Never refuse a tea chest …… you may not have them for long

I grew up with tea chests.  

In south east London and I guess pretty much everywhere they were what passed for storage.

Often used during house moves, and in some cases never quite emptied and always smelling of tea.

My Wikipedia tells me that they were “a type of wooden case originally produced and used to ship tea to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. The conventional tea chest is a case with riveted metal edges”*

They were only ever used the once and then passed on to general use, and tended to be handed on to family and friends.

And in the 1950s began to be used as basic basses in skiffle groups.

I had quite forgotten about them until I came across three on offer outside Ken Foster’s Cycle shop on Barlow Moor Road.**

They were selling for a tenner each which is cheap.  A quick trawl of the internet came up with prices ranging from £30 up to £80.

I was tempted to do the aroma test, but that might have seemed a tad odd, so I took the picture instead.

Leaving me to reflect that l will await their reappearance in the new themed bar specialising in tea, tea infused gin, whisky and Guinness and  tea posters soon to open in Chorlton.

In the great sweep of history the story ain’t worth much, but with modern container ships and new methods of storage in transit, I suspect the tea chest will become a little bit of history along with the picture cards which were given away by Horniman and J Lyons.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Picture; tea chests on Barlow Moor Road, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Cetlon, 1944, from the collection of Bob Ward

*Tea Chest, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_chest#

**Ken Fosters Cycles, https://www.kenfosterscyclelogic.co.uk/?srsltid=AfmBOoqBNA7vgLA0y8JTEXkgfX1QAp1NS3Be_n3PJ4vBQf_CSvsx5a4x 

Ours was a young community.... stories of Public Health

I think it must be the oldest picture of Chorlton children in the collection and I guess it was taken at the old school on the green. 

Even so when it was taken child mortality had improved and these youngsters could expect to survive into adulthood. 

But fifty or so years earlier it would have been a different story.  Despite the fact that ours was a young community with children out numbering all other age groups they were vulnerable to many different illnesses.  Amongst the very young in the warm weather they were prey to diarrhoeal infections and in late winter and early spring from respiratory ailments while school children could die from diphtheria and scarlet fever.  Added this all of them might be prone to mumps, skin diseases, sore throats chicken pox, coughs, colds, bronchitis and influenza.  So during the first half of the 19^th century of the 27 children under the age of two who died during this period 18 succumbed in the warm or hot months.

You first get a sense of this by trawling the census returns and looking for the missing children who didn’t make from the 1841 to the next ten years later and then there are the parish burial records which detail young lives caught short.

But it is the parish gravestones which more than any document brings you face to face with the awful sadness of child mortality.  William Chessyre was a month old when he was buried in 1831, Mary Bell Whitelegg and John Gresty just 3 months and William Cardrew Birley son of the Reverend William Birley and his wife Maria only five months.  Some families were unluckier than others.  The Holland’s lost three of their children between 1840 and 1841 and James Gresty buried his two young sons and his wife in just a year. *

Such events were common enough in both rural and urban settings and were partly at least due to the quality of drinking water which in our case was getting worse as the 19^th century wore on, so that by the 1880s most of our wells had according to one observer either dried up or were contaminated. 

Opposite; % of child burials in the parish church by age from 1800-1850

But in 1864 the first pipe bringing in mains water from Manchester was laid and a decade later the sewage works had been opened south of the village on the Mersey.  Not that this was all progress.

There were complaints about the state of both Chorlton and Longford Brooks which according to one newspaper were akin to open sewers and well into the 1880s there were hot spots of measles in the township.

All of which I suppose goes a little way to burst that rural rosy picture that some historians fall back on as the way things were in the country.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; school children from the Lloyd collection, undated, gravestone, from the Parish church yard, 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

200 Upper Brook Street reveals its story

This is the story of number 200 Upper Brook Street which I have to confess no longer exists.

It was one of block of houses which ran from Akers Street to Grafton Street and in time I will get an exact date for its construction.

But for now I know that it was built sometime between 1849 and 1894 and looks to be on the plans for demolition in the late 1960’s.

And with a bit more diligent research we should be able to find out who its last residents were and that is important because back in 1968 someone took a whole series of pictures of the place both inside and out and those photographs may will gives us a clue to the occupiers taste in wall paper and furniture.

So I am very pleased that Neil Simpson has shared the images which he became across while engaged in a new project working in the Central Library.

The negatives in the collection are dated from 1956 to 2007 and there are approximately 200,000 negatives to be digitised at three minutes a scan.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online  on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website.

It is rare to see inside the homes of ordinary people and while these rooms are quite clearly almost empty there is enough to get an idea of the style of wallpaper, and the remains of some of the original features.

So over the next few weeks we will revisit number 200 Upper Brook Street and its secret.

In 1911 the property is listed to a Mrs Hannah Moseley and was described as apartments. Mrs Moseley was 70 years old and shared the house with her daughter Janet.

She was a widow, had been married for twenty years and out lived four of her six children.

Back in the April of 1911 she occupied five of the eight rooms, two more were rented out to a clerk with a Mr Habib from Constantinople taking the last room.

And that brings me back to the pictures.  

There will be many who remember the old gas stove, the enamelled cream and green storage jars along with the old cupboards and the doors with their ventilation twirls.

Leaving me just to add that Tony Petrie has unearthed that, "200 Upper Brook Street isn't listed in either the 1962 or 1954 versions of Kelly's. 

There is a listing for 1929.

Which may just suggest that I have got the house number wrong.

Picture; 200 Upper Brook Street, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

At the Kings Arms waiting for Fred Wisdom to pull a pint

Now this is one of those familiar pictures of the High Street, looking east towards the church and Court Yard some time in 1915.

It comes from an excellent collection from Greenwich Heritage Centre which I discovered recently.

On the surface it is interesting enough but it is the clues it offers up about some of the people who lived along this bit of the High street.

And because Mr Digby who took the picture focused on the Kings Arms I shall start with the pub and its landlord Fred Wisdom.

I can’t be sure when he took over the place but four years earlier he had been running the Railway Bell in Tonbridge.

He lived here with his wife Elizabeth, their two young children and his two nieces who worked behind the bar and described themselves as assistants.

And there is more because I know that Fred was born in 1878, Elizabeth two years earlier and they had been married in 1899.

I doubt we will ever know why they moved to Eltham but they were here by 1914 and were still pulling pints six years later.

All of which came from trawling the street directories and electoral registers which supply the names of the rest of the inhabitants on the block running up to Court Yard.

But for now my attention has been drawn to the big billboard on the gable end.

It is advertising the serialization of a story by Hall Cains who was one of the most popular novelists in the later Victorian and Edwardian period with many of his books being turned into films.

According to one source they were primarily romances, involving love triangles, but also addressed some of the more serious political and social issues of the day.

And as if on cue the book advertised as being serialized in the popular Reynolds’s News was Woman Thou Gavest Me. which I shall go looking for.

But I will just leave you back on the High Street in 1915.

Picture; the Old Kings Head, High Street Eltham, GRW 276, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/
courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Living beside the Medlock in the shadow of those tall railway viaducts ……… Victoria Terrace and Coronation Square

 I doubt I would ever have known about a row of terraced houses beside the River Medlock in the heart of the city and certainly would not have begun looking at them in detail if Andy Robertson hadn’t sent over a series of pictures of the Bridge Inn on Fairfield Street.

The pub was doing the business by 1840, and continued into the 20th century, although it is now closed.

But what really caught my interest was Andy’s pictures of the River Medlock which briefly comes out into the daylight as it crosses under Fairfield Street before descending back into a tunnel.

And as you do I went looking for the story of this patch of land between the river and the pub, and was not disappointed.  

In 1848, there were twenty-four properties of which 14 appear to have been back to back houses along with another ten.

Some faced directly onto the river , and the rest were grouped around Coronation Square, which I suspect offers up a possible date for their construction which I am guessing must have been around 1837.  And this I think will be confirmed by the fact that the fourteen back to backs were called Victoria Terrace.

I will  go looking into the Rate Books to see how far back I can trace the houses, but for that I need the names of some of the residents, and sadly back in the middle decades of the 19th century, no one deemed them worth enough to be included in the directories.

And that in turn has made it difficult to unearth the relevant census returns for the period.

However by dint of a tedious trawl of the 1891 census for the Central Enumeration district for 1891 I struck lucky, and found all twenty four.

They were a mix of four, three and two roomed properties, and were home to 71 people.  There was evidence of overcrowding, with the eight members of the Younger family squeezed into four rooms, and Mr. Thomas Nagle sharing his three rooms with his cousin and three lodgers.

Most of the occupants were unskilled workers, ranging from labourers to  street peddlars, although amongst them there were also a tailoress, a shoemaker  an Assistant Mathematical Instrument Maker.

But most were engaged in precarious and heavy work with more than a few heading towards their sixties.  

One of these was Thomas Nagle who at 56, described himself as a Bricklayer’s labourer, although in his case he appears to have left the building trade behind, because in 1895 he is listed as a greengrocer trading from Coronation Square.

There is much more to do, including examining the ages of the residents and working out the balance of adults to children as well as where the 71 came from.

Some at least of the properties were being demolished by the early 20th century and there are two pictures from the Local Image Collection showing some of the houses.

All of which promises to offer up more of the lives of those who lived beside the Medlock in the shadow of those tall railway viaducts, just a step away from Fairfield Street

Location; Manchester

Pictures, detail of Victoria Terrace and Coronation Square, 1851, from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of courtesy of Digital Archives Association http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ , some of the properties in 1903, A. Bradburn, m11495, and in 1904, m11492, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Victoria Terrace and Coronation Square, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Walking the Isles ........ lazy little streams running into ponds full of mystery

 Now the Isles have passed out of living memory.

They were a stretch of land running west from Manchester Road to Longford Hall, and were a mix of lazy little streams running into small ponds and were evidence of our earlier industrial revolution when residents dug out the marl to put on the land and clay to turn into bricks.

The business was well advanced by the 16th century and led to one legal dispute over who had the right to dig for “marle cloddes and turves on Chorlton More”.*

Later still of course the area became the site of the brick works, which was opened at the beginning of the last century and was supposed to have a short life but lingered on into the middle decades, before closing and eventually becoming the site for St John’s school and its playing fields.

During the interwar years, the newspapers carried stories of children drowning in the clay pits and there are still people who remember childhood adventures amongst the ruins of the old brickworks, and fearing the appearance of “Duffy” whose job was to guard the place.

All of which is an introduction to that 1881 map which has featured in the blog over the last few days.

It is very detailed and has the added advantage of being in colour making the presence of the ponds along with the Black and Longford Brooks much easier to pick out.

And not for the first time I have pondered on those open stretches of water and the potential danger they presented to young children, especially those who in the twenty-seven cottages which were located close to the edge of the Isles.

These cottages were there by 1854, and there is strong evidence from earlier maps that they date back to the beginning of the 19th century and possibly into the previous century.

They were the subject of an exchange of letters in the 1880 from residents who feared their proximately to the Black Brook put their residents in danger of infection, from what had become a polluted water course.

But the Isles, like so much of this part of Chorlton succumbed to the housing boom which began in the 1880s, and by the first decades of the last century the long roads of Oswald, Nicolas, Newport and Longford has made great inroads into what had been open land.

Added to which the very clay dug by the brickworks may have hastened the loss of the Isles, as those bricks were used in the construction of the houses which now cover the area.

Leaving me just to reprise a photograph from yesterday taken around 1882 by Mr. Aaron Booth from the back garden of his house, looking out across the Isles to Longford Hall.

And not long after the story went live John Anthony Hewitt added more to the story, 

“Please allow me a minor correction to your story, Andrew. If you are referring to the 2 rows of houses marked as Fielden Terrace, not all of those were cottages. 

The nearest row of 14 on what is now Oswald Road, were indeed cottages, as my parents, neighbours and their inhabitants called them in the 1950s. The neighbouring terrace, named "Sunnyside" on what is now Fielden Avenue, were 3-bedroom houses with cellars.

Not sure Sunnyside was old as the cottages. 

Those houses did not wear well having been demolished, 1980s I think (there had been a farewell street party), to make way for bungalows, whereas the cottages are still inhabited. 

I have attached a photo, circa 1955, of my childhood home, No. 22 (and numbers 24 & 26). The large blackened stone high up on the wall was engraved "Sunnyside." If it is any help, the landlord of No. 22 in the 1950s was a firm called S. Chesters Thompson, who were based somewhere in town - Deansgate area maybe”.

Pictures; The Isles, 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, and Sunnyside, 1955 from the collection of John Anthony Hewitt

*A History of the Ancient Chapels of  Didsbury and Chorlton, The Rev, John Booker, 1857

The Welcome Inn ................... the early days

Now some stories just have a habit of not wanting to go away.

They stay hanging around challenging you to go off and discover something new to add to what has already been said.

And so it is with the Welcome Inn which every time I feature the pub strikes a chord with many people usually about my age.

In particular it is tales of Sunday nights which continue to bubble up enriched by the memories of meeting future husbands or lasting friends.

And I should know because while I was just that bit too young to drink I would listen to the happy crowds coming back down Well Hall Road past our house in the mid 60s a little after closing time.

More recently I began looking for the history of the place, and while a few people were able to offer up names of past landlords the very early history of the pub proved illusory.

And then my old friend, fellow researcher and local historian Tricia Leslie told me about The Woolwich Story by E.F. E. Jefferson.

It is as she promised me a wonderful account of the Borough from the earliest of times up to its merger with Greenwich.

I have already used the book and know I shall go on plundering it for some time to come.

So in the chapter on the 1920s I came across this “On the brow of the hill stood a large wooden building used as a workmen’s club but demolished about 1927 when the Welcome Inn was built.  

This modern hostelry set new standards in both furnishing and service.  Seated in comfort, one had to preserve patience until the waiter came to take the order, for customers were not permitted to get their own drinks at the bar. 

But this arrangement proved too leisurely, annoyed those who only had time for a quick one and tended generally toward the restraint of trade. A wise host discontinued the practice.”

Now I have no idea when that service was discontinued but I well remember the practice was still in use in some of the big Manchester pubs in the late 1960s, with the waiters in white jackets and in some rooms a bell push to summon assistance.

Sadly there are few photographs of the waiters or indeed the interiors and it would be nice if any could be shared of the Welcome in its heyday.

So that is it.  I now know when the pub was open which was clearly aimed at the Progress Estate and the new build going up behind the pub and the appeal is out for pictures.

We shall see what we get.

But in the meantime I shall go looking at the electoral registers which will give us the names of the landlords or landladies from when it opened through to the 1960s.

Location, Eltham

Picture; the site of the Welcome courtesy of Jean and the cover of The Woolwich Story

The one about a murder ….. a property developer ….. and a map … Stanley Grove

Now there is always a story, and I am never surprised at how twisty turny they can be.

So, yesterday I posted a story about the 1881 map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and how it had settled a few mysteries as well as offering up a few new ones.*

But I wasn’t  quite prepared for the speed with which that map handed me yet another story

This one centred on Stanley Grove which is off Crosland Road, behind the green.

And it started when Jeremy replied to the story with a question about the date of the map and the houses on Stanley Grove, which he thought had been built in around 1887, but appear on the 1881 map.

It is the sort of participation I welcome, not least because I have been known to get things wrong.

But in this case, the map and Stanley Grove fit together, because I found the houses on the 1881 census, and with a bit of digging pushed the date of the properties back to 1878.

They appear in the Rate Books which list both the tenants and owners of all the buildings in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the value of each property and whether it was for commercial or domestic use.

The first entry for Stanley Grove is 1878, so I think we can be confident that is the date they were built.

And here the story goes off in a different direction, because they were owned by a Frances Deaken, who turns up in other sources as a property developer, and whose father had been murdered in 1847 .**

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

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

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

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

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

So, that is it, the story that started in Stanley Grove and ran out across Chorlton, taking in a murder, a property developer and a map.

Pictures;  Stanley Grove in 1881, from the map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1881, Withington Board of Health, courtesy of Trafford Local Studies Centre, Stanley Grove, H Milligan, m18209, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Brookfield, 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Settling a few old mysteries and uncovering a few new ones ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy in 1881, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/11/settling-few-old-mysteries-and.html

**When the story of a murder reveals an earlier tragedy and a family that made good, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=deakin

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

Selling flowers ........ By St Ann’s Church sometime around 1904

Now I fell on this picture postcard of the flower seller by St Ann’s Square fully intending to write about a century of selling flowers at this spot.

The post card is from a series dated to 1902, so here we seemed to have over a hundred years of continuity.

But by one of those twists of historical research my facebook friend JBS came up with one for 1898 and in the way of these things I bet someone was selling flowers from this pitch even earlier in that century.

That said it is just possible that the painting is earlier than 1902 and might have been made in the last decade of the 19th century, but I would be guessing so I shall just leave you with the observation that it is a nice picture.

And that was the end of the story until John left a comment which just needed to be added to the story, more so because back in the late 1970s, I too took a series of pictures, which I think will include him.

"Lovely to see this picture. It depicts my family's flower stall. My great-great grandfather first started selling flowers on this spot in June 1895. 

It may have been earlier, but this is the first recorded payment of rent for the spot to the church. He sold flowers from boxes at first and the stall arrived a little later. 

The business passed down through my great-grandfather, my grandfather and great aunt, my father and finally myself. I ceased trading in 2008 to follow another path. The business was still viable but not what is t was in the city centre's busier decades from the 60's to the 00's.

I donated the stall to the church for their future rental and it was subsequently leased by others for a while. I'm not sure if it is currently occupied as I rarely visit the city centre nowadays. 

I hope it is, I've a lifetime of memories".

So there you are ...... the story continues.

Picture; St Ann’s Church  from the series Manchester, marketed by Tuck & Sons, 1904, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/, and The flower stall, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Looking at the Greyhound on Eltham High Street

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

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

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

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

OK you can come in now ... its official

So today heaps of people came in to Chorlton Library to officially say hello to the newly refurbished building, and by common agreement it is magnificent.

Location: Chorlton Library

Pictures; the new library, 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

William & Julia Relph of the Rising Sun a promise fulfilled

This is William Relph who ran the Rising Sun on the High Street from sometime in the 1880s till his death in 1909.

Now you can never be certain but it is more than likely that when a photographer turned up in the High Street in the summer of 1890 it will have been the landlord of the Rising Sun who came to the door to see what all the fuss was about.

And so this is William Relph and I have to own up to a mix of quiet satisfaction and fascination that I have tracked him down.

It was a promise I made in earlier stories and have now completed that promise.*

He was born in Greenwich in 1847 and came from a family that ran public houses.

What marks him out as a little special is that William saw his time out in both the old Rising Sun and the new one which still stands on the High Street.

The old pub according to our historian R.R.C Gregory was about 200 years old when it was demolished and replaced by the present pub in 1904.

Nor is that the only thing that intrigues me about William.

I had almost given up hope of finding him and then as you do I came across his widow Julia who was still in charge in 1911, and it was Julia who caught my imagination.

She was born in Cadiz, Spain and of course that raises all sorts of intriguing speculation.

But before I could go off on a flight of fancy I discovered her maiden name was West and like William her father was a publican.

That said her parents were in Spain between the birth of her brother in 1852 and when she was born two years later which may explain why they are missing from the census returns for the middle decades of the 19th century.

So there is more to find out but finding William and Julia of the Rising Sun is enough for now.

Pictures; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm  and Chrissie Rose February 2014

*Eltham’s Rising Sun, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Eltham%27s%20Rising%20Sun

How long before the last Chorlton farmer has gone? ……….. when things change

“Every year we witness the loss of another field to the onward march of brick and glass, and I truly wonder when all that will be left of the old Chorlton-cum-Hardy will be the memories of those ancient men and women who laboured in the open, brought in the yearly harvest and sent the produce of the land they tilled to market”.

Mr. Higginbotham brings in the harvest, undated

It is a lament for the passing of a rural way of life which might well have been uttered by many here in Chorlton during the last two decades of the 19th century.

From the 1880s through into the 1920s, there was a huge housing boom, extending along Barlow Moor Road, Wilbraham Road and out in all directions.

It had started after the arrival of the railway at Stretford in 1849, gathered pace with the creation of Wilbraham Road in the late 1860s and became a boom in the succeeding decades.

The first new houses were grand mansions set in ample grounds and home to wealthy businessmen, later came the rows of semi-detached and terraced properties occupied by professionals, managers and clerks many of whom worked in town and wanted to retreat to a semi-rural Chorlton.

Ploughing Row Acre, circa 1894

In 1851 there had been just 750 people in the three small hamlets that made up Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and most were engaged in growing crops or the related trades of blacksmith, wheelwright and thatcher.  

Added to which earlier in the century there is evidence of handloom weaving.

And three decades later perhaps 50% of the cottages were still constructed of wattle and daub that mainstay of rural properties.

Mains water only arrived in the early 1860s, followed by gas a decade later along with the first sanitation works, and the railway and later corporation tram network from 1880 onwards.

It was the combination of all these which made possible the housing boom.

Wilbraham Road, circa 1911

Plus, a clever plan by the main landowners to make it easier for speculative builders to engage in building and of course that simple fact that rents from agricultural land were no where near what could be accrued from properties.

All of which brings me back to the opening quotation abhorring that swift spread of urbanization.

And here I have to be honest ….. I made it up, because the opinions of those who worked on the land have not survived.

Thomas Ellwood our own historian did collect the memories of some “old residents” in the course of writing his history of Chorlton-cum- Hardy during the winter of 1885 and the spring of 1886, and they described many of the old rural practices but remained silent on the changes.*

Looking down Wilbraham Road, undated

That said we do know that the area around the former four banks stretching up to the library and out to Longford Hall became known as New Chorlton or the New Village/New Town to distinguish it from Old Chorlton which was the area around the village green and up Beech Road.

And to reinforce that divide New Chorlton had the banks and most of the shops while in the village we had just a post office and the Penny Savings Bank which opened for just a few hours once a week in the school on the green.

But it was a divide which lasted a full century with people still referring to Old and New Chorlton at the turn of this century.

Looking out on Manchester Road from the Sedge Lynn, circa 1880s

Such are the ways we react to change, and it was one of those comments on social media about how much Chorlton had changed and changed for the worse which occasioned this story.

I have been here since 1976 and there has been plenty of change, and some not in my opinion for the best, but it is as well to remember that very few communities stay the same.

And most places are constantly renewing themselves with buildings and with people.

Leading me to smile at those who publish comments about true “Chorltonians” as if there has even been a time.

So going back to 1851, the roads, lanes and fields of our township would have been alive with the accents of people from all over the UK, many of whom were domestic or farm servants. 

The smithy, Beech Road circa 1880

The arrival of the Duke’s Canal in nearby Stretford followed by the railway in 1849 would have opened up Chorlton, as indeed did the itinerant traders who plied their businesses around the villages south of Manchester, and of course the “weekend visitors” from town looking for peaceful country walks or on the “lash” looking for opportunities to drink themselves happily into oblivion in our small pubs and beer shops.

Now “No one expects the Spanish Inquisition” and few in the 1840s and ‘50s would have seen that housing boom coming and just how within a few decades it would transform our small rural community.**

Funny how things change.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Bringing in the harvest, date unknown,  Ploughing Row Acre before it became the Recreation Ground, 1894 , courtesy of William Higginbotham, Wilbraham Road, circa 1900,  from the Lloyd Collection, Manchester Road from the Sedge Lynn, courtesy of Miss Booth, 1880s, , and the Smithy on Beech Road, circa 1880s, from the Lloyd Collection

*The History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Thomas Ellwood, 1885-86, in 26 articles, published in the South Manchester Gazette

**Monty Python's Flying Circus, series 2 episode 2 September 22nd 1970

The sandwich board ............ a century apart

Advertising the Palace Theatre, 1896

Once the man with a sandwich board was a common site on the streets of all our towns and cities.

And then sometime after the last world war they seemed to disappear.

I guess it was part of that more slick way of advertising which relied on TV to get the message over.

But they are back usually advertising fast food and can be seen following the main routes into the city or as in this case at St Mary’s Gate close to St Ann’s Square.

Some firms have gone that step forward and produced a sign which mimics the product.

And like their predecessors a century ago they walk the streets in all weathers, come rain, hail or sun.

Fast food, 2015

Back in 1896 Henry Tidmarsh recorded what he saw on the streets of Manchester.  In all he produced over 300 illustrations for the book Manchester Old and New.

It was published in 1894 by Cassell with a text by William Arthur Shaw and told the history of the city but the real value of the book was in Tidmarsh's vivid depictions of Manchester, with streets and buildings animated with people.

Location; Manchester




Pictures; At St Mary’s Gate, 2015, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and by St Peter’s Church, 1896, Henry Tidmarsh, from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1896

The story of one road in Chorlton ……. a picture

An occasional series exploring the road which was once called Chorlton Row.

This is a familiar enough picture of what is now Beech Road, and it crops up every so often.

John Lloyd offers the date of 1880 which maybe correct.

The wall to the right belongs to what had been Daniel Sharpe’s house, and beside it is the smithy, which from 1860 had been worked by the Clarke family.

Like now, the road snakes off towards Barlow Moor Road, and while there had been some new build along its course, there were still two farm houses and plenty of open land which was still being farmed.

There had been a smithy on the Row from at least 1834, and the magic of “heating and hammering” on this spot would continue well into the 20th century.

The blacksmith was at the heart of the rural community and in 1834 this task was performed by William Davis who  supplied the needs of the village, repairing broken tools, forging new ones and shoeing horses. 

He lived with his family at Black’s cottage on land he rented from Lydia Black and John Brundrett. 

The smithy was well sited.  To the east along the Row were the Bailey and Gratrix farms and around the corner on the green three more.

Little more is known about William Davis, but we know that John Clarke paid £55 for the goodwill and fixtures , including the forge, pigsty and shed, in 1859.
If this picture dates from 1880, it is more than likely that the man in shirt sleeves standing in the doorway is John Smith who would be 50 years of age.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Beech Road, circa 1880 from the Lloyd Collection

"Shedding an occasional ray of light and cheer upon the dull lives of the slum children" ......... the Cinderella Clubs

Now until recently I had no idea that there was an organisation called the Cinderella Club or of its links to the wider socialist movement and of its work in helping poor working class children.

It is one of those little stories which has faded from view, but is an interesting insight into how we were dealing with child poverty over a century ago.

“The idea of the Cinderella Clubs seems to have originated with Robert Blatchford, a journalist with the Sunday Chronicle. According to the Leeds Mercury of 18 April 1890, the Cinderella Club Movement, which was founded in Manchester, aimed 'to shed an occasional ray of light and cheer upon the dull lives of the slum children.' 

The Chronicle had 'asked for helpers in other towns,' and appears to have had little difficulty in securing these from the middle and working classes as well as patrons from the better classes.  In Leeds, for example, the Cinderella Club could count amongst its patrons the Mayor and Lady Mayoress and at least one local Member of Parliament.”*

In pursuing the story I came across twenty-five photographs of the work of the club taken in 1910.

They cover everything from Christmas visits to parties and the inevitable day out by the sea.

And it clearly there is a story here, both in its own right and as another challenge to those who saw the migration to Canada as the answer to child poverty, destitution and neglect.

Of course the Cinderella Clubs could never do more than be a short term fix to a big problem and there will be those who argued that in the long run a new start away from the grime and awful conditions of our inner cities in the fresh air and open fields of Canada and later Australia was the way forward.

For a few this may have been the case but as the records are beginning to show the migration of thousands of children to Canada brought heart ache, suffering and in some cases a degree of cruelty which exceeded what these young people had experienced here.

It also neatly side stepped the real issues that the prevailing economic and social system was responsible for the conditions endured by the majority of working people which even in good times was circumscribed by the possibilities of ill health unemployment and just bad luck.

Any of which could pitch a family into real poverty and destitution.

So I shall dig deeper in to the Cinderella Club Movement and into the Christian Socialists who seemed to be linked to the clubs.

All of which only leaves me to thank Dee who first published the story on facebook yesterday and in turn led me to the various sites which gave me some insight into their work.

In the meantime I shall just return to the images from the archive and in particular to the four I have featured.  I could have chosen others. But these I think sum up the club.

They all convey that mix of excitement and sheer pleasure that from a  party and a day out.  It is there in the smile on the face of the lone boy and from some of those in the hall.

And then there is the station scene.  It is a destination I do not know but maybe someone will follow the clue of “FURNISH AT WARINGS MANCH’R or recognise the station approach and come up with a place.

It is so representative of an institutional day out.  The children all in the best clothes, with a uniformity in their dress, the adults also decked out in their finest accompanying their own children and beyond them the day to day throng of railway passengers.

But there is also something else which I am not so sure about and sits a little uncomfortably with me.  It starts with that sign announcing “POOR GIRLS AND BOYS”, and going on to explain that the camp is SUPPORTED SOLELY BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS, and that it is "OPEN FOR INSPECTION DAILY.”

This may be a necessary part of any voluntary organisation and good self publicity but  reminds me of those before and after images that the children’s societies of the period went in for as a way of promoting their work of rescuing young people off the streets.

But I suspect that those in our picture were not bothered about the sign, they like the lad with the smile and the present are more content with what had been offered them.

Pictures; Cricket Game with the Cinderella Club, 1910,  m68190 , a party meal, m68191, one happy child, m68208, and setting off, m68209, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

* The Cinderella Club Movement from the blog, Victorian History, http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cinderella-club-movement.html

**Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/ResultsList.php?QueryName=BasicQuery&QueryPage=%2Findex.php%3Fsession%3Dpass&Anywhere=SummaryData%7CAdmWebMetadata&QueryTerms=Cinderella-Club&QueryOption=Anywhere&Submit=Search&StartAt=1