Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 2 Homer Street and the Ward family

Now I would like to think that one of these young people could be Ethel Ward.

Students at St Andrews School, 1920

She was living with her parents at number 9 Homer Street and it is just possible she attended St Andrew’s School which was at the end of the road.

Homer Street and in particular number 9 has over the last few days drawn me in and I want to know more.

It was just a few minutes away from Fairfield Street and on a quiet night the Ward family would have heard the distinctive clunk of railway waggons being shunted in the nearby sidings, caught the smell from the river and the dye works and worried that young Ethel might do something daft beside the canal.

Homer Street, 1894

That said I remember my old friend Norman who had been born close by telling me how he had learnt to swim by being thrown in that same canal.

I last visited number 9 in 1851 when it was home to two families.

At that time I knew little about the property but now know that it consisted of four rooms which given that there were seven of them must have made it a squeeze.

Just exactly what the condition of number 9 was like is unknown, but by 1911 it was at least 74 years old having been built as part of the swift development of the area in the early and mid 19th century.*

The class of 1920, St Andrew's School, 1920

The earliest entry in the rate books is 1837 when the block was owned by a Mr Price who is still the owner in 1851.**.

I suspect Mr and Mrs Ward counted themselves relatively lucky because many of the surrounding properties consisted of just two and three rooms and were home to large families.

He was an electrician for Manchester Corporation and as such was a skilled worker.

They had been married for eleven years and Ethel as their only child.

For Ethel there would have been little that could be said to have offered up exciting places to play.

Just a short walk down Phobe Street was a tree lined Recreational Ground which backed on to the river but it was dominated by a cotton mill off to the east and the Ancoats Goods Yard to the north delivering a fair share of noise, smells and if the wind were in the wrong direction no doubt the old cloud of smoke.

Of course there is a danger in letting your imagination over play the industrial scene and I have also to concede that by the time our school picture was taken Ethel would have been fourteen and already working, perhaps in that very textile factory that overlooked the Rec.

St Andrew's Square, 1966

Her home and the rest of the houses on Homer Street had gone by 1938 although the street and some of the surrounding ones continued to appear on maps, but by the end of the century even their imprint had vanished under a site which had various industrial uses and now is a warehouse for Armato Food Products  and it was the current owners who suggested I might be interested in the site.***

Which is almost the end, but I have to add that in wandering the neighbouring streets I did come across a Mr Simpson living with his wife and two boarders in three rooms at number 17 St Andrew’s Street.  He was no relation but I like the way a random search throws up a Simpson.****

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, and St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Homer Street in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Homer Street, Enu 12 272, Central, Manchester, 1911

**Manchester Rate Books, 1837- 1851

***Amato Food Products, http://www.amatoproducts.co.uk/

****St Andrews Street, Enu 12 188, Central, Manchester, 1911

Discovering a little bit of Whalley Range’s history

Now here is a bit of history that I bet lots of people know but has passed me by and it concerns St Margaret’s playing fields in Whalley Range.

The land is on Brantingham Road and was gifted by the wife of one of the vicars of St Margaret’s and in in 1937 it was the destination of that years Chorlton carnival.

Back in the 1930s there were a number of carnivals across the city but Chorlton’s seemed to be the biggest according to the Manchester Guardian which reported that “the gala held in St Margaret’s playing fields, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, on Saturday [June 19th] may be said to mark the opening of the charity carnival season.“*

Now I recently wrote about the carnival but pretty much ignored the playing fields but after a few people asked where they were I went looking.**

The obvious place was beside St Margaret’s Church in Whalley Range and while I was close I wasn’t in quite the right place.

The church had been built in 1849 on land given by Samuel Brooks but the playing fields date from sometime later.

I have yet to establish when but I do know that in 1894 the land was still part of Whalley Farm and as late as 1911 Brantingham Road had yet to be developed fully.

That said I hope to talk to Mr Boulter the vicar at  St Margaret’s and perhaps even before then someone will come forward a bit more of the story.

And within minutes of posting this story,  Pawel Lech Michalczyk who pointed out that  "St Werburgh's Church owned playing fields.

These were opposite Parkgaye Farm, accessible via the short cul-de-sac off St Werburgh's Road.

It was the whole triangle between the railway line and Chorlton Brook, almost up to Mauldeth Road West.

Its now part of the Chorlton High School campus."

Location; Whalley Range

Picture; horses being paraded along Oswald Road sometime in the 1930s, courtesy of Mrs Kay, from the Lloyd collection

*Manchester Guardian June 21 1937

Uncovering the fascinating story of Frank Jefferson .............. historian, teacher, and soldier

I think we should all know more about the life of Frank Jefferson.

He was a teacher and later head teacher at the Open-Air School in Shrewsbury Park, was a noted historian of Woolwich and served in the Royal Artillery during the Great War.

Now that is a pretty impressive track record many of us would wish to emulate, more so because he had the rare gift of achieving much but carrying it off in the most modest of ways.

I came across him only recently when my friend Tricia alerted me to his book, The Woolwich Story.

It is one of those wonderful history books which is fun to read, offers heaps of information but has a light touch which carries the reader along.

Before I knew of his chosen career, the style, humour and ease with which Mr Jefferson delivered the Woolwich story made me think he must have been a teacher.

That said there was very little I could find about him until I contacted Jim Marret who is secretary of the Woolwich and District Antiquarian Society.

The Society had published the book and Mr Jefferson had been its President for three years.

Jim provided me the a copy of the obituary written by a friend of Frank Jefferson and from there the story tumbled on to the page.

He was born in Essex in 1889 and in 1911 was living with his family in a pleasant eight roomed semi detached on Nadine Street.

Five years later the family were at 6 Russel Place in Woolwich and it was from there that the young Frank enlisted in November 1916.

He survived the war and in 1929 as head teacher oversaw the move of the Open-Air School from Shrewsbury House to Charlton.  According to his obituary “we must not forget that he was one of the instigators of the ‘Open –Air’ school in England, at Shrewsbury Park, at which hundreds of children were aided to recovery from ill-health.  

The full story is told by Frank in his book except for one important detail- he has omitted, with typical modesty, to mention his own part in the work there.”**

And that I think is where I shall end for now but like all good stories it offers up the promise of much more.

For now I would like to thank Mr Jim Marrett of the Woolwich and District Antiquarian Society who provided the obituary and cover of the book on the Open Air School.



Location; Woolwich, Eltham, Welling

Pictures; cover  England’s First Open Air School, 1957, courtesy of the Woolwich and District Antiquarian Society, The Open Air School Bostal Woods, circa 1909, from Open Air Schools Leonard P Ayres, 1910 page 39 and cover The Woolwich Story, E.F.W.Jefferson, 1972

*The Woolwich Story, E.F.E Johnson, 1972

**E.F.E. JEFFERSON 1899-1970: An Appreciation J.J. Morrow

A 'gang' of 'teenagers' ........... just before the War outside the Horse and Jockey

Now I like the way that people continue to be generous with both their family pictures and the memories.

So I was very pleased when this one was sent to me by Yvonne.

The Horse and Jockey will always be special to me, not only because as one of our oldest pubs it featured in my first book and was the venue for its launch but also because as the “Pub on the Green” it has been at the centre of much of Chorlton's history.*

But rather than ramble on I will share Yvonne’s description of the picture.

"Hello Andrew!  I enjoy reading your post on the Chorlton Blog.  

I was born there - leaving when I was 8.  I have a photo of my mother and sister with their 'gang' from about 1936 outside the Horse and Jockey.  

It’s of a 'gang' of 'teenagers' just before the War outside the Horse and Jockey. 

My mum Dilys on the left, her sister Gwen on the right. She used to tell us all their names but the only one I can remember is Joe Rook!”

And that is a pretty good start.

Yvonne hopes it will “stir some memories up” and so do I.



All of which just leaves me to thank Yvonne.
Location; Chorlton

Picture; A 'gang' of 'teenagers' outside the Horse and Jockey circa 1936 courtesy of Yvonne Richardson

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 

A wopping big bit of Eltham’s past ........... and the historian who wrote it

Now every place deserves a historian and a good history book and Eltham had R.R.C.Gregory who wrote the Story of Royal Eltham in 1909 which remains a fine account of the area’s history.*

Mr Gregory was a teacher and later the headmaster at Eltham National School from 1901-1920 and the book began as a series of lessons for his students.

He had found the Admission Register for the school for 1814 which formed the inspiration of his teaching of local history, which drew praise from the Inspectors.

"The Headmaster directs the work with sympathy and he has striven to maintain the more helpful characteristics of a village school, more especially in regard to the old customs and associations."

It is available on the internet.

Now this all this I knew, but yesterday my friend Tricia alerted me to a smashing little account of Mr Gregory by Margaret E Taylor which appears in Eltham Records.**

The book was published by the Eltham Society which I would recommend.***

I joined nearly 50 years after it was founded.   In my defence I was 16 when it was established and by 19 was living in Manchester all of which rather negated a membership.  But happily I am now fully paid up and fined their publications very useful.

That said the book doesn’t appear in the present publication list so I shall have to go off and ask if they have a battered old copy.****

Sadly unlike many I have yet to buy Mr Gregory’s book which is now a collector’s item, but who  knows Christmas is coming up.

In the meantime a thank you to Tricia Leslie for sharing Ms Taylor's book with me.

Location; Eltham, London

Picture; of R.R.C Gregory, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 

*The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909

**The story of Mr Gregory by Margaret E Taylor from Eltham Records, 1977, Eltham Society

***The Eltham Society, http://theelthamsociety.org.uk/

****Eltham Society Publications, http://theelthamsociety.org.uk/publications.html

Walking along Gun Street in the spring of 1851

Gun Street in 1844

Now this is another one of the walks I would like to have taken in the spring of 1851.

It would have started just past New Cross, where Great Ancoats Street joined Oldham Road and Swan Street and running from Bond Street, crossed George Street, Blossom Street and finished at Jersey Street.

It is still there today, a narrow street, dominated by tall modern buildings a few workshops which long ago lost any entrances onto the road and some open spaces.

In total I don’t suppose it would have taken more than five minutes to walk its length in the 1850s, but in that short time there would have been all that the curious spectator might have wanted to observe.

For here were small terraced properties, the dark and secretive courts hidden from view and plenty of pubs and beer shops.

Gun Street in 1901

Here too was a cross section of the city’s working population from skilled journeyman to shop keeper, textile worker and a heap of unskilled labour.  And reminding us that Manchester still moved courtesy of the horse Gun Street had a blacksmith.  Perhaps even more surprising was that in that year of 1851 there was still a handloom weaver and an agricultural labourer.

In total there were 384 people living in just 63 houses with some crammed into the cellars.  The rents ranged from 1 shilling 6d to 4 shillings and 6d when a factory girl might earn between 7 and 9 shillings, a week a labourer 18 shillings and a police constable 20 shillings.

And along that short street you could have heard the accents of the rural north as well as London, and the Midlands but dominating all would have been that of the Irish, for here amongst our 384 inhabitants were 235 from Ireland and only 125 from Manchester.**

And as you would expect there is much more than we could uncover, from poor sanitation, adulterated food, the large numbers of pubs and beer shops and those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

But all that is for later.  Instead I shall leave you with the thought that had you tired of Gun Street and returned to New Cross you chanced at best a rowdy noisy meeting place and at worst a venue for popular discontent.

For most of the last half century, there had been protests and like that of April 1812 in Oldham Road at New Cross when a food cart carrying food for sale at the markets in Shudehill was stopped and its load carried off.

Nearby shops were also attacked and looted.  The mob was eventually dispersed by soldiers but only as far as Middleton.  There they met with an assembly of handloom weavers, miners and out of work factory operatives gathered to protest against the introduction of power loom machinery at Barton and Sons weaving mill.

The mob which had grown to 2000, was dispersed by “A party of soldiers , horse and foot, from Manchester arriving, pursued those misguided people, some of whom made a feeble stand; but here again death was the consequence, five of them being shot and many severely wounded.”    

While after the events at Peterloo in 1819 the military and the local police patrolled the streets like some occupying force, and in the early evening with tensions still high a large crowd gathered at New Cross.

Gun Street in 2011

Some of the crowd began throwing stones at the police and soldiers opened fire.  Before the crowd had dispersed, Joseph Ashworthy had been killed and several others lay injured.  Not surprisingly many of those injured in this event came from that close network of streets around Gun Street.

Next; those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

*Rate Books
**1851 census

Location; Manchester




Pictures; part of Gun Street from the OS map of Manchester, 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Gun Street from Blossom Street, A Bradburn, 1901  M11341, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Gun Street from Blossom Street 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Two Civil Wars ......and that Greek War reported on by Thucydides in 411 BC

Today's Radio 4 Start the Week has got the lot from the Spanish and Greek Civil Wars of the mid 20th century to a look back at war between Greece and Sparts which started in 431 BC.*

Spain Fights for Independence,1936

"But the programme is more than that and in the conversation between Yanis Varoufakis, Professor Mary Vincent, Paul Cartledge the three explore many elements of the history of those two civil wars and that ancient war for hegemony of Greece.

The economist Yanis Varoufakis found himself in the eye of the storm as Greece’s Minister of Finance in 2015, at the height of the country’s debt crisis. Now he reflects on his political awakenings and the women who influenced him in Raise Your Soul. It’s a family story that starts in Egypt in the 1920s and traces Greece’s tumultuous century through Nazi occupation, civil war, dictatorship, socialism and economic crisis.

The historian Professor Mary Vincent focuses on the Spanish Civil War and has written about fascism, political violence and its impact on the people. She sees both similarities and stark differences between the Greek and Spanish Civil Wars and ponders the question of how global politics influence what happens in nation states.

As a new translation of Thucydides’s The History of the Peloponnesian War (by Robin Waterfield) is published, the classicist Professor Paul Cartledge explains why this ancient text has remained essential reading for military leaders and politicians for centuries. Thucydides’s account of the war between Athens and Sparta that began in 431 BCE depicts the devastation of civil war and reflects on the nature of political power".*

Producer: Katy Hickman

*Yanis Varoufakis on Greece’s civil war, Start of the Week, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002kfpg

Picture; Spain Fights for Independence, For Peace and Solidarity Among All Peoples, G. M. 1936-39 from The Palette and the Flame, 1980

The Fallowfield handloom weavers

There is much of the history of south Manchester which has sunk without trace.

In the way these things work we have rather been eclipsed by the story of Manchester just a few miles to the north.

And yet there was much going on in these small rural communities.

A little of this can be gleamed from the accounts written at the end of the 19th century which tried to recreate what life had been like in the early 1800s.*

And of all the lost stories I think it is hand loom weaving that has completely become ignored.

Now don’t get me wrong there are excellent accounts of the trade and in particular its decline but all are centred on Manchester and the townships to the north and east with no reference to what went on here in Chorlton, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Burnage.

There is not one handloom weaver recorded in the 1841 census for Chorlton, but dig a little further back and we have a name and names for those across south Manchester.  Not that this should surprise us.  If it was going on north and east of Manchester it should be here, and it is.

All of which I have written** about along with the speculation that just as there were people from Urmston at Peterloo there must have been some from other parts of south Manchester.  It is just that they have yet to surface. All of which brings me to my Fallowfield and Burnage weavers.

I first came across them in Mrs Williamson’s book, Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present published in 1888.

“Returning to the village  we find opposite Back Lane the footpath leading through fields to Chorlton, which had been Lover’s Walk of so many centuries.  On this footpath which is the present Sherwood Street, two of the oldest existing Fallowfield houses were built by Mr Langford, of Withington, for Mr Burrows, father of the man to whom we are indebted for the greater part of these reminiscences.

These cottages were specially arranged for handloom weaving; not only the Burrows family, but all the inhabitants of Fallowfield, except a few coachman or gardeners, and some agricultural labourers, gained their livelihood by weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams, an occupation which gave to the village its pleasant click-click, an association with old weaving villages, never lost to those who have once known it.

The woman carried the produce of their looms on foot to Manchester on market day, disposed of it, and with the money bought at Smithy Door or in the Apple Market, food and clothes for the family use during the following week; these necessaries they carried home also on foot.”

In most cases weaving was the main economic activity but in some households it seems to have been a secondary one undertaken by the wife or adult children, and there is much evidence that many weavers combined working at the loom with other occupations of which farming was the most common but not the only one.

And this may explain why there were only 19 listed in the Fallowfield area in 1841.  This census had been undertaken in June when there would have been work again in the fields and some who might have described themselves as weavers in the slack months of the agricultural year were now minded to call themselves agricultural labourers.

And there were some families in both Lady Barn and near the Sherwood Inn where both husband and wife and even children worked a loom.

But it was an ageing workforce and of the 19 weavers twelve were 40 years or older.

And like everywhere in south Manchester the numbers were falling away and so by 1851 there were only three weavers left in Fallowfield of whom only one was still active and he was fifty.

All of which meant that by the time Mrs Williamson was writing it was a trade of the past.

Pictures; detail of Fallowfield from the OS for Lancashire 1841-54, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Hymns Cottages © Barri Sparshot
* Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.
** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Handloom%20weaving

So who was Miss Edith Townley of 13 Rectory Place in Woolwich and how did she spend the Christmas of 1917?

Now I went looking for number 13 Rectory Place yesterday which was home to Miss Edith Townley in 1917.

Writing to Edith in 1917

It is there on the old maps of the area, along with the street directories and looks to have been a grand property.

In fact walking up Rectory Place towards St Mary’s Street I reckon I might well have felt quite out of place.

But there is no crime in walking past and looking at a posh house, except that none of them are there now.

Instead there are some blocks of flats which is all a bit of a shame.

Along Rectory Place in 1872

But then Miss Townley also seems to be lost to history.

According to this wartime postcard Fred was expecting to be home on leave and was so confident of Christmas in Woolwich that he told her not to send the parcel.

The problem is simply that I can’t find her anywhere in Woolwich for 1917, and that nu 13 had been the residence of the Rev Charles E Dove as late as 1914 but he was also in the habit of changing his address and can be found at one time or another living in several addresses both in Woolwich and further afield.

Added to which there were a lot of Townley’s living in both London and serving in the armed forces.

"Dear Edith .........."

All of which might seem to make this a bit of a non story but I think not.

There will be someone who can help me with when those blocks of flat went up, replacing the grander properties which included nu 13 and with a bit more patience I might be lucky and identify Fred and in turn come closer to finding Edith.

In the meantime I have to say I have discovered a bit of Woolwich I never knew existed and might get to know more about the postcard which set me off on the search.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who recently purchased it as part of a batch he found on eBay.

Miss Edith Townley

I look forward to seeing it and getting to know the picture on the front, which may not help me discover anything more about either of them but will perhaps give me a clue to the type of photograph Fred liked and thought Edith might enjoy.

We shall see.

Location; Woolwich, London

Pictures; postcard, December 1917, from the collection of David Harrop, and detail of Rectory Place, from the OS for London, 1862-72, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Of rush carts and "the sodden mass of intemperance," Fallowfield in 1830

I have been re-reading Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs C. Williamson which she published in 1888.

It began as a series of lectures about the Fallowfield that was almost beyond living memory.

It is a wonderful description of the immediate rural past and like all good local history books is not afraid to stray into the neighbouring townships.

Above; Old Hall Lane , 1926

It is one of a number of accounts which tried to capture what life had been like fifty years earlier.  In the same way our own Thomas Ellwood had set about at almost the same time to record the Chorlton of the early 19th century, while his near neighbour J.T. Slugg had done much the same for Manchester.**

What all had in common was that they drew on the recollections of people who had grown up in the first half of the century and in turn could pull on the collective memories of friends and families stretching back into the late 18th century.

So for Thomas Ellwood “the greater portion of the information I have obtained [was] from that interesting individual ‘the oldest inhabitant’ and many  pleasant evenings have been spent in gathering facts from this source.”  While for Annie Williamson it was her husband and his “own picturesque reminiscences [who] knew whom to ask for all else and how to ask them.” As well as “Mr Burrows, the oldest living man in the village, whose clear recitals of what has been were invaluable.”

Her account like so many of the period starts with the “great and good” and there are chapters on Barlow Hall and the Barlow’s, Hough End, Platt Hall and Birch Hall. But there is also much here about the life of the farmers, labourers, and weavers, and much that might dispel that over nostalgic view of rural life.
In an age before piped water, it was the lot of many to collect their water from a well, pump or pond, so the women of Lady Barn visited the nearby hay field which “had a pool at its lowest end, where the village folk came with buckets of water to clean their houses, this being as yet the only supply of any but rain and spring water.”

And there are the local traditions like the rush cart which carried rushes which would be spread on the floor of the church and was at the core of the Wakes festivities.  “Rush bearing originally took place when the rushes were ripe, and in this part of England was accompanied by such processions, dances and decoration.”

The rushes would be “built on a farmer’s flat cart, decorated with garlands, branches of oak, ribbons, flags, tinsel, everything that ingenuity and bad taste could devise, and often completed by a Robin Good and Maid Marian, who, more grotesque than all else seated on the top of the rushes.  This rush cart, which had been built on a piece of spare ground near Burton Road, Withington was drawn by twenty or thirty young men, also festooned and garlanded and harnessed in pairs.  These youths were the heroes of the day, and as they passed were quick enough to catch the eyes of the prettiest girls.”

And there was a carnival atmosphere as befitted one of the high points of the year, and so, “the cart was accompanied by men also carrying banners, sometimes of enormous size, by pipers and drummers and bell ringers.  The noise was deafening as the motley crowd slowly entered the village.  Pipers played the well-known Rush Dance, clogs, which then everyone wore, beat time; children’s penny whistles accompanied; and the shouts of all the people drowned or tried to do so the medley of sound.”

It is a vivid description whose strength comes from the fact that it was a firsthand account, but amidst all the detail I sense a slight hint of disapproval, as if there was too much shouting and “medley of sound” and too many “young heroes” catching the eyes of the prettiest girls”

All of which is given a way a little later when Mrs Williams records the arrival in turn  of “a Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday School, a Church Sunday and Day School, and a Working Men’s Club, combined to lighten the sodden mass of intemperance this place had become , and, the leaven once introduced must spread.”

Ah well in the midst of factual reporting creeps moral opinion.

Later; the weavers of Burnage, and the punishments awaiting apple stealers.

Pictures; Old Hall Lane Fallowfield, November 1924, City Engineers, m77453, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and map of Fallowfield in 1818 from Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present

* Williamson Mrs C., Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present 1888
**Ellwood, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-86, South Manchester Gazette, Slugg, J.T., Reminiscences of Manchester, 1881

You can find out more about Rusholme and Fallowfield’s history at http://www.rfcf.org.uk/archives/directory/rusholme-and-fallowfield-civic-society

That theatre in Woolwich I wished I could have visited ...... the Royal Artillery Theatre

Now I must confess I did not know of the Royal Artillery Theatre which was opposite the Royal Artillery Barracks.

Cinderella, 1949

But as it closed eight years before I began visiting Woolwich I am not surprised that its existence passed me by.

It opened in 1863 as the Royal Artillery Recreation Rooms and was a conversion from a multipurpose hall which underwent further alterations and a name change, and reopened in 1905 after a fire which had destroyed the interior.

It was my old friend Tricia who told me about the theatre and introduced me to its history via that wonderful theatre site, Arthur Lloyd.co.uk which I had completely forgotten about.

The site tells the story of our theatres and music halls over the last few centuries and is well worth a visit.

I consulted it over some of the other theatres in Woolwich and also in Manchester and If memory serves me supplied some information about one of our local play houses.

How to get there, 1949

Now never being one to just reproduce another’s research I will just direct you to the site, leaving you to wander over the old programmes, and marvel at the pictures, and draw your attention to the map from 1949 showing the streets around the theatre and the tram routes.

And that map for me has to be a bonus, given as I was born in that year and have never lost my love of the stately trams.

So thank you Tricia.

Location; Woolwich

Pictures; from for Arthur Lloyd.co.uk

* Arthur Lloyd.co.uk, http://www.arthurlloyd.co.uk/RoyalArtilleryTheatreWoolwich.htm

Richard Buxton .......... part three

The continuing story of Richard Buxton, working class botanist who record the plants of Chorlton

When the Buxton family arrived in the Ancoats it was just beginning to change from open fields with its own Hall to urban sprawl. The transformation was completed in just a few decades, and the casual visitor who might have once walked through fields in 1770 would have been met with a maze of narrow streets, dark courts, grim workshops and noisy cotton mills twenty years later.

The impetus for this development came with the building of the Rochdale Canal in 1804. It was built on the east side of the area and even before it was finished industrialists had begun erecting cotton mills along its route. In 1815 Ancoats had more cotton mills and the largest number of households than any of the other rating districts in the city. The population, swelled by large numbers of immigrants from Ireland as well as the surrounding area, rose from 11,039 in 1801 to 53,737 by 1861.
It was a crowded and teeming place, which visitors to Manchester either admired or like the Prussian, Johann Georg May thought was a “scene of melancholy.”

A view endorsed by another foreign visitor, who “saw the forest of chimneys pouring forth volumes of steam and smoke, forming an inky canopy which seemed to embrace and involve the whole place ......It is essentially a place of business, where pleasure is unknown as a pursuit, and scarcely rank as secondary considerations. Every person who passes you in the street has the look of thought and the step of haste”

Buxton who lived amongst the grime, smoke and melancholy was far more generous when he wrote “The operative who lives in a large manufacturing town, sees plenty of the handyworks of his fellow-men in the giant steam-engine, the ingenious mule, which rivals the gossamer in spinning threads, the never-tiring power loom, and the countless other contrivances of mechanical skill which have resulted from the fertile brain of man.”

But this paean to industrial Manchester only serves to act as a contrast to the wonders of flowering plants and open fields. The worker might see “the triumphs of science and art but little of the works of nature. This renders him an intelligent, but to a certain extent, an artificial man.”

It is no wonder I suppose that he should hold to the “many delightful walks, by pleasant streams through green woods.” All the more so when faced not only with the dirty industrial waterways, and satanic mills but awful hovels which were home to so many in Ancoats.

Speculators had followed the industrialist in laying out streets and building houses in the area and with no regulations much of the housing was of the worst type. It hadn’t always been so. Working class dwellings erected in the last two decades of the eighteenth century tended to be substantial and used good quality materials. Some of these like those on Lever Street were built in the 1790s and were constructed on three floors with cellars and were at first occupied by artisan families. The uppermost floor would have been used as workshops and some of these surviving on Liverpool Road still have the longer and wider windows designed to admit the maximum amount of daylight.

But under the impact of the growing population, builders responded with cheap poorly constructed buildings which used the cheapest materials. In an effort to maximise the number of houses that could be erected on a given plot speculators began building one up one down houses which were back to back. The outer wall would be one brick thick and internal walls just half a brick. Many would have been built in courts and access from the main road would have been by narrow alleys.

There are some one up one down houses on Bradley Street. The Bradley Street ‘three’ are the last remaining one up one down houses in Manchester. They were redeveloped in the late 90s and nothing is left of the original interior. Similar houses which have been excavated at Greengate in Salford opposite St Mary’s in Manchester reveal the small shoddy nature of this type of house. They had room sizes of less than 3.5 m square with foundations of one brick depth. Each ground floor room had a fireplace but there was no sign of floor covering nor a staircase and it is likely that access to the upper floor was by a wooden ladder.

Picture; One up one down houses, Bradley Street Manchester 1983, Courtsey of Manchester Early Dwellings Group

References
Hartwell Clare, Manchester2001 Penguin page273
May Johann Georg, quoted in Visitors to Manchester complied by L D Bradshw Neil Richardson Manchester 1987 page 25
Cooke Taylor William, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire quoted in Visitors to Manchester page 36
Buxton R A page xii
Nevell Michael, Manchester the Hidden History The History Press page 149

Of Naples in 1961 and Little Italy in Ancoats in 1901

Rosa in Naples 1961

This is one of my favourite pictures of Rosa.

It was taken in Naples when she was just 21 during the summer of 1961 just after she had collected her passport.

Later that year she left Italy with Simone her husband and moved to Cambridge.*

They were two of those economic migrants much derided by some who sought a new life in a new country.

In the same way and just sixty years earlier my father’s parents crossed the border from Scotland and settled in Gateshead while just a little later my maternal grandfather  came home to Derby with his German war bride.

And it carried on.  Dad and mum finally made their way to London where I was born and over the course of twenty years moved around south east London, and just under a decade later I left for Manchester.

All of which reinforces that simple idea that people move around, make new homes in new places and along the way add to the communities they have joined.

Nor is it all one way.  My great uncle left for Canada in 1914 followed by his sister eleven years later. One of my uncles carved out a career in India and east Africa before settling down in South Africa and to close the Italian connection Rosa and Simone finally left Cambridge for Italy returning not to Naples but Varese in the north.  Only for one of their daughters to return to Cambridge, relocate to Manchester and in the fullness of time to set up home with me.

13-15 Blossom Street, 1903

All of which is an introduction to the many who found a home here in Manchester in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ours was the shock city of the Industrial Revolution and the mills, engineering plants, chemical works and collieries drew in the rural poor from the surrounding countryside, which were added to by those fleeing the famine in Ireland and later still those escaping the persecution in eastern Europe and the grinding poverty of southern Europe.

For some this was the eventual destination while for others it was the half way stage before crossing the Atlantic.

And their presence can still be found in the synagogues and Torah School of the Jewish community of Strangeways and Redbank and in names like Little Ireland and Little Italy.

Most have had their historians who have recorded their presence, ** which is all to the good because these communities have by and large vanished.  Little Ireland which had become one of our worst slums fell victim not to the sweep of town planners but to the railway, which cut through the area.

Not for the first time did a  railway company act as a means for slum clearance.  Much the same happened to sections of Angel Meadow in the north of the city and to parts of London’s slums.

In the case of the Jewish communities of Strangways and Redbank it was that other familiar social development which saw the better off moving out along Cheetham Hill Road to leafy more pleasant places.

Jersey Street, 2011

And so finally to Little Italy in Ancoats which became home to those from Italy who were seeking a better life.

They came from the great cities of the north like Milan, Turin and Genoa from the rural hinterland as well Naples, Sorrento, and Palermo.

It was a small close knit community inhabiting the area behind Great Ancoats Street and primarily located around Jersey Street, Blossom Street, and Henry Street.

Jersey Street, 1908, with No 2 Jackson Court to the left

Now as I often maintain if someone has done the research I have no intention of stealing their thunder, so for those who want to know more about Little Italy there is not only Anthony Rea’s book Little Italy, which was first published in 1988 but his equally fine site where you can find a wealth of information, stories and pictures.***

Added to this there are links to a whole range of other sites which give a comprehensive picture of he life they left and the contribution they made to their adopted city.

Pictures; Rosa in Naples, 1961 from the collection of the Balzano family, 13-15 Blossom Street,  A, Bradburn, 1903, m11033, and Jersey Street, 1908 m10153, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Blossom Street from Great Ancoats Street with Gun Street and Henry Street beyond, 2010 from the collection of Andrew Simpson



*Messy history .......... Part One Migration, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/messy-history-part-one-migration.html


** Bill Williams, The Making of Manchester Jewry, Manchester University Press 1976, Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History, DB Publishing, 2008, and a new book on Manchester’s Pre Black History 1750-1926, Anthony Rea, Little Italy, Neil Richardson, 1988, and of course Little Ireland in Conditions of the Working Classes in England , Friedrich Engels, 1844

***Manchester's Ancoats, Little Italy, http://www.ancoatslittleitaly.com/index.html

Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

There have been many who have written about the history of Chorlton.

Almost all of them draw on twenty-five articles written in the winter and spring of 1885-86 by Thomas Ellwood.

These were published in weekly instalments in the South Manchester Gazette and reappear as articles in the Wesleyan and Parish magazines throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ellwood in turn drew on an earlier work on the histories of the churches and chapels of south and east Manchester written thirty years earlier as well as contemporary documents.

 But the real strength of his account is that much of it is based on the oral testimonies of some of the oldest inhabitants of the township, people who had had been born at the very beginning of Ellwood’s century and who confidently recorded the customs and people of an even earlier time.

Picture;  from The Manchester City News, Saturday March 4th 1922

Woolwich in 1915, a Manchester soldier and a love letter from Chorlton

The Herbert Hospital circa 1900

“Arrived safely today. No settled address at present.  Best wishes George.”

Now at first glance there isn’t anything special about George’s message to his wife Nellie even given that it was sent from Woolwich to 146 Bedford Street, Hulme in Manchester.

Thousands of young men every year leave the family home in search of work and until things are settled will not have a permanent address.

But what makes the card just a little more interesting is the date and time for George sent it on October 25th 1915 just in time for the late evening collection.

From George at Woolwich  to Nellie in Hulme, October 1915

He was in the Royal Artillery and over the course of the next three years was to serve in Ireland and on the Western Front where he was killed in the June of 1918.

I can’t yet establish when he enlisted but Woolwich may have been one of the first posting after he left Manchester.

And just four days after our post card he sent another to Nellie with the request not “to send any letters to Woolwich until further notice.  Expect leaving this weekend for unknown destination.”

During those few days be bought a number of cards depicting Woolwich but never sent them and they now form part of the George Davison collection.

In all there must be a hundred postcards, letters and official documents from 1915 till 1955.  Many are from George to Nellie and after his death there is correspondence from the War Office, the pensions department and his commanding officer.

Woolwich, 1915

There are also his school reports, details of his first job along with the social club he joined and his membership of the Independent Labour Party.

And if that was not enough there is a series of charming letters he wrote to young Nellie before they were married.

The first dates from 1904 when she was just 16 and talks of his recent proposal of marriage and his wish to meet her parents on the following day.

Others follow during the course of the next two years and are the usual love letters sent in the age before the telephone.

But it would be a full four years before they married and another three years before the birth of their son.

This is a wonderful collection of material spanning the last decades of the 19th century and well into the next.

And for me there is a very personal connection which links me to George.

During the years before he was married he lived just a few minute’s walk away at Barway House on Edge Lane here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the first marital home was close by in Hulme and we shared a similar political outlook.

Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich circa 1900

All of which then just leaves Woolwich.  He was stationed there briefly in 1915 and I grew up close by separated by just forty years which in the great sweep of things is not much.

I suspect that the Woolwich he knew was still the one I was familiar with in the 1960s and which has now pretty much vanished.

I doubt that he would recognise Beresford Square or Wellington Street any more than I can today, and I am sure would be equally hard pressed to make sense of the area around the Arsenal or for that matter the water front.

Odd that two people separated by those four decades should still have more in common than I would have thought.

But then that is sometimes how history pans out, which is less by grand design and more by a series of hiccups.

Location; Woolwich, London


Pictures; from the collection of David Harrop

A tank, a souvenir, and the soldier far from home in Woolwich

Now the romantic in me would like to think that George Davison bought one of these as a souvenir for his wife Nellie and their son Duncan.

The Woolwich Tank, circa 1918

He was in the Royal Artillery and was stationed in Woolwich during the Great War, first in 1915 and then again in 1917, and 1918 while they were living in Manchester.

That said Nellie spent time with him in “digs” in Ireland and Woolwich so it is very possible that she would have come across this piece of crested china, and took it home from London.

Pieces like this were very popular during the Great War and were turned out in their thousands.

The coat of arms of Woolwich

The porcelain companies, seeing the potential of war souvenirs switched from models of Blackpool Tower and Ann Hathaway’s cottage to tanks, battleships and ambulances.

They turned out identical ones, with just the name of a different town or city and coat of arms to distinguish them.

Sometimes in their zeal to market across the country they got it wrong, so while you could have bought an ambulance or tank with Manchester’s coat of arms, you could also have bought a model battleship, despite the fact that there was no such ship in the Royal Navy during the conflict.

The Davison's, 1916

Our Woolwich tank is in perfect condition, and bears the name Shelley China, which was a Staffordshire pottery company founded in 1862, only ceasing as an independent business in 1966.

What I particularly like about this one is that it has been acquired by my old friend David Harrop, who is the also the custodian of the George Davison collection which is a fascinating archive of letters, personal documents and pictures, spanning the period from George’ birth in 1886, through to his war service and into the 1950s.

Mr Davison was killed on the Western Front in June 1918, but his wife continued to add to the collection throughout a big chunk of the century.

And what makes the collection just that bit personal for me, is that he appears in the book I wrote about Manchester and The Great War, but more than that he was at one point in 1918  living just down from our family home on Well Hall Road prior to embarkation for France.*

This I know because we have his will he made out in March 1918, witnessed by a Mr Drinkwater who lived on what is now the old Well Hall cinema.

And in a letter to Nellie he refers to her stay at the house which was just minutes from ours.

Nor does the connection end there, because before he married Nellie, he lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy just a short walk from where we live now.

And while there, at Barway House on Edge Lane he wrote a series of courting letters to Nellie.

Shelley China

All of which makes the tank and the story very personal.

When David told me he had the tank the message just said “Tank coming home” and while it is not going back to Woolwich it will be joining the George Davison collection, and was  pride of place in a major exhibition to mark the end of the Great War, which was on show at Central Ref from in 2018.

Location; Woolwich, Manchester

Pictures; the Woolwich Tank, circa 1918, George Davison, his wife Nellie and son Duncan, 1916 from the collection of David Harrop

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, Andrew Simpson, 2017, the History Press, 

https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-great-war-how-we-remember-it.html

If it wasn’t for the houses in between you could see all the way across the fields to Ancoats Hall*

Smithfield Wholesale Fish Market, 1900

We were in the Northern Quarter recently showing some of the family around this part of the city.

There will be many who remember it as a bustling area dominated by the whole sale markets and lots of little businesses.

But when I washed up in Manchester in the late 1960s it had taken on a more run down and seedy appearance, a place waiting for something to happen but not quite sure what that something might be.

Junk, 2 Dale Street

Today large parts of it seem to have a purpose and function again.  Here are those quirky little shops and businesses you won’t find elsewhere in the city.  It is to quote one review, “a centre of alternative and bohemian culture.”**

And as you would expect it’s also rich with history.

Walk these streets and more particularly the small narrow ones or the even smaller ones which sit behind them with names like Back Piccadilly and Back Thomas Street and it is still possible to get a sense of the city’s past.

More so because a fair number of the late 18th and early 19th century workers home and workshops have survived.

Detail from Green’s map of Manchester 1794

They were built just as Manchester was beginning to grow into something new and exciting on the back of commerce and cotton.

A place Asa Briggs described as “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution” and one that attracted visitors who came to gawp at the mills, the smoke, noise and great show warehouses, taking away vivid memories of the sheer frenetic activity of a new type of city.

Now there is no getting away from the fact that there was here also a lot of sorrow, blighted lives and a sense that for those working in the mills, living hard by the canals and factories and existing in awful housing conditions Manchester was no easy place to inhabit.

It was also a place of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and long hours of work which were recorded by Kay, Engels and others.

My old friend Richard Buxton’s family had moved to New Cross from rural Prestwich in the late 18th century and exchanged fields for those narrow mean streets and courts.

But during this period it was possible to walk just a few minutes from Piccadilly or New Cross and be in fields, with fresh streams and endless expanses of open countryside.

Richard Buxton is a case in point.  The family home may have been in a crowded little terrace off Great Ancoats Street but where he began work was just where the city met the country.

Port Street, 1960

In 1798 he was apprenticed at the age of twelve to James Heap in Port Street “to learn the trade of bat maker; that is a maker of children’s small leathern shoes.”

At that time Port Street was still on the edge of city.  On one side there were houses and workshops and open land on the other.

Standing with his back to the built up street Buxton could have looked out east on fields and the occasional houses with an almost uninterrupted view to Shooters Brook and the farms beyond.


Twenty years later you could still have followed the river Medlock or the Rochdale Canal out past Ancoats Hall and be open countryside by the time you reached Beswick.  Had you chosen to head west instead, once you had cleared Cornbrook with its dye works and chemical plants you were fair set for the field and farms which would eventually take you by degree to Chorlton and beyond.

Junk, 2 Dale Street

All of which would have been familiar to Buxton who was a botanist and often walked out of the city in the early to mid decades of the 19th century.

Now I know that is a long way from where we started in the Northern Quarter, so perhaps we should end where we started.

I think any one fascinated by the history of the city should just wander the area, and I suppose if you want a guide there is nothing better than Claire Hartwell’s book, Manchester, Penguin, 2001.

Our Jill and Jeff did.  The following day they were back there and in one of the shops on Dale Street Jill bought a very nice little red dress.  One of the memories and for showing off back in Eltham.

Pictures; Smithfield Wholesale Fish Market, 1900, now the Craft Centre, m59592,Port Street, 1960, H. Milligan, m04850, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Junk, 2 Dale Street, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, detail from Green’s map of Manchester 1794, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*apologies to Gus Elen and his music hall song, If it wasn't for the houses in between
Oh it really is a wery pretty garden
And Chingford to the eastward could be seen;
Wiv a ladder and some glasses,
You could see to 'Ackney Marshes,
If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1GmDA8FU9w

** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Quarter_(Manchester)