Christmas in Chorlton, circa 1989 and a quest for a special toy

Raphael

Anyone with children born in the 1980s will remember the desperate hunt to collect the four Ninja Turtle figures.

I can’t remember which Christmas it was but the quest to find all four pretty much occupied the run up to the day.

The four and you had to try and collect all four were Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello, and Raphael and shops just couldn’t keep pace with the demand.

It was I suppose not unlike the stories my mum told about food rationing in the last war.

The rumour would circulate that one of the four was available from a certain toy shop and the race was on.

I remember there was an informal agreement that if you were out and you struck gold you bought as many as you could so that they could be shared out.

I am sure Quarmby's did their best but it was the big stores who offered the best chance of success.

Our eldest managed to get all four and in the way these things work all have now been lost.  But we do have a replica which came into the house a few Christmases ago for another of the lads.

It is Raphael who apparently was the bad boy of the team, being aggressive and sarcastic.

On a more pleasant note we still have mountains of Lego which once formed ships, castles, space rockets and pirate islands, now sadly reduced to their parts, kept in bin bags and waiting for something to happen.

But these were the toys of the 1980s and 90s when the boys were growing up.

Mud in 1974

Go back another decade and I could have picked space hoppers, scalextric, my little pony along with groups like the Bay City Rollers and Mud but I won’t.

Between them Mud and the Bay City Rollers divided the girls I taught and for a few years the school Christmas parties were dominated by alternating hit singles played out on an old record player  linked by a series of tired looking cables to the sound system which was already twenty years old and feeling its age.

These were the years when I had just become a responsible adult, had got married and was buying a house in Ashton Under-Lyne.

It would be a full ten years before I began pondering on wish lists and children’s toys.

That said I never quite lost my fascination for toys and in particular train sets, but that is for another time.

So given that I wandered into to that decade when my  sons were growing up I shall leave you with yet another image of Raphael and call a halt on all these Christmas postings.

Pictures; model of Raphael, Ninja Mutant Turtle from the collection of Josh Simpson, picture of Mud in 1974 from Wikipedia Commons, Beeld En Geluid Wiki - Gallerie: Toppop 1974, Author, AVRO

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago …… walking the Rochdale in 1979

 A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

Back then the canal was still in a shabby state and despite the work of restoration there was still an air of decay, which was added to by the state of the buildings which stood along its path.

Many had seen better days, a few were derelict waiting for something to happen, and since I walked the walk some have been demolished and some have been renovated.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 18 ........... Christmas 1958

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Actually it would be another six years before we celebrated Christmas in Well Hall, but why spoil a story?

The weather was less than promising with the Manchester Guardian on Christmas Eve, reporting that it would be “A Very Murky Christmas” with “Fog forecast for much of England and Wales [and] airports closed”.

Going on to comment “Fog to-day, fog to-morrow (though perhaps less) on Boxing Day are the possibilities for the Christmas Holidays in many parts of England and Wales.

Fog yesterday was a certainty,; it affected about thirty counties,  It covered nearly twenty thousand square miles stretching from Bournemouth to Durham.  It closed Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool airports and last night was seriously upsetting flights into London Airport.”.

But we were not planning to travel far.

Which leaves me trying to remember how we spent our Christmas that year.  I would have been nine my twin sisters just two and a bit and our Jill still a baby.

As happened every year Uncle George would have travelled up from the west country a few days earlier and the day would have unfolded with the presents, breakfast and a walk to Peckham Rye and back, before Christmas dinner and followed by a mix of the telly and board games, of which Monopoly was dominated every Christmas evening.

Like many families we had bought into a television during the 1950s, and while I no longer know when our first one arrived, by 1958 it was an established item.

So that Christmas on BBC we had a series of films, along with variety shows and a ghost tale, which was pretty much replicated by London ITV and Granada.

Setting aside the television that Christmas drew heavily on the traditions experienced by my parents, both of whom were born in the first decades of the last century.

There were still  a mix of oranges and nuts in the Christmas stockings which for us were pillow covers, and 1958 might well have been the first year that coloured lights replaced real candles on the tree, although it would be many years before the paper chains and bright paper trees were done away with.

But as ever the bright but fragile glass baubles survived well into the 1980s and were brought out as they had been done every year, with a few additions to take the place of the broken ones.

As for presents, mine were as traditional as they had been each year, with an addition to the train set, an Eagle Annual and an assortment of sweets.

And while I can’t now remember exactly what those presents were I know that the Eagle Annual was number eight and that the lead story was Dan Dare in Operation Moss.

All of which I think is enough.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Christmas decorations; from the collection of Catherine Obi, bought at Oxfam, and the Eagle Annual Number 8, with an extract from Operation Moss

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

**“A Very Murky Christmas”, Manchester Guardian, December 24th, 1958

Christmas Eve with the Eagle

Christmas Eve with the Eagle

The Eagle always celebrated Christmas by decorating the main panel.



Location; Christmas



Picture, Eagle, Vol 6. No. 51 December 23, 1955, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Eltham we have lost, part 3........ Making hay a rick at Lyme Farm

Another of those pictures of Eltham’s past which need no comment

This was  Lyme Farm as the labourers were constructing a hay rick in 1909.

Later I the month I think I will return to Lyme Farm and explore its history and some of the people who lived and worked there.


Picture; making hay a rick at Lyme Farm 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

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago .......... walking the Rochdale in 1979

 A short series bringing together for the first time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.*

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the Canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

Back then the canal was still in a shabby state and despite the work of restoration there was still an air of decay, which was added to by the state of the buildings which stood along its path.

Many had seen better days, a few were derelict waiting for something to happen, and since I walked the walk some have been demolished and some have been renovated.

Once you had walked underneath St James’s Building and Oxford Road you had a clear waljk down the canal as far as the bridge which carried Albion Street into town.

Today this section is flanked with modern buildings but in 1979, the walk took you past a heap of warehouses and factories dating from the 19th century and offered up fine views of the Refuge Building.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal …18 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

 

Looking for stories ………. from one house in Chorlton

Now, it has become popular to take a pretty ordinary house and trace its story back in time.

The house, 1959

I have to confess it is something I have done with three of the houses I have lived in over the last seventy years, and more recently the idea has become a successful television series.*

All of which is an introduction to Bamburh House on High Lane.

It featured yesterday on the blog when I began to explore its history.

And I have returned today with part two.  It was to be the story of some of the domestic servants who toiled away in the background rarely recognized, but essential to the well being of the family who employed them.

The idea was partly prompted by my own interest in those “who toiled”, and also from a comment by Sarah, the present owner that “When we bought the house we opened up the attics and there was a bedroom for a maid up there. 

I will dig out the pictures just for your interest because although the staircase carried up to her room she would’ve had to bend  double to get under the roof to enter”.

But as so often happens their stories are harder to piece together, and despite an afternoon wandering the records the four I chose led almost nowhere.

I had started in 1871 when the house was built, with a Miss Taylor aged 23, and young Agnes who was just 14 and employed as a “nurse”, but the enumerator’s handwriting was almost undecipherable, and my best shots led nowhere.

And while a decade later I could at least identify a Sarah A Edwards and John Strawbridge, they too remain in the shadows.

High Lane, 1881, the house marked with an X

Still there are plenty more to look for, and in time I will go looking.

All of which leaves me falling back on the house and exploring a little bit more of its past, which begins with an interesting mystery concerning John Strawbridge who in 1881 is described as a groom, suggesting the then owners had a horse and carriage.  Maps of the period show outbuildings behind the house on the west side, but later census returns make no reference to a groom.

The last census records that in 1911 Mr. Robert Newberry West, who was a surgeon, employed Elizabeth Parker as “cook-domestic” who was charged with maintaining the elven rooms and cooking for Mr. West, his mother and his two siblings.

The house, 1881, marked with an X

I have to say I have been drawn to Robert West, partly because he was born  in Camberwell,  close to where I was born and grew up in south east London and because we can track his progress from London to Chorlton-on Medlock where his father was the vicar at St Stephens and on to Southport where he lived with his widowed mother.  

He married in 1920 at the grand old age of 47, living on Upper Chorlton Road and finally Barlow Moor Road where he died in 1924.

Nor is that quite the end of the story, because like many bigger properties in south Manchester,  Bamburh House finally succumbed to multi occupancy.

Just when this happened is unclear.  

In 1929 the directories show that it was occupied by the Morris family, but a decade later the house was divided in to five flats of which two were unoccupied.  The remaining three were occupied by a sales manager and sales assistant, neither of whom were married, and Mr. and Mrs. Bond and their young daughter. Mr. John Bond was a sales manager for a tobacco and drugs company, his wife Doris was “an assistant hospital nurse” and Rita, their daughter was just 2 years old.

After which the house continued its long association with multi occupancy.  In 1954 it was home to three tenants, and in 1962 to four, and it remained so until Sarah bought the property and returned it to family use, which of course has been a trend across Chorlton.

With thanks to Sarah for allowing me to profile her house and Tony Petrie who supplied the street directories for 1929, 1959, and 1962.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

The house, 1956

Pictures; the house in 1959, A. E. Landers, m17886, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass High Lane in 1881, from the 1881 Withinton Board of Health map, courtesy Trafford Local Studies Centre, https://www.artuk.org/visit/venues/trafford-local-studies-centre-6551 and in 1956 from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1956

*The story of a house, 

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall 

The story of one house in Lausanne Road, 

The house on Harrow Road in Leicester, 

The art of Christmas ………. part three

The third in the series featuring festive menus from Blackpool hotels covering the period from the late 1940s through to 1969.

They come from the collection of Suzanne Morehead who kindly passed them over to me a few years ago.

I have always planned to use them in a series but always missed the boat of featuring them at Christmas, and running the stories in April seemed a bit daft.

What I particularly like about them is the artwork, which is a style I remember so well from the period.

1947 will have been the first Christmas after the war that many people decided it was time to spend the holiday away in a hotel letting someone else do the business of coking cleaning and entertaining.

And even given the restrictions of rationing and shortages it will have been an attractive proposition, even though it will have been restricted to a handful of the well off.

But during the 1950s into the 60s with growing prosperity and rising expectations there will have been more who fancied a Christmas or New Year away.

Location, Blackpool, 1947-69

Pictures; from various hotels, 1947-1969, from the collection of Suzanne Morehead

Robin .... A Christmas Annual from the Hulton Press, in 1953

This is another of those comic annuals which were published by Hulton Press.

Robin was aimed at very young children and while I remember getting the comic and perhaps even the first annual in 1953 sadly neither comic or book have made their way into my collection.

So I have fallen back on a wonderful site dedicated to the Eagle Annual  for this image of the first Robin Annual.*

Eagle, along with Girl and Swift were the companion comics and books which Hulton was responsible for during the 1950s, and for anyone wanting to know more or recreate their childhood the Eagle Annual site  is a wonderful starting point.

Robin contained a lot of colour strips and short stories which parents could read to their children and given the decade it came out in it included stories on Andy Pandy and the Flower Pot Men.

Number one also featured Birthday wishes to the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne.

And even with the help of the Eagle Annual site that is about the extent of my knowledge, although I can remember cutting the comic up for its comic figures.

Alas all a long time ago.

Now given that this is the end of the short series on the Hulton four I shall also mention Eagle Times, which for the last 25 years has set about keeping the Eagle comic alive with stories features and conversations with those directly involved with it during the 1950s.**

Picture; Robin Annual Nu 1, 1953, courtesy of Eagle Annual

*Eagle Annual, http://www.eagleannual.info/contents.php

**Eagle Times, http://eagle-times.blogspot.co.uk/

Shopping for Christmas ..... with T.C. Whitaker on Beech Road

It is the shop of Thomas Charles Whittaker at the bottom of Beech Road where it curves round into the Green.

And for me the attractions are many.  First we have a date, secondly it is possible to identify three of the four people in the picture and lastly there is that wonderful detail of all that the shop had to offer.

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.

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.

There was a grocery shop at number 2 but this was run by the Whitely family.  Interestingly enough it was still a shop as late as 1972 and today while it is a residential property it is possible to see its origins as a shop.

So all of this points to a later date perhaps closer to the Great War or perhaps after 1918which  would be more creditable given the appearance of Thomas and his son Charlie. So all that is needed is a trawl of the later street directories for Stanley Grove and the occupants of nu 2.

And I suspect that the Whittaker’s bought up the little grocery story sometime after 1911, by which time widow Whitely was 55.

Now I am in real danger of becoming boring and reducing the story to something like the medieval debate on how many angels could dance on a pin head.**

So instead I will return to those wonderful shop displays which have all the brash marketing of that famous slogan “pile them high and sell them cheap.”  The windows are covered with products and adverts for products, ranging from fruit to biscuits and those great sides of meat hanging in the open while beside them over the door is an assortment of brushes.

All of which might allow Thomas to claim that from his shop there was all that the discerning shopper might want.

And of course there are all the household names that are still familiar from OXO and Crawfords, to Bovril and Skipper Sardines.  I like even the carefully crafted descriptions either side of the family name announcing the shop as a place of “High class Provisions, Family Grocer and Italian Warehouseman”

It is not the only photograph in the collection and I must at a later date introduce another which will have been taken at the same time and shows Mr Rogers with the horse and cart.  But that as they say is for another time.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection.

* There will be those Christmas experts who will point out that the date must be earlier in the year for no one serious about Christmas cakes and puddings would leave it till November to make them.

**Which apparently is really a piece of propaganda put about during the Reformation to discredit Catholic theology.

One canal …… 18 pictures ……. 45 or so years ago ..... walking the Rochdale in 1979

A short series bringing together for the fist time pictures I took walking the Rochdale Canal from Princess Street to the Castlefield Basin.*

Most have appeared before but not together in the order in which I walked the canal back in 1979.

But given my memory and my total failure to make notes of each shot at the time I took them some may well be out of sync.

Back then the canal was still in a shabby state and despite the work of restoration there was still an air of decay, which was added to by the state of the buildings which stood along its path.

Many had seen better days, a few were derelict waiting for something to happen, and I since I walked the walk some have been demolished and some have been renovated.

The first stretch from Princess Street took in the power station, which had supplied steam to the neighbouring offices and warehouses, through pipes which ran the length of the canal.

Passing these pipes could be a tad unnerving as in places steam would escape from the joints, leaving you wondering if you would suddenly encounter a burst of scalding water. 

The pipes have gone, the overgrown towpath has been cleaned up, and sections of the canal have been transformed, which rather makes the 18 pictures something special.

Although I am the first to admit the quality of some are iffy.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*One canal ….. 24 pictures ,walking the Rochdale Canal in 1979, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20canal%2018%20pictures

An unfamiliar view of Court Yard around 1900

Now I have written about Court Yard several times and in particular about Annie Morris who lived there at the turn of the last century.

Court Yard circa 1900

And here is Court Yard from the pen of   Mr Llwyd Roberts who was living in Eltham in the early 1930s.

Many of his drawings appeared in the Kentish Times in 1930 and were reprinted in Old Eltham sixty-six years later.

He was a fine artist and draughtsman and some at least of the pictures will have been drawn from first hand knowledge others like this one were probably drawn from picture postcards and photographs taken at the turn of the last century.

Picture; Court Yard, Llwyd Roberts, circa 1929-30, from Old Eltham, 1966, courtesy of Margaret Copeland Gain

*Court Yard, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/so-what-fate-for-crown-on-court-yard.html

**Annie Morris, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Annie%20Morris

***Llwyd Roberts, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Llwyd%20Roberts

The art of Christmas ………. part two

The second in the series featuring festive menus from Blackpool hotels covering the period from the late 1940s through to 1969.

They come from the collection of Suzanne Morehead who kindly passed them over to me a few years ago.

I have always planned to use them in a series but always missed the boat of featuring them at Christmas, and running the stories in April seemed a bit daft.

What I particularly like about them is the artwork, which is a style I remember so well from the period.

And to the social historian or the nosey there is an insight into what the hotels offered over the holiday.

So from 1958, Redman’s Park House Hotel began Christmas Day with “Breakfast between 8.30 am to 9.15”.

After which guests could participate in “Snooker, Billiards and Table Tennis Competitions”.

Luncheon was at 1 pm with “The Queen’s Christmas Day Broadcast on Television and Sound Radio” at 3, followed by an appearance of Father Christmas at 3,30.

At 4 there was “Afternoon Tea and the Children’s Party” with the Christmas Banquet from 7 pm.

The evening was rounded off with “Games, Sing song and the Delta Variety Show” between 8.30 pm to 12.0 midnight, finishing with two hours of “Dancing with the Band”.

Location; Blackpool, 1948-1969

Pictures; from various hotels, 1947-1969, from the collection of Suzanne Morehead

The art of Christmas ………. part one

I am back with how hotels have celebrated Christmas in the past.

And so with that in mind I thought I would visit a series of festive menus from Blackpool hotels covering the period from the late 1940s through to 1969.

They come from the collection of Suzanne Morehead who kindly passed them over to me a few years ago.

I have planned to use them in a series, but always missed the boat of featuring them at Christmas, and running the stories in April seemed a bit daft.

So here over the next few days are a selection.

What I particularly like about them is the artwork, which is a style I remember so well from when I was growing up.

And for the social historian or the nosey, there is an insight into what the hotels offered over the holiday.

So from 1958, Redman’s Park House Hotel began Christmas Day with “Breakfast between 8.30 am to 9.15”.

After which guests could participate in “Snooker, Billiards and Table Tennis Competitions”.

Luncheon was at 1 pm with “The Queen’s Christmas Day Broadcast on Television and Sound Radio” at 3. followed by an appearance of Father Christmas at 3,30.

At 4, there was “Afternoon Tea and the Children’s Party” with the Christmas Banquet from 7 pm.

The evening was rounded off with “Games, Sing song and the Delta Variety Show” between 8.30 pm to 12.0 midnight, finishing with two hours of “Dancing with the Band”.

Location; Blackpool, 1948-1969

Pictures; from various hotels, 1947-1969, from the collection of Suzanne Morehead

Cleaning the brass and making the beds in Chorlton ........ with Miss Edith Ashworth

 I wonder what Edith Ashworth made of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

She had been born in Northenden in 1880, and lived with her father and mother and four siblings in a small cottage off Mill Lane.  Her father described himself as a labourer, while her eldest sister was employed as a milliner.

Just opposite their home was the river and the mill, while just a few minutes’ walk to the east beyond Palatine Road were open fields stretching all the way to Sale.

By contrast Chorlton-cum-Hardy was undergoing one of those revolutions which would see large parts of the township transformed into rows of modest properties, catering for the “middling people”, many of whom worked in the city but wanted to live on the edge of the countryside.

Some were professionals, while others were managers and yet more worked as clerks, and secretaries.  They rented their homes, but many still found money to employ a servant, which was always a mark of distinction.

And in the April of 1901 Edith  was working  as a general servant for Mrs. Eliza Jones, at 7 Maple Avenue.

Mrs. Jones employed only the one servant, who and these were often known as “maids of all work” because they pretty much did everything from the cooking and cleaning to turning down the beds and much more, which in the case of Maple Avenue involved looking after nine rooms along with the needs of Mrs. Jones and her two grown up children.

The family had moved into the house when it was built in 1895, and over the next century kept a unique photographic record of the house and the surrounding streets, allowing us to place Edith in the very rooms she cleaned and kept tidy.

Nor was she the only servant in the avenue.  In total there were four servants working in four of the seven occupied houses.  All were “maids of all the work”, and some catered for families much larger than at 7 Maple Avenue.

And like a century earlier when we were still a rural community, none of the four servants were local, three came from Cheshire and a fourth from Stretford.  Some people might be surprised at this, but it was that simple rule, that if servants were local they might well take stories of the household home, and those stories might well become the gossip of the township.

Only in one respect was Edith different from her fellow servants and that was her age.  She was 21, while Mary Ann Jones at number 15 was 18 years old and the remaining two were just 15.

Sadly, there is little more that I can find out about Edith, for like so many of her class, history has not been kind, and so far I have found only one other reference, but it is a tantalizing one, because on March 10th 1904 she sailed from Liverpool to Halifax in Canada on board the Tunisian.  She shared the journey with her 17-year-old sister Florence, and while I know they arrived, the rest as they say awaits further research.

As for 7 Maple Avenue, it stayed in the possession of the family until 1997, and I am indebted to Ray Jones, who is one of the descendants, for permission to reproduce photographs of the house.

Loation; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; 7 Maple Avenue, date unknown, courtesy of Ray Jones

The Girl Annual and a take on the optimism of the 1950s

Annual number 7

Now I am fully aware that I might be accused of nostalgia but I am back with those comic annual books which were published in the 1950s.

They were a by product of the popular comics like Eagle, Girl, Swift and the Lion and came out for Christmas.

But were books I kept going back to throughout the year and now fifty years after I got them as presents I still read them with pleasure.

So, not so much a present for Christmas as a friend for life.

My favourite was the Eagle but Hulton who published it were quick to spot its success could be replicated with a companion comic called Girl and two others aimed at a younger market.

These were the Swift and Robin and in the fullness of time I shall visit them too.

Today however I shall focus on the Girl Annual.

Woman of Action Lotte Hass

Like Eagle it was a mix of popular stories from the weekly comic, with features on history, nature, science and fashion. It also contained advice on a range of subjects from “New Uses for Duffle Coat Buttons” to “Making a Picnic Basket” and rope table mats.

All of which seems a little twee but the books actively sought to show women could have careers from being doctors to competing with men in the most dangerous environment.

So the Girl Annual included pictures of Women in Action including the photographer Michaela Dennis, the deep sea diver and photographer Lotte Hass and the pilot Jacqueline Cochran.

There was also a long article on the careers open to women in the merchant navy.

Now I fully concede that all of these were the caring and sharing professions  but  it did refer to “World’s 
First Woman Radio Operator Aboard ship gets her ticket” and was confident that while this was a foreign ship where “one merchant service makes a start, others will follow.”

New foods for the 1950s's table

Along with these more challehging new careers was the story on foods in many lands, which while it did refer to them as odd foods, was still opening up new horizons to young people brought up on spam and nothing more exotic than a banana.

Both Eagle and Girl reflected that optimistic view of the world which was abroad in the 1950s and which challenges the popular misconception that it was a grey drab decade of shortages, and make and mend just waiting for the “swinging ‘60s.”

It was instead an exciting period when everything seemed possible.

Belle of the Ballet

There was television and jet travel, materials like plastic and the promise of full employment and a welfare state.

There might also be the threat of the H Bomb, countless nasty and brutish colonial wars and the legacy of many old habits and ideas but the world was changing and my Eagle and Girl annuals reflected that change.

And in the process were not afraid to reflect on what had been. So the story of Belle of the Ballet and A Midsummer Night's Dream was set in the blitzed out ruin of a church hall.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

October 24th 1981 ...... a banner, a cause and a march ... one I remember

Now the thing about a demonstration is that it has a short life in the popular memory.

Walking up from All Saints

If the aim of the demonstration is successful then it is pretty much forgotten in the serious detail of implementing the changes it called for, and if it fails then it quickly slips into obscurity.

Of course there are memorable exceptions like the historic March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 at which Dr King delivered the “I Have a Dream" speech, and all of us will be able to pull out another.

As for the rest, at best they merge together, get mixed up or become a blur.

In St Peter's Square

But for me, many of them stay fresh because I took the pictures, ......... lots of them covering a dozen or so
demonstrations  during the 1970s and into the next decade, covering protests over nuclear weapons, rising unemployment, cuts in public expenditure and those nasty little wars which killed many and left both the victorious and defeated no better off.

Most of the images survived the years in the cellar, although a few were such poor quality to start off with that they will never see the light of day.

And then around 1984 I stopped, partly because our Ben had been born, and for a while the demands of nappies and feeds took over, and because I felt less comfortable at going along and photographing people especially given that there were “official photographers” on all the marches who many viewed with suspicion.

All of which meant that perhaps for two decades I rarely attended a demonstration and since then have never carried a camera.

That said of course these days, anyone with a mobile phone can record the events as well I ever did with my two Pentax K1000’s.

Passing Central Ref

So with that in mind and because this is a history blog, here are four images from a peace march through Manchester in the October of 1981.

The march started off from All Saints which was one of the usual starting off points, and by degree made its way up through St Peter’s Square, into Piccadilly and then down either Market Street or Cannon Street and finishing at Crown Square, which back then was a drab windy place dominated by the law courts and the old Education Offices.

Looking back at the four, there are plenty of people I recognise, many of whom would have been on other demonstrations with me.

And because we are now dealing with an event which is 37 years ago, many of the buildings we passed have gone.

Frank Allaun MP and others 

I did toy with the idea of leaving you guess which have gone, but I didn’t.

So in no particular order the lost, include the tall Maths Tower opposite Manchester Museum, that fine stone building in St Peter’s Square, the old bus station by the Arndale and of course Crown Square, although the picky will maintain that the open space is still there but I doubt it retains its name.

There will be others but these I have deliberately missed off the list.
I am also prepared to be corrected on the route after Piccadilly but know we finished up in Crown Square because half a dozen  pictures testify to that.

So I shall leave it at that and just reflect on how busy the march was and just how many people you recognise.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Marching against Cruise Missiles, October, 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A happy Christmas from the 1950s

It's not often you get a Christmas card from the 1950s dropping through the letter box.

Anyone who regularly read the Eagle comic will recognise the rocket ship and the names Digby and the Meakon.*

At which point l shall not say any more about the two or the Christmas decorated ship hurtling through space.

Instead l will just confess that the card was no time travelling bit of Christmas cheer, instead it came from The Eagle Society that society of like minded happy bunch dedicated to keeping the memory of the Eagle alive.**

It was this years contribution.

And of course l have been one of those happy members for four decades and an "Eagler" since 1957.

Picture; Christmas card from the Eagle Society, from the front page of the Eagle comic, December 22, 1950, No. 37

*The Eagle, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Eagle

**The Eagle Society, https://eagle-times.blogspot.com/

The Eltham we have lost, part 1 ........ The Chestnuts

Now there will be those who accuse me of being lazy this week and not doing my homework, but sometimes it is nice just to let the image say it all.

So here from today and stretching out for the next few days are some scenes of Eltham from the first decade of the last century.

All are taken from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, published in 1909 and represented by Roy Ayers.*

This one is the Ivy Cottage, which stood where ‘the Chestnuts,’ Court Road now stands.  The figure in the foreground is ‘Bishop’ Sharpe, the old schoolmaster, sketching.” R.R.C. Gregory




Picture; The Chestnuts, 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

* 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

The lost Manchester Collection ..... no.1 ....... August 4 1980 in Castlefield

They were a series of photographs I took during the late 1970s into the ‘80s and have sat in our cellar for over thirty years.

They were taken in the old days of film, and were developed and printed in a dark room using smelly chemicals.

That said most never got beyond the stage of being negatives, and when I finally gave up on the hobby they were a neglected piece of history made all the more redundant because the enlarger, chemicals and all the other bits of chemical photography were thrown away.

But now with a new Christmas present which scans the negatives I am back in business.

The images are not always the best quality but they are a bit of our collective past

So here are the first of the hundreds, chosen at random,  and are of the Steam Exposition at Castlefield on Saturday August 4 1980.

The old railway deport on Liverpool Road had closed and the Science and industry Museum had yet to move from Grosvenor Street and take over the site, and so on a Saturday in August lots of people came to enjoy the steam.

There was a band. lots of steam locomotives, a handful of vintage cars and buses and this old lady who had wandered into see what all the fus was about carrying her shopping bag and wearinger her slippers.

Location; Castlefield, 1980

Pictures; the Steam Exposition, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 7. ......... snow across the meadows

The meadows are a special place for me.

During the time the lads were growing up it was a place we went to a lot, often with the dog and always looking for adventures.

More recently it became a subject for research, because long before it became a nature reserve, a place to tip household rubbish or even before the sewage works, it was farmed as meadowland.

This was a particular form of farming which involved the flooding draining and flooding again of the open land in a specific way and designed to grow “early grass” for feeding to the cattle.

Sometime in the winter of 1978 or '79 I wandered across the stretch from Brookburn Road to the Mersey.

It was a bitterly cold day, more cold than we get these days and the snow stubbornly refused to melt.

I suppose if I checked back using the weather records I could pinpoint the exact year but I won’t.

Location; Chorlton






Picture; the meadows,1978-79 from the collection of Andrew Simpson