Growing gloom over Chorlton

 In the days after Boxing Day the weather turned gloomy.

The weather forecast told me that we were experiencing a period of mist which occurs when warm moist air suddenly cools.

It is similar to fog but is thinner and more transparent which marks it different from fog which is denser and more opaque.

And that pretty much describes what happened.

During the day visibility became less, and while you could still see across the Rec, it became more like gazing out of a dirty window.

A situation which became more pronounced during the late afternoon as the light faded.

Of course, for those of us born in the first half of the last century this mist was nothing to write home about.Growing up in London in the 1950s we experienced that real loss of visibility when pretty much every year the city was cloaked in deep dense fog.

First the outline of buildings across the road grew feint, which progressed till lampposts and passing traffic became obscured.

And with that blanket of grey came the loss of noise as every sound became muffled and you were lost in the swirling grey stuff.

I say fog but back then often it was smog that far more dangerous mix of pollutants caused by thousands of factory and household chimneys dispensing smoke from countless coal fires into the atmosphere.

One year a science teacher at school exposed filtered papers to the elements at regular intervals and recorded the growing amount of dark looking particles which had a settled on the paper.

All very good and as a 13-year-old it proved a slight welcome interruption to the lesson, until it dawned on us that as school closed early we would be making our way through the streets breathing in this gunge as we headed home or tried to do so.

On one occasion dad had got lost just yards from home, stuck on a roundabout trying to find the right turning to come off.

I was too young to remember the Great London smog of 1952 which enveloped the city two months after my second birthday, but it will have been an awful experience for mother who regularly suffered from bronchitis.

Of course London was not alone in getting these fog and smog visitations, and I guess people from other towns and cities reading this will also have their memories of closed downs streets where things, and people slowly disappeared.

Happily, our mist cleared in just a few days and the other end of the Rec was again clear to see.

Location; The Rec, Beech Road

Pictures; Growing gloom, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Art of New Year ……..

So, given that New Year’s Eve only happens once a year you only get one stab of featuring the art that said goodbye to the old year.

Now I think you are either a Christmas or New Year person, and I and my family are definitely Christmas.

There were a few years when the attractions of alcoholic excess seemed attractive but they were accompanied with a hangover and a wasted following day.

Nor did I ever feel the need to party away with a heap of strangers in in a hotel eating food that was overpriced and pretentious.

But lots of people did and still do and I wouldn’t knock them for that.

So instead, here are two pieces of New Year art, courtesy of Suzanne Morehead whose parents danced the night away having had the full menu.

Back in the day, we saw it in with the kids, and in the absence of that insane bout of fireworks would hear the ships sirens from the docks welcoming in another year. 

Location any one of a shedload of New Year’s Eves

Pictures; from various hotels, 1947-1969, from the collection of Suzanne Morehead

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number one ...... a bridge across the Mersey 1816

Now this will be a short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and is also a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

This was the first bridge across the Mersey on the edge of the township.  Samuel Wilton built it in 1816 at a cost of £200, but the ferry and the right to transport passengers across the Mersey were still in place in 1832 when the pub and the surrounding land were put up for sale.

At the time it was the landlord of the pub who benefited from the ferry charges.  The toll of a 1d to cross the bridge was abolished in the 1940s.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection 1865

In St Ann's Square with an ongoing debate and lots of people

Now if you are of certain age, let’s say old enough to have thought “She Loves You” was magic and yearned for a TV programme which was in colour then I guess St Ann’s Square full of cars will be familiar.

When my friend Sally posted the picture  last year it set a debate going on exactly when it was taken.

Much hung on the make of cars that were parked up, but I wonder if another clue might be the statue on the plinth.  Today on the plinth are two soldiers from the South African War.

But in our picture they are not there so it should be simple enough to research when the Victorian worthy was moved and replaced by the two men.

The war memorial was made in 1907, and was listed  grade II status in 1974.

And perhaps even start another debate on which Victorian worthy was staring down at us.

I think I know but I shall keep that to myself at present.

Of course the code MHR 9 at the bottom right hand corner is also worth following up.  I think it will refer to a reissue of the card.

That said there may be someone reading this who was there when the picture was taken which is a long shot I know but I am constantly surprised how things pop up.

Today of course St Ann’s Square remains one of our busiest open spaces and is one of the venues for those markets.

I actually prefer it without the markets, when it offers up a place to sit catch up with friends or just watch the ebb and flow of a day in the city.

And it was on a recent Tuesday while waiting during a shopping adventure that I recorded a few of those waiting like me for someone.

It was a dinner time and so along with those wandering trough the square there were plenty sitting on those long stone benches and more than a few propped on those large round stone orbs which are comfortable for a few minutes but which after a while force you to move on.

And what was what made me wander across the square.

So there you have it from a place teaming with cars and people to one just full of a pedestrians, some waiting, others intent on eating a sandwich and some just passing the time of day.

Pictures; St Ann’s Square before now, courtesy of Sally Dervan, the statue and people from the collection of Andrew Simpson, July 2014

Another of those vanished scenes ........... the Thames and Tower Bridge

Now you will have to be the wrong side of 40 to be able to recall this scene.

The date on the card is 1936 but the scene with cargo ships discharging all manner of things from around the world was still pretty much the same two decades and bit later.

I remember crossing London Bridge as a youngster looking across to Tower Bridge with the wharves and cranes on the south side and the old fish market on the left.

Location; London

Picture; the River Thames and Tower Bridge, 1936 from the series London by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

Nostalgia ….. penny ago ….. memories of a past Chorlton-cum-Hardy

These are pictures of our Lych Gate on the green.

1979

They were taken in the winter of 1979, although I am well prepared to accept a date in the early 1980s.

And looking at them again after a passage of 45 years is to be struck by how dilapidated and neglected it had become.

1979

Once the proud gift of Mr. and Mrs. Brooks who lived at Barlow Hall and who buried their children in the parish graveyard just 90 odd years later it was in a poor state.

There were holes in the panels above the entrance, and boards had been placed over part of the elegant woodwork in the tower while the brickwork looked tired.

It would be another 14 years before the roof of the tower had some tender care and attention, and a full 45 years before the whole structure was restored using materials sympathetic to the original.

The finished project has received a lot of praise, but as ever with those comments came the inevitable ones which suggested Chorlton was no long what it once was.

And … yes on one level it is not what it was.  

It would be naïve to think after almost half a century almost anywhere is going to be the same.

1980

But for some the logical extension is that it is not so good.

And that got me thinking about the Lych Gate which certainly does look better than it did in 1979, and in turn the parish graveyard which had become neglected with some of its 360 head stones in a poor state, with some in danger of toppling over and others the subject to mindless vandalism.

The upshot was that in the 1980s it had had a make over which created a peaceful place with benches, bushes and trees, which in the years since have matured.

The downside, and there was a downside to the makeover was the loss of of most of the headstones, which recorded the names of those who had been buried here since at least the 18th century.

Those inscriptions were indeed a real set of historical records which have now been lost, and despite perhaps the good intentions of the planners their removal was an act of vandalism.

And while we do have a record of the inscriptions made by City Works in 1975, they can no way compensate for the disappearance of the originals.

2023

That said the graveyard had become a sorry place. The church which the headstones surrounded had been closed in 1940 and demolished nine years later bringing to an end a history of worship which stretched back to the early 16th century and perhaps even earlier.  

And in turn the graveyard had been locked off and pretty much neglected by most people, save for the odd trespassing kids and those interested in the inscriptions.

All of which makes it a tad easy and historically lazy to mumble things were better then.

They were different but I am not so sure they were better.  

At 75, I can remember a time when I lived in houses without central heating where in winter ice formed on the inside of windows, and when much of what we take as standard medical care was still in the realms of science fiction.

And when the much-vaunted local grocer’s shops had little variety and sold produce which was often close to its sell by date, and for a six year old telly on the one channel finished early, with programmes interrupted because the service broke down.

There will be few today who remember the BBC’s offering of the “Potter’s Wheel” or “London to Brighton in Four Minutes” which went on for ever while a clever technician fitted the fault.

2024

Of course I suppose on those day I could have climbed over the wall into the parish graveyard and read the inscriptions on the headstones and wondered who had had the job of ringing the bell in the Lych Gate tower on New Year’s Eve.

But that is perhaps another story for another time.

Location; Chorlton Green

Pictures; the Lych Gate, 1979- 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A park for new Chorlton, May 1892

It’s not much of a story really but it does point to the changes that had been taking place in Chorlton over the last two decades of the 19th century.

Before the rapid development of housing in and around the railway station and along the Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Roads there had been plenty of open spaces with fields to walk around and woods to explore in and ponds and water courses to play beside.

All of that changed as more and more of Chorlton was given over to rows of houses which prompted one resident to write to the Manchester Guardian, “being so near town, there is a demand for houses and they rise like mushrooms.  Rows, avenues, and semi detached in abundance, each with a small garden, where flowers can be grown if the smoke from the chimneys will allow; but very few have a grass plot large enough for the children to play on.”*

Apparently there had been hopes that a good site on Wilbraham Road might have been turned into a park but it was sold for building, “then the residue of an estate in Barlow Moor Road was for sale which is nicely wooded; that has now been sold to the Roman Catholics.”  All of which led the writer to fear that “Chorlton will soon be as crowded as Alexandra Park but without the park.”

But there was one field left which “in the general opinion of the residents is the right spot for the much talked of park.  The plot extends from Wilbraham Road to a new road about to be cut – Holland Road, I think it is to be called.  It is flanked on one side by Cavendish Road [Corkland] and on the other by the railway.”

It says much for the period that the writer expected the land and the maintenance of the park would be achieved by public subscription.

In the event it never happened and the plot was built on.  It would be a few more years before the Recreational Ground on Beech Road was laid out and well into the 1920s before Chorlton Park was established.

But next time I take the short cut down Zetland Road  [Holland] to Corkland Road [Cavendish] and onto Morrisons I’ll reflect on what might have been.

Locarion; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester

Picture’s, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, Manchester and South East, 1888-93, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/, and Holland Road from the Lloyd collection

* Manchester Guardian May 24 1892

A bold new station for Manchester and the film Hell is A City

This has to be one of my favourite Manchester stations. It is Oxford Road Railway Station.

The original station dates from 1849 and in 1960  was replaced by this one which was listed in 1995 and described by English Heritage as a "building of outstanding architectural quality and technological interest; one of the most dramatic stations in England.”*

I do have to agree with them.  Its glass and laminated wood entrance soars into the sky and on a sunny evening the reflection of the Refuge Building is captured in those high windows.

Now its predecessor was a much more modest affair.  It too was made of wood but was workman like and lacked style and presence.

There are a few pictures of this older station but not many and until recently I had not really given it much thought.

Until I came across a still from the film Hell is a City which was set in Manchester starred Stanley Baker and focuses on the search for a violent criminal.

It was made in 1960 just nine years before I arrived in the city and much of the location shots are ones that I remember well.

And there as Stanley Baker confronts the criminal on the roof tops of the Refuge Building is Oxford Road Station, both the Armadillo roof of the new station, the sweeping concrete wall of the car park and the old station.

It stands at right angles to the new station entrance which was something of a surprise but is logical.

Of course you would have to be over 50 and more likely 60 to have any vivid memories of this building and I doubt that there are that many pictures of the two standing together.

And like all such things the new station has undergone change.

That sweeping concrete wall and the car park it protected has gone.  In its place has come a tall steel structure with stone steps, which on a sunny day are occuppied by those waiting for a train or those catching a bit of sun along with their sandwiches.

And it remains a very busy place both inside and outside the rush hour.








Pictures;Oxford Road Station in 2008 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, still from Hell is a City, 1960, from Graham Gill,

This Is London ........ a unique guide to the London of 1959

Now I have no idea why I never got a copy of This Is London.*

Cover of This is London

I guess that there are only so many books that you can get for Christmas, and with the Eagle Annual and the odd history book that was enough.

Not that I think I would fully have appreciated it back then when I was only ten all of which is so different now.

It is a witty, informative guide to the London I knew as a child and is full of marvellous images in the style of the period and these alone take me back nearly sixty years.

But it is also the humour which shines through and marks it as something original.

It starts with a page of brown sludge with the occasional splash of yellow accompanied with “Well, this is London. 

 But don’t worry, it is hidden in fog like this only a few times a year in winter. Most of the time it looks- like this!”

And that is the start of a wonderful series of bright colourful and exciting paintings of London with a text to match.

All of which is a riveting read and one that has now become a history book in itself.

So much so that the new edition which was published in 2004** has updated some of the entries,  pointing out for instance that “Today the Billingsgate fish market is located in the Docklands, a rejuvenated section of the London Docks.  It moved there in 1982.”

Now that move passed me by and while I have no doubt it was for the best I have vivid memories of the market, the over powering smell and the debris left on the streets on a Saturday morning only hours after the traders and the fish had left for shops across the city.

Some three million passengers are carried daily in Underground trains

It is just one of the moments which bounced out of the past along with those electric milk floats, old Routemasters and a river which was still a working river full of ships from every corner of the world unloading their cargoes under the shadows of tall cranes and massive warehouses.

All of which I remember and for those like my own lads who never knew that London, Mr Sasek’s book has it all.

And so as you would expect I have gone looking for other editions in the same series which included, Paris, Rome, New York, and San Francisco.

In time I might order up the reprints of New York, and San Francisco, but at present I am content to wait for the arrival of This is Rome which was originally published in 1960 and reprinted in 2007.

Like This is London it has an page of updates which will be fun to match with the original text and my own memories of a city we regularly return to.

Now ever one to respect copyright I held off posting and substitute the same story but with images drawn from the collection.

However after contacting the publisher it appears at present no one knows who owns the copyright to the illustrations, so as the blog is no commercial and this is about encouraging everyone to buy read and share the booksof Mr Miroslav I can't think anyone will object, but if they do I shall revert to the original.

And for those intrigued by the books there is a site dedicated to the author and his books.

Picture; cover from This Is London, and Underground train page 42 courtesy of Universe Publishing

*This Is London, Miroslav Sasek, 1959

**Universe Publishing, a Division of  Rizzoli International Publications, New York, www.rizzoliusa.com

***This is M Sasek, http://www.miroslavsasek.com/index.html

On the streets of Manchester, polishing shoes, selling food and offering up fun balloons

It is one of those things about city life that there is always someone who will sell you almost anything.

Just over a hundred years ago down by the Cathedral walls, the artist H.Tidmarsh recorded the old man selling newspapers, a woman selling potatoes and a boy polishing shoes, while up by the Infirmary at the top of Market Street he painted another street vendor selling food.

Not far away by Hunts Bank late at night young children plied the streets selling newspapers in the early hours of the morning.

And a century and a bit later, out on Market Street the crowd surged past the burger van, negotiated the balloon man, and stopped to buy a political paper.

Pictures; Manchester street sellers by H.E. Tidmarsh from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1894 and from the collection of Andrew Simpson, June 2013

And over the next few weeks I shall focus on more of the street vendors who plied the streets of Manchester  in the late 19th century and their counterparts who still do the same business today.

When the story of a murder reveals an earlier tragedy and a family that made good

Now the murder of PC Cock in 1876, and the subsequent arrest and conviction of one of the Habron brothers is well known and was recently the subject of a new book.*

Brookfield House, Chorlton,  circa 1900, home to the Deakin family in 1881

And more so because of the timely confession of the real murderer who was a criminal with a long track record of burglaries and violence.

PC Cock was interred in the churchyard by Chorlton Green where there is still a memorial to him, the real murderer  was hung and Mr Habron after his release fell out of history.

What intrigued me and set me off on one, was a request from Brian Robertson who runs an excellent facebook site. **

Brian was interested in Francis Deakin who employed Frank and William Habron.

Brookfield House, 2015

The Deakin family were well known to me.

They had been market gardeners way back into the 19th century and in the middle decades they lived in Martledge which was one of the three hamlets of Chorlton –cum-Hardy.

In the 1840s they farmed 3½ acres when Mr Deakin’s father was murdered in a beer shop in Chorlton in 1847. ***

The family received much sympathy and financial help not least because Mrs Habron was left with a large family of young children.

The family appear to have survived the tragedy and prospered. By 1881 Francis Deakin was farming 36 acres and employing 16 men and 3 boys and lived at Brookfield which still survives and is the house in Chorlton Park opposite Hough End Hall. ****

In that same year Mr Deakin farmed land near Hough End hall and so I suspect it might well be that the land was around Brookfield House in what is now the park.

The land around Brookfield House, 1854

But in 1876 at the time of PC Cook’s murder the rate books have him down as farming near the old Church which must be somewhere near Chorlton Green close to the Bowling Green pub on what was Lloyd land and also on High Lane just past Stockton Road and maybe all that was left of Row Acre which was a sizable plot of land which was farmed by various Egerton tenants and originally stretched from roughly Cross Road down to Acres Road between Beech Road and High Lane.

The OS for 1894 shows that it had shrunk to a stretch from what is now Chequers Road to Cross Road.

Interestingly there is a reference to Francis speculating in building plots in the 1880s and the rate books show that he owned at least one property in Chorlton.

Brookfield House, 2014

For me what makes the story just that bit more interesting is that it revealed more about the Deakin family, provided me with another resident for Brookfield House and offered a possible place for where the Habron brother’s worked.

That said Brian added that   “there seems to be some confusion over where the land that the Deakin’s worked was though. One newspaper report clearly suggests that access to it was from a triangular piece of land opposite the spot where PC Cook was murdered.”

This might put it over the border and alas at present I don’t have access to the rate books covering that area.

But it is entirely consistent with land holdings in Chorlton during the 19th century, with many farmers and market gardeners renting plots over the whole township and beyond into Withington and Stretford.

So there you have it.

Pictures; Brookfield House circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection, and in 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the area around the house in 1854 from 1854 OS for Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk

* The Murder of Chorlton’s ‘Little Bobby’ ………… Who killed Constable Cock? by Angela Buckley* https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/the-murder-of-chorltons-little-bobby.html

** Greater Manchester History, Architecture, Faces and Places

***The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012

****Looking for the story of Brookfield House on the edge of Chorlton Park, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/looking-for-story-of-brookfield-house.html

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

Atoken issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141

Walking the streets of London’s East End in 1953

Today I am enjoying "Nigel Henderson’s Streets" which is a collection of the photographs he took in East London between 1949-and 1953.

It is a Christmas present from our Ben and Lindsey who knowing that I grew up in southeast London though it would make an old man very happy.

And of course it does.  

I may have only been four in 1953, but the scenes depicted by Mr. Henderson are little different from those I remember a few years later in my patch of Peckham, New Cross, and Deptford and later still in Woolwich.

At which point I could repeat the glowing introduction from the book on Mr. Henerson’s skill and his background.

But the pictures in the book will do that, so instead I will just reflect that as someone born in the first half of the last century these images are ones I can relate to from my own patch of London, and indeed from the streets around city centre Derby where I was dispatched for long summer holidays.

One of my favourites must be the Wig stall at Petticoat Lane taken in 1952. Amidst the bustle and interest of possible customers there is the woman perfectly framed between the model heads displaying their wigs.

There are plenty of others which match this one for the insight into street life, but there is such a thing as copyright, and I am a fierce defender of the right of the artist to retain control of his work.

So that is it.

Nigel Henerson’s Streets, Photographs of London’s East End 1949-53 Edited by Clive Coward, Tate  Publishing.

Pictures; from Nigel Henderson’s Streets

What did Chorltonville do in the last war?

South Drive, 1913

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

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

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

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

Nell Lane, 1941

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

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

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

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

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

Barrage Ballon on the Rec, 1941

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

The Meade, 1913

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*** reproduced courtsey of Chorltonville News

King Winter’s Birthday ……….

At 75 I know I have never really grown up.

Or perhaps after doing the business of working for 40 years, bringing up kids, and being serious I can revert to that other time.

But that would be to ignore that I have always enjoyed reading the comics of my childhood along with the books that took me far from Peckham, Eltham, and later Manchester.

So, with that out of the way it’s the book King Winter’s Birthday which captivated me on Christmas Day.

The publisher’s review described as “An achingly beautiful, timeless picture book by bestselling author Jonathan Freedland and illustrated by Emily Sutton, inspired by a story from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, author of The Passenger

It's King Winter's birthday, and he wants his party to be really special. He asks all of his brothers and sisters to be there: Queen Spring, King Summer and Queen Autumn.

But the wind and the trees whisper a warning, and as the four play magical games, something strange begins to happen outside.

Inspired by a story from Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, written while he was interned on the Isle of Man during the Second World War, this timeless fairy tale is a celebration of nature's rhythms, and of a chaotic world restored to balance”.

And it is wonderfully retold by Jonatham Freedland and accompanied by a magical set of illustrations by Emily Sutton which are in the style of pictures I remember from the 1950s and 60s.

And it ends with a short biography of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz who was German and Jewish and who wrote the powerful novel The Paasenger 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".

Which just leaves me to return to King Winter's Birthday which stands as a reminder of the imagination of Alexander Boschwitz.

King Winter’s Birthday, Johnathan Freedland and Emily Sutton, Pushkin Children's Books.

Pictures; courtesty of the publishers

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

Posters from the Past ........... no 7 enjoying a film and a night out at the Grosvvenor

Take a modern image of a building we all love and turn it into the style of poster which was popular in the middle decades of the last century.

It was a bit of fun from Peter which has become the series Posters of the Past.*

And today it is the turn of the Grosvenor which was opened in 1915 to a design by Percy Hothersall and with almost a thousand seats was I think the biggest cinema outside the city centre at the time.

Even now long after its days as a place to see films have ceased it is still a pretty impressive building.

Its green and cream terracotta tiles marked it out on that stretch of Oxford Road which apart from the Town Hall opposite and the old offices of the Poor Law Union on the corner of Cavendish Street was a drab spot.

And I just missed going there.

It closed as a cinema in 1968 and I had to be content with using it as a pub which it had become after unsuccessful stints as a bingo hall and snooker venue.

Still some of the original features still exist including the balcony, vaulted ceiling and much plasterwork although they have not been treated well.

I guess the cinema entrepreneur, H.D. Moorhouse would be less than amused.  Pretty much all his working life was given over to picture houses and the films, having started as an accountant he got drawn in with a parts share on one and later a string of cinemas, across the city.

And now his cinema is a pub.

So instead let’s slide back to a time when the price of admission to a night of dreams, fears and adventure was just 6d.

I think it would have to be the 1930s with that wonderful film Things to Come.  Of course yours will be different but as they say “you can be at my film night if I can be in yours.

Poster; The Grosvenor, © 2016 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Posters from the Past  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Posters%20from%20the%20Past

On discovering Woolwich

I have very fond memories of Woolwich.

Washing prawns, 1979

It was a place that I was quite late in visiting  which is a bit daft since we had moved to Well Hall in the spring of 1964 and the 122 and 161 ran by our house.

But during the week I was going back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern and the weekends were full with exploring Eltham.

So it will have been sometime in the summer of 1966 that I started going there.  At first it was to meetings in the evenings in the back room of a small pub at the bottom of the Woolwich New Road.  All very earnest political stuff, and then I just took in Woolwich on a regular basis, starting with the market, the Arsenal, and of course the river.

And later it was where I got the bus to to work at the bus stop facing the ferry.  I can't say it was always a comfortable place to stand at 6 in the morning but even on wet grey days the vew was one I liked.

But the busy sprawling market was always a draw.

And so here from 1978 or maybe 78 is the market on a busy day.  Sadly this is the only image to have survived umpteen moves and the odd disaster.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1979

Christmas over Chorlton

 Nothing more complicated.

At the back door, 2022

Christmas on Beech Road.

Waiting for evening, Christmas Eve, 2024

December evenings, 2023

Despite predictions of snow, blizzards and worse, Christmas 2024 passed off with that weak winter sunshine.

And while Boxing Day began damp and closed with mist.

Boxing Day across the Meadows, 1979

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Christmas in Chorlton, 1979-2024 from the collection of Andrew Simpson