Gasholders I have known and loved ........... no 3 inside the Rochdale Gas works

Now I am well aware this is a cheat ............. less a gasholder and more the inside of the Rochale Road Gas works.

But I have included it the series Gasholders.

The picture is entitled Gas Works Drawing Coke Rochdale Road and dates from 1894.

This was the time when “town gas” was manufactured on site and didn’t come down a pipe from the North Sea or in a container ship from somewhere on the other side of the world.

Back in 1894 Henry Tidmarsh recorded this one along with over 300 other  illustrations for the book Manchester Old and New which  was published in 1894 by Cassell with a text by William Arthur Shaw.

In three big volumes it 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.

Pictures; Gas Works Drawing Coke Rochdale Road, 1894, Henry Tidmarsh, from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1894

*Gasholders,https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Gasholders

Will those responsible ……… return the drinking fountain to the Rec on Beech Road

It is one of those silly stories which started with a couple of pictures of the Rec in the early morning.

Early morning on the Rec, 2021

And progressed through to a newspaper report from September 1897 of an ordinary meeting of the Withington Urban District Council at which Mr. Burgess “intimated that a gentleman in Manchester, whose name he would not at present mention, had offered to give a drinking fountain to be placed in Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.*

I had been looking for information about the early years of the Recreation Ground on Beech Road.**

It had been opened in the May of 1896, and was gift form Lord Egerton of a strip of land which had for centuries been known as Row Acre.***

And here I went very  wrong, because so engrossed was I in the research that the fountain and the Rec came together and for a brief while I went searching for just where the drinking fountain might have been located on what is now called Beech Road Park.

Waiting for something to happen, 2021

All of which will allow Mr. Pedantic of Provis Road to mumble that the story is a nonsense, and artificially connects pictures of the Rec on a Tuesday morning with the real drinking fountain which was on Chorlton Green.

And he would be right, leaving me to reflect on that earlier bit of public open space which is surrounded by two pubs, the old parish burial ground, the village school along with two former farm houses.

Today most of us think of Chorlton green as an open space of grass ringed by trees but this was not how it has always been.

Before the turn of the 19th century it may have been much bigger and indeed for most of that century was not even open to the people of the village, having been enclosed by Samuel Wilton and not returned to public use until the 1890s.

And then for a great stretch of time remained without grass but did have a pretty neat water fountain.

The Green, circa 1900

The picture dates from 1906 when the Horse and Jockey was still just a set of beer rooms on either side of the main door, Miss Wilton’s outhouse still jutted out from the building and the space between the main entrance and the sweet shop was still a private residence.

I have always liked the lamp which stands on the green, with its hint of Narnia.

And back in the May of 1986 I can remember walking past it in the early evening and coming across a string quartet playing around its base.  Today people would just take it in their stride mutter something about it being typically Chorlton, but back then it struck me as the promise of things to come.

Which later that night with the defeat of the Conservative candidate and the election of the first Labour Councillor it  indeed seem to herald something new.

But being a historian I have to own up to the fact that the following year the Conservatives were back but they were on borrowed time, and 1987 marked the final year that a Conservative would be elected from Chorlton to the Town Hall.

The year before may have been the first string quartet on the green but it has not been the last.

The drinking fountain, circa 190o

I have to say I prefer the grass but lament the loss of the fountain.  

First it lost its cups and then vanished sometime in the 1920s or 30s.  To my mind that was a loss.  Public fountains are wonderful places to meet people, spend time chatting and just having a drink on a hot day.

Once it would have been the village pump which offered all three and which on hot summer days had the added bonus of a place the kids could play.

Now there is a lot more history to explore in the photograph of the fountain but I rather think I will leave that for another time.

To which Michael Wood has added, "My recollection is that the fountain on the rec was located centrally outside the shelter, as on the attached snip from the georeferenced maps website showing OS 25” 1892-1914 series.  

It was the same design as was used in Chorlton Park near the tennis courts, a perfunctory iron structure with domed hoods over the outlets, operated by a button on top -  nothing like the elaborate ornamental feature on the Green.  Can’t find an image at the moment, but I could draw one!  

The Rec, 1914

They must have been a common municipal feature in their time, but by the mid-sixties they were semi-functioning or defunct. "

And I hope he does, as it is I never knew about the bandstand.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Rec very early on a Tuesday morning from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the drinking fountain on the green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection

*District Councils, Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1897

**Public Recreation Grounds at Withington, Manchester Guardian, May 18th, 1896

***Breaking News ……….. the Rec on Beech Road is officially opened, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/breaking-news-rec-on-beech-road-is.html

Passing Burton's on Well Hall Road to the sound of Betty Everitt and Judy Street

Now I have fond memories of the old Burton’s at the top of Well Hall Road.

It was here that I bought my first suit, more than a few shirts and the odd tie, although I do confess it ran a poor second to Harry Fenton's and even Payne's on the High Street.

Of course there will be those with equally happy stories to tell of the dances that were held upstairs.

Not that I ever went.

During the mid 60s I still commuted back to New Cross for school and so had yet to find friends in Eltham and by the time I started at Crown Woods in 1966 there were plenty of other places to go with the shed load of new people I had met.

That said on the long walks back from Grove Park after an evening with Ann I did sometime pass the dance hall after one of the more rowdy evenings.

And that is a shame because it will have been there that I guess I would have herd live versions of Betty Everitt’s  Getting Mighty Crowded* and Judy Street’s What.**

It would be years later in Manchester at the Twisted Wheel and later still at Placemate that I would fully come to appreciate these songs.

And I still have a fond spot for the opening lines of Getting Mighty Crowded, with its message of losing a lover ........................

“I'm packing up my memories
And I'm gonna move
On out of your heart

Turning in my keys
And I'm gonna move
On out of your heart

Cause there ain't
Room enough for two
And sharing your heart
With someone new
Will never do"

At which point I suppose I should launch into the story of Burton’s which replaced the Congregational Church and was itself supplanted by a Big Mac.

But I won’t instead I shall go off and listen to Betty Everitt who sadly is no longer with us and Judy Street who still is.

Picture; looking west down the High Street, 2014, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick & Jean Gammons, 2013

* Getting Mighty Crowded, Betty Everitt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AmwoK6uw5Q


** What, Judy Street, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2NySUcbv3w

What do we do with an Empire? ……. the answer from 1945

 I suppose I was the last generation which went through school being taught that the “sun never set on the British Empire”.

It was a grandiose boast which in my junior school was backed up with wall maps displaying a quarter of the world coloured red, and text books which were full of heroic figures of Empire.

And this was despite the fact that India “the Jewel in the Crown of Empire” had become two independent countries two years before I was born, followed during the 1950s and early 60s by a big chunk of that red.

Not that this had been arrived at entirely peacefully.  

The resistance of indigenous peoples through the 19th and early 20th centuries to British rule was matched by the colonial independence movements that followed the Second World War, with groups in Palestine wanting an independent Jewish state, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya and EOKA in Cyprus.

All of which was recognized by Harold Macmillan in his “winds of change” speech in February 1960 which was made against the backdrop of France’s defeat in Indo China and its continuing brutal colonial war in Algeria.

So while Britain may have divested itself of most of its empire with a degree of good grace, it wasn’t entirely done without a measure of resistance, which was overlooked by those teaching us the history of Empire.

Nor of course were we made privy to the degree of exploitation and savagery which marked the acquisition of that empire, all of which is now presented in scholarly and expensive books, some of which are more readable than others.

What they have in common of course is that the story is over, and while we still live with the legacy of empire, from the debates around Black Lives Matter, to the continued impoverishment of certain Commonwealth countries, the debate on what should happen to the Empire is over.

Not so in 1945, when Alexander Campbell published his book It’s Your Empire, which was a Left Book Club Edition.*

Britain had only just come out of the war, a war which had been prosecuted by units of the armed forces drawn from almost all of the Empire many of whom were volunteers.

So I was intrigued by Mr. Cambell’s book which has sat on a shelf for over 40 years, but which I have never read.

The Manchester Guardian described it as “a rapid and up-to-date survey of current Colonial problems in their current guise.  The reader is conducted from the West India to the Mediterranean, the Middle East & Africa; then to India & Ceylon, the Fra East & the Western Pacific.  Nor are the outlying islands such as Mauritious & St Helena overlooked.  It is a full your of the dependent Empire.  The result is a valuable and vivid conspectus …. By the author of Empire in Africa & Smuts and the Swastika”.**

And at the outset, Mr. Campbell dispels a serious of myths and misunderstandings about the Empire and its history, beginning with that much hawked myth that “the British are supposed to have acquired it in a fit of absentmindedness”, and that the public were well informed about all things Empire.

Going on to point out that “large parts of the Empire were ‘collected’ comparatively recently, with huge tracts of Africa and many Pacific islands becoming British possessions only in the last few decades”.

This he cites as one reason for the public’s ignorance about Empire, along with the events of two world wars and the Depression, which perforce had concentrated minds on more pressing things.

To which he adds that people had been very badly informed.  “In schools, children have been told that the Empire is a big happy , united  ‘loyal’ family and that the burning ambition of every little Indian, African and Malayan boy is to die  for the Union Jack”.

But the book is more than just a broad diatribe on the Empire, and instead looks at each of the British possessions, examining the present as well as the historical economic background, supported by a bank of Government statistics which point to to the unequal relationship of many of the indigenous peoples to the ruling elite and the way that those “home peoples” have and were being exploited.

My own interest in the Middle East drew me to his section on Palestine and the conflict between the Arab and Jewish populations, but those on the other parts of the Empire are equally instructive.

And as ever the book was at its best when quoting the figures which dispel some of the myths, like “One third of all registered deaths in the British Colonial Empire are caused by tuberculosis, pneumonia and bronchitis; pellagra and scurvy are widespread , worm infestations almost universal in many regions and in West Africa, venereal disease afflicts 50 to 90 per cent of the population.

In every colony many if not most children suffer from malnutrition, and in some some African and Eastern towns the infantile death-rate is between 40 and 50 percent. Conditions in India are no better.  These facts are culled from the official report  of the Committee on Nutrition in the Colonial Empire”.

But the book looks to a positive and optimistic future, where the colonies become independent, but need to be supported arguing, “The colonies have ceased to be what they were in the past -treasure-houses of loot.  

The treasures have been removed; they went to to build Liverpool and Manchester. If the colonies are not to become the world’s waste lands, gigantic sums will have to be spent on combating soil erosion, rooting out disease, banishing malnutrition, and rehousing, reclothing and educating the people”.

And the book draws on the voices of those indigenous peoples like that from the manifesto of the Federation of Trade Unions of Nigeria which concluded, "The free peoples of the world look forward with intense eagerness to the fast approaching post-war years, when attention will be focused on the extermination of poverty, unemployment, excessive hours of work , and low wages, and Nigeria is not an exception …. [we shall] tenaciously explore all available constitutional  means with a view to achieving for the average worker such favourable conditions as ensure to a citizen under the British flag”.

So an interesting book, written a full two years before the independence of India, just months after the end of the war.

And a book still available.

Pictures; Ceylon, 1944 from the collection of Bob Ward

* It’s Your Empire, Alexander Campbell, 1945, Left Book Club Edition, Victor Gollancz

**It’s Your Empire, Manchester Guardian, October 14th, 1945

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack Beasley ……… his collection of Chorlton pictures ……. and a story … part 1

This is Chequers Road, sometime in the 1940s.

Chequers Road/Church Road circa 1940s

Of course, back then it was Church Road, and it is one of a remarkable collection of family snaps belonging to Kirsty.

Her family have lived in Chorlton for over 80 years and many of the photographs are of this one road

Her dad lived at number 41, and as they say the cross in the picture marks the spot.

Walk along the road today and the scene is pretty much the same, barring the inevitable number of cars and the lack of net curtains which were still a badge of respectability.

Outside 39 Church Road, with the "criss cross brown paper", circa 1939-45

Now if I wanted to hazard a guess, I think our picture will predate 1939, or certainly have been taken after 1945.

And the clue is in the absence of “the criss cross brown paper anti blast tape at the windows”, which Jack Beasley refers to on another of the pictures which was taken in the garden of 39 Church Road during the last world war.

The group consist of “Gerald Booth left, Jack Beasley, right, Gerald Vodon, [below] left, and Phyllis Vodon, [below] right”.

 Flo Beasley, date unknown

I know Kirsty has done some family research and the stories of the four will feature later, but for now I am intrigued by the unknown woman posing with a bunch of flowers.

I think she will be in the front garden of number 43, because comparing the image with others the front gate behind her is a match for number 41.*

And a trawl of the 1939 Register shows a Mrs Pauline Donbavand listed as living there along with her husband and Walter Meadows who was a Police Constable.

Pauline gave her occupation as a “Theatre Usherette”, had been born in 1909 and was two years younger than her husband.  

There is a slight confusion of the spelling of her surname which is a little unclear from the official record and Police Constable Meadows is listed as married but his wife is missing.

But like census returns, the 1939 Register was conducted on one night in early September and Mrs Meadows may have been elsewhere.

Added to which our unknown lady may not be Mrs Donbavand.  

According to Kirsty  she  could actually be  "my grandmother Flo Beasley", and certainly looking at family photographs there is a resemblance between the lady with the flowers and her grandmother.

So I rather think that is our mystery woman.

Outside 41/43 Church Road, date unknown

Equally intriguing is the way that some entries are redacted, so while Florence, Lilian and George Beasley appear, another two are hidden from view. 

That said I know that Florence was a “Bedding Machinist”, Lillian a “Shorthand typist” and George a "sapper" in the “Royal Engineers”, added to which an official returned to the list and changed Lillian’s status from single to married and including her new surname of Symonds.

There was nothing odd in the official alterations, as the 1939 Register was a working document and was used both for compiling the war time Identity cards, and for the new National Health Service which came into being in 1948.

Leaving me just to reflect that 83 years ago the occupations of those on Church Road, included two “house painters and paper hangers” a “retired Foreman lamp lighter”, an “Electrical engineer” along with a "chimney sweep", "a salesman", and a lorry driver.  With these were the familiar “unpaid domestic duties” and with a nod to the war, an “Auxiliary Fireman based at No.158 Manchester", and a number of servicemen.

I wonder what a contemporary tally of occupations would reveal.

Location; Chequers Road/Church Road, Chorlton

Pictures; Church Road circa 1939-45, from the collection of Kirsty

*There is however one hiccup and that is the modern street numbers for 41 and 43, do not correspond to what I think was the case in 1939 which may mean there was a change of numbers after 1939 ..... or I have just got it wrong.

 

Well Hall on a wet day in 1964

Now just what do you do on a Saturday morning in early July when the rain is coming down like stair rods?

I rather think an adventure in the woods is pretty much out of the question and likewise the attractions of the market in Beresford Square or the ferry fall away as the rain just keeps falling.

After all even the upbeat market stall holders found their quick fire banter and optimistic sales pitch a bit harder when everything felt damp, while the sight of the Thames held little appeal when the rain clouds all but touched the water.

There were Saturday morning pictures but at 14 that all seemed a bit below me which just left the Library on the High Street and the bus ride down to Avery Hill.

In 1964 it would be a good two years before I started at Crown Woods and so this end of Eltham was still unexplored territory.

I am guessing I went into the hot house but I may have got that all wrong, although fast forward a few years and  I am convinced it was one of those places I visited on Sundays with new girl friends following the Saturday date at the ABC in the High Street.

There will be plenty who remember the scenario ........ the evening went well, you both wanted to see each other again but wanted a place more casual, and above all cheap.

So Avery Hill fitted the bill giving both of you that added advantage of being able to close down the romance and go your separate ways, allowing the rest of Sunday to be salvaged.

But all that was in the future, back in 1964 my options were more limited and ended up with a walk round the Pleasaunce, a trip up to Wilcox’s opposite the parish church and a trip up to London.

The train journey in itself was an adventure and the noise and bustle of London Bridge or Charing Cross could make up for what had been a dull morning in Well Hall.

At 14, pubs were still off bounds, but there were museums, art galleries and monuments to look at. All were free and most were out of the rain.

And of course by the time you got back the clouds had cleared, the pavements dry and the night held out all sorts of promise.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; Eltham, 2013 from the collection of Jean Gammons

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 10........... from bread and dripping to Museli

This is the continuing story  of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I suspect pretty much every generation thinks that there’s was the one which has seen the most profound change and I am the first to accept that mine has no monopoly on the new inventions, mould breaking fashions and seminal music.

But there is no doubt that those of us born just after the last war, who started school in the early 1950s and are just beginning to enter retirement have experienced a bewildering revolution in what we eat and how we prepare that food.

I will have been four when rationing was finally abandoned, and in the succeeding decades came to take for granted a huge range of new foods sourced from all over the world and delivered within hours of being harvested.

And of course with all that came a deluge of specialist utensils, ever larger cookers and the microwave.

All of which makes me think back to our tiny kitchen at 294, which was just large enough to take an old battered Cannon gas cooker, and small fridge which nestled either side of the sink.

In their wisdom the architects had provided a largish store cupboard under the stairs and here went the bulk of our dried and tinned food.

And what couldn’t be found the cupboard or the fridge was still bought fresh and eaten on the same day.

But the fridge is the key to the change.

In the 1950s the growing reliance on frozen food would lift some of the drudgery out of preparing food.

Now I still like washing carrots, peeling potatoes and shelling peas but for sheer speed nothing beats opening the packet of frozen peas.

And sixty years ago the adverts for frozen foods focused on that simple message that they were quick to use and because of the way they had been frozen on the day they were harvested were bound to be fresher than the peas and carrots which had made their way from the field via the market to the small greengrocer, whose turn over dictated that the produce might sit for days before it was bought.

Of course few people in 1956 had a fridge let along a freezer which was why the bags of frozen vegetables came in small sizes which were bought and used on the same day.

And in much the same way out went the old fashioned breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon and toast in favour of the breakfast cereal.

Now these had been around since the 1930s, and there are ads in the collection for Corn Flakes and Rice Crispies, but the 50s offered up a new and exciting range, often marketed with a toy or other novelty and clearly aimed at the young.

Mother was quick off the mark to try the "new TV dinners  for one" which came out in the late 50s but equally died a death in our house as too expensive and not that nice.

Instead we reverted to simpler home cooked food but there was no going back on the changes that had happened.

As each of us left to set up our own homes the variety and the quantity of what we bought and ate just kept on growing.

But Dad preferred his tins, and on one memorable evening after I had cooked a pasta dish he smiled and said quietly that "it was good but  didn't really like  food messed about."

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London


Pictures;  adverts for Birds Eye Foods and Sugar Puffs, from Woman’s Own, January 12 1956

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Chorlton's brass band

There is something about old photographs and as much as I like the ones of the buildings, fields and roads of Chorlton it is those that contain people that I am drawn to.

This is our own brass band sometime in the 1920s and at least a few like William Mellor on the extreme right played in the 1893 band which I featured back in November of last year.*

Ours was one of the oldest brass bands in the country having been started in the 1820s.

 Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

 It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

What makes this one that little more interesting is that none of them are in uniform. Perhaps it was an impromptu photograph with at least one chap still in what I think is the uniform of a Manchester Corporation tram driver. But I wait to be corrected. Nor can it be the full band.

But I am going to leave the band for another time and focus instead on the three young faces behind the bandsman.

In those early years of photography stretching into the 1920s when it was all still a novelty the camera attracted the curious and the vain. They appear on the edges of a picture always staring directly into the lens but never really part of what is going on.

I would love to know more about three children especially the girl in the middle. Were they related to the bandsman? Had they followed the camera man or was it just chance that they were staring over the wall when the bandsman pose?

I doubt that we will ever know who they were, or for that matter where it was taken. My guess is in the schoolyard of the old National School which could place our three interlopers in Number 1 Passage which runs behind the old playground wall from what was once called Crescent Road and is now Crossland. But there are some things I suppose we will never know.

Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown, some of the band circa 1920s and William Rogers in 1893


*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/1893-brass-band-lives-revealed.html

The night watchman............ out on the streets of Manchester in 1896

Once the night watchman would have been a familiar sight sitting beside his hut keeping warm at the brazier and maintaining a solitary vigil over the road works or building site.

They feature in much literature during the last two centuries and only disappeared sometime in the 1960s.

Back in 1896 Henry Tidmarsh recorded this one somewhere in the centre of Manchester.

In all he produced over 300 illustrations for the book Manchester Old and New which  was published in 1894 by Cassell with a text by William Arthur Shaw.

In three big volumes it 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.

Pictures; The night watchman, 1896, Henry Tidmarsh, from Manchester Old and New, William Arthur Shaw, 1896

The Manchester of 1894

I have spent part of the afternoon looking through a wonderful collection of pictures of Manchester from the late 19th century.

They come from a three volume collection published in 1894 under the title Manchester Old and New.  It was written by William Arthur Shaw and the 300 illustrations ranging from small pictures set into the text to full page paintings were by Henry Tidmarsh.

These for me are the real attraction of the books.  True, some might be dismissed as chocolate box illustrations with a romantic hue, but many were of the less prestigious streets and highways while others like the Rochdale coke and gas works vividly bring to life an industrial scene long gone.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; from Manchester Old and New published in three volumes in 1894 by Cassell, text by William Arthur Shaw, illustrations by Henry Tidmarsh

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 9........... bold new designs and a bit of Formica

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

I often wonder what  those who lived in our house in the 1950swould have made of the new household designs which were featured in Woman’s Own for January 12 1956.

Of course they may never have taken the magazine but they would not have escaped the exciting new ideas for transforming their early 20th century house into one which fitted with the 1950s.

Looking at them today they seem quite ordinary and just a little old fashioned but back then they were at the cutting edge of all that was new and innovative.

The basic designs were all there two decades earlier but were way out of reach of most working people.

But by the mid 50s that was changing.

It was partly as a result of the growing prosperity, along with new mass produced materials like plastic and Formica and the ever present offer of hire purchase, which meant for a “few pounds down and the rest over easy instalments” bits of the new life could be pretty much within the reach of every one.

All of which marks the 1950s off as more of a mould breaker than perhaps “the swinging 60s.”

Here were bold new colours, exciting fabrics and designs which relegated the old heavy furniture many peoples’ dreams to a place in a museum along with the odd dinosaur and other ancient relics.

And along with all these were those sheets of hardboard, which were cheap and could be applied to everything from period doors to the space in front of ripped out fireplaces.

For a few bob you could obliterate the beautiful features around doors create flat level spaces and add wonders to the fitted kitchens.

In 294 the master bedroom had lost its fire place and in its place a gigantic headboard with drop down drawers and a reddish swirly affect which I thought was the pinnacle of modern design.

But then I was only 14.

Sadly the DIYers responsible had also managed to take out the other upstairs fire places leaving just one small fine cast iron one downstairs.

Now it is pointless to rail against this vandalism.

At the time it seemed new and different and after six years of a bitter and hard war along with the preceding period of grim austerity all this was what we deserved.

And I have to admit I mounted similar attacks in the 1970s on good taste pulling out old features which gave the house its authentic feel and covering the walls with wood chip.

All of which means that I would have been no better in 1956, but just maybe now I might have cherished what was already there and just added the odd new idea.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from Woman's Own, January 12 1956

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

The picture of Annie Magee on Hawthorn Lane and that young Chorlton bandsman

Now if there is a simple lesson about old photographs it’s that you should never take them at face value.

So here is a picture from Peter McLoughlin's collection of family pictures which shows his mother Annie in 1925.

I was drawn to it the first time I saw it and it began the first of series of stories that feature those family albums.

But what I missed or more accurately ignored was the young man standing beside her.

I don’t know who he was or why he posed with young Annie and just assumed he was a young serviceman, but looking again at that uniform it seems far more elaborate and I think it is that of a bandsman and if pushed I think it might well be from our own Brass Band.

And that makes it rather special because there are very few pictures of our brass band which was at the centre of life in Chorlton from the mid 1820s till 1945.

Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

There are a few accounts of its founding in the 1820s and some more of when it reformed in 1850.

I know the names of some of the men who made up the early bands, along with the prizes they collected during the late 19th century and continue to come across newspaper reports of their activities.

The band neatly reflects the history of the township, starting as a small band whose members made some of their instruments including the drum which once made proved to big to get out of the cottage.

The early band was almost exclusively drawn from Methodists and most made their living from the land.

By the 1890s few of the members still worked the land, most worked in Manchester and most were either newcomers to the township or were first generation.

But so far I guess there are just half a dozen images of the band, some as they marched through Chorlton and one of them at Barlow Hall in 1893 but sadly that’s the lot.

All of which makes this picture of our young bandsmen so interesting and perhaps in time I will discover more about him.



Picture; Annie Magee and that unknown young man, 1925 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin and the Brass Band circa 1920 courtesy of Allan Brown

One Special Constable …. a medal … his truncheon …. and the Great War

 I think finding Special Constable John T Clark might not be as easy as I first thought.*

Medal awarded to John T Clark

He served between 1914 and 1919 in Manchester and while I can reference  quite a few John T Clark’s none quite fit the bill.

But this John T Clark did his duty during the Great War and was awarded a medal which sits with his truncheon in the collection of my old pal David Harrop.

My Wikipedia tells me that just weeks after the outbreak of war in August 1914, Parliament adapted the  Special Constables Act of 1831 making it easier to appoint special constables. Under the 1831 act there was a requirement for a "‘tumult, riot, or felony’ to have occurred or be imminent before special constables could be appointed, and extended to special constables the gratuities and allowances for constables injured in the line of duty or dependents of constables killed in the line of duty from the Police Acts between 1839 and 1910.”**

In Manchester plans had been set in motion to recruit 5,000 special constables who would be divided into commands of 50 men led by a “leader.”  

By August 21 20 leaders had been enrolled and there had been 200 applications to join the force, and such was the interest in volunteering that it was reported that by November the Special Police Reserve had reached the target of 5000.

In the following year the Chief Constable doubled the hours of duty of the special constables.  Instead of one tour a week of four hours they were to be required to perform two tours of duty of four hours each.  

The medal

This according to the Chief Constable was to ensure a sufficient supply for the evening stretching into the early morning and had been prompted by the increasing number of regular constables who had enlisted and was made more difficult by the impossibility of getting “the right sort men without trenching on the military or munitions supply.” ***

Some however of the specials viewed aspects of their work as mundane and a waste of time.  Writing to the Manchester Guardian in the February of 1915 “Special Constable” “could see little point in patrolling Mount Street, Exchange Street and St Anne’s Street [when] there is always a policeman on point duty well with in a hail.  Our beats are so short, and the number of specials employed so great that we feel ourselves to be merely wasting our time.” ****

The truncheon

All of which may have been the view of a “special” but not perhaps of the burglar caught two days later by the efforts of a succession of special constables.

The said burglar had been seen by two of the citizen force who failed to catch him, but they “blew their whistles, and immediately there was an epidemic of whistle blowing among special constables in the neighbourhood.  The wretched burglar was so frightened that he took refuge beneath the grate of a cellar, and it was there that he was apprehended.”

Such are the little events which make for the bigger picture, and part of that that bigger picture and somewhere will be John T Clark, leaving me to explore the Greater Manchester Police Museum’s archive and redouble my efforts trawling census records, street directories and newspaper clippings.

We shall see.

Location; Manchester During the Great War

Pictures; medal and truncheon of John T Clark courtesy of David Harrop, 2025

*And as so often happens, after posting the story I think I have found John Thomas Clark. He was born in 1864, and died in 1935. He described himself as a "Children's clothes manufacturer" with a factory at 4 Fairfield Street, Manchester.  He lived in Sale, and Bucklow and died in Rushholme leaving £105,086.

**Special Constables, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Constables_Act_1914

*** Special Constables, Two Weekly Beats, Manchester Guardian June 28, 1915

****Citizen Police: First Week on the Active List, Manchester Guardian, February 15, 1915

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 36 Newgate ..... less a street and more a court

Now I didn’t expect to find Newgate on the directories, even when this picture was taken in the 1890s the inhabitants of this closed court were part of that unseen Manchester.

Newgate, 1890

To get to Newgate you had to turn off Long Millgate and go through an entry in a building which then led off to other smaller courts.

But even here it ranked as an insignificant address for while Pearsons Court which was the neighbouring court got a listing as a direction point in the directories for Long Millage, Newgate didn’t even warrant that.

So to all intents and purposes it might as well not have existed.

But the maps show it there and show at least eleven properties and in time with a bit of digging I will find it on the census and that in turn will offer up the names of the residents, their ages occupations and families.

Newgate, 1849

For now the best that I can offer the curious is to direct them along Corporation Street heading north and just beyond Hanover Street under that very big white building will be Newgate and Pearson’s Court.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Newgates, 1908, m8316, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Manchester City Council, Newgate in 1849, from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1843-49 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

The 1893 Brass Band ............ lives revealed.

There has been a brass band in Chorlton since the 1820s which must make it one of the earliest.

 During the first half of the 19th century Chorlton was still a rural community and many of those who played in the band earned their living from the land and had been born in the township.

But as Chorlton grew and attracted new people who made their living from other trades so the composition of the band changed.

 And it was the chance discovery of a photograph of the band dated 1893 which has revealed the story of this band. It has been possible to track almost all of the men from that picture. Most had not been born here and some still lived elsewhere.

They were clerks and warehouseman, with just a few still working on the farms and market gardens.

Like many bands ours was a close knit group with a few families supplying many of those who played, and again like other brass bands these men lived close together, concentrated off Crossland Road and Beech Road.

Picture; from  the collection of Alan Brown,1893

A little bit of the Woolwich I remember

Now I am back with another of those excellent photographs of Woolwich from the collection of Stephen Bardrick.

I don’t have a date but it can be no earlier than 1935 when the Woolwich opened its grand new headquarters just here.

The cars will be the clue to fixing the time the picture was taken and for me it is far more familiar a scene than the present one.

But that I suppose is the fate of the ex pat.  You leave somewhere you grew up thinking that the buildings and even the street patterns are parked and will just be where you left them and then you come back and it is all different.

For me it started with the entrance old railway station which looks nothing like the wooden building I remember moves on to the row of shops on either side and ends opposite with that open space in front of the 1935 building.

At which point I am in danger of sounding like one of those grumpy old uncles who comes for Sunday tea and can’t quite come to terms with seeded granary sandwiches, the absence of carnation milk to pour on the equally absent bowl of tinned fruit and yearns for fish paste  and sliced ham.

Still I bet he would have been able to date the picture and may just have been old enough to remember when the Woolwich had its headquarters at 113 Powis Street and may like many of us disapproved when it ceased being an organization owned by its members and became a bank in 1997.

I can’t remember what I did with my account but liked the old TV ad “I’m with the Woolwich” and was pleased that for almost a decade they sponsored Charlton but less pleased that they were bought up Barclay’s ending what had been a proud independent history which stretched back to 1847.

Picture; Woolwich Equitable Building Society Offices, date unknown, courtesy of Steve Bardrick

When you have the chance to explore 200 years of Chorlton’s history ……

 Today … and stretching out over the next few months I will be wandering across two centuries of Chorlton’s past.

Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone, 1885

It comes in the form of a private archive and focuses on the Wesleyan Sunday School on Manchester Road.

Today it is home to the Edge Theatre, which opened “in 2011, ….. [and] has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives”.*

The company is justifiably proud “of our beautiful venue” which dates back to 1885 and was a Sunday School for most of its existence, although during the Great War it was used by the Red Cross as an Auxiliary Hospital caring for servicemen recovering from wounds and illnesses.

I was aware of some of its long history, but the archive offers up a detailed record of how the Sunday school worked, original plans along with lists of furniture and fittings which were purchased in 1885 and heaps of memories and other memorabilia.

The Chapel and school, undated

All of which makes the archive an invaluable record of a portion of our community and takes us back beyond 1885 to the original Wesleyan School founded sixty years earlier.

For most of that earlier period the scholars met in the chapel on Beech Road and briefly in a purpose-built school on the site of the present Beech Inn. That school had been built with money raised by the congregation but for reasons which are now unclear they had not secured a claim to it, and it was lost to them.

I don’t think the archive will shed any light on that disaster but looking through the documents there is much about the new Sunday School.

It is early days, and at present the task is just scanning the many and varied records and setting up a database which will allow others to access the material.

And progress is slow, there are four full ring binders, and each item has to be copied and entered on to the data base.

At the Edge, 2024

But it’s fun and will provide heaps of detail to what is now that "beautiful venue".

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; invitation to a “Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone", 1885, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Wesleyan Chapel +New Schools And Minister Residence, John West +Architect + Surveyor Manchester, undated, and The Edge 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Edge Theatre, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/