Chorlton-cum-Hardy Vestry …… Disgraceful Proceedings

The world is full of breaking news, most of it grim.

The old Parish Church, circa 187o

So, here is what passed for breaking news in the March of 1865 across our own township.

“Last evening a meeting of the vestry was held  in St Clements School room, Chorlton-cum Hardy.

Before the proceedings commenced Mr. Charles Clark walked up to the table and took the chair.  He said  that the meeting was one adjourned from the vestry at which he had been elected chairman.  He was soon followed by the Rev. J.E. Booth, the rector of the parish , who taking a seat next to that of Mr. Clark, said he took the chair ex-offico”.

At which point one of the churchwardens got up and insisted that the Reverend take the chair, which was followed by competing shouts supporting and objecting to the suggestion, which in turn was followed by both Mr. Clark and the Rev. Booth attempting to speak at the same time.

Circa 1890

Mr. Clarke asserting, he would “not relinquish the chair , if he had to remain in the room till the next morning”, while the Reverend Booth replied that he “would take the chair legally or not”.

In the subsequent shouting and heckling from the meeting Mr. Clark could not be heard.

Happily order was restored and the meeting progressed, with an attempt at a resolution to the dispute which sought to end the great Church division, between those who wanted a new parish church and those who wanted to retain the old place of worship beside the village green.

This older church had begun as a chapel of rest, dating from the 1500, and was rebuilt in 1800 as the parish church.

But by the 1860s despite extension it had become too small, and there was a move a new one, on a site very close by.

All looked to be going well until Lord Egerton offered an alternative site on Edge Lane, which divided the congregation between the traditionalist and those who not only favoured Egerton’s offer but proceeded to raise money and begin building a new church.

1933

That church was completed in stages but while it could only carry out “divine worship”, leaving the task of baptisms, marriages and burial services to the much smaller and older church on the green.

A state of affairs which lasted until 1940 when it was closed because of frost damage, and all services passed to the new church.

But that was way into the future, when Mr. Clark and the Reverend Booth clashed in the old school hall.

The upshot of that tussle was that the meeting resolved to maintain the primacy of the old church, but it had been a fight to the end.

The modernists tabled a resolution calling on the bishop to side with them and transfer the funding from the Church of England to  the new church, but an amendment which recognized the new church but asserted that service should be retained in the old, and more importantly that the official funding should also remain with the old church was carried, “on a large majority in favour which was carried amid cheers and groans”.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; the old parish church circa 1870, from the collection of Tony Walker, and circa 1890 from the Lloyd Collection, and 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933

Leaving me just to say that the full story can be found in The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples, A Synagogue and a Mosque.**

* Chorlton-cum-Hardy Vestry …… Disgraceful Proceedings, Manchester Guardian, March 9, 1865

** The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples, A Synagogue and a Mosque, Andrew Simpson & Peter Topping, 2018**

With Gertie on Westmount Road in Eltham in 1915

Now I like picture postcards, not just because of the image on the front but because of the message on the back.

Sometimes they are short and to the point but often they take you off in all sorts of directions and along the way tell you much about what was going on in Eltham at the time.

And so it is with this one.

It was sent by Gertie to E in 1915 from Westmount Road.

Now the house is still there on Westmount Road, and is an impressive double fronted property which according to the census return in 1911 had nine rooms.

And back in 1911 it was the home of Lewis St J R Clutterbuck, his wife Isabella, and their daughter Jessie along with their three servants, Mary and Elizabeth Jackson, and Louisa Mary Pim Casson.

Mary and Elizabeth were sisters from Essex and Louisa was from Suffolk.  Louisa was described as the parlour maid, Elizabeth the cook and Mary “child’s nurse.”

Not that there was anything much unusual in that, for Jessie was just two years old and Lewis was a Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery so I guess there was the usual degree of status to maintain and perhaps also a demanding social life for the two who had only been married  for three years.

And that is where the story could go off in all sorts of directions.

Lewis had been born in Dublin into an army family whose father in turn had been born in India.  In 1891 Lewis and his parents were stationed in Chester Castle, and a decade later Lewis aged 16  was training to be an officer in Woolwich.

So by 1915 t is possible the family had moved on again and they may not have been in Westmount Road when the young Gertie sent her postcard which announced “I like the nursery work so much better so have taken a nurse’s place 2 children."

It would be tempting to think she was now nurse to Jessie and another, but at present there is no way of knowing.

The street directories would help but I don’t at present have access to the ones for the period, nor do I have Lewis’s service record, although I think he survived the Great War to rise to the rank of Colonel in 1939.

And then there are other leads, E lived at Foxearth Hall in Sudbury which might suggest she too was a servant.

It is a simple enough piece of domestic history but which still has the opportunity to lead off down different paths.

But what I also like about the card is that little touch of humour reflected in Gertie’s after thought which just says, "Floss tells me post it now about time too?!!"

And post it she did sometime in the later afternoon.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When I lost a water trough ….. in Stretford in the summer of 1965

 I collect water troughs ….. eccentric perhaps but fun.

And had I been on Chester Road in the summer of 1965 this one would have made the collection.

But then in 1965 I was sixteen still living at home in southeast London and had yet to come across one of the passions of my life.  

Sixty years ago I might well have snapped this one, recorded its exact location, and returned decades later to check its fate.

Now I have no idea how many water troughs were made in the 19th century or for that matter how many have survived.

In London they were made and maintained by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association which is not the zippiest of names but neatly does the business.

It had been founded in 1859 as the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain Association and added the rest when it began providing fresh water for horses and cattle as well as fountains for the people of London.

According to Dickens’s Dictionary of London, in 1879 there were 800 fountains and troughs which on a hot day 30,000 people took advantage of the supply while a “single trough supplied the wants of 1,800 horses in day.”*

So, I shouldn’t be surprised that in my pursuit of water troughs I should keep turning up fine examples of ones that have lasted the course.

All of which leads me back to the Chester Road trough which the caption from the 1965 slide says was erected in 1874, and here’s the rub I can’t find it.

I have wandered down Chester Road using Google maps, checked out the route from the 1896 OS map, and even trawled the collection of old photographs from Trafford Lifetimes, but to no avail.**

That said someone will know, suggest where to look and perhaps surprise me with the fact that it now resides in one of the parks.

And even before the post went live, my friend Lawrence helped me out with, "I do remember it now. That’s the floodlights of Old Trafford in the background. 

They were four steel towers at each corner. Erected around late 1957 early 1958. Now demolished. That pub is the Dog and Partridge. Used to go drinking in there when I was 16. Now demolished and the Bishop’s Blaze pub was built there.

Chester Road was widened and the island went under tarmac and the horse trough disappeared. That area has fascinating relics of the early 20th Century. I think the building behind the camera now a Halfords tyre fixing garage was a factory for motor cars.

It's the starter for ten.

Location; Stretford

Pictures; the Stretford water trough, Chester Road 1965, from the 1965 Collection 

*quoted from Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Drinking_Fountain_and_Cattle_Trough_Association

**Trafford Lifetimes, https://apps.trafford.gov.uk/TraffordLifetimes/

A Manchester Love Story …… John and Enriqueta Rylands .... the talk this Saturday ….

I can think of no better place for Juliette Thomlinson to talk about her debut novel featuring John and Enriqueta Rylands than Stretford Public Library.*

Afterall John Rylands established the first free lending library in Stretford in 1883 and his wife Enriqueta gifted it to the local authority a decade later, following this up in1903 by paying for the structural alterations to the building costing £1,335.

Longford Hall, 1965

Juliette’s talk with be in the present Stretford Library which dates from 1940. 

She tells me that she will be discussing how she came to write the novel, her own personal connection to both Longford Hall and the park as well as a bit about both John and Enriqueta Rylands.

And given that Juliette is an excellent speaker with an engaging manner which does not distract from her knowledge of the Ryland’s we should be in for an interesting afternoon.

Longford: A Manchester Love Story, Saturday March 1st, at 4pm for an hour in Stretford Library, Bennett Street, Stretford, M32 8AP No charge

Stretford Library, 2022

Location; Stretford

Pictures; cover of A Manchester Love Story, courtesy of the author, Longford Hall, 1965 from The 1965 Collection and Stretford Library, 2022, courtesy of Google Maps 

*A Manchester Love Story, The Squeeze Press, www.woodenbooks.com

Tickets for Longford: A Manchester Love Story, available from eventbright https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/longford-a-manchester-love-story-tickets-1248215398859?aff=ebdsshsms&utm_share_source=listing_android

Early morning on Beech Road ………..

Long before the bars, the restaurants and gift shops there was a Beech Road.*

It’s present incarnation as a cool place to visit is just the most recent reason to wander down from Barlow Moor Road to the old village green.

Within living memory, it was a destination for a heap of traditional shops with a mix of retail outlets offering everything from food, hardware, and services including a plumbing firm, TV repair shop, photographer, Bryan the Book and the emporium for gerbils, goldfish and all things pet related.

And long even before all of these there were farmhouses, a blacksmith, a pond and the homes of the posh.

Back then and way into the distant past it was known as Chorlton Row and twisted and turned avoiding natural obstacles down from the main lane from Didsbury to Chorlton Green.

That twisty turny place is best discovered in the early morning before the “Friends of Beech Road” with their cars parked across the pavement have arrived.

So today I was out around 7.30 but the cars were already parked up and by 11 the Friends were arriving.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Early morning Beech Road, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Beech Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Beech%20Road

Our own Elizabethan country house …… sixty years ago

This is Hough End Hall as it was on a summer’s day in 1965.

The Hall has a long and mixed history and is a place I often write about. *

It was built in 1596 by Sir Nicholas Mosley and was all a country house should be for a man who had done gooder in London and had returned to live in splendid retirement.

It’s mixed past included being the Mosley home, and later a farmhouse for over 250 years before becoming a restaurant, briefly an office suit and a restaurant again.

During the immediate years after the millennium, it stood empty with an uncertain future which mirrored a similar period in the early and mid-20th century.

That earlier time nearly saw it demolished when plans for Mauldeth Road West were being considered, and while it escaped it became the subject of various proposals to turn it into a community centre and a museum.

Eventually it was acquired by a local farmer who in turn sold it on to a developer, who very lightly followed a brief to restore it.

That restoration used the wrong materials, and at some point, the interior was gutted to create two large spaces at ground level and above.  Also, in the process the second floor was lost, and two office blocks were constructed to the west of the hall, almost totally obscuring Nicholas Mosley’s pride and joy.

They can only be described as “the abomination of desolation”, brutal, ugly and with no charm.**

The restoration did at least put a roof back on the building and end its association with groups of children who used it as playground while searching for ghosts.

The exact details of the sale, the restoration and those office blocks are now hazy. 

But we do have the memories of Oliver Bailey who acquired the hall, and a series of letters and articles from 1962 through to 1972 in the Manchester Guardian and Guardian newspapers as well as a book on the story of the building. ***

Along with these there are a heap of paintings, photographs and plans stretching back to the early 19th century, including a wonderful set of images taken in the mid-1960s of kids playing in the building by Roger Shelley.

To these can now be added these there from the 1965 Collection.

Location; Hough End Hall

Pictures; the Hall in 1965 from the 1965 Collection

*Hough End Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Hough%20End%20Hall

**“the abomination of desolation” The Book of Daniel 12:11

***Hough End Hall The Story, Andrew Simpson, Peter Topping, 2015

Discovering more on that bomb that fell on Well Hall Road in 1916

This is one of those stories which are still as they say in the making but with the help of Tricia I think much of the lives of the family who died on Well Hall Road in the August of 1916 will be revealed.

They were the Allen family and they were living at 210 Well Hall Road when the house was almost completely destroyed by a bomb from a Zeppelin.

It was a story that has pretty much been forgotten and surfaces only as a footnote to pictures of the ruined house or in the story of the Zeppelin Raid.

Now I can’t claim much of the story.  It was Tricia who found the picture and Daniel who tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road in a neat bit of detective work.

And it was also Tricia who found the family in Surrey in 1911 and those they were buried in St John’s and she has promised to go into the Heritage Centre today and dig a bit deeper.

They may be some newspaper accounts of the bombing and an indication where they were buried in the church yard.

It may even be that the Centre holds the employment records for the Arsenal for this is where Mr Allen would have been employed.

And that will be useful for in 1911 he described himself as a domestic coachman and seven years earlier they had been in Cape Town in South Africa.

All of which means there is more to the story and in its telling I hope we will discover more about the tragic event and the family who have pretty much fallen out of history.

Picture; the house on Well Hall Road, 2015 from the collection of Daniel Murphy

*One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 12 ........... the bomb that dropped next door, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2015-08-04T02:30:00%2B01:00&max-results=7

On a day in 1969 ……..waiting for the new Hulme.

Now, I am not going into the debate on the regeneration of Hulme in the late 1960s and early 1970s, other than to say, some tired old properties were swept away to be replaced by others which failed the test of time.

Instead I shall reflect on the picture which perfectly captures that a moment in the cycle of city regeneration.

In the distance are some of the flats already erected and beyond them the landscape of the city centre.

But the rest is just an open building site, pretty much cleared of the demolished houses, with few recognizable points of reference.

Location; Hulme

Picture; Regenerating Hulme, 1969,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

   

Hardy Farm ..... on the edge of the Township

 This is Hardy Farm at the end of Hardy Lane, and you will have to be of an age to remember it.

Hardy Farm, 1965

It has gone now, but it appears on Yate’s map of Lancashire for 1786 and may date back further into the 18th century.

In 1845 it was home to tenant farmer John Cook who farmed 29 acres of meadow, arable and pasture, included in which there was three quarters of an acre of woodland and an acre of orchard.

Four years earlier the census records that he lived here with his wife, five children and Thomas Hand.

The family were methodists and his standing in the community was such that he was a member of the Rate Payer’s Committee and in 1848 was one of the two elected Overseers for the Committee.

The farm stood on the edge of Chorlton and strictly was in the small hamlet of Hardy out by the River Mersey.

Hardy, Chorlton and bit more, 1830

This was a lonely spot which at one point in 1830 could boast five cottages as well as the farm.

But the cottages appear to have been progressively abandoned with the last residents leaving in the early 1850s.

Location; Hardy

Pictures; Hardy Farm, 1965 from the 1965 Collection, and Hennet’s map of Lancashire 1830

Zeppelins over Well Hall

I have become fascinated by the story of the Allen family who lived just two doors down from us on Well Hall Road and died in a Zeppelin raid on August 25th, 1916.*

Until recently I knew nothing about them or that that their home was destroyed by that air raid.

But Tricia Leslie had uncovered a picture of the war damaged house and Daniel Murphy then tracked it down to what is now 290 Well Hall Road.

And from there Tricia went on to reveal something of the family and the night the bomb fell on Well Hall.

The Allen’s were from Surrey but by 1916 had already spent time in South Africa and New Zealand.

This I know because Tricia had uncovered their census entry for 1911 which showed them living in Surrey but also that their daughter Gladys had been born in Cape Town in 1904, and four years later they were bound on the SS Corinthic for Wellington which left London on February 5 1908.

I guess the journey would have been fairly comfortable given that the SS Corinthic was just six years old.  It was one of those work a day ships which carried freight and passengers and had been built for the route to New Zealand.

Now such globetrotting was not so uncommon and given that Mr Allen was an engineer he would have been part of that generation that went out across the world building and maintaining the machines of empire.

But by 1916 the family was back in Britain and Mr Allen was working at the Arsenal and living in of those brand new homes on the Well Hall estate.

Of course for them that was pretty much the end of the story.

According to newspaper reports of the raid and the subsequent coroner’s inquests the Zepplin that dropped the bomb had taken a random and leisurely route dropping its payload across the south east.

By the standards of the air raids of the Second World War this was a small affair, with just eight people being killed.

But that is not to diminish the loss of life or the damage done and the coroner’s comments reveal the extent to which this was a new type of warfare.

Summing up he said “the interesting point in these cases was as to the safest place.  In each case the bomb appeared to have exploded in the upper part of the house and it seemed that the ground floor and basements were more or less safe, except from falling debris.”**

A fact which was not lost on those in 1940 faced with no air raid shelters.

* Zeppelins over Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Zeppelins%20over%20Well%20Hall

**District Times September 1916

Research by Tricia Leslie

Picture; the bombed house today courtesy of Daniel Murphy

Don't get me on the subject of wool shops ...........

Now I belong to a generation that was dragged round wool shops as a child.

My mum, her friend and later my sisters all knitted and so the trip to the shop was a regular part of my Saturdays.

It started with the knitting pattern, went on to an endless discussion about the colour of the wool and finished with walking home with loads of the stuff.

Then there was the smell.

Wool shops had a distinctive smell, which was a sort of warm perfume smell which followed you home and stayed where ever mother was knitting.

There was something else about the wool shop which for years I couldn’t quite work out what it was, and then recently it came to me, it was always so very quiet, as if there were secrets about knitting that could only be uttered in a low almost conspiratorial way.

Ours was a traditional wool shop. The wooden shelves which reached to the ceiling were made of a deep dark wood which shone in the sunlight and were heaped high with wool.

 And then there were the wooden and glass counters which today you only see in shops pretending to be old. Through the glass top you could see more wool and all sizes of knitting needles.

So the day Mrs Rogers announced that she was going to try out a knitting machine it was if she had admitted to multiple affairs over the preceding twenty years.

I wouldn’t mind but it wasn’t even that she was going to buy one; all she wanted to do was try it out.

 But that marked her out as a flighty thing who would soon be buying a Christmas cake instead of making one and no doubt had already used custard powder and meat spread.

Nor did the torture of the wool shop stop there. Once home the wool had to be wound into balls, which could be only done using the back of a chair but usually involved me having to stand with my arms outstretched and the wool was pulled from me and went into balls.

So I suppose I chose to ignore the wool shop on Wilmslow Road, and then it had gone.

And in memory of that wool shop and many others I shall leave you with this classic pattern from our Jillian who collects them, in the hope that she will knit me a balaclava.

Location; Wilmslow Road,

Picture; Wilmslow Road, 1967, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY
and knitting patterns, 1930-1970 from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith

Taking a swing ...... to Salford

I was never allowed to take Geography O level which may account for my reluctance to  be precise on the location of the Barton Road Swing Bridge.

But Tony my old Salford chum and fellow dabbler in dusty stuff from the past assures me that the 1974 local government boundary changes left it with Salford.

That said I fear my other trusty pal Bill from Stretford my have something to say about Trafford’s claim to the bridge.

Being from southeast London with a Manchester occupancy permit dating back only to 1969 I shall retire from the debate, and just say that the images come from the 1965 Collection and were originally colour slides

Of course the date may prove a challenge to Tony's claim but happily back in 1965 I was still travelling the Thames by the Woolwich Ferry and those two foot tunnels that ran underneath the river, with an option on the link by Underground between Rotherhithe and Wapping.

But now I am showng off.

So I will leave to allow those who wish to complete "If it ain't got ....." and suggest a location.

And quicker than a gerbil can eat a lettuce Tony responded with "Great photo taken from the Davyhulme side with Barton High Level Motorway Bridge in the distance..in 1965 was under Eccles..the swing bridge is owned and (badly) maintained by Peel Holdings..a great photo none the less".

Location Barton Road, [note my care in not saying which authority]

Pictures; Barton Road Swing Bridge, 1965, from the 1965 Collection

Manchester in the September of 1969, memories from the new boy

Manchester sky line the old and new, 1970

Now had I been born just a decade earlier the chances were I would have done my time as a conscript in the army.

As it was at the tender age of 19 in the September of 1969 I arrived in Manchester with a suitcase and an address in Withington and the promise of an academic career at the newly formed Manchester Polytechnic.

There were those at the time and since who have bemoaned the end of National Service, but not I suspect many of the young men who for eighteen months marched and drilled.

Three years after the last world war the Government decided to retain conscription which meant that healthy young men aged between 17 and 21 years old were expected to serve in the Armed Forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years.

They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years. Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": coal mining, farming and the merchant navy for a period of eight years. If they quit early, they were subject to being called up.

The future College of Commerce, 1965

But all that I missed and instead a year later than most of my friends I left home with all that brash confidence of youth to do three years with John Donne, William Shakespeare the odd romantic poet and lots of dead historians.

And fifty-four years later I am still here and hence this occasional series of reflections on the city that adopted me and in particular the places I remembered as a young Londoner in the September of 1969.

Not that this will be one of those sentimental journeys into a comfortable world which was better than now.

Just a few miles from where I read Wordsworth and explored the events of the Industrial Revolution and the complexities  of the French Fifth Republic, the Corporation was sweeping away a century of sub standard housing and coffee meant a lukewarm brown liquid with a hint of beans and a mass of frothy milk.

But there was a buzz about the place.  It was there in those bright new buildings of glass and steel which were going up around the city, the modern station concourses at Oxford Road and Piccadilly and the Mancunian Way.

For me it was the contrasts.  Sitting in the old Milk Maid facing the gardens, there was a panorama of the old Victorian city with its mix of elegant show warehouses, offices and shops while above us was the impressive Piccadilly Hotel.

And yet just a few minutes away were the tiny side roads dominated by shabby industrial buildings where somehow the light and warmth of the sun rarely penetrated.

The City Barge, Rochdale Canal, 1970

Now many of these places I discovered on long walks around the city when we should have been in the library.

I guess Canal Street pretty much sums up those walks.  I was drawn to it because it was close to the college and was bounded by the Rochdale Canal.

Back then both the canal and the street were drab, non descript and a little tired looking.  The attempt at something more exciting was summed up by the City Barge Restaurant in the stretch of the canal from Chorlton Street to Princess Street.

It was of course out of our price range but had the promise of something new and exciting and something to aspire to.

Still we had those wonderful three course meals offered at lunch time in the city centre Chinese and Asian restaurants for just three shillings a head.  Even now fifty six years on I smile at how sophisticated I thought I was when eating Banana Fritter and captivated by the Chinese version of custard.

Looking at the City barge from Princess Street, 1970

Which I suspect is just beginning to border on nostalgic tosh, so I shall close with that more serious reflection that in that drive to bring Manchester into the 1960s there was a serious attempt to sweep away all that Victorian heritage.

And so between new office developments, shopping precincts and traffic flow schemes some fascinating buildings and important bits of our history disappeared.

And more of that serious stuff another time.

Pictures; the new College of Commerce in construction, W Highham, 1965, m64167, and City-Barge-Restaurant Canal-Street, Dawson-A, 1970, m49402, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

A pub ... a farm.... and that walk through Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1881

Now I grant you this isn’t the zippiest of titles, but it does the business.

We are standing at the junction of Barlow Moor Road and Wilbraham Road, looking up towards Martledge and the year is 1881.

Wilbraham Road was still relatively new having only been cut a decade and a bit before, but had already begun to attract some wealthy residents who settled along the stretch from Edge Lane towards Barlow Moor Road.

And that fulfilled the expectations of the Egerton estate who in the 1850s had considered a route which would run from Stretford through to Fallowfield, creating a new highway which could better connect Chorlton-cum-Hardy to Wilmslow Road and in turn open up the township to new developments as well as the possibility of more trade.

There had been a series of alternatives , all of which favoured a route to the north of the one built, but all seemed to have been abandoned possibly because the land was dotted with small water courses and ponds which had given the area the name of the Isles.

As it was the route chosen sliced through Manchester Road which ran away from the village and up to West Point and which by degree passed through Martledge which was one of the three hamlets which made up Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Today, on a wet grey day when the rain clouds touch the tops of the houses, the best way to get a sense of the area is street google, which offers up a map, a satellite view and of course pictures of the properties along the way.

But I have the 1881 map, commissioned by the Withington Board of Health which is both very detailed and very attractive.

And because I can I have chosen to look at the bit which today is a mix of residential and commercial properties, including that car park.

I won't insult any one by commentating on the details that map reveals or a then and now commentary, anyone interested can do that for themselves.

What does fascinate me are the houses along that bit of Manchester Road which vanished under the car park and the long greenhouse behind the old Royal Oak which stood to the north of the present pub and had been dispensing beer and cheer from the early decades of the last century.

The present pub stands on the site of Renshaws Buildings which were a collection of ten back to back cottages which were constructed sometime before 1832.

Leaving me just to wander up Barlow Moor Road to where it joined Manchester Road and stand by the guidepost.  

And here the map throws up one of those tiny bits of history I like.  Back then the post faced a tree lined field, which today is the Co-op Undertakes, and was from 1920 a cinema, which in turn replaced a grand house called Sedge Lynn.  

This was the home of Aron Booth who in the summer and winter of 1882 took a series of photographs of Martledge of which only four have survived.

The Booth’s were one of those new families with money behind them and business interests in the city who had made their home here just as the housing boom of the 1880s was about to take off.

A housing boom which in a few short decades would not only engulf Martledge in rows of houses and shops but ensure that the name of the hamlet was forgotten, so that when people talked about the area they preferred to call it the new town or new Chorlton to distinguish it from the older community which lived around the village.

But what the map shows is that Sedge Lynn was built sometime between the beginning of 1881 and the April of that year, because the house is not there on the mapbut the family show up on the census return which was completed in April.

Leaving me just to trawl the Rate Books to confirm that date.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; Martledge, 1881,  from the map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1881, Withington Board of Health, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre Sedge Lynn and the view across the Isles towards Longford Hall  in 1882 courtesy of Miss Booth, from the Lloyd Collection

The grimy ones ........ our River

Now here is another of those short series taken from the family archive.

All were taken around 1979 and offer up scenes of the River which we knew but most tourists seldom saw.

Location; the River

Pictures; the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Where are you now? .....not quite lost but now very found

I am guessing there will be a very simple answer which will make me look daft, but I wonder where this milestone is now? And of course there was ..... jist read to the bottom.

The "Old Mile Post", 1965

It was according to the caption the “Old Mile Post, Chester Road, Stretford, (outside St Matthews Church)”.

Now I was there a few months ago and couldn’t see it.

But back then I wasn’t looking for it, and indeed only discovered it last week when I was looking through a set of colour slides, donated by the daughter of the chap who took the pictures.

In all there are 32 images, which cover Manchester, Salford, Stretford, Wythenshawe and Chorlton.

The collection was made in the summer of 1965, and are mix of industrial scenes, some historic buildings and a few of city centre Manchester.

So that is it.

My old fellow wanderer through the past, Bill Sumner has promised to investigate.

The Great Stone, 1965

Leaving me just to add the bonus picture of the Great Stone, which Historic England tells me “is probably the remains of a medieval boundary cross. 

It is now at the entrance to Gorse Hill Park but it originally stood on the south side of the Roman road from Manchester to Chester. 

It was moved here in 1925. It is also thought to have been used later as a plague stone. Plague stones had holes in, usually filled with vinegar, where money from an infected town could be placed so that trades people delivering food could collect it. 

This meant they did not have to come in to contact with those infected. The vinegar was thought to act as a disinfectant on the money”.*

So, 40 years after it was placed in the park it was the subject of a photograph, and while I can be sure of its location I bet there will be someone with an alternative explanation for its origin.

We shall see

Where Chris and others said it was, 2025

And sure enough the answer to the missing mile post has been solved.

It is outside the St Ann's Chruch on Chester Road.  Apologies to all those who correctlty located it and to who I said it wasn't, and to Chris Geliher,who had the patience and the determination to offer up an image of the mile post in situ.

In my defence it is much smaller than I thought it would be in real life and missed it on my google maps trawl of  Chester Road.

*The Great Stone, Chester Road, Stretford, Greater Manchester, Historic England, https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/the-great-stone-chester-road-stretford-8408

Location; Stretford

Pictures; Old Mile Post and Great Stone, 1965 from the 1965 Collection, and the Mile Post outside St Ann's Church, 2025, from Chris Geliher

Travels through a lost bit of railway history ........ sixty years ago

 I won’t be alone in having a long love affair with the former Liverpool Road Railway Station.

The 1830 Warehouse, 1965

It opened in 1830 along with a warehouse and was the first passenger railway in the world connecting Manchester to Liverpool.

Not that passenger traffic was the reason for its construction, that decision rested with the economic priorities of providing a cheap form of transport to shift goods between the two destinations.

So successful was the venture that within a few years extra warehouses were constructed, a second passenger platform was built and just 14 years after it all began, a new station was opened at Hunts Bank and our site was given over entirely to goods.

The story is one I often return to and for two decades was a place from where I ran conducted talks and walks.

The platform with former passengerwaiting room beyound, 1965

It had been abandoned by British Rail in 1975 and bits sold off to Granada TV and later still the rest became the new home of the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Technology. 

My first encounter with the place was in 1980 during the “Steam Expo” event, when I took a series of good and not so good pictures.

But others had come with their camera before me, including Ron Stubley and as yet unknown photographer in 1965.

The unknown photographer took four colour slides which are part of a collection which cover Manchester, Stretford and out to Chorlton and Wythenshawe and are a mix of industrial scenes, some old historic buildings and more than a few of well-known city centre sites.

Former passenger platform, 1965

The collection was donated to me by the daughter of the photographer, but somewhere along the line their identity was lost, although I am still looking for the letter, email or Facebook message which alerted me to the names of the woman who donated them and the photographer.

Those for the Liverpool Road site are a window into what was still a working area and show just how far the buildings had been knocked about over the 135 years since the  complex had opened.

The 1830 warehouse still retained the loops holes through which goods would be taken in from the rail side and the arches through which wagons would have been pulled into the building.

The plaque, 1965

But at some point, one of the arches had been lost and a much larger entrance constructed.

As late as the 1990s it was still possible to find the turntables used to turn wagons 90 degrees and transfer them inside.

Likewise, bits of the old passenger railway station had survived but all were in a vey sad state.

Along with these relics there was the commemorative plaque above the doorway on Liverpool Road, recording the site’s history and set against that washed out red paint which was part of the old British Rail livery and indeed may been remanent from the former LMS colour scheme.

On that last note I await to be corrected.

Location’ Liverpool Road

Pictures; walking the old Liverpool Railway site in 1965, from the 1965 collection

Looking for the Shambles …. behind Marks and Spencer ………….. 1969

Now, I don’t remember Old Shambles as it was before its move following the building of the Arndale.

Although I guess I must have fallen across, but by then the place had been much knocked about, first by the Victorians and then by Mr. Hitler’s bombs.

What was left, which wasn’t much but included the Wellington Inn were designated as Grade ll listed buildings in 1952, and that was a real bonus given that the Wellington is the only surviving Tudor building in the city centre.

There is a heap more about the history of the Old Shambles and what was done to it as part of the Arndale development and post IRA bomb rebuild, but that is covered very well for anyone who doesn’t know the story.*

Added to which there are plenty of pictures in Manchester’s Image Collection, of Old Shambles from the early 20th century and back into the century before.**

But these two photographs drew my attention, partly because I have never seen them before, but also because they date from 1969 when I washed up in Manchester.

Between them they perfectly anchor Old Shambles in a place I know.

And that is what pictures should do …. make the link with the past, which in the case of these two I admit is a full 51 years ago but to me remains only yesterday.

Location; Manchester

Pictures: Old Shambles, 1969

*Shambles Square, Manchester, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shambles_Square,_Manchester

**Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Mrs Keal and the mystery of 419 Barlow Moor Road

Leon's, 2015

It has taken sometime but I am closer to solving the mystery behind the date on the wall of  419 Barlow Moor Road.

Most people will know the place as Leon’s the fabric shop but I have long wondered why the building carries the date 1885 when it was built around 1915.

The Leon family began trading there in the 1990s and before that it had been the Addressal  Print Works which is listed in the directories by 1921 and for an even shorter time between 1915-17 it was the Chorlton Laundry owned by Mrs Keal.

Not that this helps with the date of 1885 which appears above the door along with the word Established.

Addressall Printing Works, 1959

Now it is just possible that the date refers to either establishment of the laundry or the printing company but there is no reference to Addressal in any of the directories in the late 19th century and any way the stone lettering looks like it was done when the building went up.

So I rather think we must be with Mrs Keal who was running a laundry business on Beech Road in 1894.

That said there is no evidence that she was trading before that date and in 1881 Mr and Mrs Keal were living in Croydon.

But by 1889 they had settled in Chorlton and were running a business from nu 30 Wilbraham Road.
Mr Keal described himself variously as a brick layer or builder and I suppose it is just possible that the date 1885 refers to the start up of his business.

Either way in1915 Mrs Keal was in that building on Barlow Moor Road operating the Chorlton Laundry.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when she moved in but in the April of that year Mr Keal of “Brookbank Bridge Barlow Moor-road died at Chorlton Laundry Brookbank Bridge.”

London Gazette, February 1917

And just over a year later the business went bankrupt.*

According to Mrs Keal at the bankruptcy hearing in the February of 1917 “the main cause of her coming into court was the shortness of loose working capital when she removed to her new premises in Barlow Moor Road after having carried on a similar business on less extensive lines for many years in Beech Road, Chorlton.

Mrs Keal further stated that after she had expended over £900 on new machinery so that she might undertake the laundry work of the military hospitals in Manchester a large proportion of the work was undertaken from her.”

But the “military authorities had established laundries under their own control.  Difficulties in the way of getting sufficient labour had it impossible for her to get the work done as promptly as the hospitals required [and] she could not overcome these difficulties by paying higher wages.”

She went on to say that “she had taken steps to strengthen the weak point in her business affairs which had been pointed out by her accountant.”

But it seems that was it and she finished up the business and moved to St Annes-on-Sea where she died in 1935 leaving £2625.

It is just possible that the date refers not to Mrs Keal's Laundry but to the building business of her husband which may well date from 1885.

And it t maybe the Leon family can help who could have the deeds to the building which will offer up its history.

Peter painted the picture of the building and while there he spotted the story of the Leon family which is displayed inside the shop.

It is a fascinating account of one family business stretching back across the last century and so by the time I get round to writing their story they may well be able to offer up a missing document.

Well we shall see.

Additional research from Tony Goulding

Picture; Addressall Printing Works (originally built for laundry), House adjoining used as office for printers, RE Stanley, m17530 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Painting; Leon's Barlow Moor Road, © 2015 Peter Topping,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*First Meetings and Public Examinations, The London Gazette, February 16, 1917

**Laundry Proprieters Ill-luck. Failed with a surplus of over £3000, Manchester Evening News March 6 1917