Looking for the first carol singer in Chorlton-cum-Hardy ...and other Christmas traditions

As titles go it is a bit daft even for a history blog, and I guess ranks with Carol Singer bites dog and the carol singers who started singing in Easter.

But it sets me off on a story which touches on Christmas in Chorlton across the centuries.

Mr Wittaker sells Christmas, 1906

And what better than this picture of Mr. Whitaker and his two assistants outside his grocery shop on the corner of Beech Road and Chorlton Green in the run up to a Christmas long ago.  

The date is 1906 and judging by the adverts for “CHOICE NEW CURRANTS AND SULTANAS [for] XMAS”and the boxes of Mincemeat we must be in late November or December.

Standing in front of the shop by the open door in Thomas who was 40 years old when the picture was taken and to his right is his son “Charlie” and away in the corner is Mr Fox who the caption tells us was about to become the manager of the Stanley Grove shop.

Now it says something about the concentration of people around the green that old Thomas Whittaker could feel it made business sense to open another shop just round the corner and off the green, and later had another store I am told on Ivy Green Road.

Choice Xmas Currants, sardines and Bovril

But the captions and the photograph do not quite fit.  If the date is indeed 1906 then the figure to the left of Thomas Whitaker cannot be his son Charlie who would have been just ten years old, and while the Fox family lived at 19 Stanley Grove there is no evidence that they were running a shop at any time between 1903 and 1911.

Singing on the green, 2022

All of which is becoming too complicated.  So I shall to reflect on the picture postcard of Beech Road on a summer’s day over printed with “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” and go back to carol singing.

Before the green was stolen by Sam Wilton and turned it into his private garden in the early 19th century it had been the centre of many village activities.

Then after it reurned to community use in the 1890s, there will have been a return of events of which one will have been centred around Christmas.

Just what shape that event took has yet to be discovered.

But for now the revival of carol singing around the Christmas tree set against the backdrops of the Horse and Jockey, the Lych Gate and the Bowling Green Hotel beyond has become a popular highligh of the festive season. ..... is back.

Join us on Christmas Eve at 6.15.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Mr Wittaker sells Christmas, 1906, carol singing on the green, 2022, courtesy of Peter Topping and Christmas Eve on Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Christmas Eve, Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022