suffice to say,  that Rawhide, Bonanza, Laramie, Cheyanne and perhaps Have Gun Will Travel were all featured.

Looking up towards General Wolf

I guess it was inspired by the 1959 Perry Como song, Delaware, which had lines like, “What did Del-a-ware boy, what did Delaware, She wore a brand New Jersey”, going on to mention another 13 US States.

The challenge of both Mr Como’s song and our rhyme was to remember each line perfectly, a task I failed to do then and still can’t today.

Perhaps out there someone will remember the TV rhyme and offer it to me.

We shall see.

Location; Peckham and Greenwich

Pictures; Greenwich Park and the River, 2017 from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith, and looking out from General Wolf, and looking up to him, 1978 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The towers of Manchester rise like the trees of the forest

Not the most original title I know, but for anyone who remembers the skyline of the city at the close of the last century it is perhaps apt.

I make no judgement other than that when the height of buildings become such that the individual passer by is reduced to an insignificant presence something of the scale and beauty of the architecture is lost.

And yes, I know the economics of the practice, and its place in the history of the last two centuries of building design but it ain’t for me.

In the past going high was a statement of humanities relationship to a god, the need for protection against an enemy or just a political statement on the part of the owner, and was always limited by technology, but not now.

All of which was occasioned by my old friend Andy Robertson’s latest set of “pictures” which he sent over today.

Andy has been chronicling the transformation of the twin cities, and pretty much the rest of Greater Manchester for three decades and his collection is a remarkable history of the changes.  

More so because he will visit and record a derelict building and go back recording its demolition and the subsequent rise of the new development.

And yesterday on Deansgate he set about recoding just one tall tower from different angles, and then as afterthought threw in another.

Of course, for all those who look appalled there will be those who applaud the new towers as the representation of the age, and a statement of the degree to which the city remains economically vibrant.

I might add that slip back to the first half of the 19th century and much the same opinions can be found amongst those mourning the loss of so many 17th and 18th century properties which were being replaced by dark overpowering textile mills, gigantic warehouses, and the new railway viaducts.

But as someone once remarked ....... if you want to check out the economic prosperity of a place, "just count the number of cranes", which I know is not exactly the same as the level of prosperity or well being of the residents but that disparity has always been there.

So, choose your development and make your point.

Location; Deansgate

Pictures, “Yesterday at Deansgate”, 2024, from the collection of Andy Robertson

1883 .......... one year in the work of the Manchester and Salford Children’s charity

Now 1883 was a busy year for our own children’s charity which had been established just thirteen years earlier as a rescue mission to feed and give a bed for the night to destitute boys on the streets of Manchester and Salford.

Outside the Refuge offices, circa 1900

Just over a decade and a bit later it had expanded into a whole range of support activities including homes for both boys and girls, vocational training, seaside holidays, along with campaigning for legislation to protect vulnerable children and intervening in the courts against neglectful and abusive parents.

And the key  to knowing about  the work of the charity, is to start with the annual reports, and at random I have chosen 1883.

It was a busy year but looking at the spread of reports from 1871 through to 1919 it was typical.

And with that in mind I thought it would be useful to focus on that report.*

The first port of call was the newspapers and in particular the Manchester Guardian, and starting next week I shall be delving into the archives.  Like all good research every item begs a whole set of questions which will take me off in all sorts of directions.

But for now it is that year of 1883 and that report.

The report began with the appalling news of the “virtual collapse of old central premises in Strangeways just when the new additional building was almost finished.”

But that hadn’t stopped the completion of extension scheme for Orphan  Girls’ Home Branch or the start of “The Seaside Home for weak, pale faced city children” which had been established at Lytham.

It is easy perhaps to react against the Victorian directness of language but  this and the other summer camps organized by the charity provided children with a holiday by the sea which for many would have been their first.  And some of the 225 children “under our care and training at the Refuge and branch homes” may well have been on one of those trips to the seaside.

The report detailed the gender split, and the number who had had one or both parents still living, and concluded by describing where 118 went onto who didn’t stay in the Refuge.

And that is all for now.

Location Manchester

Picture; courtesy of the Together Trust

* Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, March 12 1884

**The Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/who-we-are

Gentrification …… Beech Road ….. and those posh people who lived here

So, I see Beech Road is back in the news with heaps of people on social media comparing it with Burton Road that other interesting row of shops and things.

Chorlton Row, circa 1880s

And in the debate came that old easy assertion of gentrification, which I am never sure whether it is  a] an insult b] a lazy definition or c] something else.

My dictionary describes gentrification “as the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, often displacing current inhabitants in the process”.

Now if you moved on to Beech Road in the 1970s or grew up in the surrounding streets it is just possible to have some sympathy with that assertion.

Charles Clarke our blacsmith from the 1860s

What was an indifferent but nice shopping area offering the range of retail opportunities from food, booze, hardware, and a TV shop has morphed into a row of bars, restaurants and gift places.  Added to which the small rows of two up two down houses, many of which were built for rent by Joe Scott at the start of the 20th century are now desirable and sought after modernised homes, commanding high prices which are beyond the range of our children who were born and grew up on Beech Road.

But all of that is to be a little unhistorical.

Even in that so called pre gentrification Beech Road which I am guessing is meant to be sometime before 1960 stretching back into the beginning of the last century there were a lot of well healed, comfortably off families living here.

That is attested not only by the census records and street directories but by the big houses along Cross Road, and Chequers, Stockton and St Clements Road.

And look again at the shops themselves and there was a mix of basic and slightly up market shops from when Beech Road was developed during the late 1870s onwards.

Go back another thirty years when we were a small agricultural community and Beech Road was called Chorlton Row, and between the blacksmith, a beer shop and some wattle and daub cottages there were several wealthy households.  They included the Holt family in their huge house and garden on the corner of Beech and Barlow Moor Road, and several very comfortable families, one of whom lived beside the smithy. To which can be added the Blomey’s who had the pond on the corner of Acres Road named after them.

Chorlton Row, 1854

The reality is that Beech Road has always been a mixed area, and the expansion of smaller houses on Provis, Neale and Higson was a response to the changing demographics which saw the occupation of the residents defined by clerical and professional occupations and away from the land.

To conclude it is a moot point what came first in the late 1970s and 80s.  Was it gentrification or the collapse of the traditional shopping patterns which saw more and more shops close with no apparent hint at what would replace them?  

Our own brief amusement arcade came and went in the 1980s, and the first restaurants and bars were opening up along with the Italian Delia by the end of that decade.

Bar de Tapas, 2023

And the trend by professionals to buy up and modernise those small two up two downs was only just beginning during this period.

On the cusp of change Beech Road circa 1980s

Go back to the beginning of the 20th century and we find the Manchester Evening News reporting that large parts of Chorlton including the roads off Beech Road were being transformed from open farm land to comfortably off modern properties home to the middling people.

All that seems to have have happened is that a century later the process continues.

And with that comes that other rather blunt observation which is the residents of Beech Road when I moved in in 1976 might well be offended by being told they lived in a "poor urban area". 

Beech Road Cafe Society, circa 2008

Looking at the historical records their occupations ranged from manual, through to clerical, retail and professional and Chorlton -cum-Hardy  was always perceived as a comfortable if not affluent suburb of the city.

I assume the gentrification jibe refers to the shops and restaurants, and here the question is "if not them what?"

Retail shopping has changed and small independent food shops rarely survive, and that has pretty much been the case since the 1980s.  

Leaving aside the deli we do have one grocers shop which competes with the Co-op and Etchells and that I think is all that Beech Road can sustain.

Beech Road, circa 1900

Remember, when there were a multitude of food shops all along Beech Road, and around the Green and off both Crossland and Ivy Green in the early decades of the last century people didn't have either a freezer or a fridge, and were forced to shop daily. 

It is less that Beech Road has gentrified and more that few people  now shop as they did a century ago.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Chorlton Row circa 1880s, , Beech Road circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection, picture of Charles Clark, 1913 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, picture of Charles Clark, DPA 328.18, Courtesy of Greater Manchester Archives, Chorlton Row, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashure, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/, Beech Road in the 1980s, from the collection of Tony Walker, 1980s, Cafe Society on Beech Road, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The class of ’68 part 8 ……. doing drama the big way*

Now if you went to Crown Woods in the 1960s and into the next decade, chances are you will have been part of the big block buster performances, involving the English, Music and Art departments.*

The Price of Coal, November 1968

And if that performance was The Price of Coal which was performed in November 1968, then you could add the History department to that list.

These were the inclusive productions which set out to include as many students as possible from all age ranges, skills and talents to show case the school and show just what a comprehensive school could achieve.

The Price of Coal, not only brought together the traditional departments but was researched by students doing history, and told the story of the impact of coal mining in the late 18th and 19th century.

It was performed in the same year that Newcastle Playhouse’s production of "Close the Coalhouse Door" which was written by Alan Plater, based on his friend and mentor Sid Chaplin's mining stories, and with music by Alex Glasgow – all three of them born in the County Durham mining area.

I should remember The Price of Coal, and Peter Grimes, because I entered the school aged 16 in the September of 1966.

Peter Grimes, March, 1968

But I did perform in two others which were All that life can afford and Crown Woods at southwark.

These productions were were spoken of with a mixture of pride, but also a nonchalance, based on that confidence that this is what a comprehensive school can do.

I have no doubt that the neighbouring schools of Eltham Green and Kidbrook did the same, but Crown Woods was my school.

And for someone who came from a small all boys secondary modern, on the borders of Brockley and New Cross, Crown Woods was something very different, very exciting and ultimately very rewarding.  

Not only for his academic standing but also because it was a co-educational school and for a lad from a single sex institution that was something else.

But that is for another story, leaving me just to thank Margaret Copeland Gain, who sent over the two covers from the productions of The Price of Coal and Peter Grimes.

crown woods at southwark

Location; Crown Woods, Eltham

Pictures, covers from the productions of The Price of Coal, crown woods at southwark,and Peter Grimes, 1968, courtesy of Margaret Copeland Gain

*The class of '68, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20class%20of%20%2768

**Close the Coal House Door, Alex Glasgow, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGPSqE74F0Q

The class of ’68 part 6 a beginning

The class of '68

We were the class of ’68.

Twelve young people from south east London about to leave school for the last time.

It would have been in late June or early July 1968 outside Crown Woods School in Eltham, our exams were finished and we were all preparing for that long hot summer which would end with exam results and the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

And now fifty-three years later I guess we have all entered another phase which is pretty much about retirement, watching as the grandchildren come along and reflecting a little on the bitter sweet passage of time.

The PYE FBIC Consule retailing at £85, 1951

Not that this will be some nostalgic drivel.  It isn’t that the past was better, the summers hotter or the Waggon Wheels bigger it is just that it was different.

Nor have the changes we have encountered been any less dramatic than previous generations.

My uncle was born in the closing years of the 19th century, lived through the 20th and into the 21st.

During his lifetime he saw and managed a revolution in technology from how we communicated, travelled and saw the world.

Had he lived just a little longer than his 102 years I have no doubt he would have mastered the computer and the internet in the way he had the telephone, the wireless and the TV.

My sons will no doubt grapple with even faster change.

But the class of '68 were no less adept at coping with the new.  We grew up just as the television was beginning and moved into adulthood with the transition from one black and white channel to three, and entered middle age with digital channels.

Mr Therm, 1949

The hand held communicator much loved of science fiction has become the mobile phone and the postcard replaced by the email.

The paths that the 12 of us went down were quite different but what we all have in common is that we are part of what some have called the favoured generation and others “the baby boomers.”

And there is no doubt that we were born in to a world our parents were determined would be better and different.

It was one of rising prosperity, of a welfare system which confidently planned to care for us from “cradle to grave” and as we entered adult hood there was promise of full time employment and the opportunity of a university course which for some of us would be totally free.

There was a dark side to all this. The Korean War had begun just as most of us were coming up to our first birthday, and the ever present threat of nuclear war hovered in the distance, and as if to round off our child hood by the summer of 1968 there was the awful tragedy of the Vietnam War.

All of which is still in stark contrast to the experiences of my parents and grandparents who lived through two world wars and a major trade depression or the uncertain future of my children.

But, and there always is a but I do tire of the shallow analysis and cheap jibes offered up by the unthinking commentators on the baby boomer generation, most of which lacks historical validity and often is a smoke screen to hide the failings of our market economy.

The class of '68 in the summer of 1965

The class of ’68 did not create the present economic situation, and if we are sitting on inflated house values this was not our doing.

Indeed for any one starting out buying a house in the 1970s and ‘80s the constant rise in  inflation made balancing the household budget and meeting the spiralling mortgage costs a real problem.

And I suspect all of us baby boomers now creak a lot and despite those favoured years of full employment we are coping with failing hearing, stronger spectacles and in my case a distinct recurrence of back pain.

Added to which there is that sure fire knowledge that there are fewer years ahead of us than behind.

But if there is a consolation it is that while we may not be any fitter than previous generations the quality of our lives and those of our children are better.  The old killer diseases are held at bay and so are many of the less serious but no less debilitating complaints.

Which brings me back to the beginning and just as 1968 marked an ending, so for the class of '68 the next decade will be full of new beginnings and with it some wry reflections on what has been and what maybe to come.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey and Andrew Simpson