The film ….. a train journey ….. and a birthday ... or ….. Spartacus … London Bridge and being 10

Spartacus remains a film I return to if only for that scene at the end where a dozen or so men stand up and proclaim, “I am Spartacus”.

Roman soldier, circa 1975

It is one of those bits which has become much parodied over the years but always takes me back to the film.

In my case the first time will have been 1960 at the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street which was followed by a journey in the cab of a train from London Bridge home to Peckham.

And it is one of those things that I have no memory of the film, the cinema or even the journey up to town.

The premiere had been on December 7th and regular showings followed which means it was less a birthday present and more a treat after the event as I was 10 in the October.

I don’t think mum told me what was happening and even now I can’t be sure it was London Bridge Railway Station.  Waterloo would have been closer but we may have got the Underground or perhaps even the bus.

But what has stayed with me was the trip home.

Mother with that impetuous side to her character, asked the train driver if I could sit in the cab for the trip back to Queens Road Railway Station.

It must have broken every rule in the book, and I can’t even be sure she stayed with me, which today would be unheard of.

Lightening the dark, 1981

Now the journey from London Bridge to Queens Road is a short one … just about eight minutes with one intervening stop. All of which is a blur other than the speed, the lights and the oncoming trains.

A full 66 years later that is what I remember about the evening.

The baker Terentius Neo with his wife circa 79 AD

I was quite oblivious to the fact that the story behind the film was equally as challenging as the subject matter of a slave army taking on the Roman Republic.

Kirk Douglas who played Spartacus and produced the film hired Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted as one of the "Hollywood 10".  And because of his non status, Mr. Trumbo was paid using his pseudonym "Sam Jackson". 

Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given screen credit for his work, which helped to break the blacklist.Trumbo had been jailed for contempt of Congress in 1950, after which he had survived by writing screenplays under assumed names. Douglas publicly announced that Trumbo was the screenwriter of Spartacus.[25] Further, President John F. Kennedy publicly ignored a demonstration organized by the American Legion and went to see the film.*

As for the Metropole Cinema on Victoria Street, my cinema TREASURES tells me “The Metropole Kinema was the first large cinema in the Victoria district of central London and opened on 27th December 1929 with Stanley Holloway in 'The Co-Optimists' and Jameson Thomas in 'Hate Ship', plus Jack Hylton’s band on stage”.**

Romans against Spartacus, 1975

And like many of our picture houses its ending was slow but inevitable. It became a “Laser Theatre” in 1977, and then a concert hall before finishing as a restaurant, having undergone the indignity of losing its auditorium to the demolishers and finally being knocked down in 2013.

So best that most of those memories are lost and instead I can be happy with that short train journey through the night on a birthday treat.

Leaving me just to reflect that like so many recollections the images that instantly spring to mind can not be preproduced.  

Stuff from Spartacus remains copyright, and there is no time to ask cinema TREASURES for permission to use their picture of the Metropole.

Added to which one agent is advertising Spartacis posters at a cool £200 a piece which prompt that thought .... what price my nostagia? To which there is the cost of that journey, which in 1960 would have cost one shilling, or 5p and now would set me back £4.68.

Best stay with the memory.

Location; London 1960

Pictures; Airfix models of a Roman solddier, circa 1975,the baker Terentius Neo with his wife. Italian National Archaeological Museum of Naples (cat. no. 9058 ) and Lightening the dark, 1981

*Spartacus (film), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_(film)

** Metropole Cinema, 160 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5LB, cinema TREASURES https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/3770

The grim side to some of our Manchester pubs

Now I am back with Peterloo and the dastardly actions of the Manchester Yeomanry who on August 16th, 1819, charged a peaceful crowd in St Peter’s Fields, leaving many dead and wounded.

The Manchester Yeomanry in action, 1819

And over the last few days I have been exploring* the background of the 101 men listed in the Northern Star as participating in the outrage.**

We can track the occupations of 87 of them, and they represent a cross section of the population, with over a third drawn from the “people of plenty”, another 29% who made their living as publicans and shopkeepers, which left the rest as a mix of skilled, and manual workers, with the odd surprises which include a “Professor of Dance” and a quack doctor.

But today I am interested in the nine publicans.  They were William Bowker of the King's Head at 4 Old Shambles, John Beeston who ran the Windsor Castle in Salford, and later took over the George at 47 Deansgate, and William Benson of the Fox at 1 Jackson’s Row.

The Briton's Protection, 2016 as seen in the book

To these three we can add Mr. Burgess of the Hen & Chicken on 163 Deansgate, Parker Horsefield of the Briton’s Protection on Waterloo Street by Great Bridgewater Street, Edward Hall of the Blue Cap at 80 Greengate, Jacob Chadderton who offered up beer and cheer at the Wool Pack in Pendleton, John Reid of the Globe, Gartside Street and Samuel Lees of the Crown and Thistle, 9 Half Street, Manchester.

Of these I am pretty sure that only one of the nine pubs still in business is the Briton’s Protection, but some will have lasted longer than others.

So, while the Blue Cap on Greengate had vanished by 1850, the Windsor Castle on New Windsor in Salford was still there thirty-one years after Peterloo.

The Windsor Castle Salford, 1850

Had I come across this bit of information back in 2016, it might well have been included in our book on city centre Manchester Pubs, that said as the book is only about ones you can visit today that would have limited the inclusion of the Manchester Yeomanry landlords to just the Briton’s Protection.

That said, I see no reason why I shouldn’t pursue the remaining eight, starting with the Fox on the corner of Deansgate and Jackson’s Row which was still selling happiness or sadness in 1844, but now sits under Onward Building.

So in the fullness of time we  shall see just what can be found out about the two Salford pubs and their landlords, followed up by the more  Manchester landlords and their pubs.

The Fox, Jacksons Row, 1844

Location; Manchester and Salford

Pictures; "Manchester Heroes", Peterloo, print from etching by unknown artist, published by S W Fores, 1819, m07587, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, New Windsor, Salter’s Street Directory, 1850,  The Fox Inn, Jackson’s Row, 1844, from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1844, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/


*The Manchester Yeomanry, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/08/exploring-butchers-of-peterloo-101-men.html

**The Northern Star, Chartist newspaper, August 20th 1842

*** Manchester Pubs- The Stories Behind the Doors, Centre Centre along with  our two companion volumes,  Manchester Pubs- The Stories Behind the Doors, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and  Manchester Pubs- The Stories Behind the Doors are available from www.pubbooks.co.uk and Chorlton Books

When Stretford removed Chorlton’s tram track ...... municipal manoeuvrings and other tales

Now it seems bizarre that one local authority in dispute with another should take the drastic step of digging up a line of newly laid tram track, but it happened.  

Upper Chorlton Road, 1907, before the extension and the Stretford quarrel

In the winter of 1909 Manchester was in the process of extending a tramway from Brooks Bar to West Point along Upper Chorlton Road, part of which went through Stretford.

This stretch ran for just ten yards but because the Stretford Council had not been asked first, it fired off a flurry of blustering letters threatening to remove the track if Manchester continued.

And when the City laid the offending ten yards of rail, Stretford retaliated, informing Manchester “that a physical disconnection has been made” adding that, “the removed rails were placed behind the seat on the footpath leading to Chorlton-cum-Hardy beyond the [Stretford] district, convenient for reinstatement”.

The underlying reason had more to do with Stretford attempting to get a better deal for electricity it supplied to Manchester to on match days after United had relocated to Old Trafford.

The Bridge at Manchester Road, 1907

Nor was this the only obstacle the city encountered in extending Corporation trams to Chorlton.

Work on the line at Manchester Road was halted after the railway company objected  that the bridge over the railway line was too weak for tramway traffic.

The dispute was finally settled with Manchester paying nine-tenths of the cost of strengthening the bridge.

Such were the problems faced by the Corporation honouring its promise to the rate payers of Chorlton who voted in 1904 to join the city and thought they were getting a tram service.

These are those tiny little stories which don’t count for much in the great sweep of history, but are fascinating none the less.

Car 901 at the tram terminus, date unknown

As is the little known fact that from 1923 until the outbreak of the Second World War there was a facility for late night posting of letters on 14 Manchester and 7 Salford tram routes.

According to A.H. Kirby,  “A posting box was carried on the rear platform of trams timed to reach the City at about 9.30 p.pm; from mid December 1923, these cars were indicated by POST CAR in place of the route number. 

The Chorlton services selected were on route 13, departing from Chorlton due at Albert Square at 9.29 and on route 22 departing Chorlton and arriving Piccadilly at 9.30”, with more being added over the years.*

Car 277 on Barlow Moor Road with the cinema behind, date unknown

Now I thought I knew my Chorlton tram history but Mr Kirby has offered me a fascinating and detailed glimpse into how the trams came to Chorlton and their impact over the 39 years they rattled their way in and out of the township.

And I am indebted to Trevor James who having acquired the two editions of Tramway Review with Mr Kirby’s articles, and thinking of me, scanned and sent them down from Scotland.

I also have to thank Stenlake Publishing who bought The Oakwood Press which published The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and gave me permission to reproduce four of the images from the publication.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy







Pictures; trams of Chorlton from The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, courtesy of Stenlake Publishing

*The Tramways of Chorlton-cum-Hardy – 2, A.H. Kirby, Tramway Review, Vol 18, Autumn 1989, No. 139, The Oakwood Press. Page 80

** Stenlake Publishing, http://stenlake.co.uk/?page_id=442

Memories ….

It will be something like 46 years ago that I walked beside the River snapping away with a brand new camera.

I can't pretend the results were always what I wanted  and back then it was all smelly photography so the pictures I took during a brief trip home to Well Hall, had to wait until I returned to Manchester and processed them.

And the negatives have sat in the cellar for 4 decades.

But now they are out in the light of day, a reminder of what the River was like and that excursion out with the brand new camera.

Location; The River

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

Goodbye the Hotspur Press … only the demolition team and Andy Robertson think of you……

 Well of course that is not strictly accurate.

There are others interested in the building who keep coming down since the fire to photograph the sad sight of what’s left.

But there aren’t many.  The media, and TV pundits, have moved on to pop concerts, and road closures.

While the conspiracy theorists no longer cast the dice on who was to blame, how had the story first broken on a Chinese news station 24 hours earlier and had the building really been consumed by flames, and instead return to stories of visitors from outer space building the pyramids.

Not my old chum Andy Robertson who was back on Friday with camera in hand to explore what was going on.

As ever he is creating a collection of pictures which will chronicle the end of the building and whatever the developers have in mind for the site.

So here are his latest images which reveal the bits inside which most never see from Cambridge Street, along with the effects of the fire on timber, stone and wood.

And I finish with a picture almost the same as the first, but which offers us that chair just beyond the fence.

I may be wrong but that chair or a similar one seems to have sat there for as long as I can remember, long before the fire and long before the high-rise developments along Cambridge Street.

Well I may be wrong …. Someone I am sure will have an opinion, and perhaps come up with some photographs of the site of their own.

We shall see.

Location; Cambridge Street

Pictures; Friday on Cambridge Street at the Hotspur Press site, 2025, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Withington Hospital ....... sixty years ago

 This is Withington Hospital in 1965.

Withington Hospital from Cavendish Road, 1965

And it’s a lesson in how quickly we forget.

The image was taken from Cavendish Road and shows the rear of the complex, with the large field in between.

I must have passed it heaps of time but when confronted with the picture I was puzzled, and it took a few minutes rummaging through old maps and even older photographs to fix the place.

The view along with the hospital have long gone.

Interestingly the caption of the colour slide offered up the title “Union Workhouse”, which of course is what it was.

The hospital and field, 1956

Built in the early 1850s by the Chorlton Union, it replaced the smaller workhouse in Hulme and remained as such till the 1930s.

The hospital and field, 1935

Today some of the hospital buidlings have been converted into residential use and apart from a property in Styal, the only surviving building from the age of the Workhouse in south Manchester is the former offices of the Chorlton Union in All Saints.

In its day the offices administered the work of poor relief across south Manchester and early in its history added an infirmary to the workhouse.

The infirmary was requestioned during the Great War and served as a hospital catering for casualties from the battle front and some of those who died are buried in Southern Cemetery.

I rather think the recovering wounded in their “hospital blue” uniforms may have made good use of the field.

There are a few images from Manchester Library’s archive of images which show the field but none that I can find which places it beside the hospital.*

So perhaps a unique image.

Location; Withington Hospital

Picture; “Withington Hospital, former workhouse, seen from behind”, 1965, The 1965 Collection, the hospital and field  1956, from the OS Map of Manchesterster & Salford, 1956, hospital & field, 1935, m53369, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

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

The history of Eltham in just 20 objects ........Nu 10 a historian and a book

The challenge is to write a history of Eltham in just 20 objects which are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

Anyone who wants to nominate their own is free to do so, just add a description in no more than 200 words and send it to me.

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

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

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

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

It is available on the internet and more on Mr Gregory later.

Location; Eltham, London

Picture; of R.R.C Gregory,  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 

The history of Eltham in just 20 objects ........Nu 9 a water trough chosen by Jean

The challenge is to write a history of Eltham in just 20 objects which are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

Anyone who wants to nominate their own is free to do so, just add a description in no more than 200 words and send it to me.

And here my friend Jean has chosen a horse tough and describes her choice.

This is a photograph of a disused Horse Water Trough still in position in Bexley Road, the road linking Eltham with the neighbouring town of Bexley.

With the growing awareness in the late 19th century of the need for such street furniture, to ease the way of the hundreds of workhorses pulling wagons and vehicles of all kinds up and down the highways of the kingdom, stone troughs of the kind shown in this photograph were provided throughout the country through the generosity and compassion of individual benefactors, and many survive to this day.

The one provided on the Bexley Road was presented by Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson of Charlton House, Greenwich.  Charlton House is one of the finest Jacobean mansions in the London area and it remained the home of the Maryon-Wilson family until 1916, when Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson moved out of the house which was being used as a hospital for officers during the 1st World War.

Charlton House and Park were sold to Greenwich Borough Council in 1925, and Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson died in 1944

Location; Eltham

Picture and text; courtesy of Jean Gammons

A little bit of what we have lost ………. Manchester in the 1990s

Now I always maintain that it is often some of the most recent photographs of the city which look outdated and somehow out of place.

I suppose it is because we are prepared for those old black and white images from the beginning of the last century or the end of the 19th.

The people and the places are quite clearly from another time, when they did things differently, and even when the buildings are still there, they belong to that other time.

But not so more recent images, which are usually in colour and have enough about them to be almost now, but not quite.

And these two of St Peter’s Square fit that bill.

Both date from the 1990s, feature those old blue trams, and feature Central Ref and the Cenotaph.

But just a quarter of century or so on, the trams have been replaced, the Cenotaph relocated, and Central Ref undergone a major refurbishment and make over.

Added to which, the square itself has been transformed, and while we have lost the People’s Garden, we have gained a new metro stop, and an exciting new open space.

Well I think so anyway.

Leaving me just to expect a shedload of comments.

Location; St Peter's Square

Pictures; St Peter’s Square, circa 1990s, from the collection of picture postcards of Rita Bishop

School’s out for summer …. the day after

The summer term ended with strong sunshine and a party in the Rec.

Heaps of kids, parents and picnic stuff spread out across the grass and all was fun, play and noise.

Saturday came with rain, and the reminders from the day before.

One discarded Brookburn sweatshirt and rubbish bins appropriately filled to the brim and three abandoned tyres.

Location; The Rec, 

Pictures; School’s out for summer, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The 1950s ... that decade of optimism

 I am looking at one of those to do lists we all make from time to time.

And given this is summer it is not surprising that our list should feature what to take on holiday.

It all looks familiar until you spot the items listed as Identity Card and Ration Card and we are suddenly in a time long before now. A time when everyone was issued with an identity card which had to be carried on your person and a change of address had to written on the card and registered at the relevant centre.

And walking in tandem with the identity card was your ration card which is a hint that we are in the early 1950s. Both were a legacy of the last war and in the case of rationing the card would still be necessary till 1953 when the last foods came off rationing.

And I can pin the list to 1952 when it appeared in the News of the World's Household Guide to and Almanac.

It is a treasure trove of lost insight into the 1950s. 

Now the 1950s in some ways remain more interesting than the much lauded "Swinging 60s".

It was after all the first full decade of peace and saw the end of rationing, a growing level of affluence which brought with it the expectation that everyone might share in a better life

 Compared to the bitter 1930s characterised by mass unemployment and the Means Test and followed by a hard war the 1950s were the optimistic decade. 

But that growing prosperity stubbornly wasn't shared by all just as parts of Britain recovered more quickly from the Great Depression. 

So, while my grandfather never had a permanent job after 1931 till the war time economy saw him in full employment, by contrast during the 1950s he was never again out of work. 

Not that l was aware of much of this.  Having been born in 1949 l was just past my tenth birthday when the 60s began. 

So, the guide offers up those snip bits of a period many of which never get into the serious history books.

And along with our holiday list there is an advert for "Blighty" which was one of those light hearted periodicals aimed at men.

It had launched in 1916 went through several reinventions changing its name along the way and finally emerging as Parade.

Now Parade l knew because back in the 1960s it occasionally came in to the house by routes l never understood. 

It was a mix of pinups, light articles as well as jokes, and offered guides and suggestions to the lifestyle all young men should aspire to.

I know that neither father of mother would have sought out the magazine and l do recall sometime around 13 summoning up the courage to buy copies for one shilling from the newsagents.

And to my eternal shame when we moved house I dumped the lot. Some behind the shed wall and some into a cupboard for which the key had been lost.

I had almost forgotten Parade with its titles like "June is busting out all over".

Although I do still have my identity card and some of the family ration cards which somehow survived the accidents of decluttering.

I have to thank Debbie Cameron for the gems from the Housekeeping Guide with their insights into how we lived and how the editor thought we should live.  

So please keep them coming Debbie

Location; 1952

Pictures from; News of the World's Household Guide and Almanac, courtesy of Debbie Cameron

Before the Beetham Tower ...... one of those lost Manchester scenes

Trafford Street and Deansgate, March 2003

We are on Deansgate, looking towards Trafford Street and this is one of those lost scenes of Manchester.

It is one I have been familiar with for over forty years.

To our right is the Deansgate pub and directly ahead is the great curved roof of what was Central Station and is now the exhibition centre.

And just to the left of where we are standing ran the viaduct that carried trains into the Great Northern Warehouse.

All that is now left of the viaduct is the end by Bridgwater Street.

The other end was only demolished relatively recently along with the buildings directly opposite us.

All went between 2004 and 2006 when the Beetham Tower was built.

Now the Tower comes in for quite a lot of criticism mainly I suspect because of the way it dominates this corner of the city.

And there is no escaping its presence.  Many of the views which were once familiar are now blocked by the tower and the glass box that stands beside it.

Trafford Street and Deansgate, May 2002

That said the buildings it replaced were not really much to write home about and once the ambulance depot moved out the site was pretty dismal.

But I have to say I can’t quite make up my mind about the Beetham Tower.

I am not against modern architecture partly because if history teaches you anything it is that some of our best loved buildings were once regarded as blots on the landscape but its sheer size does seem out of keeping with its surroundings.

Worse still, friends I talk to share with me that feeling that  the Tower makes you feel insignificant, something that even the CIS building and Sunlight House do not.

Both were built at a time when Manchester was embracing the new architecture of the mid 20th century and while they were hailed as new and exciting they fitted into the city landscape.

So I am left pondering on what we have lost and looking at these two pictures which were taken just a year apart.

The first was shot in the May of 2002 and the second in the March of the following year.

Trafford Street circa 1900

Unknown to me just a few months later in July 2003 the decision was taken to build the Tower and work began a year later.

Now hindsight is a wonderful gift and had I known of the plans back then I think I would have spent more time capturing the site before it disappeared.

Of course much of what it looked like soon after the viaduct had been built and the Great Northern Warehouse was open for business vanished a long time ago.

The great brick viaduct having crossed Deansgate carried on over Trafford Street, Crown Street and Bridgewater Street, delivering four railway lines into the warehouse.

Below in the arches were the stables of the railway company, a reminder that while the goods came in to the city by train it was horse drawn wagons that distributed them across Manchester.

I will go searching for some old photographs of the area.

That said they may be someone out there who did.

If so I would love to see the pictures. And indeed a selection of images of the towers which have followed the Beetham and those still under construction.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; corner of Trafford Street and Deansgate, 2002-3, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, detail of Trafford Street area, from Goad's Fire Insurance Maps of Manchester , 1900, Digital Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

One place …. just 87 years apart ….. Beech Road 1935 …. 2022

The blog doesn’t usually do then and now pictures.

Beech Road, 1935

But this one which was taken by the sister of Marjorie Holmes is a favourite of mine.

It is a bit blurred but that is what comes with a “snap”, but then the quality of the second is only marginally better.

 The first was taken during the Jubilee celebrations for King George V in 1935 and mine just a few days ago.

I will leave it to others to make the obvious observation and repeat that request for more “snaps” of where we live.

For those interested behind the wall on the left of Marjorie's picture was still a laundry, while what is now Suburban Green, had been variously an ironmonger's, a hair dressers and even a piano shop before settling down to its long association as a bar and restaurant in the mid 1980s.

Beech Road, 2022

The first of which was Café on the Green.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Beech Road, 1935, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes, and in 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Rediscovering our recent past the Coldharbour Estate in Eltham sometime in the 1950s

I rather think that we often overlook our most recent past.

There was one history teacher of mine at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School who maintained that if wasn’t at least a hundred years old it didn’t class as history.

Now I know what he was getting at but that ignores so much of ore recent past, a past still vivid in the memories of many people.

So today I have decided to look at the Coldharbour Estate some of which will have clocked up sixty-six years of history which makes it older than even me.

The estate is “a large and spacious estate developed on the site of the Coldharbour Farm by the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich from 1947.  It is sliced in two by a major road, William Barefoot Drive, where the small shopping centre and community buildings are located.

The estate was planned as a ‘garden suburb’, and there are many attractive greens.  From the open space at the Court there is a magnificent view of Eltham Lodge.”*

And there is the St Albans Church, “a small red brick church designed by Ralph Covell in 1953 it has a nice square tower and gently bowed window, and is linked by an arcade to the original vicarage.”*

The estate was not some where I knew well but only because none of my friends lived there so I had no reason to visit it, and when you are sixteen there are far more interesting places that call you over.

So I never went and now forty-seven years on and 230 miles further north I guess I won’t.
But that is not to say I have ignored the place.

Like many other post war developments it was a part of that determined effort to provide decent housing in pleasant surroundings.

And Coldharbour must have been significant enough a place to warrant a set of postcards by Tuck and Sons Ltd.

My favourite is the one of Witherstone Way mainly because of what was written on the back which announces that “The HOUSE MARKED X IS MY HOUSE. La maison c’est chez moi”

It has been dated to 1976 but the card must be older and is in that tradition of local communities getting their own visual record of what they were like, along with that even older habit dating back to the beginning of post card of marking the spot where you lived.

And reminds us that once the image had been created the company continued using it despite the fact that by 1976 the cars and the fashions had moved on a full twenty years if or more.

Pictures; Witherstone Way and St Albans Church and the Mound, courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/postcards

*Spurgeon Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2000

The Romans are back in Manchester ….. just as it should be

Now, the news that a bit of Roman road has been found in Manchester is the sort of news I like.

Two very knocked about Romans, 1975

I am and have always been fascinated by Roman history and yes, I fully accept the bits about slavery, conquests, nasty emperors and the exploitation of heaps of people but I remain fascinated none the less.

Down at the dig, 1979

And how much more fascinating to discover new Roman finds in the city.

It comes from an ongoing dig on Liverpool Road and is the missing bit from excavations done on the Roman fort and on the civilian settlement.

The digs in the 1970s were met with a lot excitement and provided a rebutal to the historian A J P Taylor who had dismissed the significance of Roman Manchester.

Indeed like many I made my way down to Liverpool Road and even took a party of students to observe the patient back breaking work of the team of archeaologists.

At which point I could quote from the article, but where would the fun be in that when here is the link.

Artemidorus, Hawara, Egypt, second century

I missed the story when the BBC first announced it so seven days later so here again is the link to the story.

Picture; portrait of Artemidorus, Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum, taken from cover image  of the Poems of Catullus, Penguin Classics, 1968, Digging for the Romans in Manchester 1979, and two Romans much knocked about circa 1974

*Roman road discovered in city centre, Angela Ferguson & Mat Trewern

BBC News, Manchester, July 12, 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y74246pppo

Adverts … cheap remedies ….. and a step back into another time

 I am back in 1952, and it was the decade when I crossed from being a baby into a school boy.

That said I don’t remember much of it until well into the 1950s, but these adverts were the backdrop into my growing up.

These four all come from the News of the World’s Household Guide and Almanac and were sent up to me by Debbie Cameron who came across the book and “just had to have it”.

Now on one level there is nothing remarkable about them, all traded on maladies which with varying degrees of seriousness could be experienced by all of us.

And these remedies go back into time and were the staple of magazines, and periodicals in the 19th century while some were traded by quacks on street corners and travelling fairs as the answer to all your medical problems.

In 1919 at the height of the influenza pandemic which killed millions the firm Genatosan Ltd offered up Formamint, their “Germ Killing Throat Tablet” which would ensure “you will be safe from Spanish Influenza and other epidemics" and endorsed by some of Establishment "who had been ordered to take Formamint by their doctors which gave great relief”.*

Now I do not rubbish those who felt the need to resort to such “cures” nor to dismiss the seriousness of their complaints, only to reflect that for the genuine remedy there were and are countless others which at best do nothing and at worst should carry a Government Health Warning.

What is a little surprising is that in1952 in the age of the NHS and the relative cheapness of a prescription from a doctor people could resort to something they could buy from a postal address.

But then in the 21st century across the internet and as an introductory preamble to many a U Tube song there will be a “self-proclaimed expert” extolling everything from a way to cure short sightedness, to the solution the dangers inherent in tap water. 

Added to which many of those reading the News of the World’s Household Guide and Almanac would have grown to maturity against an absence of “free medical care at the point of access” and so would have turned  to Mr. Henry J River’s solution to “Weak Nerves, Worry, Depression, Sleeplessness, Fears, Shyness, and Blushing”, of that promise to “Calm those jaded Nerves” with “Dr. Niblett’s Nerve Sedative”.

And it is easy to forget that for most of the population even the cost of a visit to the doctor was a visit too far.

So, while I can smile at those “’Pick me Up’ Tablets” and sometimes rage at the quackery and exploitation of those who were too poor to expect better, these advertised remedies take us back to a time most of us would not like to see again.

Indeed, the protestations of some who would be happy with a totally privatised health system should be judged as an endorsement of bygone age of privilege and inequality. And they should reflect on the record numbers who in 1948 applied for a pair of NHS spectacles.  This was not because they were looking for something on the cheap but because for the first time, they were given the opportunity to correct poor or failing eyesight, banishing the need to visit Woolworths and try on pairs of glasses to till one pair allowed them to see the back wall.

Or in the case of toothache offered a visit to a professionally trained dentist, obviating that old practice of visiting the tooth puller who could be found practicing his skill in town markets across the country.

All of which means that those adverts in Debbie’s 1952 book are a powerful reminder of what we have lost and perhaps a warning about those who think the prevention and cure of ailments and diseases come in neatly packaged pills or the soothing words of a voice from the internet.

Location; 1952

Pictures; adverts from News of the World’s Household Guide and Almanac, 1952, courtesy of Debbie Cameron

*Simpson Andrew Manchester, Remembering 1914-1918, 2017

Looking out from Cross Lane ....... across the fields of Chorlton-cum-Hardy with Mr Samuel Walton

In the spring of 1877, Mr Samuel Walton would have had a fine view from his house on Cross Road out on to the fields which stretched down Beech Road.

Cross Road, 2018

He had moved in earlier that year and was the first occupant of the house built by a John Rhodes.

During that first year the annual rent for the property was £25 per year, which rose later in the next decade by three pounds.

By then Mr Walton had bought the house and moved out renting it to a succession of tenants.

I had always assumed that the houses on Cross Road dated from the early 1870s, but on being asked to do some research on one of them I discovered that they had been built in two phases.

The lower numbers were there by 1871 but the rest came along a little later.

They were some of the first new “posh” build in what was still a rural area.

Row Acre directly beside Cross Road, 1894

To the east of the long gardens of the houses on Cross Road was the large walled garden of Beech House which belonged to the Holt family along with a set of cottages which jutted out onto what we now called Beech Road.

The name Beech Road is relatively recent, before that and no doubt running back centuries it was called Chorlton Row, and by the 1840s, consisted of a few wattle and daub houses dating into the 18th century, two fine houses built in the early 1800s, a couple of farmhouses, a beer shop, the Wesleyan Chapel and the village smithy.

The Rate Books also show that Cross Road underwent a number of name changes, beginning with Cross Lane, then Cross Street and finally Cross Road.

Looking out from Cross Road, 1894, on all that was left of Row Acre

And for all those who never tire of telling the assembled crowd that Chorlton has no streets but only roads, this might seem a revelation, and one that I shall follow up with the fact that Acres Road was once Acres Street and the small stretch of road from the Chorlton Green past the Beech Inn to where there is a twist in the direction of the road was Lloyd Street.

And so back to Mr Walton and that house whose views out on Row Acre were changing.

By the late 19th century Row Acre was getting nibbled away till all that was left was a 2 acre patch bounded by Beech Road, High Lane, Cross Road and Wilton Road.

It was last ploughed in 1895 and was gifted to the people of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by the Egerton’s as a Recreational Ground.

And that is it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Cross Road, 2018, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, ploughing Row Acre, courtesy of Mr Higginbotham from the Lloyd Collection, and Row Acre, 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Sources; Census Return , Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1871-91, Rate Books, 1877-1900