The lives behind the doors ….. numbers 2-14 St Andrew’s Square

Now, it has become quite popular to take a house and tell its story over time.

St Andrew's Square, 1849

Long before a certain television series did just that with a property in Liverpool, I had done the same for our house in Chorlton, along with the two I grew up in, in south east London, and the home of our Josh and Polly who live in Leicester.

And over the years I have dipped into the history of heaps of houses, including Homer Street and Coronation Square, both of which were in Ancoats and which were developed in the late 1830s.

Back then the area was just beginning to change from what one account described as a place “of fields [where] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” *

Within a generation the fields had been covered with mills, factories, foundries and dye works along with mean terraced housing and the Medlock began its long association with filth and pollution.

The area, 1819

And so to the challenge laid down by Bob and Del Amato to find out about what was there on the site of what is now their business. **

The warehouse of Amato Food Products stands on what was once a row of fourteen terraced houses which faced St Andrew’s Church. 

I can’t be exactly sure when the square was developed, but the church was opened in 1831 but by 1839 the properties show up in the rate books.

Eighteen years earlier according to Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

St Andrew's Square, no 2 at the bottom, 2021

But the 14 properties along the southern side of the square were a cut above their neighbours .

The houses consisted of five rooms and they commanded a weekly rent of just over 5 shillings, which is higher than the surrounding streets.

And many of the residents were drawn from the skilled working class, including a railway clerk, a tailor, a dressmaker and a bookkeeper, along with a salesmen, painter and book keeper.

Their origins were as varied as their occupations with a fair few having come from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Lakes, with others from Cheshire as well as Salford.

I could have picked any of the 14 homes but ended choosing no. 2 St Andrew’s Square for no other reason than it was the first in the row as entered the square from St Andrew’s Street.

Today it is the western end of the Amato warehouse, but in 1851 it was home to Mr. and Mrs. Cruickshank, and their five children, Elizabeth, May, Emma William and James.

Mr. Cruickshank was 43 years old, had been born in Manchester and gave his occupation as a Miller.  His wife Hannah was three years younger and was from Salford.  Three of the children were born in Chorlton on Medlock and the youngest in Oldham, and despite the fact that they ranged in age from 20 down to 13, only William who 15 is listed as working.

Looking east along the square, 2021

I doubt that any of them had attended the school at the other end of the square but certainly some of the children from the other houses will have done.  

The school appeared in an earlier blog story but deserves to be revisited.***

What is interesting is that the square does not appear in the street directories until the beginning of this century, by which time our house was occupied by Samuel Boole who was a labourer for Manchester Corporation, his wife Ethel, their five children and Ethel’s mother.  

Like many families of the period, they appear to have moved across the city, and we can track their movement by where their children were born. The eldest of the children was born in Chorlton-on Medlock and the rest in Ancoats.

In time I shall dig deeper into the stories of both the Boole family and the Cruickshank’s, as well  the occupants of the other thirteen houses.

Inside the warehouse, 2021

All of which just leaves me to ponder on what remains may lie below the warehouse.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s Square, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, and St Andrew’s Square in 1849, OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49,  and the area in 1919 from Johnson's map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/

***Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/looking-for-lost-one-street-over-time_7.html

When no trains ran from Chorlton railway station

Now I featured the story before of when flooding stopped the trains at Chorlton Railway Station.

But Andy Robertson just passed over this picture from his collection in 1954 and so here is a little of that story with this picture.

After “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

*When flooding stopped the trains, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/when-flooding-stopped-trains.html

**Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

Picture; Chorlton Railways Station 1954 from the collection of Andy Robertson

On Eltham High Street in the 1930s

I am back on the High Street sometime in the 1930s, and this is Joan Wilcox behind the counter of the newsagents run by her parents.

The shop was at number 36 and I have to thank her daughter Lesley for permission to reproduce the image.

There will be many who like me remember these traditional shops with the glass cabinets, sturdy wooden counters and much more.

I am hoping that it will bring forth more pictures and perhaps a few memories.

Like those of the old 1950s Woolworths with their heavy island counters wooden floors and that sweet smell I have never been able to track down.

And it may have been pure chance but I seem to remember that when ever we went in we were greeted with the sound of Apache by the Shadows.

Picture; Joan Wilcox, from This is Eltham, http://www.thisiseltham.co.uk/

If you go down to the woods today* …….or Wednesday in Stockport

So, yes, I know Jimmy Kennedy’s line on going down to the woods is a lyric too far for Stockport Interchange, but there are trees, and bushes as well as a roof top garden all slowing maturing after a year.

And it is a popular place, and not just with people catching buses.

When I was there this week there were people using it as a meeting place, with some just sitting outside taking in the sun and more than a few just pausing between arriving and moving off into the town centre.

And there was even a couple with a picnic, or to be very accurate, a flask, some sandwiches and two cream cakes.  Still not sure if the hamper was meant to be eaten at the end of the destination or a sort of elevenses between breakfast and dinner.

Or perhaps it was destined for the roof garden with the an afternoon taking in views of the trains crossing the viaduct.

Now over the years I have stood in a heap of bus stations, some more desolate than others, and a few quite threatening, none compare with Stockport’s which has been designed with flair, imagination and style.

It replaces the old one which did the biz for 40 years and has that advantage that you can keep dry while waiting and is light and welcoming.

And according to my wikipedia so pleased was everyone with the Interchange that the public  were allowed access weeks before the official completion in the Sping of  2024, and mighty happy they were.

I leave others to add detailed comments on the walking and cycling links, the rooftop park, the 18 bus stands with the capacity to accommodate 164 bus departures per hour, cycle storage facilities and the travel shop which I used to talk to a very helpful member of staff who confirmed that the railway station was closed.

But that is another story.

Location; Stockport Interchange

Pictures; buses people and architecture, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*If you go down in the woods today,

You're sure of a big surprise.

If you go down in the woods today,

You'd better go in disguise.

For every bear that ever there was

Will gather there for certain because

Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic. Teddy Bears' Picnic, melody written 1907, John Walter Bratton, , lyrics by Jimmy Kennedy, 1932

**Stockport Interchange, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockport_Interchange

Pushing water up a hill …… looking for Mr. Mills in 1851

 Sometimes you know you are on a loser, but a mix of curiosity and a bit of stubbornness allied to the sheer fascination of digging deep into the past won’t allow you to stop.

John Broome and Jonathan Mills, 1828

And so it was with John Broome and Jonathan Mills who I first came across in a court case in 1828.

They were alleged to have taken part in a very nasty piece of vindictive bullying against a fellow apprentice in the Soho Iron Works in New Islington.

So far I haven’t been able to find out their fate at the Quarter Sessions only that they had both been ordered to find “sureties of £20 each to answer to any indictment at the sessions which having found, they were discharged”.*

Now £20 was a lot of money and there is no indication as to how they raised it.

But that was enough to set me off.

Not that I expected I would find out much.

After all we were dealing with two young men in 1828, who might not have lived long enough to make it into either the 1841 or 1851 census, and who any way could have moved away from Manchester or just slipped through the historical records.

Arthur Street, 1851

And it wasn’t a promising start because there wete plenty of John Broome’s in Manchester in the 1850s, but none quite fitted the profile.

Johnathan Miller was a tad different, because I found a Johnathan Miller on both the 1851 census in the Rate Books. This Mr. Mills gave his occupation as “Mechanic” and his age of 42 would have meant he was 19 in 1828, so just possibly still an apprentice.  

6 Arthur Street, 1901

He was living at 12 Arthur Street with his wife and three children in the heart of Ancoats, surrounded by textile mills engineering works and other industrial premises, all of which used machine power and in turn would have employed mechanics.

The family had been there from at least 1845 and were still there eight years later.  A decade later the family on Ashton New Road in Audenshaw and he described himself as a “labourer in a Chemical works”.  

I doubt we will ever now why he slipped down from a skilled job to being a labourer and while it is attractive to speculate it will not get us anywhere.

Of course this whole trail is based at present on two census returns and the assumption that this is our man, and that is a big assumption.

But the search did reveal a little bit about Arthur Street, which was bounded on two side by the River Medlock and on a third side by a railway viaduct and was located to the south of Fairfield Street closes to London Road Railway Station. 

It is now under the new development which is Mayfield. 

The family were paying a weekly rent of 3/8d and the maps of the period and a series of photographs taken around 1900 suggest that they were two up two down terraced properties.

Back of 6 Arthur Street, 1901

So a step up from the back to backs which many occupied but sufficiently close to the river and heavy industry to have offered little in the way of green verdant pastures.

And there the search for Jonathan Mills peters out,  reminding us that even if this is our man plenty of that water has flown back down the hill to make him and his family pretty obscure.

Location; Manchester in the mid 19th century

Pictures; extract from the Manchester Guardian, 1828, deatil of Adhead’s map of Manchester in 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/, the site in 2023, courtesy of Goggle Maps, and 6 Arthur Street, m10771, Back of 6 Arthur Street, Bradburn A,m10771, Back of 6 Arthur Street, Bradburn A,m10772 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Arthur Street, now part of the Mayfield development, 2023

*Manchester Guardian, July 5th 1828

In Stockport with a bit of history ……

 Well, less the history and more the successor to Stockport’s bus station which after 40 years of receiving and sending buses out across Greater Manchester shut up shop at 3.15 am on August 29th, 2021.

Information Centre, 2025

I would like to say I was there with a tear in my eye and an old unused bus ticket, but I wasn’t.

Busy morning, 2025

Nor was I there when its reincarnation welcomed travellers in March 2024.

My Wikipedia tells me that “Stockport Interchange is a transport hub in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. As well as a bus station, it includes walking and cycling links, a rooftop park, and a mixed use residential and commercial building.

The interchange includes an accessible, covered passenger concourse with seated waiting areas, 18 bus stands with the capacity to accommodate 164 bus departures per hour, cycle storage facilities and a travel shop.

The development also includes a 2-acre landscaped park on its roof, located above the bus station. Following a public vote, it was named Viaduct Park. 

A brace of buses, 2025

A waterside walking and cycling route with a spiral ramp provides access from the River Mersey and the Trans Pennine Trail to the park and onward to the town centre.”*

All of which shows I missed a lot by not being there and indeed not actually going till this morning.

And there’s the rub, because I quite forgot to explore the garden, and missed making the interchange with the railway station.

If I am honest the bus station was always an after thought which just fitted into the big adventure which had been to travel into Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station from the nearest destination.

I know there are other contenders of which Ardwick and Ashburys are closer, and in the case of Ashburys there would be a sentimental link back to the days over fifty years ago when we lived off Grey Mare Lane and used the station.

Waiting, 2025

But I reasoned going to Stockport would allow me to visit the Interchange, and then take the train into the city to check out how much the skyline had changed since the 1970s.

Alas it failed to happen.

Stockport Railway Station had been closed for three weeks and wouldn’t reopen till Saturday.

And if that wasn’t enough, I discovered you had to pay 20p to use the Interchanges’ lavatory.  Now in this age of contactless payment I had long ago stopped carrying cash and was only saved by the intervention of a kindly old man who offered me the money as he left the lavatory.

So full marks Stockport’s Interchange for a magnificent bus station with its garden and fine views of the river, but perhaps it needs to revisit its policy of spending a penny and if abandoning the charge is not going to happen at least find an alternative way of paying.

Location; Stockport

Pictures; of the Interchange, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The story behind the story of an Eltham postcard

Now as everyone knows there can always be more than one story behind a picture postcard.

The first is the image on the front which in an instant tells you so much about a place in the past.

And then there is the name, address and message on the back which can be equally revealing.

The skill of the historian is to marry the two sides and tell a story, but just sometimes that story cannot be told and that is what happened to my friend Tricia who found this postcard on eBay back in September.

She told me that having found it “I did a little research on the information on the back and managed to trace the family history of the person it was sent to.”

The research led to a connection with the garage beside the church and a family who had lived in Eltham.

Tricia managed to trace the family, met up with one of them and handed over the postcard.

It would have made a compelling story but given that one of the familiy did not want the details made public Tricia quite rightly chose not to publish it.

But there is always a story in a story and for me the story is less aboutt the family and more about how one postcard in the hands of a skilled researcher can reveal much that might otherwise have been ignored or lost.

It involved Tricia's leap of imagination to use the name and search through social networking sites and then the diligence to match these against people and those listed and  then try and make contact.

And I like the final touch of Tricia's in  choosing to reunite the card with the family a full seventy seventy years after it was sent.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Church circa 1940s from the collection of Tricia Leslie

When flooding stopped the trains

It might seem a last exhausted stab at stories about Chorlton and flooding but this one is interesting and set me off on one of those little historical adventures.

The picture is undated and could be anytime in the 20th century.

There are newspaper reports of flooding on the line in 1926 and 1954 and I rather think it might be the latter, given the style of the clothes of people on the platform, but I might be wrong.

But after “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* and from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, extract from the Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

*Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

The Prince’s of Loom Street ……. lost streets of Manchester no. 97

History has not been kind to Loom Street in Ancoats or for that matter Naval Street, Cotton Street and Elizabeth Street.

Cotton Street, 2023

These were the narrow streets you would have encountered in the space between Oldham Road to the north and Great Ancoats Street to the west.

Loom Street never featured in any of the early street directories and now parts of it have been relegated to a car park while its eastern section is underneath a modern set of industrial units.

And when it did appear in the 1911 directory, the only entry is for one firm at no. 8 which was “Wansker, David, trimming manufacturers” .

All of this despite the fact that in the mid-19th century it consisted of 116 houses, many of which were small back-to-back cottages and the street let out in to 14 closed courts of various sizes.

But then I am not surprised given that a section of Blossom Street which ran parallel was renamed Naval Street, and nearby Elizabeth Street has vanished under a non-descript brick slab.

Back in the 1970s Loom Street came to the attention of the Manchester Historical Association who produced a pack of original source material about the street and focusing on one family.  

The pack was designed to be used in the classroom introducing school students to the skill of interrogating documents and using them to build a picture of life in a working class part of the city during the middle decades of the 19th century.

Loom Street and Murray's Court, 1851

I long ago lost or gave away my copy and as yet I haven’t been able to track down a replacement.  But given that the family were called Prince and they lived in Loom Street in the middle decades of the 19th century, I followed the creators of the pack and went looking for them in the census records and there they were living at no. 9 in 1851.  The Rate Books show that they occupied the house from a decade earlier and were still there in 1857.

They paid a weekly rent of 3 shillings and six pence to the estate of the Earl of Elsmere who had who had an extensive portfolio of properties in Loom Street and the surrounding streets.

I can’t be sure exactly where their house was on Loom Street but I rather think it will have been on the northern side close Cotton Street.  The houses were demolished when St Chad's School on George Leigh Street was extended south and St Michael’s Roman Catholic Church was built next door sometime around 1867. 

Loom Street and St Mary's Court, 1849

And that extension with the construction of the church resulted in the demolition of numbers 1 -9 along with a small, closed court known as Murray’s Court which only a few years earlier had been known as St Mary's Square.

All a tad confusing.  On one level I doubt the loss of these houses caused much of a stir given that some including the home of the Prince’s were small two roomed back to backs.

Murray’s Court consisted of 8 back to backs and access was through narrow passages leading off Loom and George Leigh Streets, presenting us with a location where the sun fought to penetrate the open space, and fresh air struggled against the various smells of close living.

Loom Street and St Michael's RC Church, 1894

The upside of the renovation of the buildings that replaced numbers 1-9 and Murray’s Court in 2016 has been the careful restoration of a wall memorial stone dedicated to the memory of “The Very Rev Thomas Cannon Byrne Rector 1878-1907”, which in time will offer up more research possibilities.

But alas the historical records are less forthcoming about the Prince family after 1857 and to date have offered up no details of the inhabitants of Murray’s Court.

In time something will pop up but not yet. Thomas and Hannah Prince were married in 1830 and both signed their names rather than making a mark. He gave his occupation as a spinner, and two of their five children were also engaged in the textile trade as piecers.

And had you wandered along the street in the 1850s, the majority of those who you might have met were in occupations related to the manufacturer of textiles, while others were labourers or engaged in skilled trades, like dress and makers, some bricklayers and even a Policeman.

Trying for posterity, Naval Street, 2023

Most were born in Manchester or from the surrounding towns with a few from Yorkshire and Ireland.

And few have been remembered by history, if history ever bothered to acknowledge them at all.

Leaving me just to reflect that some of the present occupants of the area have tried to leave their mark on at least one of the forgotten streets.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; Naval Street, and Cotton Street, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Loom Street in 1849 from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1849, in  1851, from  Adhead’s map of Manchester, 1851, and in 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Elm Terrace ......... the picture and the story ...... Eltham High Street in 1905

Now, I have to say that this row of terraced houses is not what you expect to see off the High Street.

And I had to think for a few minutes just where Elm Terrace is, because I don’t remember the houses and I doubt few people today will either.

Elm Terrace is of course one of those narrow little streets off the High Street, opposite the Rising Sun.

As a kid I had no reason to go down there, and the last time I ventured down it was an unremarkable place with a Chinese restaurant and not much else, although there was a bit of a ghost sign which had been exposed after a sign board had been taken down.

It is on the side of the wall of number 23 which was once Four Paws Grooming Saloon, but has been empty for a few years.

Now as everyone knows I am attracted to ghost signs and this one intrigues me because all we have left picked out in giant red lettering is ASTEL, leaving me to wait for someone with a longer memory to tell me what it referred to.

So with that cleared up, I am back to the picture, which is dated around 1905.

I say 1905, but that was when the picture postcard was sent and so the actual date it was taken maybe earlier, but not much because, Margaret writes to her aunt “that I have put a cross by our house. Mrs Smith used to live by the lamp post - the house you see at the bottom is Mrs Masson”.

These were four roomed houses and there were 23 of them in the terrace.

Our own historian Mr Gregory writing in1909 said nothing about the properties and limited himself to a speculation on the origins of the name which he thought “in all probability is derived from two old elm trees which at one time stood at the end of the road remote from the High Street.”*

Now I don’t blame him for passing over a description of the houses, at the time they would have been familiar to everyone.

As it was nine years later they do not even warrant a reference in the 1918 street directory, which confined itself to listing just William Ryde & Son, farriers, and The Eltham Public Hall which was owned by R. Smith & Company.

The line of the roof of the hall is just visible at the end of the terrace. It dated from the 1870s and was the British School but with the opening of the school at Pope Street the building was “used for meetings, concerts and similar purposes”.

As for our houses, those “on left were demolished for the Arcade development in 1930 which was only half completed when the developer went bankrupt.  The Elm Terrace Fitness Centred (opened in 1931 as an indoor market) covers the site of most of the cottages on the right except the last three, which are now used for commercial purposes”. ***

I have to say I do like the picture and more because we can identify pretty much everyone who lived here during the early 20th century using electoral registers and the census returns.

And here I must pay tribute to Tricia, who sent over the picture and did much of the research on Margaret Pocknall from which I know she was a dress maker, born in Eltham in 1877, and her family moved around Eltham and settled just round the corner in Southend Road in Elm Villas.

But I will close with one simple observation and that  even back then, a gable end invited the idle to chalk on the wall.

To which Matt K Minch went one better and posted this picture with the comment, "'Astel' I think is the remnants of the sign that said Hardcastles, this being what became of the 3 houses that survived there."

And that really is it, with thanks to Matt and Tricia who did all the research.
Location; Eltham

Picture; Elm Terrace, courtesy of Tricia Leslie, and Elm Terrace from the collection of Matt K Minch, date unknown

*Gregory, R.R.C. The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909, page 286

**ibid, Gregory, R.R.C., page 287

***Kennet, John, Eltham a Pictorial History, 1995 image 84

Defending Chorlton and Didsbury from the fury of the Mersey

Now there is a caption competition here but I leave that to the swift of mind who can call up a witty aside on the turn of a sixpence.

All I will say is that we are back in 1966 at that point on the Mersey where the new bridge crosses the river by the pub.

And not for the first time over the last few centuries work is underway on the river banks,

These have been raised and raised to protect us from the river which in the past could flood with little warning and cover the meadows in a lake which stretched for miles.

The last time this happened on our side of the Mersey was in 1912 and there are pictures of the flood water poring over the weir which had been built to protect the Duke’s Canal.

There are plenty of stories of those flash floods which during the 19th century were common enough to enter local folk lore and have been reproduced in the book on Chorlton-cum-Hardy.*

And that is about all I am going to say other than that the story of Jackson’s Boat and its many different names is covered in that book and in the latest on Chorlton’s pubs and bars.**

But I shall just finish with one last comment on the image which and has recently come to light through a new project.

Neil Simpson tells me that "the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed, is in the process of systematically scanning the 200,000+ negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on Manchester Archives+ Flickr and later on other Archives+ digital platforms.***"

*Manchester City Council Archives+ Town Hall Photographer's Collection Flickr Album...

And that is all I have to say other than a thank you to Neil and the team.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Down by the Mersey, 1966, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html 

**A new book on the pubs and bars of Chorlton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/chorlton-pubs-and-bars-book-has-arrived.html

***Manchester City Council Archives+ Town Hall Photographer's Collection Flickr Album...

My favourite Roman ........ Catullus ..... on the wireless today

I have returned to the poems of Catullus.

The 1968 edition

I first came across him in 1975, during a very messy moment at the end of a relationship.

And since then I regularly return to his poems.  

And today I am doing so with Natalie Haynes and her wonderful series Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics * which the sleeve notes tell me Catullus was 

"The brilliant Roman love poet is the poster boy for teen angst. He feels everything intensely, from the stealing of his favourite napkin to the death of his lover Lesbia's pet sparrow. And then he dies young. Of course the Romantics loved him, as do his biographer Dr Daisy Dunn and Professor Llewelyn Morgan.

The 2004 edition

Born to an aristocratic family in Verona, Catullus is fearless in abusing in sophisticated verse his father's friend Julius Caesar, his ex-lover Lesbia and the poets unlucky enough to be his contemporaries. Satirical, scurrilous and obscene, his popularity endures.

'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.

Dr Daisy Dunn is an award-winning classicist. Her books, Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, and The Poems of Catullus: A New Translation, were published in 2016 and earned her a place in the Guardian‘s list of leading female historians.**

Producer...Beth O'Dea Read less"

Pictures; cover of The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, cover shows a portrait of Arteidorus from Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum 1974, reprint, and Catullus The Poems Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 2004, cover shows a detail from a Roman mosiac 3rd-4th century AD in the Piazza Armenia villa of Maximinorous. Sicily, photoo AKGO/Eric Lessing

*Catullus, Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, Series 11, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

**Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016

Collecting for the Ancoats Hospital in the summer of 1924

I belong to that generation which was the first to grow up with the National Health Service.

School Daisy Day, date unknown

It over saw my birth in the General Lying In Hospital in Lambeth went on to look after me through the succeeding decades and is all the more a friend as I pass into my 66th year.

And for most of what I have needed it has continued to be free at the point of need offering the best medical care I could ask for.

But of course had I been born just a decade earlier my parents would have been expected to pay for my care not through their taxes but directly out of their pocket and like many would no doubt have been forced to dig deep from the family income.

All of which is a powerful reminder that there was a time when medical care was neither automatic nor a certainty for a large section of the population and that funding for our hospitals was still reliant on charity and big annual events.

Ancoats fancy dress day, date unknown

These ranged from The Alexandra Flag Days to local events and all were geared to raising cash which brings me back to a series of postcards from the collection of David Harrop and The Daisy Day Parade.

This was a regular event which began in June 1913 to raise money for Ancoats Hospital and consisted of selling artificial daisies and a fancy dress parade.*

All of which brings me back to the post cards.

An invitation, July 1924

Now I have no idea when the photograph was taken which means it could date from the 1920s and perhaps even from the events planned at the General Meeting held on July 17th to which Miss Miriam Buckley of 18 Dawns Street was invited.

It was held in the Out-Patients Department of the hospital and was the General Meeting for the Ancoats Daisy Day’s Hospital.

In time I might be able to track down the minutes and discover if she attended.

There is a reference to a Miriam Buckley aged 10 living with her parents at 59 Herbert Street, Ardwick in 1911 but after that the trail goes cold save for a  reference to her death in 1974.

The Manchester Guardian reports, July 21 1924

Either way I think she would have pleased with the events of the day which the Manchester Guardian reported “took the form of a fancy dress parade on the lines of the student’s procession on Shrove Tuesday.

In this case, however the industrial areas rather than the business centre of the city were tapped by the collecting boxes.  

The better to cover as large an area as possible the parade divided forces, one party going through Ancoats and by way of Ashton Old and New Roads to Belle Vue Gardens, the other combining Chorlton-on Medlock, Hulme, and Ardwick.

Fancy Dree, 1924

Numerous prizes were awarded for figures in the processions and there were prizes for those who collected the largest amounts.”**

I doubt that I will ever be able to confirm a date fo those young people in their Daisy Day fancy dress, but if I were to slip into speculation and fastened on July 1924, then some of those staring back at me may well have become proud parents in an NHS hospital in the years after its creation in 1948.

Now that would round the story off nicely.

Pictures; School Daisy Day, date unknown and invitation to Miss Miram Buckley, July 14 1924 from the collection of David Harrop, and Manchester Guardian, 1924, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* A Daisy for Daisy Day, A History of Ancoats Dispensary in 100 Objects, https://ancoatsdispensary100.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/17-a-daisy-for-daisy-day/

**Fancy Dress Parade for the Hospitals, Manchester Guardian, July 21 1924

The benign and fairly gentle River Mersey

The Mersey up by the meadows and down past Jackson’s Boat can seem a benign and fairly gentle stretch of water.

And this picture taken some time in the early 20th century captures just such a moment.

It was taken on the edge of the township by Red Bank Farm which was lonely outposts hard by the river, well away from the rest of community.

Another peaceful scene, May 2009

It is a peaceful scene on a warm sunny day and you can see why our commercial photographer went to the trouble to take the scene.

As it turns out he took more than one and there are a whole series shot on the same day along this part of the water.

He must have had it easier then to get the water’s edge.

Most of the river at this point is today viewed from towering banks built and added to over the centuries as the main defence against a powerful threat to the lives and livelihoods of all those who lived beside it.

And a less peaceful scene, February, 1991

Generations of farmers have laboured to construct this natural wall to repel the flood waters of the Mersey and three are plenty of moments when our benign and fairly gentle stretch of water burst even these defences, in what were sometimes flash floods and often such an immense tide of water that it created a huge lake several miles wide across the meadows.

Here below in the February of 1991 the Mersey was just lapping the top of the uppermost bank.


Location; along the Mersey

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1900, and the collections of David Bishop, 1991 and Andrew Simpson, 2009

Walking down the High Street sometime around 1907

Now I can’t be sure when this picture was taken.

The postmark records that it was sent at 11 am on September 20th 1907, but picture postcard companies did keep old photographs in the catalogue and reuse them long after they had been taken.

In some cases even over printing on what was a summer scene a Christmas greeting or retouching the picture to the point where it almost became a blur.

In this case we are on the High Street looking west down towards the church, and I am fascinated by the shop advertising “Eltham Steam Printing Works” which was on the north side of the street.

Given that the Castle is almost opposite I think our shop will be under the modern block which includes Marks and Spencer but I am finding it difficult to find the shop on the street directories.

It doesn’t appear in the 1914 lists, so may have gone by then.

Of course I may be looking in the wrong place and at present I don’t have access to earlier directories, but someone will, and the story behind the “Eltham Steam Printing Works” will come out of the shadows.

Location; Eltham High Street

Picture; Eltham High Street, 1907, courtesy of Tricia Leslie