Moany Romans ........the sad letters of of Claudius Terentianus ..... one to listen to today

As ever I am looking forward to this edition of Being Roman with Mary Beard.*

This one is entitled Soldiering for Softies and as the sleeve notes say "The image of the battle-hardened, well regimented Roman soldier has been set in stone by movies, novels and video games. 

The letters of Claudius Terentianus reveal something very different. A terrible moaner, the young soldier has to beg his father to send the most basic of equipment, from sandals to swords. 

Stuck in the marines, the poorly paid squad tasked with guarding grain supplies, he bribes and wangles his way into a more illustrious legion, but still seems to spend more time shopping than fighting.

Mary Beard catches up with Terentianus at the British Museum's Legion exhibition and discovers more about his uncanny ability to avoid conflict and ensure a prosperous retirement.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

Expert Contributors: Carolina Rangel de Lima, British Museum; Livia Capponi, Pavia University and Claire Holleran Exeter University

Cast: Terentianus played by Robert Wilfort"

Picture; models of Roman soldiers, 1974, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Soldiering for Softies,Being Roman with Mary Beard, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zdrj

Castlefield ......... the place without a castle

Now you won’t find a castle at Castlefield.

It is one of those regrettable gaffs that the Normans didn’t reckon Manchester important enough for even one of those oddly named Motte and Bailey ones.

But instead the disappointed tourist will uncover a rich seam of history which will take them from the Romans to the start of the Age of Canals and on to the first passenger railway station in the world, some oddly named hospitals and a shed load of period pubs.

The Romans built a fort here during their push north to subjugate the “blue shield people” who also went under the name of the Brigantes and were not over keen on hypocausts, Latin or the Roman taxation system.

All of which is why with minor modification the fort continued the business of protecting the important link between Chester and York for 300 years.

In the process it also attracted a small band of civilians who lived in the township outside its walls and they have left a mix of everyday objects offering up an insight to how they lived.

As for the fort bits of its walls survived into the 18th century which despite the usual cries from the heritage lobby were destroyed in the construction of the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal which as everyone knows was constructed to bring coal from the Duke’s mines at Worsely into Manchester, thereby providing cheap fuel and further contributing to the grime of the city.

But in recognition of what was destroyed the area became known as Castlefield, a name which continues to confuse the tourist, especially when confronted with sections of replica Roman wall built in the 1980s by apprentice bricklayers employed by Manchester Corporation.

Sadly the mural painted by the artist David Vaughan on the side of a nearby railway viaduct showing a group of Roman soldiers entering the fort was left to fade and peel and was finally painted over.

Still one of those viaducts was built to resemble the towers of a castle so perhaps all turns out for the best in this best of all historical worlds.

Location; Castlefield

Pictures; the Roman fort, 2002 and the canal, 2006 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Beaufort Street and the mural by David Vughan coutresy of http://www.davidvaughanart.com/

The brick works, a forbidden place and a man called Duffy

It was one of those perfect summer days out beyond Hardy Farm.

The sun was hot and the sky a brilliant blue with just a few light clouds high up and overhead. And we were on a mission.

I forget now what had prompted us to be there and very quickly whatever it was had been  lost in the sheer pleasure of wandering through the long grass with absolutely no one else around.  There was that intense smell of the warm grass, the sound of a bird and away over the Mersey the faint noise of traffic.

We have all done it, and it’s like being seven again and on one of those carefree adventures with nothing to worry about and everything to discover.

Now I have done my own share.  I remember long solitary walks along Derbyshire country lanes and endless treks looking for new strange parks to play in or just taking my 2/6d pocket money to the local railway station and seeing where it would take us.  Sometimes you struck gold and were rewarded with open fields at the end of the line and at others a dingy industrial wasteland hard by a smelly canal.

The best was the walk to Blackheath which led on to the park and the river.  But there were also the bomb sites those lingering ugly reminders of the war we had been lucky enough to miss.  There was no danger there any more although just occasionally you might come across some hidden treasure which had somehow worked its way back to the surface.

David O’Reilly who grew up on Chorlton has similar fond memories.  In his case it was “the Clay Pits” which was
“situated to the immediate east of Longford Park, just the other side of the interrupted Rye Bank Road - it was a series of mounds and gulleys, the left over from previous workings of the old brick works factory with its tall chimney.  

It was a forbidden play place and it was guarded by an almost mythical man named "Duffy"! With another 9 year old boy, I recall daring ourselves to go into this derelict building one day and even crawling under the tunnel - through rubble to a place where I could look up inside the chimney and see the small hole of daylight at the top. 

On re emerging we continued to play until - that knowledge of being watched - made its presence felt - and we looked around to see a man who I think was called Duffy staring at us, stood on a small wall about 12 yards away. Scared witless we fled the scene, and although not chased, the memory of Duffy, the clay pits, and the old building, has played a part in several nightmares since that day!”

I have to say that when I first came across the brick works I was surprised.

But the clay and marl around the Longford Road area has been used for centuries.

The marl was used for spreading on the land while the clay became the bricks of some of our older houses .*

The pits are there on the OS map of the area for 1841 and carry names like Marl Pits and Brick Kiln Pits.  And as late the 1920s and 30’s the water filled pits proved a fatal place for some of our children.

But I want to end on a lighter note.  David and I may have been aware of the dangers in where we played but it didn’t stop us. In those long ago days parental supervision was perhaps  lighter and there may have been far more open spaces to while away the long hot summers.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Munich …the home of trams since 1876 …..

 Munich trams are blue.

A blue Munich Tram, 2024

But my travelling chum assures me that apart from being blue they are just like our yellow ones.

Blue Munich trams, 1974

Well that may well be but my Wikipedia lists a whole set of different designs which have busied themselves across the city since the first horsecars appeared in 1876 followed by the first electric trams nineteen years later.*

Now we won’t over mention the last world war when only 168 trams out of a fleet of 444 were operational.

Happily today there are 13 day time tram lines with four night time routes covering a total of 165 stops. 

At this point Eric who is a champion of our own Metro link will point out that in Greater Manchester there are 99 stops along 64 miles of track, although ruefully he had to concede we have only eight lines …. But with more planned.

Two yellow trams, St Peter's Square, 2024

Now I could mention the new series of books telling the story of Greater Manchester by Tram, but that would be an outrageous bit of self-promotion, so I won’t other than to offer up a link to the project.**

And because Eric insisted our own yellow trams get a look in , only for the technical tram fan to argues about the similarities and differences between blue and yellow.

Location; Munich

Picture; a blue Munich tram, 2024, München MVV Tramlinie 9 (M4.65 2496) / 20 (M3.64 2350) Cosimapark am 17. August 1974, Kurt Rasmussen, and yellow Manchester trams, 2024, St Peter's Square, and Deansgate Castlefield, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One yellow tram, Deansgate Castlefield, 2024

*Trams in Munich, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Munich

Back with that blue Munich tram, 2024

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

Wishing you well ........... postcards from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham for the summer ..... nu 6 old houses Woolwich

A short series with few words looking at the postcards we sent from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham.

Now the caption is none too helpful and offers up just the description “Old houses Woolwich.”

But the building proved popular enough for another postcard company to reproduce a similar photograph with the more a more useful description which places them at “Free Ferry Approach.”

And according to one source was “situated on Hog Lane, later Nile Street, this timber building of fifteenth and sixteenth century origin had deteriorated into a lodging house by the time its northern half was cleared for the Free Ferry Approach during the 1880s.  Its southern half survived until 1905 when it was condemned.”*

Now I went looking for Nile Street and there it was in 1972 running into Rodney Street hard by the river and in time

Location; Woolwich

Picture; Woolwich, 1902, Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

*Woolwich Through Time, Kristina Bedford

Mrs. Clara Nicholson of Chorlton ……. the mile of pennies ……. and a Disaster Appeal

“In the Russian famine we are witnessing the most terrible devastation that has afflicted the world for centuries.

"Hordes of starving disease infected people have left their homes" 1921

It is estimated that 35 million people will require relief.  I am sorry to say that such news as we have received points to a most appalling catastrophe”.*

The words could have come from any one of several celebrities or journalists looking to camera and reporting on a human disaster against a background of moving and awful images of starving people.

But not so, they come from the Manchester Guardian reporting on the appalling famine that was ravaging Russia in the summer of 1921.

And in the face of that famine thousands of people were on the move.  Some were heading towards Turkestan, others to Siberia and more to Poland in the knowledge that there were “no food supplies and no shelter and they are doomed to annihilation.  Of these migratory bodies only some 20 per cent are able bodied and MORE THAN 30 PER CENT. ARE CHILDREN. The condition of these last is piteous.  Many of them have been abandoned to their parents.  The people are eating grass, roots and other rubbish”. **

Now my Wikipedia tells me “The Russian famine of 1921–1922, also known as the Povolzhye famine, was a severe famine in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic which began early in the spring of 1921 and lasted through 1922. This famine killed an estimated 5 million people, primarily affecting the Volga and Ural River regions.”***

The mile of pennies, 1921

Reading the Manchester Guardian’s coverage I am struck by the depth of the crisis, and how contemporary were the appeals for help, particularly for The Save the Children Fund, which produced a series of films about the famine and the wider relief problems across Europe.

Here in Britain people were encouraged to send subscriptions responding the simple appeal “Send what you can ‘All you can- Today!”

And individuals and groups looked to the imaginative ways they could raise money and that has led me back to Mrs. Clara Nicholson of Chorlton who along with others set out to raise £220 by making a “mile of pennies”.  

The event took part on October 30th, 1921, in the waiting room of the former tram office on Barlow Moor Road, because the location was a busy spot on a Sunday afternoon.

And just like modern fund-raising activities the committee had invited the Lady Mayoress to take part, personalizing the appeal by specifying “Twenty four pennies will keep one Russian child for a week and so every step in that 'proposed mile' would bring hope and happiness where there is only despair."****

One of the members of that committee was Mrs. Clara Nicholson of Gilbrook Edge Lane, and as you do I went looking for her.

Chorlton Tram Office, circa 1920/30s

And in 1921 I found her at Gilbrook which was number 10 Edge Lane, married to James Nicholson, who was a clothing manufacture with works at Worsley Street in Hulme.

Sadly their home on Edge Lane had vanished by 1933, but I did come across their house on Wilbraham Road close to Blair Road where they had lived a decade earlier.

As yet that is about it, and the trail goes dead.

There is a Clara Nicholson living on “private means” in Oldham in 1939, but that is about it, which is a shame because I would like to know more about her charity work.

But someone may offer up more.

We shall see.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Cartoon and description of the mile of pennies, 1921, the tram office with waiting room, circa 1920s-30s from the Lloyd Collection

*The Most Terrible Devastation that has Afflicted the world for Centuries., Manchester Guardian, August 28th, 1921

**ibid, Manchester Guardian, August 28th, 1921

*** Russian famine of 1921–1922, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_famine_of_1921%E2%80%931922

***From Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the Volga Valley, Manchester Guardian, October 20th, 1921

Lost in Prague .... with just some street furniture .... and a song

 So today l welcome into the Street Furniture Hall of Fame another great find. *

It is one of those cast-iron objects which I love so much.

Over the years I have inducted into the “club” a host of coal cellar covers, old gas lamps, finger posts, redundant parking meters, quirky litterbins and the odd gasometer.

And so today it’s a nice piece from Prague, collected by a chum yesterday and sent back from the “City of a Hundred Spires” and it is a good one, which not only does the job of helping the water run smoothy but carries that all important coat of arms and the bold announcement that it is part of "Prague sewage system".

My Wikipedia tells me that "the coat of arms was first introduced in the 15th century (when the city of Prague corresponded to what is now the Old Town district). 

It consisted of three silver towers on a red shield. 

In 1649, after the Thirty Years' War, Ferdinand III added an armour arm in silver holding a silver sword emerging from the city gate. This symbol represents the effective defence of the city against the Swedish army during the Thirty Years war. 

The coat of arms was inherited by the modern city of Prague upon its formation in 1784, when the four boroughs (Old Town, New Town, Hradčany and Lesser Town were unified".** 

There is more, but mindful it’s someone else’s research I will just offer the link for you to read the rest.

And that is it.

Location; Prague

Picture; a little bit of Prague, 2024

*Street furniture lost and saved, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Street%20Furniture%20lost%20and%20saved

**Coat of arms of Prague, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Prague#:~:text=The%20coat%20of%20arms%20of,lesser%20and%20a%20greater%20version.&text=The%20coat%20of%20arms%20was,towers%20on%20a%20red%20shield.

Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster

Now I had quite forgotten the exhibition ……… Jewish Women in Britain, which ran from May 1992 through till the January of the following year.

But then it was a full 32 years ago and so I think I can be excused.

The poster hung for years in the kitchen until steam and age made me take it down with the intention of having it professionally mounted.

But as often happens the plan never happened, and it shuffled around the cellar until I came across it recently.

So for no other reason than I like it, here it is, scanned in two sections, waiting to be skilfully re-joined.

Location; The Manchester Jewish Museum















Picture; Jewish Women in Britain ……. the poster, 1992

The secrets of St John Street

Now I discovered St John Street about a month after this picture was taken and became captivated by these 18th and early 19th century houses. 

South side of St John Street, including number. 11, 1969

And a lot of other people have also been fascinated by them and you can see why because in a city which is constantly reinventing itself these are a link to a time when Castlefield was being developed.

Added to this over the years I have become intrigued by one house in particular, which is number 11.

This was the home of the Holt family who built the house in the early 1790s and occupied it well into the middle of the following century.

They had made their money from making the wooden engraving blocks used in calico printing, went on to own an extensive portfolio of properties in the surrounding streets and in the 1830s settled in a fine house in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

South side of St John Street, including number. 11, 2011

The first to make the move to the country were James and Hannah Holt who were followed by their children and grandchildren.

And during the writing of the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy I not only got permission to tour number 11 but was given access to the deeds.

The 1969 image of the street have been unearthed by who came across it while engaged in a new project working on the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, in the Central Library, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed.

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

There are a dozen or so in the small collection and what struck me is that in those that contain people all of them are dressed in jackets and ties and in the case of women all carry those handbags.

But for me the other surprise was that modern bit of building which ran from the double fronted number 11 back towards Deansgate.

Detail of St John Street, 1969

I remember at the time thinking how out of keeping it was with the sweep of elegant period houses.

And then I guess sometime at the turn of the century I noticed that the spot was now occupied by a row of imitation 18th century properties.

For a while I was puzzled and almost doubted that they were relatively new, but Neil’s picture confirms my memory.

Pictures; St John Street, 1969, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 2011 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Photographs from the Royal Herbert during the Great War ............ a unique album of pictures

The Royal Herbert, date unknown

Now the story of the Royal Herbert has just got a lot more exciting and that has a lot to do with a fascinating photograph album from the Great War.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who has a unique collection of memorabilia covering both world wars as well as the history of the Post Office.

And today I am looking through it with the hope that some at least of the men and the nurses in the pictures can be traced and their stories uncovered.

Christmas Day, 1915

In time I might even be able to discover the nurse responsible for the album.

A few of the nurses are named and tantalizingly two pictures are captioned “myself” so the search is on which may be made easier as the Red Cross continues to add to its online data base of those who served during the Great War.

And then there are the large number of photographs of soldiers in their “hospital blues” recovering on the wards, a few party scenes and handful from soldiers who had recovered and left the hospital.

Summer, 1916

Together they help reveal a little bit of life in the Royal Herbert during 1915 and 1916.

Given the quality of the cameras and the age of the pictures some images have not fared so well but even the poorest have a story to tell.

One of my favourites is of Sister Thomson and a group of men on a ward on Christmas Day in 1915 along with a much faded image of the garden in the summer of 1916.

Now these albums were quite common but I suspect not that many have survived.

Album cover

David has two more which contain comments, poems and drawings of men recovering from wounds and illnesses.

One remains a mystery but the other comes from a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and it has been possible to track  some of the men who made a contribution.

Their stories are as varied as I am sure will be the ones from the Herbert and include a young Canadian who survived the war and went home to live a successful and productive life and another who is buried in the military hospital outside Cairo.

And like all good stories led my friend Susan who lives in Canada to tell the story of that young Canadian and in so doing brought his drawing and his words  off the pages of the Cheltenham book and back from the past.

Now that I have to say was both exciting and moving.

The Royal Herbert album is different in that it only has photographs but in looking through it I have made a link with a hospital I knew well and which at one point in the 1970s treated our mother.

All of which makes it that bit special.

David's permanent exhibition can be seen in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and currently features a collection of material commemorating the Manchester Blitz.

Pictures; from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

Summer days in south Manchester No 3 the Chorlton Peace Festival 1984

It is an event I have visited before, but it is well worth another outing.*

It was at the height of the second Cold War when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place.

Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

So there we were in the Rec on a hot day listening to music, engaged in some politics but above all just relaxing with friends and family.

And having posted the story someone left a comment who helped organise the event and reminded me that there had been a badge designed for the event, which I have, and decided to update the piece with a picture.

It was a designed by Jim De Santos.

Location; The Rec

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, and Andrew Simpson

*Dangerous times and peaceful protests, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/dangerous-times-and-peaceful-protests.html

The painting ... a film ... and correcting an injustice ...... Adele Bloch-Bauer ...and the Woman in Gold

 Now like many people much of what I know about art and literature has come about by a mix of accident and curiosity.

And so it is with the painting of  Adele Bloch Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.

"Adele Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy society woman, hostess of a renowned Viennese salon, art patron, and philanthropist. Her famous portraits by Klimt are historical witnesses to the significance of Jewish patronage during the Golden Era of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Among the famous guests in her salon were composer Gustav Mahler, journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, author Stefan Zweig, and socialist Julius Tandler. She supported socialist causes."*

She died in 1925, and during the Nazi occupation of Austria, her family’s collection of art was stolen, by the German Government.

And in 2015 the story of the painting and the attempt by the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer to have the art work returned to its rightful heirs was the subject of the film, Woman in Gold, which is where I come in, because having seen the film on a wet Sunday afternoon, I went looking for more.

Like all fictional accounts, the film toyed with the events and in particular underplayed the role of Hubertus Czernin the Austrian journalist and publisher who found the historical documents which allowed the family to the begin the process of reclaiming the collection.

But the film and two earlier documentaries highlighted the part played "by Jewish patrons in shaping Viennese modernism and …. the historical injustice in handling their restitution claims.”*

And led me to explore other such claims for restitution, as well as discovering the work of Gustav Klimt.

Not bad for a wet Sunday afternoon.  

Never being one to lift other people’s research, the full account of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the attempts by her niece, Maria Altmann, and the lawyer,  E. Randol Schoenberg can be read by following the link.

Location, Austria, and California

Picture; Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt in 1907

* Adele Bloch-Bauer, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bloch-bauer-adele

So what was Southern Street in Castlefield once like?

Southern Street in 2003

This was Southern Street, off Liverpool Road during a chunk of the 1980s  and into the next two decades it was one of the stops on an annual walk and talk I did in the Castlefield area.

During the course of those years it underwent profound changes with most of what had been late 18th century houses demolished or converted into flats and offices.

Of course part of me was saddened by the loss of these old properties but the upside is that the street is once again a place where people live and work.

Looking down Southern Street 2003

And that has to be a good thing.  By the 1980s there were few businesses left and within the next twenty years even they had gone.

I remember talking to some of the men who worked in Andrew’s Garage in the centre of Southern Street along with the owners of the printing business at one end of the street and the motor bike shop at the other.

Collectively their memories spanned back into  the 1950s and in the course of the next week or so I want to look at that lost Castlefield.

But for now I shall just reproduce something I wrote back in 2003 and leave you to reflect on just how much this little bit of Castlefield has changed.

“Southern Street in 1851 shows the same pattern of housing occupation as other working class parts of the city.  

In many of the houses there is evidence of overcrowding and cellar occupation.  

So at 3 Southern Street, 15 people are recorded there in 1851, with 5 living in the cellar, 2 in one room, 4 in another and 4 in the garret.   

Numbers 3 & 5 Southern Street, 2003

Number 5 has 11 people.  Across the street number 12 &14 are now a garage.  
In 1851, 7 people are listed as living in number 14.  

It is easy to appreciate the degree of squeeze when you measure the size of these properties.  

Put more simply when you look down Southern Street, remember that the 1851 census recorded 81 people living in this small street, which was a drop from the 200 living there a decade before.

Numbers 3 & 5 Southern Street is worth looking at in detail, as they may not be there for much longer. 

The block has been bought recently and while there is some doubt about the future plans I can’t see them staying in their present state.  

They were surveyed in 1993.  The houses consisted of three floors and a cellar.  The second floor dimensions of number 3 are 22 feet 6 inches back from the front and 16 feet 4 inches from side to side. Number 5 varies slightly at 22 feet 2 inches by 17 feet.  

Numbers 12 & 14 Southern Street, 2003

Evidence for the cellar windows can still be seen but much else has undergone changes.  

Ground and first floor windows are not original and the door to number 5 has been enlarged. 

All the evidence suggests that they were built sometime around 1794.  

Houses on Southern Street, Barton Street and Worsley Street are shown on a map of that year, when Liverpool Road was still called Priestner Street and terminated at Collier Street.  

Street Directories record people living in them from 1795.  This fits in with what we know of the surrounding streets.  

Evidence from the title deeds of the White Lion Inn and the Oxnoble Inn show that that six plots of land were sold in 1782. In 1804 the Oxnoble plot was sold again on condition that it was built upon within two years.”*

Location; Manchester

*Castlefield, Andrew Simpson, 2003

Pictures, Southern Street and Liverpool Road, 2003

Made in Woolwich at the Arsenal in memory of those who died in the Great War

Now I grew up in one of those houses built for Arsenal workers during the Great War, and have read about the munition girls, the vast numbers of shells and bullets which were turned out but had no idea that from 1920 they were also responsible for making these bronze plaques issued to the next of kin who lost loved ones in the conflict.

Memorial Plaque, circa 1919

It measures 122mm in diameter and depicts an image of Britannia holding a trident and standing beside a lion.  Two dolphins swim around Britannia and a second lion appears at the bottom.

Each plaque carried the name of the dead servicemen omitting any reference to a rank and running along the plaque was the inscription “He died for Freedom and Honour” which was changed for the 600 issued to commemorate women to  “She died for Freedom and Honour.” 

In all 1,355,000 were made and they continued to be produced into the 1930s in recognition of those who died of their wounds after the war.

The first were made in Acton in London and in 1920  production was transferred to the Royal Arsenal and here comes the connection with George Davison of Manchester.

He enlisted in 1914, served in Ireland and died on the Western Front in June 1918 and in 1915 and again in 1916 and 1918 he was stationed in Woolwich.

Those made in Woolwich have a special mark on the back which George's has got which marks another link between him and Woolwich and confirms that his was made sometime during or after 1920.

All of which just leaves me to mention his will made in March 1918 in Woolwich shortly before embarking for the Western Front. It is witnessed by H M Drinkhall and V L Dade, and was hand written in a single sheet of note paper and is simple and the point. “This is the last will and testament of me George Gurnel Davison of Birch Vale Cottage, Romily, Cheshire.  

I give devise and bequeath to my dear wife Mary Ellen all my property whatsoever and wheresoever and I appoint her sole Executor of this my will.”

By the time he made the will he had served with the Royal Artillery for four years and spent time in London and Ireland but now with the German offensive in full swing he was about to go to France, and as we know would be killed just three months later.

Location; Woolwich, London

Pictures, memorial plaque, circa 1920 and will, 1918, of George Davison from the collection of David Harrop

That vanished road in Chorlton ……… 1907 - 1937 RIP

I won’t be the only one in Chorlton who is fascinated by the lost roads of Chorlton.

Some just changed their name, but others have vanished completely.

And one of those is Cardiff Road which was off Longford Road. 

Cardiff Road, 1937

It consisted of 12 two up two down properties and dates from sometime after 1901 and had but a short life.

So, while it doesn’t appear on the 1901 census, it is on a street directory two years later and crops up on various historical records until 1939.

It is a place I have written about but never really dug deep into its story.

But today I have redressed that omission, mainly because of a press cutting sent over by Chris Geliher who added "Hi Andrew. Came upon this clipping from the M/c City News 16/7/37. Thought you might be interested on the off chance that you haven't already seen it”.

Cardiff Road, 1907

And of course, I was very interested because it offered up the first clue as to why Cardiff Road had been expunged from the record.

According to the Manchester City News the Corporation had approved the “recommendation to demolish nos. 2-18 , inclusive Cardiff-road, Chorlton, as being unfit for human habitation”, adding that Dr Veitch Clarke, the Medical Officer of Health for the City Council had pointed out that the houses were “not capable at a reasonable expense of being rendered fit” to live in.*

Now I would dearly like to know who had built the properties and who rented them out, if only to search for similar “rundown” houses that the landlord was responsible for in Chorlton.  Alas the Rate Books that can be accessed online stop in 1900, and there appears at present no other reference to ownership in the historic records.

But looking at the census return for 1911 there is much to shudder at, not least because some of the properties were incredibly overcrowded.

At number 20 Annie Elizabeth Wilson shared the house with her eight children ranging in age from 20 down to 5, while at 24, Mr. Devine and his wife lived with four children, a nephew, a sister in law and two lodgers.

Cardiff Road, 2015

Nor are these two houses the exception.   At number 2, Jane Fitzgerald lived with her two children and a lodger, and at 12 there were a total of seven people.

Perhaps most shocking is the census return for number 8 which revealed two families inhabiting the one house, consisting of one family of six and another of 4.

At present there is no way of knowing just how poorly built the properties were, but their very short life suggests that they were not the best in the housing stock of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Indeed, they back onto our own brick works which might offer up a possible landlord.

A decade on in 1921 there was still evidence of overcrowding in almost all of the four roomed houses and severe overcrowding in two.  

Cardiff Road, 1911

What is in interesting from both the 1911 and 1921 census returns is that few of the inhabitants were linked to the brick trade, and only one man in 1921 was directly employed at the brick works and he described himself as unemployed.  

Others worked for the grocery chain Twfords in Chorlton, two were employed by Manchester Corporation, one was a carter, and another was a warehouseman for J. R. Smith on Ducie Street in town.

All of which leaves me with that opening sentence from the newspaper report which proclaimed “Chorlton often described as Manchester’s most select residential suburb has come under the slum clearance activities for the authorities”.

So despite the detractors who shout that Chorlton has become a “twee place” to live, there were those who thought it so over eighty years ago.  Didsbury please take note.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; A Chorlton “Slum” 9 Dwelling Houses to be Demolished, Manchester City News, July 16th, 1937, courtesy of Chris Geliher, Cardiff Road, 1907 from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1907, and in 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*A Chorlton “Slum” 9 Dwelling Houses to be Demolished, Manchester City News, July 16th, 1937

Trapped …… in a country that won’t let you out……. and countries that won’t let you in

I am rereading The Passenger by Alexander Boschwitz, which is to my knowledge the first fictional account of the events which led up to Kristallnacht.*

Alexander Boschwitz, wrote the book in 1939, and it details the experiences of Otto Silbermann a German Jew caught up in the growing nightmare of  state sponsored antisemitism just before the Night of Broken Glass in 1938.

In an effort to evade arrest, Otto takes a series of train journeys from his home in Berlin across Germany. 

In the course of which he encounters a cross section of the population, from rabid Nazi antisemites, to “regular” Germans getting on with their life, and minding their own business.

But there is no doubting the danger he is in, which at one point involves an attempt by an acquittance to cheat him out of the true value of his home, and by the actual appropriation of his business by his partner and long time friend.

Much of the book revolves around his own internal debate about whether he should have left Germany earlier, and the contradiction between those he meets who appear “decent” and those who at best are indifferent and those who are hostile.

And while he flips from despair to optimism that things can’t get any worse, there is also a sense of incredulity that in his own words “in the middle of Europe in the twentieth century” this could be happening.

Along with that observation is the chilling fact that he is trapped, because Germany  won’t let him out  and other countries won’t let him in. "For a Jew, the entire Reich has become one big concentration camp".

What I like about the book is that it offers up no easy key to how he should have acted when the Nazi’s first came to power.

Both he and his wife who is not Jewish found reasons not to leave.

Shop damage in Magdeburg, following Kristallnacht, 1938

Some rest on relatively trivial reasons, while others get to the heart of how most of us might react, balancing the antisemitic policies of the Nazi’s with measured judgements on how far the new Government would actually go, and indeed how long they would stay in power.

It is not an easy read, but it is  fascinating one, which I suspect owes something to the translation, as to the subject matter.

And as a result, I read half the 256 pages in one sitting.

All of which is more poignant because Alexander Boschwitz saw the writing on the wall just two years after the Nazis seized power, and judging that the Nuremburg Laws were just the start, he and his mother left Germany, finally arriving in Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.  

Being German, they were interned, and Alexander transported to Australia.

Later with the relaxation of control of who was interned, he was given permission to return to Britain, but his ship was torpedoed by a German U Boat and he perished along with the crew and his fellow passengers.  He was twenty-seven years old.

Pictures; cover The Passenger, 2021, and Kristallnacht, shop damage in Magdeburg, 1938, from Kristallnacht, Wikiperdia, supplied by The German Federal Archive, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

*The Passenger, Alexander Boschwitz, 1939, published by Pushkin Press 2021

Surprises ……. St Matthews Sunday School

I have always liked the former St Matthews Sunday School that stands on Liverpool Road.

It is a simple but pleasing building which I think was paid for out of a fund created by the Government to commemorate the victory at Waterloo.

My Pevsner’s just records, “St Matthew’s Sunday School, dated 1827, converted to offices in the 1980s. Brick, two storeys, with an apsidal s end and windows with pointed arches and simple Y-tracery”.*

Given the whole sale destruction of many of the buildings along the road, it is always a surprise that it survived.

But survive it did, and this is the rear, on Rice Street.

Location; Castlefield

Picture; St Matthews Sunday School, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester, Clare Hartwell, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Penguin Books, 2001, p269

A century of shopping on Powis Street in Woolwich

I am back in Woolwich this time on Powis Street separated by just over a century.

And I had forgotten how narrow the road is and how crowded it must have been when traffic including buses travelled along it.

Its transformation into a pedestrian through fare will have made shopping a lot safer but something of the buzz has been lost.

That said the place has retained the same sort of small shops which were there in 1908 when Banks and Bryan were trading from number 6 just two doors away from the Shakespeare which I remember drinking in but is now something else.

But there is a sort of continuity for  back then at number 2 was Birts & Son who were pawnbrokers and today almost on the same spot is H&T pawnbrokers who also offer “CHEQUE CASHING, CASH LOANS and PAYDAY ADVANCES.”

And along the road there is the same mix of chemists, tobacconists and clothes shops.

But there the similarity stops.

In 1908 there were lots of grocery outlets, butcher shops and hairdressers, along with a coal merchant, boot maker and umbrella manufacturer.

The list does much too high light the changing needs and fashions that have happened over the century.

Banks and Bryan were mantle manufacturers, G.H. Nickolds made and sold artificial teeth, James and John Matthews were hatters, and at number 36 the South Metropolitan Gas Company had their offices and show rooms.*

Then of course back in 1908 there are the number of horse drawn vehicles, most of which are delivery vans and wagons, with the old cab.

All a lot different from the scene captured by Colin on a Sunday morning in September of this year.

Pictures; Powis Street, 1905, from the series Woolwich Town & City, produced by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/ and Powis Street in 2013 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick

*Raphael Tuck and Sons Ltd who sold postcards for most of the late 19th and 20th centuries.http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/raphael-tuck-and-sons-ltd-who-sold.html 

Waiting for the tally man

There is always a tally man.

The name may change, and so to the description of the business.

We knew it as “tally” but others will remember it as “the never never” or “HP” and today it’s simply  “credit.”

But the process was pretty much the same and consisted of the opportunity to buy goods in advance of the full payment up front.

Now I am not being sniffy about this.

For my family and for many others if we wanted to share in that new consumer boom of the 1950s and 60s, we pretty much were forced into putting down the deposit and paying monthly.

In our case it was a chap with a van who came round each week collected a small regular payment, brought back the shiny catalogue and if mother had decided on something he would bring it out of the said van.

I have completely forgotten the chap’s name which might have been Terry and until recently I had also forgotten the name of the firm which was John Blundell Ltd, but also seems to have traded as Edward Evans and maybe also the Hartlepools Mutual Trading Company Ltd.

But as you do in going through some old family stuff there, dating back to the 1960s were the payment cards.

There are no dates on any of the cards, but we were round 116 and our payment day was “day 6” which I suppose was a Friday and was always in the evening.

The weekly sums paid back range from 4 shillings up to a £1 and mother never seemed to miss a payment which given that a £ in 1964 was still a substantial amount of money was a serious commitment.

I have no idea when it began but Terry or his name sake was already a feature of the weekly routine in the late 1950s when were still in Lausanne Road and carried on when we moved to Well Hall.

From memory Dad always paid on the nail for the big domestic items like the washing machine, telly, and wireless and so the tally man was there for those items of clothes, bedding and shoes.

And these were always in demand given that there were five of us all at school.

The down side of the system was that it was no cheaper than credit today.

So the “Terms” on the card announce that “5p per week for every £1 in value or as arranged, Payments may be used as a deposit on a later purchase [and] Special terms arranged for Furniture and Cycles.”

Added to which of course many of the clothes items may well have been almost worn out before mother had finished paying for them.

But that was the price you paid, and while some more virtuous than me will mutter “we always saved up for and then bought” I have to point out that there was and still is not an option for many.
Not that this is a rant, or a reflection on the power of consumerism, just a reflection on how we lived prompted by the discovery of some old credit card payment books.

Location; Eltham, New Cross, Peckham and pretty much everywhere.

Pictures; tally Payments Cards circa 1964, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Glue Man, three young people and a fascinating insight into the Britain of 1943

Now the thing about old films is that long after their contemporary appeal has faded they become a piece of history.

It starts with the the clothes, the cars and the buildings and moves on to the assumptions, prejudices and attitudes of the people portrayed along with its period comment on the events of the time.

So it is with A Canterbury Tale, made in 1944 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film is loosely based around the Canterbury Tales and involves three very different people all with their own unique and powerful stories who come together in a Kent village just outside Canterbury in the summer of 1943.

The three consist of a British sergeant an America sergeant and a Land Girl who are thrown together by the mystery of the Glue Man.

The events last only a few days but in the course of those three days we get to see how these young people from different places and different walks of life work together to solve the mystery and come to a closer understanding what they have in common.

Now given that the film was made in 1944 it is pretty easy to see the motivation that drives the plot and that of course is part of its value today.

The threat of a common enemy in the form of the Glue Man unites the three and along the way we get to know more about their own lives which have been put on hold by the war.

And as the plot unfolds the film offers some wonderful scenes of Kent over 70 years ago, from the bombed out houses on streets in Canterbury to rural scenes in the fictitious village of Chillingbourne.

These are themselves a priceless record of a past which no longer exists.  The hay waggon loaded high with a land girl sitting on top, the old men outside the pub and the carpenter talking about when to lay down timber for the future are scenes of a rural way of life which seem timeless but has pretty much vanished..

And of course that is one of the messages of the film that here is a way of life unchanged for centuries which is at the very heart of what we were fighting for.

Added to which it provided an opportunity to show just what we had in common with the United States as the that young American talks to a carpenter and finds out that he lays down timber for the future in exactly the same way as in America.

And as you would expect of a film with an eye to its propaganda value, all three receive good news.

The Land Girl discovers her boyfriend who was shot down has survived and that his father no longer opposes them getting married, our American gets news that his girlfriend is serving with the Women’s Army Corps in Australia and the British sergeant gets to play the organ in Canterbury Cathedral.

All of which in itself echoes those themes of the People’s War which pitched people out of their ordinary lives and threw them new challenges and in the process showed how the country was united in its determination to win.

And that is all I want to say, if you want more the film is available and as well as being a good tale is real history lesson.

Of course there are a shed load of equally interesting films from the period which no doubt I will return to.

Pictures; cover from A Canterbury Tale, and Canterbury in 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson