“Look on my Works”* ……… and wonder …… a story for Alan

I don’t usually do then and now pictures but sometimes I break the rule, especially when it’s a place I have known for heaps of time.

The Rochdale Canal, 1979

And so, it is with the stretch of the Rochdale Canal from Piccadilly down to Castlefield.

Back in the 1970s I regularly walked it, marveling on how it had survived a combination of neglect and willful vandalism and how it offered up glimpses of what had once been.

The Rochdale Canal, 2023

Like those pipes running along the wall of what had once been part of  St Mary’s Hospital and supplied steam to a host of buildings from the old Electricity  Station.  

Some of the lagging had fallen away and steam rose from the pipes leaving me a tad worried that one day I would cop for a scolding burst.

And further along there were those half sunken boats which were a continuing source of mystery and fed my imagination with possible disasters which had overcome crew and cargo.

The future of the canal always seemed in doubt, and despite its historic significance and its role in shipping water through the city there was always the possibility it would end up being filled in.

But not so and the story of its restoration is there to read. 

Suffice to say it was saved and now boasts plenty of amenities along its towpath of which Deansgate Locks are but one.

And so last Thursday I looked down on that bit of water beside the bars and reflected on the changes on the skyline, which of course is the point of the two pictures, and the rest as they say is for you to "compare and contrast".

Looking down towards Castlefield, 1979

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures, My canal, 1979 and 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!", Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1817 

Animals for the pot back in the kitchens of Chorlton and Well Hall in 1848

Back in rural communities in 1848 pigs and chickens were common enough and many families aspired to keeping a family pig. 

These were kept in the back garden or yard and could be fed on almost anything and would provide a family with food for almost the entire year.

As well as fresh pork there was salted bacon, cured ham, lard, sausages and black pudding.

Beyond its food value the dead pig offered its pigskin for saddles, gloves, bags and footballs while the bristles could be used for brushes and an average pig gave a ton of manure a year.

All of this was fine but often the pig became a family pet which made its killing just that bit harder.  Not that this halted the inevitable, which tended to be done in winter.

It was reckoned that the cooler months should be preferred given that in the words of the farming expert Henry Stephens, “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured.”    

So the traditional time was around Martinmas in early November which had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

As for the slaughtering of the pig this was done by the local butcher who was often paid in kind, and could be a traumatic event for both pig and family.

Not that there was any set way to carry this out and stories abound of botched attempts all of which led Stephen’s to recommend that the pig be placed on a bed of straw and the knife inserted into the heart.

The event was very much a family affair with everyone pitching in to scrap the hair clean from the body by either immersing it in boiling water or pouring the scalding water over the carcase, and later salting down the meat.  Immediately after it had been killed it was hung and left for the night before being cut up.

It was a time consuming job to rub salt into the hams and not a pleasant one either.  First the salt had to be crushed from a salt block which was then rubbed into the meat.

A side could be anything up to four feet [1.2 metres] in length and special care had to be taken to rub the salt into the bone joints.  All of this left the hands red raw.

Nor was this the end of the process.  The meat then had to be soaked in water and dried before being wrapped in muslin and hung up.  Meanwhile some of the pork might be cooked up into pies and the blood made into black pudding.

The family pig was indeed an important part of the means by which many in the township supplemented their earnings.  But pigs were part of the local economy and both farmers and market gardeners would find keeping pigs a profitable undertaking.

As we have seen they could be fed on almost anything.  In winter this might be potatoes or turnips and in summer they could be left to graze in a grass field.  The going rate at market in 1844 for a pig was anything between 24s [£1.20p] and 30s [£1.50p].

Our old friend Henry Stephens calculated that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

The same was true of poultry which existed happily enough in a back garden or farmers’ yard.  But I doubt that there was much to be made from selling the eggs.

A dozen eggs in the summer of 1851 might cost 4d [2p] a dozen and rise in price to 8d [4p] later in the year.

Enterprising farmers and market gardeners might store up summer eggs to sell in the winter.  This involved smearing them with butter or lard while still warm and packing them in barrels of salt, oats or melted suet then transport them into the city or sell them to egg merchants who visited on a weekly basis.

Pictures; from the Book of the Farm Henry Stephens, Vol 11 1844

THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Andrew Simpson, 2012, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Mr. Renshaw, the buried bowl and tales of classroom cruelty ………

I am back on the trail of James Renshaw, who was a Chorlton schoolteacher and not someone who would easily survive in the profession today.

But back in the early 19th century things were a tad different.

He remains a shadowy figure and apart from appearing in the census returns for 1841 and 51, along with references in the trade directories, all we know about him comes from anecdotal comments recorded by our local historian in 1885, a full half century after he died.

From these we can gather Mr. Renshaw was not to be trifled with in the classroom, because his discipline ran from “strict to severity, especially with scholars not in his favour” * 

They remembered how he who would strike the boys on the head with his cane and then apply cobwebs to stop the bleeding, and in the case of William Rhodes nearly cut off one of the lad’s fingers.  This had been done with an open pen knife which he threw at the young Rhodes who had put his hand on the desk while standing during a lesson.  

Despite this, Renshaw was much respected amongst the villagers and was known simply as ‘The Village Schoolmaster’ being consulted on many subjects ranging from the law and medicine to science.  

The school master held an interesting position in the rural hierarchy in that he would be respected for his learning which set him apart from most in the village but was less grand than the vicar or curate and certainly more accessible than those who styled themselves ‘gentry’.

Not that Renshaw by all accounts could always play the dignified pillar of village society.   

Despite his formidable personality which was much helped by his only having one leg he could still be bested by his students.  In a story still told thirty or so years after his death James Renshaw was the butt of more than one schoolboy prank.  

There was the story of the lost porridge bowl or I suppose more accurately the tale that started as a conspiracy and ended in a student revolt.  Each morning one of the schoolboys had the task of collecting Renshaw’s breakfast from his home and bringing it to the school.  

His home was a little further up the Row and on this morning the conspirators had elected Charles Brundrett to bury the spoon and throw the bowl into the pond opposite the school.  This stretch of water was known as Blomley’s Fish Pond and extended along the opposite side of the Row up to Sutton’s Cottages and across the centre of this water was a bridge leading into the fields.  **  

While young Charles Brundrett was engaged on this enterprise, one of the class ‘split’ to Renshaw who rushed out to prevent the deed happening.  Not only did he fail but on returning was refused admittance without the promise of a holiday, a tactic repeated by the boys on other occasions and supplemented by hiding his pipe and tobacco.  

Charles Brundrett suffered no long term effects from his prank and grew up to run Oak Farm.  Not that anything as dramatic might have occurred in that other private school run by Mary Taylor at Clough Farm at Martledge.  ***

James Renshaw was a Methodist, and is attributed to being the first in the village **** and so his school attracting children from Methodist backgrounds continued after the establishment of the first National or Church school on the green.  

In 1834 he was listed in a local directory as running a school in Chorlton and in 1841described himself as school master. But by 1851 aged 79 he had retired and by 1852 was buried in the grounds of the Wesleyan chapel.  *****  

Sadly no records of the school fees of Renshaw’s establishment have survived, but over in Stretford in the early decades of the 19th century, Mr Johnson charged “3d to 8d per week with 1d [ 1½p to 3p and ½p] extra for fire money in the winter.   

The scholars were allowed one quill a week and had to pay ½d each for any more.” ****** Johnson like our own Renshaw was “a perfect Squeers, inventing all kinds of queer punishments, and in one case made a lad eat a bad exercise he had written.”*******   Given the harshness of the times many parents may not have deemed such behaviour as excessive especially if the means delivered an educated child.  And Johnson’s fees were not cheap.  They were beyond the means of farm labourers and the services provided by James Renshaw and Mr Johnson was limited to the children of farmers and tradesmen.

There was also the Sunday school.  The first was set up by the Methodists in the August of 1805 and was held in the chapel later it moved to a building across the road which had been built from subscriptions raised by the Methodists.  When this building was lost the Sunday school returned to the chapel.********

Alas no pictures of the man have come down to us, and there is little more, other than that he was born in Chorlton-cum Hardy, never married, and was a member of the Renshaw family who had farmed in the township since the 1760s.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 

Pictures; Sutton’s Cottage circa 1892, photograph from the Wesleyan Souvenir Handbook of 1895, and Pigot's Directory Lancashire  1828-29, Stretford Chorlton Page 282, Chorlton Row now Beech Road in 1845

* Ellwood, Thomas, A History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Chapter 24, Shops, schools, April 24th 1886, South Manchester Gazette

** The water ran from where Acres Road joins Beech Road up to just before Wilton Road.  Ellwood Chapter 24. Elizabeth Blomley, gentlewoman was living in Chorlton in the mid to late 1820s

*** Pigot’s Directory Page 68, Historicacl Directories Page

*****  Pigott 1834 Page 68 Historical Directories Page 337, 8141 census, Enu 8 Page 5, 1851 census Enu 1 Page 11

***** Ellwood Chapter 18, March 6 1886.  He died on June 22 1852 and was buried in the Wesleyan chapel on the Row.Owen MSS Vol 42, Edge Geoffrey a claim Ellwood also made for James Baguley

****** Leech, Sir Bosdin, Old Stretford, 1910, Manchester City News Co Ltd Manchester page 38

******* Ibid Leech, page 38

******** The loss of the building is unclear.  The Methodist historian Ellwood writing in 1886 wrote that the Wesleyans had failed to convey it to trustees and that the building was sold to Thomas Taylor who charged them rent until 1827, when they were given notice to leave and the building converted into cottages.  The land was retained by the Lloyd estate 

Chicken bryani in the Plaza on Upper Brook Street on Saturdays in the 70s

For those who were born around the mid 20th century who queued to see the film Spartacus, remembered with profound sadness the death of Ottis Reading and raged at the Vietnam War it is more than likely that if you were in Manchester during the late 60s into the 80s you will have eaten at the Plaza on Upper Brook Street.

I had almost forgotten my beery nights out which always seemed to end at the Plaza until a post about breakfast on my friend’s Lois’s blog brought it all back.*

I have yet to meet anyone who ate there who does not have fond memories of the place, and has their own story. Mine are many.

 I remember the night of the Milk Snatcher’s Ball at UMIST** when we fell into the cafe with our baby doll nightdresses which we had borrowed from two flatmates securely hidden under our jeans and tee shirt or the night of the vivid conversation between a man with a broken hand and his girl friend about the relative merits of an A &E unit in down town Berlin.

I am sure there were many things on the menu but I can only ever remember eating the chicken or meat bryani, half of which cost 3/6d in 1970 and was more than enough for two.

The chicken arrived on a pile of yellow rice and raw onion with a small pot of the curry sauce and after vast quantities of cheap student union beer it went down well.

Now our friend Mike had never taken to curry and so at 3 in the morning on Upper Brook Street he would ask for a roast dinner which he got, with everything including the roast potatoes, chicken, gravy and just possibly Yorkshire puddings too. It was as my friend Lois said that "everything was possible at the Plaza."

Sometime around 1972 I stopped going. I suppose it was a mix of things really. My girlfriend of the time wasn’t over keen and by the end of that year we were living off Grey Mare Lane and soon after that out in Ashton, which meant that Upper Brook Street was a serious trek.

I suspect we were also playing at being grown up and grownups eat sensibly at places like the Bella Napoli off Albert Square and on Sundays in China Town. Looking back it was my loss.

And then it had gone. When exactly I don’t know, although I have friends who still went there in the early 80s for Sunday dinner.

Now I know that with age comes a rosy nostalgia about the past, and no doubt my sons can talk of their own food dives and late night experiences but for my generation the Plaza was special, even if it was hard to remember much of the night the following day.

Picture by kh1234567890 posted on flicker photostream

*http://loiselsden.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/breakfast/

**My friend Marc always referred to it as the Tech but he went there while I and my friends Jack, Greevz, Mike, Lois and John slummed it across the road at the Poly which we always called the College of Commerce which had been its pre amalgamation name. There were other things we called it of which the College of Knowledge was one, but mercifully never Colcom which really put you out with the nerds in the dustbins.

Today I walked the old road ........ part two

The road twists and turns following the old field divisions and natural obstacles before running up beside the river bank.

Junction of the Gore [Chorlton] Brook, 1963

This was our first warning of the power of the Mersey. For here there is no gentle river bank sloping down to the water’s edge.

 Instead the road hugs a towering bank built and added to over the centuries as the main defence against a powerful threat to the lives and livelihoods of all those who lived beside it. Generations of farmers have laboured to construct this natural wall to repel the flood waters of the Mersey.

The village and the isolated farms were all built beyond the flood plain. Even so this was not always sufficient protection. The Mersey has on countless occasions risen and breached these towering banks sometimes even sweeping away the defences themselves.

It was for this reason that the weir was built. Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

Not that it always worked. Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heightened river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

 In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive. It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”


Painting; Junction of Gore Brook and River Mersey, 1963, M80140, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Montogomery is incorrect, at the point where it joins the Mersey it has become Chorlton Brook

Looking at the Greyhound on Eltham High Street

Sometimes it is just sufficient to let the image do the business.

We are on the High Street and the caption just says “The Greyhound and other buildings (from and old photograph)".

And for once I shan’t attempt to poke around behind the front doors, other than to say that running the Greyhound in 1908 was Ernest Robert Elms, who lived in the seven roomed property with his wife, two children and a barman.

Pictures; the Greyhound and other buildings, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

How do you write a novel?

Now writing fiction alludes me.

 I can do the factual stuff, supported by research and heaps of maps and pictures, but the skill of making real historical names come to life is beyond me.

So I went to the Edge yesterday to hear Juliette Tomlinson talk about her debut novel, "Longford", which charts the lives of Enriqueta and John before they met and takes the reader on that journey that eventually saw the two of them married.

It is the first of a trilogy which will span the decades from 1864 into the twentieth century and on the way offers up glimpses into the lives of the two, set against provincial France and Manchester, with of course sideways looks at Longford Hall, Stretford and other bits of south Manchester.

The book came out on September 1st and yesterday we got to meet the author and hear about her passion for Enriqueta, how she came to write the book and her plans for the two subsequent books.

The room was packed and the presentation started with Juliette engaging with the audience to explore what makes fiction and then by degree we were led into the story of the Rylands, from their origins, to their lives before and after they met.

All of which was supported by a power point presentation and a reading from the novel.

But what I especially found fascinating was the question and answer session which allowed Juliette to develop why she chose the Rylands, the tension with portraying once real people who may have descendants, and her favourite character.

One of which was a disagreeable owner of a house the author stayed in durimg a holiday in the French town where Enriqueta had lived in and who became the equally disagreeable woman  Enriqueta worked.

And alongside that answer was the equally revealing question about how Juliette took each of the characters and brought them alive mixing the known evidence about them and that skill of making real historical names come to life.

So there you have it .... almost two hours in the company of the Rylands, the 50 or so who attended, and of course Juliette in what was a smashing afternoon.

Leaving me just to acknowledge the work of Beverley from library who supervised the talk as part of   Chorlton Book Festival the staff at the Edge and Linsey from Chorlton Bookshop who did the business of selling Longford after the event was over.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; cover of Longford, courtesy of the author and Chorlton Book Festival courtesy of Manchester Libraries, and other images from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2024

Longford, A Manchester love story, Juliette Tomlinson, 2024, The Squeeze Press

 The Squeeze Press, www.woodenbooks.com

And having said all of that ..... which includes how much I enjoyed the talk, and what I learned about the Rylands and writing fiction, my final comment is that simple one that it was fun.

Juliette had a light engaging way of presenting the story which never detracted  from her deep knowledge of the subject, or commitment to the project, and yes it was ...

.... fun.

Today I walked the old road .......... Part One

Today I walked the old road.

It is little more than a narrow paved track but for centuries it was one of the main routes out of the village to Manchester. Along this road went the farmers with their wagons loaded with agricultural produce destined for the Bridgwater Canal, villagers wanting to join Chester Road which led on into Manchester, and cowmen driving their cows back from the Meadows to the farms around the Green.

It was called Back Lane and it started by Hardy Lane ran down past the parish church, across the Meadows and ended just beyond the Duke’s Canal. Over the years parts of the road have changed their name and there are now houses along some of its course. Our chosen route would take us from the green past open land all the way to Stretford.

In some ways little appears to have changed in the last 150 years. Just as then hawthorn, oak, hazel and ash trees line the road and the banks made from countless years of leaf deposits trapped under the hedgerows are still there. My companion pointed to hazel trees which showed evidence that they had once been coppiced. It is a skilled job and one that I guess had not been undertaken here on our road for perhaps half a century.

In the distance rooks swooped back and forth, around their nest. Nothing quite prepares you for one of these. High up in the bare branches they seem as natural apart of the tree as the branches themselves. And there, just past Sally’s pond stood the old oak tree, perhaps the tallest tree on our road. More than likely those bringing the news of Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar would have passed it on their way into the village as would an obscure soldier fired by missionary zeal to preach the Methodist message.

Picture; the old road from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Eltham High Street looking south from the new Well Hall Road in 1909

It is one of those scenes that just about makes sense.

This is Eltham High Street in 1909 and the Grey Hound is fairly obvious as is the building to its left, but the others have gone.

Now as you would expect there are stories here which I shall come to when we walk this side of the High Street taking in Back lane, various pubs and some more fine houses.

Location Eltham, London

Picture; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

A park bench, a Radio Station and a reggae singer ............. Piccadilly Gardens sometime in the 1970s

Now as soon as you post a picture of Piccadilly Gardens you can be confident there will be a deluge of comments.

Most favour the old layout and I have to say I am one of them.  In my case it is a mix of nostalgia and a preference for a more formal set of displays.

All of which I know in these cash strapped times is hard to maintain but the present expanse of grass flanked by the concrete slab does little for me.

We will all our own vivid memories.

One of my most vivid ones is walking through the gardens on a summer’s morning.

A few people had taken up a bench but they were there for just a few minutes before going on to work.  The air was still fresh, and the cool morning air had the promise of a hot day to follow.

Fast forward a few hours and the place would have been full of lunchtime visitors, grabbing an hour in the sun with a set of sandwiches and catching up on the gossip with friends.

All of that is old hat so instead I shall finish with the message on the back which was sent to John Dees at Piccadilly Radio.

It was one of two that he received from our sender who left no name but again was writing about John Holt the reggae singer.

Now I know from an earlier picture postcard that he was her favourite artist.

There is no date or postmark on the reverse of the car, but I think it will have been taken earlier perhaps in the 1960s.

Location; Piccadilly Gardens


Picture; Piccadilly Gardens, circa 1960s, from the collection of David Harrop

Just how exotic could Manchester be? ………. memories of 1971

Now you have to be of a certain age to remember the Ceylon Tea Centre, or its equally enticing rival the Danish Food Centre.

An exotic market place, 1957

Back in the early 1970s they were a revelation to me, who until then had really only known Lyons Corner Houses, Wimpey Bars, greasy cafes and the odd forays for a business meal in the Chinese and Asian restaurants around town.

The Tea Centre was a commercial showcase for Ceylon’s products, and it was there that I first discovered a salad could be more than a soft tomato, some limp lettuce and a bit of curly cucumber smothered in salad cream.

Here were rice dishes, some of which were curried and others which contained fruit, nuts and other exotic things.

I remember the one in Regent Street in London but given that I was a student in Manchester it was the one on St Peter’s Square in Elizabeth House which we went to.

Although we did also do the Danish Food Centre on Cross Street, which had opened to a blaze of publicity on November 19th, 1965.

The Guardian ran the story over a full page, reporting that “the Danish Prime Minister with his wife, the Danish actress Helle Virkner, will attend the opening of the new Danish Food Centre in Cross Street tomorrow”, attended also by “the Lady Mayoress of Manchester, who enters as the first Mancunian housewife  to do so”.*

Ceylon Tea Centre logo, date unknown

There were also a host of other invited guests including “representatives of the Danish agricultural organizations, representatives of the grocery and provision trades of Manchester and district and representatives of women’s organizations and other local associations and institutions”.

The Guardian article did the Centre proud commenting on the décor the air conditioning and reflecting that here was a “little bit of Denmark” which was an “ideal place for a coffee and Danwich – the open Danish sandwich”.

Like the Ceylon Tea Centre, it also sold “quantities of Danish foods, [which] can be bought for an office lunch or a party with a difference at home”.”

Looking back now at a city full of restaurants offering up food from around the world, these two food centres seem quite tame.

Elisabeth House, home to the Tea Centre, 1988

But at the time they were both exciting and innovative, because while you could eat at the Armenian on Fountain Street, the Bella Napoli on Kennedy Street and a host of more expensive and down market eating places, these two were open all day into the evening and were relaxed and easy going.

From memory the Ceylon Tea Centre had a self-service as well as a waitress area and each featured those classic large wall mounted photographs of tea plantations and coastal landscapes.

Together they are part of the changing food culture in a city which just a decade earlier was more likely to have offered up visits to a Wimpey Bar, The UCP outlets, or faded tea rooms which competed with coffee bars and transport cafes.

Location; the 1970s

Pictures; the market, 1957 from Looking at Other Children, 1959**Ceylon Tea Centre, logo***, and Elisabeth House, 1988,m04395, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Danish Food Centre opens in Manchester Denmark comes to Cross Street, the Guardian, November 18th, 1965

**Looking at Other Children, Jean and David Gadsby, 1957

*** Vernon Corea’s visits to the Ceylon Tea Centre at 22 Lower Regent Street London, https://vernoncorea.wordpress.com/tag/ceylon-tea-centre-lower-regent-street-london/

Shopping on Well Hall Road in the summer of 1907

Well Hall Parade in 1907

Now I am back with two more from Greenwich’s collection of old photographs.

They are both of Well Hall Road and are separated by just eight years.

Of the two the first offers up much more detail of what this row of shops looked like just over a century ago.

And it is a world away from today.

It starts with those ornate lamps protruding from the shop fronts which may have been lit by oil but I suspect will have been gas.

The chemist,  the fancy draper and the watchmaker, 1907

Then there are the large windows  with their iron frames which have just a hint of ornate decoration, which are topped by the names of the owners some of which will have been painted but others might have been etched on glass.

And finally there are the shop displays some of which adhere to that old Edwardian maxim of pile them high and sell them cheap.

Now I rather think it must either be a Sunday or early one morning as most of the shops have their blinds down, even though some have opened their large canopies.

On balance I would go for a Sunday afternoon sometime in the summer judging by the number of  pedestrians and the way the light is falling.

And for those with an even keener eye for detail there are no tram lines and of course a total absence of traffic bar the solitary horse and cart.

The caption says 1907 and assuming that there hasn’t ben a rapid turn over of shop keepers the shop on the corner with Greenvale Road opposite the Co-op was Mr William’s who was a cycle maker and seems to have left his shop signs propped up outside.

Little change in 1915 on Well Hall Road

And using the same street directory for 1908 it is possible to identify all the shops and their owners up to the chemists run by the London Drug Company.

Nor has much changed in the eight years that takes us up to the second picture taken in 1915.

By then the tram has arrived, there is a little more traffic which might just be explained by the fact that the shops are open and there are a fair few people about.

It is easy to forget that our parade of shops would have been as colourful as those of today and each would have displayed their names on the awnings which on this sunny day were pretty much all down.

Picture; Well Hall Road in 1907, GRW 378, and 1915, GWR380 http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Saving the odd old road sign ....................... another street furniture story

Well it had to happen ............. the one bit of street furniture I have consistently ignored, so here is the start of a series on the humble road sign.

I say road sign because as everyone one knows, Chorlton-cum-Hardy never did streets, just roads.
I rather think a “street” might have crept in with all that new development over the years and we did have our own Lloyd Street back in the mid 19th century but that is it.

And of course more recently there has been the renaming of roads.

But for now I just want to focus on the road sign like this old traditional one on just round the corner from us.

You can still see them on the sides of buildings but they are in decline, replaced by the easier to read but a bit bland version of today.

And while I am on it perhaps a supplementary series could be the road/street names themselves.  Most are in memory of long gone local heroes, like Mr Brundrett, Mr Needham and of course those big landowners, the Egerton’s and Lloyds.

But sometimes the odd names strike you, like Ney Street in Waterloo in Ashton which I will leave you to ponder on, given that Marshal Ney was one of Napoleon’s generals and Napoleon of course was defeated at Waterloo.

Or Battle of Tel el- Kebir Street in Sunderland or the equally imaginative Faucet Street in the same town and our own Anita Street which more than a few people will be able to furnish the full story.

So that is it ............ road signs the new series to sit beside the other street furniture series, which include, finger posts, water troughs telephone kiosks and pillar boxes, not forgetting those huge iron street ventilation pipes.


That said my old friend in Adam in Peckham has started the research going, so lots I suspect still to come.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Provis Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Old Road in the 1890s

Now the Old Road has always been special to me. 

It ran from Hardy Lane down past the Brook into the village by the church and then off across Turn Moss to Stretford.

Over the years it has had many names and bits of it have been renamed from time to time.

Strictly speaking it was never known as the old road for there are equally old roads, lanes and track ways which ran out of the township.

But unlike the others it has retained much of its rural character.  True if you start at Hardy Lane you are presented with a modern road followed by the “stumps” which lead into the ville and the stretch past the school, round the church and along Ivygreen Road is pretty urban, but where it becomes Hawthorn Lane it still has the power to transport you back to the early 19th century.

Here it becomes a narrow twisty lane with the remains of hedges along its path, the 18th century weir clearly visible through the trees and finally the raised platform underneath the canal built to protect travellers from the farm wagons passing on their way to Stretford.

All of which makes this picture and those to follow over the next few weeks rather special.  They capture something of the charm and magic of the old road.  This one is from around 1890.  Despite the fashions of the couple staring at the camera which dates it to the late 19th century it could be any time over the last few hundred years.

The horse and cart add to the almost timelessness of the image, but hard by where the road ran into Stretford was a modern railway line, and just over a mile and a bit in the other direction was new Chorlton with its rows of recently built houses catering for the middling people who travelled into town from the newly opened Chorlton train station but still lacked the idea of living on the edge of the countryside.

Location;Chorlton

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

When East Manchester became Eastlands

Now there will be those who accuse me today of just taking a few pictures of east Manchester and coming up with some not very subtle sentences to connect them together.  

And that is not so far off the mark.  Yesterday I was reflecting on the changes that overtook the area in just over a decade and half and today I want to continue the theme.

We washed up on Butterworth Street in the January of 1973 and I suppose made a little bit of history.  We and the other five couples were all students or husband and wives of students who attended Manchester Polytechnic which had taken over six flats in the complex that had once housed the Mill Street Police Station, Fire Station and Ambulance Station.  Only the police remained and the six flats which had once been home to the families of fire fighters were now the first residential accommodation run by Manchester Poly.  So in a sense we were making history, while all around us something of a bigger bit of history was unfolding.

East Manchester was one of the centres of industrial production.  Here was the colliery, gasworks, chemical plants, and iron and steel foundaries bounded by the canal and railway lines, and because all these places of enterprise needed a work force here too were the rows of terraced houses, corner shops and pubs.

We arrived just as the area was changing.  Bradford Colliery had closed in 1968 and at the same time many of the old terraced houses were being cleared to make way for the large block of flats close to Grey Mare Lane.

Gazing out across the market at the decks of flats at night was I have to say an impressive sight and reminded me of ocean liners out at sea.  But Fort Beswick had a much shorter life than the terraced houses it had replaced and came down just twenty or so years after they had gone up.  Even at the time they presented a grim appearance in daylight and the idea that families with very young children would be comfortable or safe on the top decks of the block now seems a little absurd.

But there were still plenty of the old traditional houses around and what contributed to their demise was the swift deindustrialization of the area.  In 1951 72% of Britain’s working population was engaged in manual labour* and here in east Manchester they had their pick of places to work.

Just up the New Road was Clayton Aniline, with its tall chimney which belched out different coloured gasses at different times and turned the sky different shades.  Then there were the wireless works up by Philips Park, the canal, the railway lines and countless small lock workshops along with the gas works and the big engineering factories down through Openshaw and into Gorton.

Despite the closure of the colliery in 1968 there was much still working when we arrived five years later. But just a decade and a bit after that much of it had gone. The area was renamed Eastlands and ambitious plans were drawn up to make it the centre of our bid for the 1996 and 2000 summer Olympic Games.  Neither submissions were successful but it was where Manchester hosted the 2002 Commonwealth Games with its exciting new stadium on the site of the old Bradford Colliery.

In a rather odd twist of coincidence my eldest son found work during the Commonwealth Games at the stadium which had been built almost on the spot where just thirty years earlier I had lived.  Nor was this all, for his journey to work along the Ashton Old Road took him close to where I had worked.

I went looking for both sites recently.  The scaffolding yard on Pottery Lane is an open space, and Butterworth Street and our block of flats is just hardcore under Alan Turing Way.  Although I did find a tiny stretch of the road that ran between Mill Street and Butterworth Street along the side of our block, not a blue plaque I grant you but all that is left of when we were there, and of course in a bigger way a little bit of what was there when Eastlands was East Manchester and there were factories, and foundries and much else that was industrial.

Pictures; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Butterworth Street, Luft M 1991, m55776, Grey Mare Lane, 1962 Hotchin, F, m15440, Grey Mare Lane, Hotchin, F, m15450, Grey Mare Lane flats, Milligan, H, 1971, m12519, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 24 ........... the shed, the garden and a new way of taking pictures

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family. *

Now this is nothing more complicated than a picture from one of our bedrooms looking down on the back garden.

It was taken sometime in the early 1970s, and shows Dad's shed, the old swing which came with us from Lausanne Road, and the two fruit trees.

And in its mix of stuff, I guess will not be much different than all the other houses on the Progress Estate.

What might just set it apart was that the picture was taken with one of those instant cameras, which gave you a result in seconds.

Once the button had been pushed , you waited just a minute or so for the photograph to appear, doing away with a trip to the chemist, or posting the film away to a photographic lab.

All of which dispensed with the week or delay before the images arrived back.

Here was instant pictures, which to a pre mobile generation was magic.

I can't now remember which type of instant camera we used, and I have to say most of the pictures have long since been lost, while a few were ruined as they came out, because the trick was lo let them dry, otherwise you smudged them.

And that could be a bit of a disaster given how much the films cost to buy.

The shed and the trees have long gone, and this represents one of the few pictures we have of the house and garden.

Still it's enough and will bring back shed loads of memories to me and my sisters and their partners.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Well Hall Road, circa 1973, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

House Yard Road ...... the one we lost

It’s the cut through from the village green down to the Bowler we all use.

House Yard Road, 2023

Or at least we use when we don’t want to walk on the gravestones in the graveyard, or fancy chancing the narrow pavement along St Clements Road.

That said its not always the most enticing cut through.  

In winter it can be wet, muddy and slippery under foot while in high summer the vegetation can be a challenge as it stretches out across the path.

For most people that is it, but for those of us a tad older, its northern end did have that telephone kiosk which once had stood on the green.

X marks House Yard Road, 1845

And like most of us I took it for granted as just an unnamed strip of land which over the years had become an unofficial path.

But not so, because it did have a name, and it did lead somewhere other than the Bowling Green Hotel.

For this was House Yard Road and it led to the farmyard and barn of William Knight, or it did in 1845.  

By the early 20th century the farm had gone but the site was home to a collection of workshops and lock up garages, until thy all vanished to make way for Finney Drive in the 1960s.

The Knight family farmed in the township from at least 1832, and farmed enough land to qualify for a vote in Parliamentary elections at a time when the entire electorate of Chorlton was just 32 men out of a total population of about 750.

In 1845 William Knight rented 72 acres land from the Lloyd estate, which marked him out as one of the more prominent farmers.  His land was a mix of arable, pasture and meadow land spread out across the township.

His son ran the Robin Hood pub in Stretford, before moving into the township to farm on the green in the 1850s after the death of his father. 

House Yard Road, circa 1910

He is also on the electoral register for 1854-55, can be found in the minutes of the Vestry or Ratepayers and was part of the inquest held at the Horse and Jockey into the murder of Francis Deakin and he was buried in the family grave in the parish church yard.

And earlier in 1824 a Thomas Knight was listed in Pigot and Dean’s Directory of Manchester & Salford as “vict Old Greyhound, (boat house) Chorlton”, and Martha Knight was listed in Baines’ Directory for 1824-5 as running the “Boat House” in Chorlton.  This later became the Old Greyhound and still the Bridge Inn and today is Jackson’s Bridge. 

All of which means that House Yard Road will have been a busy place, and walked over by the Knight family, along with their agricultural labourers and perhaps heaps of others making their way to the Bowling Green Hotel, or the pond beside the pub to do a bit of illicit fishing.

So, our little cut through has indeed some history.

Location; that cut through beside the old parish graveyard

House Yard Road, so good we included it twice 2023

Pictures; House Yard Road, 2023 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and circa 1908 from the Lloyd Collection, and in 1845 from the map of the Tithe Schedule

Central Station, a bar called Cox’s and a defeat

Now try as I may I have never been able to get a decent picture of G Mex from Peter Street looking down Mount Street.

And there will be plenty who murmur “and you missed the boat with this one too Andrew”.

Which I accept may be true but at least the image recorded the old Central Station and Cox’s Bar, both of which I remember with affection, although in the case of Central it was as a car park and not a place to catch trains, as it had closed just month before I arrived in the city,

Location; Manchester

Picture; Central Railway Station, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 3, going back to 1915

Opposite our house on Well Hall Road, 1950

We lived on Well Hall Road  for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

And so I have decided to explore its history.

Now I have to admit I never gave much thought to what the house would have been like back in 1915.

As you entered the front door the central staircase was directly in front of you with the two living rooms off to the right and left.

A plan of a Parlour house similar to ours

Of these the left room extended the length of the ground floor and gave access to the kitchen while to the right was a smaller room which backed on to the kitchen.

So essentially the ground floor consisted of three rooms with that central staircase.

Upstairs and the model merely replicated itself with three bedrooms and a bathroom.

The plan opposite is very similar to ours but the layout at 294 Well Hall was reversed and access to the smaller front room was at the front with no passage along the side of the stairs.

And I am also a tad puzzled about the bathroom.

One resident I spoke to recently maintained that bathrooms were offered as an addition later by the Progress Estate.

Tenants had the option of having a down stairs extension or converting one of the three bedrooms for a slight increase in rent which was all too much for one old chap who choose to have neither and retained  his tin bath.

That said the original plans** would suggest that bathrooms and inside lavatories were fitted at the time of construction and there is a reference to The Office of Works odering “all the timber and supplied Baths, fireplaces and many other fittings which were kept in a large store on the site.”***

Sadly the majority of the records dealing the Estate were destroyed during the last war and with the passage of time much else about the early decades its history will also have been lost.

So I have no way of knowing whether the original properties had a kitchen range, the extent to which  gas was used instead of electricty for lighting or just how domestic water was heated up.

All no doubt will be revealed.

Nor can I remember the fire places.  Most had been taken out and the spaces bordered up before we arrived.  If anyone still has theirs I would like to see them.

Only the main one was still there and this we took out for a mock Tudor surround and gas fire around 1965.

This I suspect was only partly to do with taste and more to do with the simple fact that “this house is likely to be included in a Smokless Zone under the Clean Air Act of 1956 and approved fireplaces must be fitted in to the open fireplaces in the lower rooms by October next.”****

Looking back there is little that I can remember dated before the 1960s.  The previous occupants may or may not have done much to the place but I suspect not.

Just up from our house in 1950

That same surveyor’s report commented that “the house is not in good decorative order and that the whole of the inside will require immediate decoration.”

That said the large master bedroom had been modified with the addition of a gigantic head board which I now realise had been constructed in front of what would have been the fireplace.

Such are the awful acts of the amateur DIY enthusiast and I wonder to this day what awful secrets or more likely what hidden treasures lay behind the laminated mix of timber and hardboard.

Alas I will never know, like so much of that house in Well Hall Road its history has still to be revealed.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

**Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy, The Town Planning Review Vol. 21, No 3, October 1950, Liverpool University Press

*** Well Hall Estate, Eltham, S.L.G. Beaufoy, The Town Planning Review Vol. 23, No , July 1952, Liverpool University Press

****Surveyors Report, February 1964.

The Northern Art Workers’ Guild ...... all you ever wanted to know …. the book out on October 10th

 Here is a book I have been waiting for ever since Barry Clark told me he was engaged in writing about The Northern Art Workers’ Guild, which “was a part of the late nineteenth century revival of the crafts celebrated as the Arts and Crafts movement”. 

The book is the work of Barry and his co authors Stephanie Boydell and Richard Fletcher.

Over the years in conversation with Barry I had got to learn a little about the guild but as the publisher’s introduction reveals   “The history of The Northern Art Workers’ Guild until now its history has been largely untold. 

This beautifully illustrated book examines the impact of the Arts and Crafts movement in Manchester and the overlooked history of the Guild from its formation in 1896 through to its demise in 1912. 

Unlike the London-based Art Workers’ Guild it had active women members throughout. 

This new and original study identifies the Guild’s members and their work, together with the exhibitions that brought them to public notice. 

It tells the history of a northern craft revival that was neither rural nor London-focused, but an essential component of the Arts and Crafts movement located in the heart of industrial England.

The authors also examine the legacy of the Guild, in the later work of the Red Rose Guild of Artworkers and the lesser-known Manchester branch of the Design and Industries Association”.

To which Barry mischievously and with a smile told me “It’s very Chorlton! As well as me as lead author, Alan Ward has designed the book, Stephen Hale (a very near neighbour of yours!) copy edited.  And a number of the key figures in the book lived in Chorlton. 

I have their addresses. And Chorltonville gets a mention.”

Chorlton Civic Society will be hosting a Chorlton launch and illustrated talk  on Wednesday November 6th, at 7.30 in Chorlton Central Church, where Barry will be selling the book.

And you can buy it from Chorlton Bookshop.

So that is it for now, but I will be back with more news when the date of the Chorlton launch is announced.

Leaving me just to say it retails at £22, I have got my order in already and publication date is October 10th.

Who stole all of Chorlton's streets?

 Now for all those who never tire of telling the assembled crowd that Chorlton has no streets but only roads, it might be a revelation that this was not always so.

Cross Road, 2018

Acres Road was once Acres Street, while 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.

Added to this the Rate Books  show that Cross Road underwent a number of name changes, beginning with Cross Lane, then Cross Street and finally Cross Road.

And nor has Beech Road always been a road, in fact it only became a road in the mid 1870s.

Before that, stretching back the centuries it was Chorlton Row.

Just why we came to prefer road to street is unclear, but it wasn’t always so.

One explanation might be the the swift urbanization of Chorlton from the 1880s onwards, which within two generations transformed the area from a small rural community to a suburb of Manchester.

The coming of mains water, a gas supply and later a railway station made Chorlton ripe for development.

And many of those who came were the "middling sort" who worked in the city and wanted a sort of rural place to come home to

Lloyd Street running north from the Green, 1854

Many of them of them were professionals, or managers, with a strong representation from clerical occupations, and perhaps the draw for them was a "road" not a "street".

It was as the Manchester Evening News commented in the September of 1901 so swift a development that “the green fields of one summer are the roads and avenues of the next.”*

And something of just how quickly the roads and avenues appeared can be got from the street directories for the early 20th century.  

These were not unlike our telephone directories in that they listed the householder in each road, street and avenue, with the added bonus that they often give the occupation.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Cross Road, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Lloyd Street, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Manchester Evening News September, 1901

More stories

Looking out from Cross Lane ....... across the fields of Chorlton-cum-Hardy with Mr Samuel Walton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/06/looking-out-from-cross-lane-across.html

Looking for Lloyd Street ........... the lost roads of Chorlton part 2, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/looking-for-lloyd-street-lost-roads-of.html