A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 5........ a street fire alarm 1958

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

In an age before we all had telephones it was necessary to be able to call the fire brigade.  Back in the 1880s there was a dedicated phone in the Lloyds Hotel.  Later still we got these.  This was one outside the Gaumont/Savoy cinema on Manchester Road.  There was another on the corner of Manchester Road and High Lane outside Oban House.

Picture; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, A H Downes, November 1st 1958, M17988, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Memories of Billingsgate Market, that fishy smell and the promise of the Tower

Now we are on the Lower Thames Street in 1927, and it didn’t look that different when I was regularly wandering along it in the late 1950s.

We usually got there around 10 on a Saturday by which time all the fish had been sold and apart from the odd porter there were just the men sweeping up.

That said there were still the odd bits of ice and discarded fish in the gutters and of course that all pervading smell of fish.

Had we been there a few hours earlier and the place would no doubt have been as busy as the scene in the picture postcard.

I always preferred walking down the Lower Road just because there was still so much more to see.

It started with the descent from the northern end of London Bridge down an impressive flight of stone stairs to street level and then the walk to the Tower of London.

This was one of those regular Saturday excursions which occupied most of the day and was pure magic.

Before you got inside the Tower there

were those smaller roads one of which of course had the Monument which was in  itself a pretty neat place to visit with what at the time had one of the best views across the City from its observational platform.

I can’t say I ever took much notice of St Magnus the Martyr which is clearly visible in the distance.

And now taking that route is to be amazed at the transformation of the road, but that along with Andrew’s stories of the Tower is for another time.

So I shall just close with a thank you to Mark Flynn who kindly lets the odd image from his postcard site and whose prices are very competitive.

Picture; Billingsgate Fish Market, 1927, courtesy of MARK FLYNN POSTCARDS, http://www.markfynn.com/index.html

The Typing Pool ………. gone forever?

I just wonder if the Typing Pool still exists in the same format as it did through most of the last century, and beyond.

The wide use of the type writer ushered it in, no doubt replacing the rows of clerks with pens, pots of ink, and candles.

And I suppose the arrival of the computer has pretty much killed it off.

Happily someone will know, and enlighten my ignorance, and add memories of working in the pool.

Location; a Typing pool

Picture; the Typing Pool, 1969, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 4........ a brick circa 1830

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

As bricks go I do not think it looks very remarkable but then I suppose like most of us they are not things I tend to think much about.  But this one has a story.  The clay from which it was made may have come from just north of the village where clay and marl have been dug since at least the 17th century and it was part of a fine house which was probably built sometime between 1830 and 41.  The families who lived in it were comfortably well off and were important enough to have been listed in the local directories.  But like all but two from the same period it was demolished and we lost a link with our past.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Happy birthday Lead Station

To be accurate you will have to wait till August to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Lead Station.

Welcome to  the Lead, 2025

We were there, and it has been one of those special places ever since.

Old decor different furniture, 2004

During the 1990s it was somewhere I would have a quiet coffee on days when the kids were elsewhere, later it was a drop in after work on a Friday for tapas and too many glasses of wine.

Later still we would take family and friends for a special night out and in between it has acted as a venue for business meetings.

Added to which it was the site of my 60th birthday surprise organised by Tina which l celebrated with my lads, my sisters from London and friends.

So, it really has got the lot.

And for those with a bit more historical interest, the building was originally opened as one of a group of new police stations built by the Lancashire Constabulary.

Ours was opened in 1885 and in its appearance and design mirrors others built at the same time.

Later the place became council offices for Manchester Corporation and also was home to a number of local families.

Leaving me just to point out l had originally got the anniversary wrong, suggesting it was 25 years when of course the time from 1995 to now is 30. 

To which l have Kathy Lee to thank who commented, "Andy - didn’t it open as the Lead Station in 1995? So it’s 30 this summer?"

To which l can only say l failed Maths O level in 1966 with  a grade 9.  "Nuff said"

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; the Lead Station, in 2024 and in 2004 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The shop that had almost everything ………… Lord’s Wholesale Retail Stretford Road …… 1963

It took a little while to locate just exactly where we are on Stretford Road back in 1963, but I now know the shop on the corner is at the junction with Upper Medlock Street.

And if you were to head down Upper Medlock Street you would cross, Dale Street where the car is parked by the road sign and then Bonsall Street.

Back then it was part of a tight network of streets and terraced housing, all of which was swept away in the wholesale regeneration of the area in the 1960s and again more recently.

So much so that I suspect a time traveller from 1963 would be totally confused and at a loss to find that street corner.

Happily, Stretford Road and Bonsall Street survived and offer up a means of anchoring where the pictures were taken.

So,  with that sorted the rest of the story will be about that shop and the advertising hoarding.

Lord’s Wholesale and Retail shop was one of those places that pretty much offered everything in the way of clothing, from Donkey Jackets, moleskin trousers , to rubber boots and riding breeches, reminding me of that sign “If we ain’t got it, you can’t get it”.

I do have to wonder what demand there would be for riding breeches in Hulme, although given this was still the age of the sailing ship there might well be people wanting a cabin trunk.

That said there was a full range of things anyone might want to kit themselves out for work.

And having done work for the day, the advertising hoarding on the corner of Dale Street, gives flavour of what was showing at the cinema.  Judging by what the Crescent and the Grosvenor were showing that week, my choice would have been Samson and Delilah with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamar.

But the Grosvenor only held just over 900 seats, while the Crescent had a thousand, added to which Cossack Street was closer than All Saints.*

That said in 1963 I was just 14, and I rather think Night of the Blood Beast, showing on Tuesday, Peeping Tom and Demons of the Swamp, which followed on Wednesday and Thursday would have won over on Victor Mature, but all three, along with The Bad One and Teenage Frankenstein would have been X rated, to which I would have been barred.

But  I would have drawn the line at Subway in the Sky,  which was showing on Saturday.

The film centered on an American soldier in West Berlin who goes on the run after being falsely accused of trafficking drugs. He hides in his wife’s flat where he meets a cabaret singer who helps him prove his innocence.

And after a melodrama like that, there could only be a recourse to some fried bread, and Ovaltine, given that at 14 the joys of Wilson Ales were some years in the future.

At which point I should draw to a conclusion were it not for that beer advert, which has got me a tad confused.

As a south east Londoner, newly arrived in the city in 1969, I picked up the divide between north and south which came not by way of my accent or the dominance of the Home Counties in so many things but simply the shape of the beer glass.

My friends pointed out that those dimpled pint pots were a southern affectation and they would always demand a straight glass.

Such was the chasm between me and them.

Leaving me just to record that the church at the end of row of shops was the Catholic Apostolic Church.

Location’ Stretford Road

Pictures; Stretford Road, 1963, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

*Kinematograph Yearbook 1947

The London of 1949

The Pool of London in 1909

This is the Pool of London in 1909.

Fifty years later given a few changes and a bit of bomb damage and it is pretty much as I remember it.

Fast forward another half century and I doubt that  either me or the photographer would recognise much beyond the bridge and the Tower.

All of which is not so much a trip down memory lane, but an introduction to some of the films I got for Christmas.

Of these it is Train of Events and Pool of London I want to write about.  Both were made in 1949 and are very much of the period.

The Thames, the cranes, ships and the Tower, 1909

Train of Events starred Jack Warner and was one of those disaster morality movies, where a collection of little dramas are acted out in advance of a train crash and yes the murderer and the thief do not survive the crash.

In Pool of London a fairly ordinary crime story is given bite with the exploration of one of the first inter racial relationships in a British film.

Both reveal a wonderful slice of London life on the edge of the 1950s.  Here are trams, bomb sites, the rather shabby side of a post war London and plenty of scenes now lost forever.

In that respect they are fascinating social commentaries and perfectly capture the period I grew up in.

The river was still a working river, Tower Bridge opened and closed regularly during the course of a day, the trains were all pulled by steam locomotives and there were references to rationing, shortages and the last war.

Trafalgar Square, 1955

Not that this is some rosy, cosy nostalgic trip.

The interiors of the houses remind me of how little there was in terms of affluence for most people, and there is that prevailing sense that this is still the era of make and mend.

It was also a time of blatant racial prejudice and intolerance towards “living over the brush” and one where some at least had not yet managed to forgive our former enemies.

So watching the two as I did yesterday was both a pleasure and a lesson in history.  I am too young to remember the old trams but here they were, along with some old 1949 television programmes and some fine scenes of the river, the city as well as Blackheath and Greenwich.

Now for a historian and a Londoner that can’t be bad.

Pictures; The Pool of London, 1909, from the series London, and Trafalgar Square, 1955 from the series London, both marketed by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

Catching the bus ……….. 1967

Despite all my efforts, I have no idea where we are, but as the following images in the collection are from Collyhurst, I am guessing that we are on the north side of the city.

Now, there will be those who question the significance of the image, given the absence of a location and a pretty mundane set of buildings.

But that is the point.

The workshop, and the terraced houses which were once common, have mostly vanished, along with the bus stop.

Neither of the two posters offer up clues.  One is for British Road Services, and the other advertising the film A Man for All Seasons, might just have listed a local picture house, but instead was showing at the New Oxford in the city centre.

So that is it.

Other than to say I like the picture.

Location; unknown

Picture; catching the bus, 1967, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 3........ the tithe map 1845

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

The tithe map perfectly captures a moment in our history.  Here were recorded the fields, buildings and roads in 1845.  But there is much more because the map and its accompanying schedule lists who owned the land, who they rented it to, the size of each field, its value and above all its use. It will also tell you who lived in the houses.

Now  we live facing the Recreation Ground and beside us was the Bowling Green Field, farmed by Samuel Gratrix, and owned by the Egerton’s.  It was an acre of arable farm land and its value was 3s 10d and directly opposite us was Row Acre which is now the Rec

Picture; by courtesy of Philip Lloyd

A little slice of London life …….. courtesy of Joan Littlewood and Barbara Windsor

Now I am a great fan of those books, plays, and films that set out to portray the lives of working people during the 1950s, and 60s.

The Christening, Greenwich, 1981

Saturday Night  and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, A Taste of Honey, and A Kind of Loving, were set in the decades when I was growing up and although our family life was very tame in comparison, the story lines and the settings were ones I recognized and knew.

Today I still watch them, but less for the drama, and more for the period shots of people going about their daily business, catching trams, and trolley buses, often against backdrops of bombed out streets, wearing clothes that made little distinction between the older generation and the younger one.

Looking at the collection of DVDs on the book shelves what strikes me is that so many of the ones I regularly watch are set in the North, whether it is Nottingham, Salford, or Wakefield, which given that I have lived in the North for over half a century is fine, but then I am a Londoner, and the list barely touches London.

Greenwich, 1979

That said I did watch the 1951 movie, the Pool of London recently, enjoyed the story, and reveled in shots of the Thames, London Bridge and the Observatory at Greenwich.

All of which is an introduction to tonight’s film ……..Sparrows Can’t Sing.

I was too young to see the play which was staged at Joan Littlewood’s Stratford East theatre in 1960, and some how missed the film which came out three years later.

But in 1963 I would still have been just 13, and a bit and while I might have managed to get in,  some how I doubt it would have appealed.

Tonight, is a different thing, and having purchased a “digitally restored” version, I shall sit down with Tina to watch this slice of London life.  Just how much of the Isle of Dogs, Limehouse and Stepney I recognise will be up for debate.

Woolwich, 1979

And it will be interesting to see what Tina makes of it.  She is Italian and was born in the mid 1960s.

In the fullness of time I will pass it on to our lads, who were all born, here in Manchester in the 1980s and 90s,  and see in their dad a south east London lad who crossed the Thames once too often.

But for now, I shall get myself ready to watch Barbara Windsor, James Booth, George Sewell and host of Joan Littlewood’s original cast recreate a London I knew.

Location; London

Pictures; Greenwich and Woolwich in the 1970s and 1980s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A little bit of 1949 and a thank you to Mike Billington

Now I know Christmas is behind us, but in the cold bleak month of January I would still be reading the books I had been given as presents.

So for no other reason than I like the image here is the front cover of the 1949 Rupert the Bear annual.

I would be born a full ten months after this sat under a Christmas tree, but I grew up with Rupert who appeared in the Daily Express each day.

I can still remember reading the strip both at home in New Cross and on holiday in Derby with my grandparents.

In the fullness of time I got my own Rupert annuals, but this one comes courtesy of Michael Billington who shares my love of such things.

And if we should have snow during the next few weeks my thoughts will be drawn back to Rupert and his chums on the village green in the snow.

Picture; from the Rupert the Bear annual 1949, courtesy of Mike Billington.

In Albert Square with dirty buildings and bus stops ……………1956

This is Albert Square in 1956, and while it would be a full thirteen years before I discovered it, the scene in front of us was pretty much the same.

Except of course for those soot blackened walls which were the product of a century of coal fires and other industrial pollution.

Not that Manchester was alone in this.  As a child playing in the local parks in Peckham, I could get pretty dirty from climbing the trees which like the buildings were caked in the stuff.

But when I arrived the Town Hall had just undergone a clean up.  And not before time.  The interior of the Town Hall had been cleaned in 1925, and although the Council in 1964 estimated it would cost £25,000 the project was delayed.

I am not quite sure why there was a time lapse, but Ian Nairn in an article for the Guardian in 1965,  had called for caution arguing that “such action could ruin the stone of many British buildings”, and asserting that some “town hall and stations have gone jet black, covered with a crystalline  deposit which sparkles in the sun and seems to defeat the gloom by annexing it to a deeper darkness”.*

Adding that in uncleaned these public buildings could “become lustrous pools of darkness in grime-free cities, appreciated for their innate qualities and freed from any moral taint of being ‘dirty’ or ‘clean’”.

It didn’t however seem a popular idea, and most people I met back in 1969 were very pleased with their newly cleaned Town Hall.

Whether they were equally happy after Albert Square was closed to buses and was no longer used as a car park is unknown to me.

But I suppose it must have taken a wee bit of adjustment, and that takes me back to the picture which offers up other fascinating details, like the presence of a J. Lyons Tea Room across the square, or the partial cleaning of the Northern Assurance Buildings.

There is more to discover but that I will leave for now.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Albert Square, 1956,Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY


*Think before you wash! Ian Nairn, The Guardian, June 27, 1965

Round About A Pound A Week ......... London life and London Poor ..... 1913

“Take a tram from Victoria to Vauxhall Station.  

Get out under the railway arch which faces Vauxhall Bridge, and there you will find Kennington Lane.  

The railway arch roofs in a din which reduces the roar of the trains continually passing overhead to a vibrating muffled rumble.”

And with those opening lines Mrs Maud Pember Reeves plunged into a detailed account of the lives of families struggling to make ends meet in the Lambeth of 1913.*

She was a social reformer and feminist who served on the Executive Committees of the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Anti Sweating League, and the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage along with the Committee of the Fabian Society.

And it was after a lecture given to the Fabian Women’s’ Group on the Economic Disintegration of the Family in 1908 that she and other members of the group set about recording the daily budgets and lives of working class families in Lambeth.

The book details everything from the area where they lived to the daily battle to bring up a family in damp and lousy properties, while balancing a household budget and the ever present threat of unemployment.

It is a book which compliments that of Robert Roberts’s description of life in Salford at much the same time. **

So given that I will no doubt be returning to the book I shall conclude with a little more from the opening chapter

Lambeth, 1874

“From either end of the arch comes a close procession of trams, motor-buses, brewers’ drays, coal lorries, carts filled with unspeakable material for glue factory and tannery, motor cars, coster-barrows, and people. 

It is a stopping-place for tramcars and motorbuses; therefore little knots of agitated persons continually collect on both pathways, and dive between the vehicles and descending passengers in order to board the particular bus or tram they desire.

At rhythmic intervals all traffic through the arch is suspended to allow a flood of trams, buses, drays and vans, to surge and rattle and bang across the opening of the archway which faces the river.

At the opposite end there is the cross current.  The trams slide away to the right towards the Oval. In front is Kennington Lane and to the left at right angles, a narrow street connects with Vauxhall Walk leading further on into Lambeth Walk, both locally known as the Walk.

Such is the western gateway to the districts stretching north to Lambeth Road, south to Lansdowne Road, east to Walworth Road, where live the people whose lives this book is about.

They are not the poorest people of the district.  Far from it!  

They are, putting aside the tradesmen, whose shops line the big thoroughfares such as Kennington Road, or Kennington Park Road, some of the most enviable and settled inhabitants of this part of the world.  

The poorest people- the river-side casual, the workhouse in-and-out, the bar room loafer – anxiously ignored by these respectable persons whose work is permanent, as permanency goes in Lambeth and whose wages range from 18s. to 30s a week.

Picture; cover Round About A Pound A Week, , Virago ed 1979 featuring an image from the Greater London Council Photograph Library and detail of the area in the 1870s from the 1874 OS for London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Round About A Pound A Week, Maud Pember Reeves, 1913, Virago ed 1979

**The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts, 1971

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number two ........ the tram terminus 1928

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a few paragraphs and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

I have chosen the tram terminus sometime around 1928.  Trams took the township out of the era of the horse drawn coach into the 20th century.  In 1903 the route from Belle Vue via Brooks’ Bar and Upper Chorlton Road was extended to West Point at Seymour Grove and four years later was extended again to Lane End,the junction of Sandy Lane and Barlow Moor Road. And in that year of 1928 Manchester trams carried 328 million passengers on 953 trams via 46 routes and along 292 miles of track.  We had indeed become part of the city.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection