Catching the bus ……….. 1967

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

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

But that is the point.

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

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

So that is it. Although Geoff reminded me "I found this for you last year. Corner of Rochdale Road and Conran Oh and  I like the picture.

Location; unknown

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

A photograph and a clue to how we used to read

I like this picture. It is not very remarkable one but that is the point. 

In a sense it is the ordinariness of the scene which is interesting.

It was taken in the May of 1959 by A Downes who spent that year walking up and down the main roads of Chorlton, stopping and recording each block of houses and shops.

This was the parade of shops on the east side of Barlow Moor Road, opposite what is now the Co-op but was once the Palais de Luxe Picture House next to Shaw’s Garages.

It must have been a sunny day but a bit on the cold side. It was that time when people still wore overcoats rather than the padded outfits which would not be out of place on the ski slopes.

And it is the other little things which mark out the period.

There is the old fashioned machine for dispensing Polo mints which could quite easily have been for chocolate or cigarettes and a decade later might have sold cartons of milk.

Then there are the two belisha beacons at the road crossing which had been introduced in the mid 1930s but are now a rarity. Add to this the headscarf and the unfamiliar looking car and the scene is complete.

But it is the small detail that captures my eye. Just at the top of the right of the picture and partially obscured is a sign for a library. Now this was then and still is a parade of shops and the municipally owned public library is a way at the other end of Chorlton.

Privately owned lending libraries were a feature of all our towns and cities until well into the 1960s.

I well remember the one that my mother visited on New Cross Road in a bookshop which was opposite Deptford Public Library. For a small fee she could borrow a selection of books.

Some of my contemporaries have similar memories. David for instance recalled
“my parents would visit it on a Saturday afternoon. They were friendly with the couple who ran it. 

There was a counter at the back of the shop and my parents would chat with the owners - for what seemed like hours. 

My brothers and I would entertain ourselves by looking at the lurid covers of pulp science fiction titles in the room at the front of the shop” while Linda remembered “visiting the small room at the back of the newsagents, Charlesworths, in Holmfirth with my mother in the 1950s. 

 I think she paid 6 pence a week for 3 romantic novels, before the County Library opened up, and she then choose her books from there as they were free.“

And there were plenty of them. Along with the one on Barlow Moor Road, Oliver remembered Mr Cuthbert who lent out books from his newsagents at 64 Sandy Lane. Thomas Cuthbert had been in business from the late 1920s and was still there thirty years later.

It would be an interesting project to chart the rise and fall of these enterprises and look to why they eventually disappeared.

Picture, of 362 Barlow Moor Road, A H Downes, May 1958, m17608, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,

http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Lost on Sidcup High Street, looking for Boots the Chemist

Now I am on a roll.

Having recently wandered up Sidcup High Street in 1961  as far as the old ABC, I back again today.

It is another picture postcard from Tuck and Son but sadly without a message on the reverse.

Still it will bring back memories for some at least with that collection of shops which include Woolworths, K Shoes and Boots.

Picture; Sidcup High Street, from the set Sidcup by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://www.tuckdb.org/

Along time in the story of a house in Eltham

Cliefden House in 1909

Now I am back at Cliefden House.

This grand 18th century property is still there on the High Street opposite Passey Place.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century.

Together this made for a large 17 roomed house which could accommodate and it has been both a private residence, and a school and now shops and offices.

I have written about it in the past and have decided on a second visit.  Now this is mainly because I want to feature a then and now set of pictures, although strictly speaking they are both then pictures.

The first dates from 1909 and the second from 1977.

Cliefen House in 1977

In the space of that time the front garden and wall have been sacrificed to the widening of the High Street and with scant disregard for such an elegant old property Granada and Frisbys Shoes set about adding the most appalling signage to the exterior.

And we may just have caught the place on a bad year for the front walls look in need of a coat of paint.

So I suppose today we have to be pleased that the present two occupants of the downstairs shops have been a little more subdued with their signs and a fresh coat of paint has been applied.

Pictures; Cliefden House in 1909 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 in 1977, courtesy of Jean Gammons

"See better days and do better things," the sad end of the Chorlton Liberal Club.

The Chorlton Liberal Club had opened in the October of 1897.

It wasn’t the first club the Liberals had had here, that was on Wilbraham Road but the new one on Manchester Road was more “commodious and suitable for the purpose.”*

Its opening was greeted “with the hope that the club would strengthen Liberalism in Chorlton-cum-Hardy” and membership figures seemed to bear this out. 

In the space of the year they had recruited another 50 members and were confident of more.  I suspect the club was only part of that success, with something also down to the influx of new people into the township.

Not that they saw it that way.  The official opening was done with a gold key and the job fell to Reuben Spencer “an old Liberal” who “hoped it would be a centre of light and leading, round which young men would be prepared to take a part in social, municipal and public life generally.”

We might jib at the emphasis on men especially as women were active in local politics and within two decades Sheena Simon was elected with a majority of over 1400 votes and 58% of the vote as the first woman Liberal councillor for Chorlton.**

Nationally the years around the opening of the club were not good for the Liberals.  They lost both the 1895 and 1900 general elections and would not be returned to office till 1906.

Locally they fared better both on the old Withington District Council and after our incorporation into the city on the Manchester City Council and by the 1920s were so evenly balanced with the Conservatives that the Manchester Guardian reported in 1928 that

“there are few wards in which Conservative and Liberal opinion is so nicely balanced.  Of the eight elections that have been fought in Chorlton since 1920 four have been won by the Conservatives and four by the Liberals.”**

But by the early 1930s the Liberals were on the defensive increasingly being squeezed by the Labour Party.

They won their last seat in 1932, saw their sitting councillor Lady Sheena Simon loose to the Conservatives the following year and after 1935 did not  contest another election  till 1946 by which time they had slipped to third place.***

I suspect this might have also been reflected in the state of the club which I remember as a slightly dowdy place by the 1970s.

All of which was a great shame.  It had been a private residence before becoming a club and I rather think might have been built sometime in the 1880s.  It last occupants had been the Lloyd family who where there in 1891.

It remained an impressive building and gained a new lease of life after the fire in the 1980s when it became the Lauriston Club.

And now with the close of the club it is again a residential property.

Pictures; the Liberal Club after the fire from the Lloyd collection, undated

*Liberalism at Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Manchester Guardian, October 11, 1897
**Not that she was the first woman councillor here in Chorlton, that was Jane Redford elected in 1910.  She was not a Liberal but styled herself a Progressive Candidate and must have been close enough to the Liberal outlook to ensure they never put up a candidate against her or other Progressives.
**The Chorlton By-Election, Manchester Guardian December 18, 1928
*** Local election results 1904-1949, compiled by Lawrence Beedle

Off to the seaside in the 1930s

Now if you are of a certain age you will remember the works outing to the seaside and the variation which were organised by the local pubs.

In my case it was a boozy day out to Brighton for the employees of Glenton Tours, and I guess because numbers were a tad low Dad asked me if I wanted to go and also if I wanted to bring some friends.

And so that was how at the tender age of 15 I went on my first “Beano” or “Jolly.”

What they all had in common was that they ended up at the seaside, involved numerous stops for “refreshments”, “comfort pull ins”, more refreshments and somewhere along the way a meal.

In most cases you paid for the trip in instalments, travelled by motor coach set off early in the morning returning late at night.

And the benefits of the sea air and countryside were slightly negated by the enormous amounts of beer and cigarettes consumed on the journey but what fun they were.

In an age before paid holidays and when the annual leave from work was little more than a week and a bit a day out with friends and family was an important occasion.

They would be remembered for years after and the stories of those left behind along with the raunchy seaside entertainment would be told and retold becoming ever more outrageous and funny with each retelling.

I was reminded of all this by two photos from the collection of Ken Fish which date from the 1920s or 30s.

Both convey that mix of fun, excitement and anticipation at the trip ahead, and are an important record of the day away.

And long before the coach it was the horse drawn charabanc, but that is for another time.

Pictures; from the collection of Ken Fisher, date unknown

*The day the photographer took the picture of the charabanc, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/day-photographer-took-picture-of.html

A lost house, an old bridge ..... and a scene that has passed out of living memory, Barlow Moor Road in the summer of 1909

Barlow Moor Road Bridge, 1909

We are looking at a stretch of Barlow Moor Road that has now passed out of living memory.  The picture was taken in 1909 and captures a time when we were still a little rural.

Away to our right across the Brook and over the fields is  half hidden by the trees is Lime Bank Cottage.

Sadly the building to our left has not survived which is a shame because it is one of those that would have unlocked a bit of our history.

It was built sometime between the late 1780s and 1818 and was a fine nine  roomed house set in a large garden and orchard with views across the fields. 

Brook Bank House

In the 1840s it commanded a rateable value of £58 which put it amongst one of the most expensive properties in the township.  And throughout its history the occupants appear to have been well heeled.

In 1841 Elizabeth Whitelegg described herself as of “independent” means, while her son was a cotton dealer.  

A decade later the Heywwod brothers and sisters were also able to rely on an inherited income, and at the time of our picture, William Henry Foxwell owned his own engineering export business.

This makes Brook Bank important in the story of Chorlton.  There were only handful of these comfortable properties in the township and today only two have survived of which one lies empty with half its roof missing.

And given that all the homes of working people from the first half of the 19^th century have also vanished this just leaves a few of the farm houses of which only two come close to resembling the originals.

Across the fields with Hough End Hall in the distance

Which leaves us just this tantalizing glimpse through the trees of Brook Bank on a summer’s day in 1909.

But that is not quite the end of the story.

We are on Barlow Moor Road just before the bridge was rebuilt and for all its idyllic appearance the road and the surrounding land was about to be transformed.

Already the developers and builders had been busy. Just behind our house and only partly hidden by a green house and out houses were the semi detached properties of Claude and Reynard Road, while to the north a line of tall houses stretched up to Beech Road and beyond the Brook plans were a foot to construct Chorltonville.

Picture; Barlow Moor Road Bridge, J Jackson, 1909, m17447, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

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

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

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

Location; the River



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

A little bit of Manchester in Holland, and another bit in a garden in Chorlton-cum-Hardy

I am looking at a picture of the Manchester Assize Courts which I have added to the collection.

It was donated by my old friend David Harrop, who is a collector of all things posty.

The Courts were designed by Alfred Waterhouse and finished in 1864.

Sadly, this magnificent building did not last a century and after being hit during the blitz of December 1940 and again in ’41 it was demolished in 1957.

Some of the exterior sculptures were designed by Thomas Woolner who was one of the founding members of the Pre Raphaelite-Brotherhood, and others was the were of the Irish stonemason firm of O’Shea and Whelan.

But more of them in a minute.

For now, it is the postcard itself which interests me, and in particular the message on the back, which is in Dutch and begins, “Congratulations on your birthday We have a pleasant one ………….”

And here I have to credit Google translate, which over the years has allowed me to appear semi proficient in a host of languages.  And what makes the card that bit more interesting is that it appears to have been produced for the Dutch market, given that the printed word postcard is also in Dutch.

Not that I should be surprised at that.  F. Firth, like Raphael Tuck and other companies marketed their postcards across Europe and beyond.

But I like the idea of a little bit  of Manchester somewhere in Holland, and …………. with a smile at the contrived link that follows, I like the fact that for many years one of the stone figures from the Manchester Assize Court adorned a garden in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

The garden was part of Park Brow Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane where it joins St Werburghs Road.

My friend Tony Walker maintained that it came from the old Manchester Assize Courts on Great Ducie Street in Strangeways and looking at pictures of the building the figures do look the same.

And it has led me to more than a few stories about the farm, the Assize Courts and just what people put in to their gardens. *

Location; Manchester, Amsterdam, and Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; The Assize Courts, 1898, from the collection of David Harrop, and stone figure in the garden of Park Brow Farm, 1988 from the collection of Tony Walker


*One stone statue ........ late of Park Brow Farm and the Assize Courts .......... makes its way into Cheshire and on “down south”, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2016/06/one-stone-statue-late-of-park-brow-farm.html

A film star, a fish market and a bit of speedway, Britannia of Billingsgate … 1933

Now we can all have slow days, which is how I came to roam the database of old postcards hosted by Tuck DB.*

And having viewed their selection from Italy, I idly typed in film stars, and was rewarded with a rich collection from the 1930s.

Most I had never heard of and so on a whim I went for Kay Hammond, who was born in 1909 and made a series of films through the 1930s as well as appearing on the stage.  

She played  Elvira Condomine, in Blythe Spirit and acted in her last film in 1961, and featured in 24 films in her career of which 19 were made between 1933 and 1936, and of these the one that caught my eye was Britannia of Billingsgate.

If like me you are both a Londoner and someone who grew up in the 1950s and early 60s, Billingsgate Fish Market will be a special place.  It was located by the Thames, close to the Tower of London and the Monument and I passed it regularly on my way to the Tower.

Even at 10’o clock in the morning, long after the market had all but closed the smell of fish lingered in the air along with the odd remnants of discarded fish parts which had yet to be cleared away from gutters.

So I had no option but to look up Britannia of Billingsgate which was released in 1933, and as you do steal the sleave notes from the BFI’s introduction to the film.

“A star is born (or at least found) in a fish and chip shop, in this effervescent musical comedy that jaunts between the cloth caps of Billingsgate Fish Market and the top hats and heady glamour of the film world. Things have never looked so good for Billingsgate chippy owner Bessie Bolton (Violet Loraine) after she is presented with the opportunity of becoming the singing sensation of the silver screen - Shepherd's Bush style.

Violet Loraine had been a music hall star since the early 1900s, but was here returning to showbiz after a break of more than a decade. The film also features an early role for John Mills. The studio where Bessie gets her big break is the Shepherd's Bush Studios belonging to the production company, the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. The cinema where Bessie's film is premiered is the Gaumont Palace in Hammersmith - now the concert venue the Hammersmith Apollo”.*

It is a mix of “glamour”, some iffy scenes of working class life, but is still a wonderful watch and is free to see on the BFI web site.

Location; London, 1933

Pictures; Kay Hammond, Violet Lorraine, Gordon Harker, and John Mills, marketed by Tuck and Son in the series A GAUMONT-BRITISH PICTURE, STAR, PLAYER or FILM (scenes from movie), cards numbered 150-199, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/ 

*Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/ 

**Britannia of Billingsgate, BFIPlayer, https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-britannia-of-billingsgate-1933-online

Back at that shop on Manchester Road

I wonder how many people remember visiting Whitegg’s the grocer’s shop after its makeover in 1961.

Now I am fairly confident that there will be quite a few people given that yesterday’s story about the shop brought forth a shed full of memories.*

I have long wondered if there was a connection between the Whitelegg family that ran the Bowling Green and another Whitelegg who was the tenant farmer at Red Gates Farm further down Manchester Road.

It was a bit of research I never took further.

But then Andy Robertson sent me two pictures of the building as it looks today and pointed me towards a photograph taken in 1958.

And that was enough to set a story going and as they it is a tale which will run and run because Andy is back with another old picture and a bit of research.

It seems that this picture dating from 1961 was taken during the alterations to the shop and led Andy to ponder on the chap in white.

He suggested I "check out  the man in white coat who looks very grocer-like, could well be Thomas Whitelegg who was born in 1916 and looks just the right in 19161.

His parents were Thomas Whitelegg, Maggie Robertson who were married in 1910 and also ran a grocery and confectionary shop at 17 Hope Road Sale.

Thomas Whitelegg senior was the son of Joseph (1860-1944), a grocer and milk dealer, born Manchester.

And there the continuity breaks down because Joseph’s father and grandfather were cabinet makers from Manchester.”

Of course like all good researchers Andy is careful to point out that he could be wrong but concludes that “it all looks promising.”

Which indeed it does and along the way rules out my theories but offers up some fascinating new lines of inquiry, leaving me only  to quote from my favourite Fu Man Chu film “the world has not heard the last of this.”

Actually he said “the world has not heard the last of me” but that didn’t fit.

So before I get too silly I shall just add that Mr Thomas Whitelegg is listed as the shop keeper in 1969 and so will in all probability be the chap looking on at the conversion and will also be the chap who served so many of those customers who have remembered the place with fondness.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Research; Andy Robertson

Pictures; No 61 alteration of shop front, A H Downes, 1961, m18076, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the shop entrance, 2016 from the collection of Andy Robertson

* In search of Whitelegg's on the corner of Manchester Road and Oswald Lane, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/in-search-of-whiteleggs-on-corner-of.html

The story of a strike and of strikes yet to come, part two .... a Chorlton postcard

On Newton street in July 1911

The Carters came out on strike in Manchester at the beginning of July 1911. 

It was the picture of police escorting a strike breaker which first caught my interest and led to the first story yesterday.

But they were not the first or the last during the next few years to withdraw their labour to advance a demand for better pay and conditions.

Early in 1912 the miners had come out following a ballot “in favour of giving notice to establish the principle of a minimum wage for every man and boy working underground,”* and at the beginning of March Manchester Municipal workers voted to follow those of Stalybridge, Salford and Stockport and strike for higher pay.

You can get a sense of the mounting conflict from the newspapers of the period. The Manchester Guardian was quick to comment on the concerns over coal stocks in the Greater Manchester area just weeks after the miners had come out, and carried reports that in Nottingham the bakers and painters were about to go on strike while in Manchester there was serious disruption to the rail network.

Leonard's fears

And here in Chorlton on the day the Guardian reported that 60% of trains from one Manchester railway station had been “knocked off” Leonard wrote to a friend of his worries about his mother’s illness and that “all our staff intend to come out on strike this weekend.”

Now it may never be possible to discover the business that he ran or what happened on Friday March 15th when the strike was due to start, but I shall endeavour to try.

He was “busy making arrangements to fill their places” and thought that “this Coal crisis ..... is a terrible affair.” 

All of which rather eclipsed his pleasure that at the Parliamentary bye-election earlier in the year “our man got in (Good old Blue) turned a liberal majority from over 2,000 to a conservative one of 500, great excitement.”

It is a fascinating glimpse on how people here in Chorlton looked out on the mounting political and industrial unrest and sadly represents the only comment we have so far.

As it was the strikes rumbled on through the year, but more about them tomorrow.

Picture; detail of a postcard sent on March 12th 1912 from the Lloyd collection, detail from the Carter's strike, courtesy of the Greater Manchester Police Museum

*Balllot paper issued by the Miner’s Federation of Great Britain, January 1912

A Chorlton wedding in the April of 1913 and a tiny mystery

I doubt I would ever have got to know about Mr Hugget Billing and Miss Vivien Horsfall Attwood if it weren’t for Sally’s wedding photograph.

The couple were married at St Clements Church in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on April 16th 1913, and on that Wednesday the Manchester Courier was on hand to record the event which according to the paper was “crowded.”

And I think that may have been down to Vivien’s father who was a journalist and newspaper editor.

As such he will have been well known, added to which the family had lived in Chorlton on Cavendish Road from at least 1901 and so I guess there would have been plenty of local well wishers.

Mr Herbert Huggins Billing was a salesman who had been born in Rusholme, lived in Ancoats and in 1911 was residing in Longsight.

The couple settled in Chorlton and lived at 42 Claude Road.  Vivien died in 1930 and Herbert Huggins fourteen years later.

In time I will delve deeper into their stories.  I know they had two daughters and just before his death Vivien’s father was living opposite them at number 55 Claude Road.

Of course all such research runs the danger of becoming intrusive especially if there are direct living relatives and so I am minded to concentrate on what their lives might tell us about Chorlton and Manchester during the first half of the 20th century.

The records of how much all three left when they died reveal something of their financial background and a future hunt will tell us which paper Vivien’s father edited, and in time I might solve the little mystery of why her parents and her husband are all buried in Southern Cemetery but she is missing from the family plot.

That maybe because she died at Oakmore in Cheshire but I can’t be sure.

That said even I have to own up to a little curiosity and wonder why Miss Attwood gave her age as 28 in 1913 when she was in fact 31.



Picture; A Chorlton Wedding, the Manchester Courier, April 17 1913, from the collection of Sally Dervan

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 44 ........ Bradley Street .... those back to backs and a car park

Now I have been visiting Bradley Street for a very long time.

Bradley Street in 1983

It runs from Faraday Street up to Ancoats Street and draws me back because of the three one up one down properties which back on to the far grander row of terraced houses on Lever Street.

They could have been lost to us but were saved and converted into offices.

Over the years I have looked into their history, trawling the census returns for the people who lived in them.

The same stretch, 2016

When I first came across them in the early 1990s they were empty and pretty derelict.  In one of the three the decades of wall paper were slowing peeling away from the wall revealing forty years of changing design.

As for the rest of Bradley Street most of it is just a car park.

But a bit of it has undergone one of those dramatic changes and is now enclosed by a building which occupies the southern end of the street.

I remember this section as an open space where buses parked up and with views from Spear Street across to Lever Street.

And then some time in 2008 the area was fenced off and by 2011 a big new development had filled the void.

Looking down the south side of Bradley Street, 2016

I have to admit that when I passed it recently I gave it no more than a glance but that would be to ignore a bit of history.

So as you do I wandered in and came out on Faraday Street which was originally Friday Street.

And that is about it except to say you should never neglect wandering the city accompained by a camera, a notebook and forewarned by the most up today announcements from the planning department of new applications to build and develop bits of our streets.


Location; Manchester

Picture; one up one down cottages in Bradley Street, 1983 from the Early Manchester Dwellings Group and Bradley Street 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

At the Woolwich Hippodrome sometime between 1907 and 1916

I missed the music halls by just a few decades.

They were a mix of popular songs, comedy, and speciality acts and lasted from the 1850s till I guess the 1960s, although I am sure in some small towns and sea side resorts the shows lingered on for a little while longer.

And continued also on the club circuit in the North so while the Hulme Hippodrome might have closed there was still the Princess Club in Chorlton, the Golden Garter in Wythenshawe and Sharston Labour Club to name but three.

But even these were not haunts of mine.  But for my father and grandparents they were regular places to go on a Saturday night.

I still treasure the smile on Nana’s face as she recounted seeing Max Millar sometime in the 1950s at the Derby Hippodrome and quietly confiding that “he was so dirty.”

But the Derby Hip’ closed in 1959 having reopened as a variety theatre after the last war. Before that it had fallen like so many into a cinema conversion as did the Woolwich Hippodrome which dominated Wellington Street between 1900 and 1923.

It was an impressive brick building dressed in stone and ran to three stories.   An iron canopy bearing the name of the theatre covered the steps leading up to the central entrance.

Another canopy continued along the sidewall with a sign across its face reading TWICE NIGHTLY AT 6.40 & 9.10. More signage appeared above the canopy reading WMF GRANT & CO. TWICE NIGHTLY also appears at the top of the side wall.

And in our picture the signs advertise Will Evans who according to some was one of our finest comedians and Pantomime stars and was the author of many sketches and songs.

Sadly there is little on him and nothing about his appearance at the Woolwich Hippodrome.

And as for the Woolwich Hippodrome, its life as a variety hall was just 23 years but as a cinema it fared even worse, closing in 1939 when it was demolished to make way for a new cinema which with the outbreak of war was not built until 1955.

Picture; the Woolwich Hippodrome, date unknown

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ...... nu 67 walking down Gun Street in 1851

Now this is another one of the walks I would like to have taken in the spring of 1851.

It would have started just past New Cross, where Great Ancoats Street joined Oldham Road and Swan Street and running from Bond Street, crossed George Street, Blossom Street and finished at Jersey Street.

It is still there today, a narrow street, dominated by tall modern buildings a few workshops which long ago lost any entrances onto the road and some open spaces.

In total I don’t suppose it would have taken more than five minutes to walk its length in the 1850s, but in that short time there would have been all that the curious spectator might have wanted to observe.

For here were small terraced properties, the dark and secretive courts hidden from view and plenty of pubs and beer shops.

Gun Street in 1901

Here too was a cross section of the city’s working population from skilled journeyman to shop keeper, textile worker and a heap of unskilled labour.  And reminding us that Manchester still moved courtesy of the horse Gun Street had a blacksmith.  Perhaps even more surprising was that in that year of 1851 there was still a handloom weaver and an agricultural labourer.

In total there were 384 people living in just 63 houses with some crammed into the cellars.  The rents ranged from 1 shilling 6d to 4 shillings and 6d when a factory girl might earn between 7 and 9 shillings, a week a labourer 18 shillings and a police constable 20 shillings.

And along that short street you could have heard the accents of the rural north as well as London, and the Midlands but dominating all would have been that of the Irish, for here amongst our 384 inhabitants were 235 from Ireland and only 125 from Manchester.**

And as you would expect there is much more than we could uncover, from poor sanitation, adulterated food, the large numbers of pubs and beer shops and those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

But all that is for later.  Instead I shall leave you with the thought that had you tired of Gun Street and returned to New Cross you chanced at best a rowdy noisy meeting place and at worst a venue for popular discontent.

For most of the last half century, there had been protests and like that of April 1812 in Oldham Road at New Cross when a food cart carrying food for sale at the markets in Shudehill was stopped and its load carried off.

Nearby shops were also attacked and looted.  The mob was eventually dispersed by soldiers but only as far as Middleton.  There they met with an assembly of handloom weavers, miners and out of work factory operatives gathered to protest against the introduction of power loom machinery at Barton and Sons weaving mill.

The mob which had grown to 2000, was dispersed by “A party of soldiers , horse and foot, from Manchester arriving, pursued those misguided people, some of whom made a feeble stand; but here again death was the consequence, five of them being shot and many severely wounded.”    

While after the events at Peterloo in 1819 the military and the local police patrolled the streets like some occupying force, and in the early evening with tensions still high a large crowd gathered at New Cross.

Gun Street in 2011

Some of the crowd began throwing stones at the police and soldiers opened fire.  Before the crowd had dispersed, Joseph Ashworthy had been killed and several others lay injured.  Not surprisingly many of those injured in this event came from that close network of streets around Gun Street.


Location; Manchester


Pictures; part of Gun Street from the OS map of Manchester, 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Gun Street from Blossom Street, A Bradburn, 1901  M11341, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Gun Street from Blossom Street 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Rate Books
**1851 census

Remembering Kingspot on Barlow Moor Road

Kingspot, circa 1980s

I went looking for pictures of Kingy today.

It was just one of those places we took for granted and long before Pound Shops it was somewhere you could get a bargain.

Here could be found everything from washing pegs, to happy colourful toys and that fabulous print of the San Francisco Bridge at sunset.

Much of what was on offer was plastic and sometimes I wondered whether they had their own plastic factory somewhere east of Hong Kong.

A post box and a sun shade, May 1959

So it was no surprise that Kingspot was always full and getting round the shop could be a challenge which often involved avoiding the buggies, and shopping trollies as you worked you way down the two isles looking for a washing up bowl and ending up instead with two plastic imitation Flying Ducks to hang above the plastic water fountain.

Our kids always seemed to be in their usually when the latest craze for BB guns hit Chorlton which I suspect followed a few days after a new consignment of cheap toys had arrived from China.

It was no different from when I was growing up.  Back then there seemed to be the regular season for marbles, cap guns and fag cards which on reflection also coincided with the latest shipment of cheap toys from abroad.

In its way Kingy was just a shop version of the market stall, but as we don’t have an old fashioned market in Chorlton this place did the business.

Sitting in the sun,April 1959

It was for a while an institution and there will be many of a certain age with fond memories of the place.

So far only the one picture of the shop has come to light and so I thought I would contrast it with a time before those plastci toys and pegs and pictures were available.

And so here are two taken in the spring of 1959 by Mr Downs who was responsible for many other fine pictures of Chorlton in the 1950's

Shirt sleeves and overcoats on that April day

It was clearly a bright day and some at least of the shop keepers had those canvas sheets over the front of the windows which performed the double task of protecting the display and advertising the business.

Bright as it may have been some waiting by the bus station had opted not to trust that April sun and walked out in overcoat and head scarf.

Others however were just sitting watching events pass by.



Now I first posted the story without that picture of Kingspot and I have Wendy to thank for pointing that it

was already there on the Chorlton facebook site and to Brian who gave me permission to use it  all of which goes to show the power of social networks

And just ours after this story was posted Jean Kingsberry left a new comment Which deserved to be included in the text.

"Thank you for your kind comments.

We rented 360 Barlow Moor Road for 21 years before we were able to buy it.

The flat above was our first home when we got married in 1970, we sold in 2005. My mother-in-law, Eileen lived there from 1972 until she passed away.

Many remember her and the several small dogs she took for walks over the years.

All the family worked in that branch at some time. My father-in-law, Harry, my husband, Keith, our son Craig and daughter Andrea.We retired in 2008, after selling our last shop in Urmston, and now live in Cyprus."

Location; Manchester

Pictures, Kingspot, circa 1980's courtesy of Brian Lee Williams, east side of Barlow Moor Road, May 1959, m17609, and west side by the bust terminus, April 1959, 17610, A H Downs, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Ki-ora, a choc ice and Bambi ...... the lost picture houses of Plumstead no 1

Now a while ago I set down a challenge to find some of our lost cinemas, and quick as a flash Tricia came back with a first and the promise to find more.

So here is what she said and what I know about the Cinematographe in Plumstead High Street.

The Cinematographe

“That sort of challenge is right up my street Andrew. 

I will dig out my many maps of Plumstead & Woolwich & find one for 1913. The first time I ever went to the pictures was at the Cinematographe in Plumstead High Street although it was called the Plaza in the 1950's. 

I saw Bambi, I still remember sitting there sobbing when his mummy died. 

The Plaza was more or less where Iceland is now. It had one screen & seated 528 people. The second time 

And just before i it was demolished in 2012

I went to the pictures was to see Tom Thumb at the Century Cinema which although was classed as being on Plumstead High Street it was set back and  I think the entrance was in Garibaldi Street. 

That was a larger cinema than the Plaza although it still only had one screen and seated 913. 

It closed in 1960 after which the building was many things, in 2012 it was demolished & is now flats. The images are of the Century the second image after it closed but before it was demolished.”

And that I think has set me off on a new series, Lost cinemas of Plumstead, which might well become Lost cinemas of south east London.**

Location; Plumstead

Pictures; from the collection of Tricia Lesley

*Off to the “flicks” in the winter of 1913 and a challenge for today https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/off-to-flicks-in-winter-of-1913-and.html

**Lost cinemas of Plumstead, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lost%20cinemas%20of%20Plumsted 
Lost cinemas of south east London. https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lost%20cinemas%20of%20south%20east%20London

Lost in Paris …. four decades ago

It is a simple rule which in the past I seldom adhered to.

Busy streets, 1981

And that is …. always record where you were when you took a picture.

At the window, 1981

All of which means that these images of Paris could be anywhere in that city.

The best I can say is that we stayed somewhere in Montmartre in one of those “bijou” little hotels, high on charm, often a tad shabby and relatively cheap.

I was there with one of my sisters and because it was the summer and we were both at a loose end we decided on an adventure in that "City of Lights”.

Neither of us had been there and it all seemed exciting which it was.

In my case a train from Manchester to London, staying in the family home in Eltham.

Then the two of us travelled down to the coast, whizzed across on the Hovercraft, and picked up another train for the Gare du Nord.

And the rest is a long weekend in Paris in August.

Somewhere, 1981

It was hot, we were hot, all of which was confirmed the decision of those Partisans who can quit the city was a sound idea.

As I recalled we did the tourist bits and along the way took in lots that were off the tourist trail.

What is now remarkable but wasn’t then was that it was all done by an old-fashioned travel agent.  He did the lot, booked the various tickets, reserved the hotel which was all done from the office next to Chorlton Post Office.

Anyone who remembers Simpson’s travel agent will remember a place full of posters advertising excursions by train, mystery tours by coach, and those all in one packaged holidays to places hot.

Passing the time, 1981

Location; Paris

Pictures; unknown and unremembered places in Paris, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Summer days in south Manchester No 3 the Chorlton Peace Festival 1984

It is an event I have visited before, but it is well worth another outing.*

It was at the height of the second Cold War when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place.

Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

So there we were in the Rec on a hot day listening to music, engaged in some politics but above all just relaxing with friends and family.

And having posted the story someone left a comment who helped organise the event and reminded me that there had been a badge designed for the event, which I have, and decided to update the piece with a picture.

It was a designed by Jim De Santos.

Location; The Rec

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, and Andrew Simpson

*Dangerous times and peaceful protests, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/dangerous-times-and-peaceful-protests.html