Snaps of Chorlton No 8 the loss of Rowe House

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

Row House had stood on the corner of Beech and Acres Road from the early 19th century.

It had been home to the Blomely’s who also gave their name to the fish pond which stretched up Beech Road, and was later lived in by William Batty, politician, jeweller and Methodist

For a while the house was also used as our “Penny Reading Room”, while the adjoining building had been a laundry and factory.

None of which saved it from the developer.

Picture; from the collection of Lawrence Beedle

That bye-election and a defeat for the Government, ....... Farnworth January 1938

Rally for George Tomlinson on the day of the election on Bridgewater Street

Here is another from the Bolton series which for various reasons I am re-posting.

They are  a wonderful collection of images of life in Bolton in the 1930s.

Secondly I have found my copy of the photographs that Humphrey Spender took* and finally because they feed my own interest in all things to do with elections.

The entire collection can be viewed at BOLTON WORKTOWN, PHOTOGRAPHY AND ARCHIVES FROM MASS OBSERVATION  http://boltonworktown.co.uk/ and range from people on trams, out shopping and relaxing in pubs to children paying in the park and just images of street life.

For me though it is those pictures which cover the Farnworth by-election which I find fascinating.  They include photographs of the election posters, the public meetings as well as campaigning on the streets and voting day.

It was an industrial seat dominated by coal mining, textiles and the railway works and from 1922 with the exception of 1931 had returned Labour MPs.

The sudden death of Guy Rowson who had represented Farnworth since 1935 occasioned the by-election.**

It was a contest between George Tomlinson for Labour and Herbert Ryan standing as a National Government candidate.

Mr Tomlinson had started work at the age of 11 as a half-timer in a weaving shed, and “when he stood for election his job was selling home brewed beer.  He used to go round Farnworth with a cart and everybody loved him.  He wasn’t a very well-educated fellow, but crikey, when he spoke he was the best speaker I heard of all the lot.”

The issues ranged from the economy to the prospects for peace and the threat of another European war, so while posters for the National Government emphasised the low levels of unemployment in Farnworth, Labour ran the slogan LABOUR AND PEACE which echoed its General Election poster of three years earlier.

In the event, George Tomlinson defeated the National Government candidate, Herbert Ryan by 24,298 votes to 16,835.

This was an old fashioned election campaign with well attended public meetings, Heath Robinson style posters on horse drawn carts, and legions of children dressed out with hand held banners and paper hats processing around the constituency.

And at the heart of it all were Humphrey Spender’s photographs.

At a National Government election meeting at the Co-op Hall

Some capture the intense concentration of the audience listening to the political points being made at meetings, the gaggle of children following the novelty of the speaker car or the election conversation over the garden gate between party activist and voter.

All of them are vivid and immediate and have a directness which belies the fact that this election was held eighty-one years ago and the style of electioneering he recorded has all but vanished.

So I recommend the election photographs at the Bolton site

*Worktown People, Humphrey Spender, Falling Wall Press, 1982

**Local Elections Archive, 2012.proboards.com/thread/1363/farnworth-election-1938

Election cart on Mount Street on the day of the election

***Harry Gordon, quoted from Worktown People.  Before his election George Tomlinson had been a local councillor and went on to be Minister of Education in the Labour Government after the war.

Pictures; courtesy of Bolton Library Museum Services, from the collections 1993.83.26.27, 1993.83.16.31, 1993.83.29.17, and poster from the 1935 General Election, from Labour Party Archives

On Eltham High Street ......... looking for Mr Brown

Now, it is so easy to get lost in an old picture of Eltham.

Eltham Village, date unknown

This is one that my friend Tricia found and posted recently.

The caption says Eltham Village and the post mark on the back is 1904.

That said I think the photograph maybe much older, given that the picture has been heavily retouched.

It is a familiar one showing the old brewery and the High Street.

And as you do I went looking for clues, and there on the corner of the wall on the southern side is a shop sign for Thomas Brown.

The shop of Mr Thomas Brown

This usually offers up a way of anchoring the scene in a time, because Mr Brown should show up on a census return and a street directory.

But he doesn’t.

There is a Thomas Brown and this one lives on Eltham High Street but in the 1880s and 90s he was residing in Sun Yard and gave his occupation variously as a road labourer and gardener.

Nor did he appear to have a son called Thomas.

The earliest street directories I can access are from 1914 and no shop keeper called Thomas Brown appears on the list.

That said I did discover that four doors up from the old Chequers pub were the “dining rooms” run by a Mr Charles Wollard who was still there four years later.

His near businesses included a cycle manufacturer, a watch maker, two confectioners, an oilman, a linen draper, and Mrs Alice Brotherton’s refreshment rooms.

Eltham Brewery

I will in due course go looking for Mr Wollard’s dining rooms which may have been a cut above his rival.  Mrs Alice’s premise were a modest affair and no doubt consisted just of the front room of her five roomed house.

She was there from 1911 and it may well have been a way of making an income after her husband who was a parish road builder had died.

They had lived just over the road in Jubilee Cottages and it would be nice to think that some of her neighbours might have dropped in or that she had a small order delivered from the brewery opposite

Of course that is just fanciful tosh and gets me no nearer a date for the picture postcard, which does not even provide the name of the manufacturer of the card.

Still it is a nice picture and I thank Tricia for finding it.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Village, circa 1904 from the collection of Tricia Leslie

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 154 ..... one day in the kitchen and a look back

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Seven A.M

Kitchen's change, dictated by fashion the changing needs of the house and the family that occupy it.

Eight A.M

Ours has undergone four transformations in 50 years.

The first ripped out the original from when the house was built in 1915, creating a bland utilitarain space.

This was followed by that 70's love affair for white tiled units on reclaimed brick which gave way to wood and a natural wooden floor.

All were bespoke and with an eye to the aquistion of more and more electrical goods saw more and more power points added to the walls.

Finally we called in the experts to design kitchen number five.

Ten past ten

2019

Along the way we discovered the house had been designed for an old fashioned kitchen range, but Joe and Mary side stepped the installation and instead went for a free standing cooker.

And in its first sixty years the kitchen had just three power points and a dark scullery with a tiny window looking out into the garden.

Over the years we added a variety of fridges and freezers culminating in those big double door leviathans. 

To these were added a heap of labour saving and fashionable appliances many of which have gone, including the toaster, electric kettle and microwave.

All of which reflects the history of the domestic kitchen in one room in one house.

That said we never knocked through into the dinning room, or created the "hatch".

Both of which turned out to be very sensible as all the kids came back and spent the statutory year and a bit with us.

And confimed my belief that the best you can do with an old house is respect the original design which often as not got it right ...... except for the power points.

2009

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; One day in the kitchen and a bit more, 2019-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/08/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html