When a bit of the Ship Canal came to Longford Park ……

This is one of the desks which once belonged to the Manchester Ship Canal.

The desk, 2025

I like the idea that it has come home to Longford Park because one of the prime movers of the Ship Canal project was John Rylands who lived in the big house in the grounds which is now the park.

To be strictly accurate this bit of ship canal history now resides a few yards away in the home of Juliette Tomlinson who has written a fictional account of Mr. Rylands and his wife Enriqueta.

The book, Longford A Manchester Love Story came out last year and has caught the imagination of everyone who has read it.*

And so, it is fitting that the second in the trilogy is being written on that desk and explores his contribution to the Canal and of course to the relationship between John and Enriqueta.

I have to confess that standing in front of the desk this morning, I did what we all would do and “touched a bit of history”.  

Longford Hall former home of John and Enriqueta, 1914

To be very honest while Juliette was out of the room I did more than run my had over the polished surface and sitting at the desk I scribbled a note to myself and pondered on the generations of clerks who will have laboured away writing up minutes, checking receipts and composing letters to long vanished shipping companies.

The romantic in me even whiled away the minutes wondering if the man himself used the desk, but that would be unhistorical tosh, so instead I looked to see if any bored clerk had left their name carved in the wood.

Longford Park, 1914

I didn’t but I will await Juliette to do the full search and report back.

Leaving me just to say it had holes for inkwells and a bank of electric sockets which will have been installed long after the first ships sailed up the canal into the docks.

Pictures, The Ship Canal desk, 2025, courtesy of Juliette Tomlinson, the book Longford, 2024, Longford Hall, 1914 from the series Longford Park, issued by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/, 

That desk, 2025

*Longford A Manchester Love Story, available from Chorlton Bookshop, Waterstones and The Squeeze Press, www.woodenbooks.com