A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 5........ a street fire alarm 1958

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

In an age before we all had telephones it was necessary to be able to call the fire brigade.  Back in the 1880s there was a dedicated phone in the Lloyds Hotel.  Later still we got these.  This was one outside the Gaumont/Savoy cinema on Manchester Road.  There was another on the corner of Manchester Road and High Lane outside Oban House.

Picture; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, A H Downes, November 1st 1958, M17988, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Melting tar …… a busy butterfly ….. and a long lost adventure

Now the thing about getting old is that there seems to be heaps more time for the memories of the past to invade the doings of a busy day.

Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 

And once that flight of nostalgic fancy starts to run its course it is easy to reflect on how your experiences of 60 odd years ago diverge from those of your kids or grandchildren.

I say that, but much of what our sons did when they were younger are only now being revealed as in their own bouts of nostalgia, they share stories of daring dos which they wouldn’t dare to have admitted to when they were 10.

Some of those stories do resonate.  Their adventures on the meadows on long summer days, chime in with my own, when armed with just a warm bottle of lemonade and a day stretching ahead of us, we wandered off in search of adventures in some faraway park, or along a stretch of the Thames.

Often it was at the end of a train journey or the limit of a Red Rover bus pass, and it usually involved a quiet suburban spot, unhindered by other people. 

One such place was at the end of a railway line, and rather than explore we just sat on the platform.  

There were no trains, no passengers and the only sound was that of a lazy insect collecting pollen, mixed with that distinctive smell of mown grass, which competed with the equally powerful smell of the oil-soaked wooden railway sleepers cooking in the sun.

We must have sat there for hours before boredom and the empty bottle of lemonade prompted us to move on.

The spot where we played  with the hot street tar in 1958

These of course can be replicated by our kids, but those of exploring bombsites have gone as is the simple pastime of watching the tar slowly melt on a hot summer’s day sitting on the side of the road and carefully making patterns of the black oozy stuff with a discarded lolly stick.  

Today the street surface doesn’t melt, and the lolly sticks are no longer there in abundance.

And in the same way those Clean Air Acts of the 1960s have happily done away with the heaps of polluted air which in turn gave us the smog’s which meant we got sent home early from school making our way along roads devoid of landmarks.

Nor today are there those thick sooty deposits on trees which when you climbed them left your hands and clothes grubby and grimy.

But enough of such nostalgic tosh.

Smog's and fogs, 1953

Our grandchildren I hope will never have to use bomb sites as playgrounds or come home with soot smeared clothes.

These they can leave to their imagination fed by granddad’s tales of aimless adventures on long ago summer holidays in that place called the 1950s.

I might try and pretend this is all about the historical context, but perhaps it is just a nostalgic wallow.

Location; nostalgia land

Pictures; Shallow ponds and lazy streams, 2018 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the spot where me and Jimmy O' Donnel played in with the hot street tar in 1958, from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, 2015, and Nelson’s Column during the Great Smog of 1952, N T Stobbs, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.

A bold new station for Manchester and the film Hell is A City

This has to be one of my favourite Manchester stations. It is Oxford Road Railway Station.

The original station dates from 1849 and in 1960  was replaced by this one which was listed in 1995 and described by English Heritage as a "building of outstanding architectural quality and technological interest; one of the most dramatic stations in England.”*

I do have to agree with them.  Its glass and laminated wood entrance soars into the sky and on a sunny evening the reflection of the Refuge Building is captured in those high windows.

Now its predecessor was a much more modest affair.  It too was made of wood but was workman like and lacked style and presence.

There are a few pictures of this older station but not many and until recently I had not really given it much thought.

Until I came across a still from the film Hell is a City which was set in Manchester starred Stanley Baker and focuses on the search for a violent criminal.

It was made in 1960 just nine years before I arrived in the city and much of the location shots are ones that I remember well.

And there as Stanley Baker confronts the criminal on the roof tops of the Refuge Building is Oxford Road Station, both the Armadillo roof of the new station, the sweeping concrete wall of the car park and the old station.

It stands at right angles to the new station entrance which was something of a surprise but is logical.

Of course you would have to be over 50 and more likely 60 to have any vivid memories of this building and I doubt that there are that many pictures of the two standing together.

And like all such things the new station has undergone change.

That sweeping concrete wall and the car park it protected has gone.  In its place has come a tall steel structure with stone steps, which on a sunny day are occuppied by those waiting for a train or those catching a bit of sun along with their sandwiches.

And it remains a very busy place both inside and outside the rush hour.








Pictures;Oxford Road Station in 2008 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, still from Hell is a City, 1960, from Graham Gill,

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 4........ a brick circa 1830

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

As bricks go I do not think it looks very remarkable but then I suppose like most of us they are not things I tend to think much about.  But this one has a story.  The clay from which it was made may have come from just north of the village where clay and marl have been dug since at least the 17th century and it was part of a fine house which was probably built sometime between 1830 and 41.  The families who lived in it were comfortably well off and were important enough to have been listed in the local directories.  But like all but two from the same period it was demolished and we lost a link with our past.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Smoke across Manchester …………1963

Any picture today looking out across the city’s skyline will reveal a forest of cranes.

Back in 1963 there were not so many, but they were there, building a brave new Manchester, some of which arose from bomb sites and others from areas whose Victorian and Edwardian buildings were judged old and beyond their sell by date.

So, here is what became Piccadilly Hotel and its neigbouring buildings boldly climbing into the sky.

But look more closely and for cranes, read tall factory chimneys, marching off into the distance, all still delivering tons of smoke.

Location; Manchester

Picture; a Manchester skyline, 1963,  "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection",
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 14 ........... the Mission Hall chair and a promise

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

Now I like the way that what seem to be totally random bits of the past come together to tell a story which in this case brings together our family home on Well Hall Road an old chair and a promise.

What connects them is this chair which I am guessing must be at least a century old and in its time has travelled from Peckham to Eltham and on to Manchester and now resides in our dining room.

As far as I know it began life in the Evelina Mission Hall on Evelina Road close to where dad had worked for forty years.

I have yet to discover when the mission hall was built but I know it will be sometime between 1874 and 1914 which I grant is a big dollop of history but it’s a start.

I know it was there by 1914 because the hall is listed in the Post Office Directory for that year.

There were plenty of similar halls in the area but by the mid 1960s if not earlier it was struggling for a congregation and closed.

And Dad always scenting a bargain came away with the chair which from 1964 sat in my bedroom in 294 before eventually coming north.

It is a beautiful chair which always reminds me of my father and as happens has already been promised to one of my sons who got in before the others.

But that is not quite the end of the story because it neatly cements the history of the family home in Eltham with my own house in Chorlton in Manchester.

Both houses were built in 1915 and although they differ in their layout and appearance both have been happy places to live.

I can’t claim that the chair has anything to do with that but it remains a little bit of my history uniting me with Peckham, Eltham and Manchester, and in time will continue to do where ever our Joshua finally settles.

Not bad for one chair.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*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

The painting ... a film ... and correcting an injustice ...... Adele Bloch-Bauer ...and the Woman in Gold

 Now like many people much of what I know about art and literature has come about by a mix of accident and curiosity.

And so it is with the painting of  Adele Bloch Bauer, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1907.

"Adele Bloch-Bauer was a wealthy society woman, hostess of a renowned Viennese salon, art patron, and philanthropist. Her famous portraits by Klimt are historical witnesses to the significance of Jewish patronage during the Golden Era of fin-de-siècle Vienna. Among the famous guests in her salon were composer Gustav Mahler, journalist Berta Zuckerkandl, author Stefan Zweig, and socialist Julius Tandler. She supported socialist causes."*

She died in 1925, and during the Nazi occupation of Austria, her family’s collection of art was stolen, by the German Government.

And in 2015 the story of the painting and the attempt by the niece of Adele Bloch-Bauer to have the art work returned to its rightful heirs was the subject of the film, Woman in Gold, which is where I come in, because having seen the film on a wet Sunday afternoon, I went looking for more.

Like all fictional accounts, the film toyed with the events and in particular underplayed the role of Hubertus Czernin the Austrian journalist and publisher who found the historical documents which allowed the family to the begin the process of reclaiming the collection.

But the film and two earlier documentaries highlighted the part played "by Jewish patrons in shaping Viennese modernism and …. the historical injustice in handling their restitution claims.”*

And led me to explore other such claims for restitution, as well as discovering the work of Gustav Klimt.

Not bad for a wet Sunday afternoon.  

Never being one to lift other people’s research, the full account of Adele Bloch-Bauer, and the attempts by her niece, Maria Altmann, and the lawyer,  E. Randol Schoenberg can be read by following the link.

Location, Austria, and California

Picture; Adele Bloch-Bauer, Gustav Klimt in 1907

* Adele Bloch-Bauer, The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women, https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/bloch-bauer-adele

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 11 ........... from the first residents to when we moved in

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

The estate in 1950

Now the great and the good are able to track their family back through the centuries and can pretty much show which of their relatives lived in the ancestral pile right the way back to when the place was built.

Few of us can do the same but just sometimes with a bit of luck and lot of research it is possible to uncover both the residents and the stories of those who occupied a house from its beginning.

Ours was built in 1915 as part of the estate laid out for workers at the Arsenal in Woolwich and while I knew the names of the first two families to live there the rest were unknown.

But using the directories and the electoral rolls it has been possible to discover the identities of all six families who occupied the house from 1915 through till we moved in during the spring of 1964.

And the importance of such a discovery is that it helps tell the story of Well Hall and of Eltham during the Great War and over the next half century.

The first to move into 294 Well Hall were Mr and Mrs Nunn from Ipswich.  He was a blacksmith by trade and in 1911 had been employed in an engineering works.

And it is perhaps easy to see the attractions of their new home over number 56 Rosebery Road in Ipswich which while it had a garden was one of these older mid terraced properties surrounding by similar drab streets.

But in the end it may have just been the work and the Arsenal, because in 1918 with the end of the war and only three years after they settled in Well Hall they left for Ipswich.

With more research it should be possible to determine how many others of those who moved on to the brand new estate stayed to make Eltham their permanent home or like the Nunn’s left.

And that is where the electoral roll comes into its own for unlike the directories which list just the named house holder the rolls provide the names of all those eligible to vote.

So Mrs Brewer two doors down who I knew only as an old lady  living on her own had been in number 290 since the early 1930s, had lost her husband some time during the war, and shared her home with lodgers, having also lived briefly down at Avery Hill.

What is revealing is that some of the families including those in our house moved out and back in during the course of the 1930s and 50s.  I can’t as yet explain why but of course given that most were still rented it would have been easy enough to do.

Looking north up Well Hall Road, 1950

In time it should be possible to discover more about the six families who inhabited the house, including how they made their living and maybe even what they did with themselves.

And that would have been the end of the story but just as I was finishing I came across what I think is a picture of Mrs Nunn and three of her children.

It dates from a little later than 1918 but there staring back at me is the woman who will have cleaned the windows, looked after the garden and walked up the same flight of stairs as me and that I reckon makes for a powerful continuity.

Location;Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall Road in 1950, from Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy*

*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

**Well Hall Estate, Eltham:  An Example of Good Housing Built in 1915, S.L.G. Beaufoy, The Town 

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 3........ the tithe map 1845

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

The tithe map perfectly captures a moment in our history.  Here were recorded the fields, buildings and roads in 1845.  But there is much more because the map and its accompanying schedule lists who owned the land, who they rented it to, the size of each field, its value and above all its use. It will also tell you who lived in the houses.

Now  we live facing the Recreation Ground and beside us was the Bowling Green Field, farmed by Samuel Gratrix, and owned by the Egerton’s.  It was an acre of arable farm land and its value was 3s 10d and directly opposite us was Row Acre which is now the Rec

Picture; by courtesy of Philip Lloyd

The age of the parking meter was short ....... we won’t see their like again

Now I am always surprised at what was once familiar street furniture can disappear like snow in the winter sun.

And looking at this 1968 picture of St Peter’s Square there will be a few who wonder what I am on about.

But I suspect that anyone born in the last two decades may wonder what that poll with the domed shaped device beside the car was used for because the age of the parking meter has come and  gone.

It was a short life.

The first in London was installed just fifty years ago which post dated their introduction in an American city by just 40 odd years.*

There are some  in Central London but 3,500 have gone leaving just 800.

And as ever, I can’t remember exactly when they vanished from the streets of Manchester and Salford.

At which point I know someone will come up with chapter and verse and also point me to the surviving ones somewhere.

As it is there were parking meters here by 1961 when the barrow boys of Back Piccadilly were concerned that their livelihood was under threat from the introduction of parking meters along the narrow street in November of 1961.*

Our image was taken in the October of 1968.

And for me the bonus of the picture is that it shows those lost buildings, one of which went I think sometime in the early '70s and the other very recently.

Location; Manchester







Picture; St Peter's Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Time runs out for the parking meter, Josie Barnard, The Telegraph, November 07, 2017, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/4029123/Time-runs-out-for-the-parking-meter.html

**Back Piccadilly may lose barrow Boys, Manchester Guardian, November 20, 1961

When Eltham did it first ..... travelling in a double-decker train

I say Eltham but strictly speaking it was the Southern Region of British Railways who came up with the idea of the double-decker train to alleviate the overcrowding during the rush hour on the Bexleyheath line into London.

Goodbye, 1971, Well Hall Railway Station

The service ran from 1949 to 1971 and was received with a mixed response.

I loved them making them my preferred train from Well Hall up to Charing Cross during the 1960s.

But some found the seats uncomfortable, ventilation of the upper deck was bad and worst of all the loading and offloading of passengers was slow. *

And I grant you having travelled on double decker trains into Milan which were quite swish, our version was a bit clunky.  

That said the appearance of our trains with their curved upper windows marked them out as very different.

I have never quite forgotten them although they have slid back in my memory along with those summer concerts at the Pleasusance, the Burton’s on the corner of the High Street and the pubs which were the haunt of my growing up.

But when the Today Programme on BBC radio ran the story that Eurostar had ordered some double deck trains, I was instantly back with the 8.30 from Well Hall nonstop to Waterloo.  The piece included references to our unique trains and rather dismissed them as having been a short experiment and raising again the issues of uncomfortable seats and poor ventilation.

Now that was a bit unfair given that they ran for twenty-two years which is quite long in the history of public transport vehicles.

And that is almost that, although there is delightful account of the design and history of the Bexleyheath double decker’s in Gus White’s book, The Bexleyheath Railway at Eltham, 1895-1995, published by the Eltham Society.

And an equally interesting article from BBC News which carries a Pathe News clip of the trains from 1949.**

So a win for all. And yes there were other double decker trains around the world, and yes I would welcome more pictures and memories from anyone who like me let the "train take the strain" between 1949 and 1971.

Location, Well Hall, 1949-1971

Picture; the double-decker on its last run at Well Hall, October 1971 from the Kentish Times and reproduced in The Bexleyheath Railway at Eltham, 1895-1995

*Gus White, The Bexleyheath Railway at Eltham, 1895-1995, The Eltham Society

**Eurostar orders first double-decker trains, Katy Austin, BB News, October 22nd 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz6n1w80z1zo

Faces with stories ………..

I am looking at the face of a young woman, and what makes the image very remarkable is that it sat at the bottom of the sea for nearly 160 years amongst the wreckage of S.S. Central America which sank in 1857 off the coast of South Carolina.

But not the Mona Lisa of the Deep, 2023

Now the story of the picture, the ship and the mystery woman are there on the internet, and  as ever I will not presume to lift other people’s research and writing*

Other than to say that the image is an example of a daguerreotype “which was made on a silver-plated copper plate, polished to a mirror finish, then sensitized by exposing the plate to the fumes of iodine or bromine. 

After being exposed to light through a lens, the image was developed by exposing the plate to the fumes of mercury until the direct positive image appeared, then fixed in a bath of sodium thiosulfate or ordinary salt”.**

In all 100 images were recovered but many were too degraded to offer up a face, but there are ten which are very clear.

And of the 10 this one has captured the imagination of many and has gained the name of the “Mona Lisa of the Deep”.  It was found a pile of coal on the sea bed.

Just who she was remains a mystery but my old school friend Richard Woods who sent over the image thinks “there is a possible resemblance to Ellen Lewis Herndon, who was the daughter of the captain of the SS Central America, although the image I have come across was taken at an older age”.

Astarte Syriaca, 1877

Who ever she was there is no escaping the vividness of the image, and that set me thinking of the heaps of photographs and paintings I have come across over the years, and the stories that sit behind the faces staring back at us.

And that in turn prompted me to think about a series of Pre Raphaelite paintings many of which are in the collection of Manchester City Art Gallery.

Of these the paintings Astarte Syriaca** and the Bower Meadow are two of my favourites. 

Both were painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and feature Jane Morris.  She was the wife of William Morris, the socialist and leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

William Morris remains one of those 19th century figures I am drawn to.  His book News from Nowhere, and his designs have long been part of our house.

But if I am honest I have always also been captivated by images of Jane Morris which might be a bit questionable given that she was born in 1839 and died just 35 years before I was born.

Not that being married stopped her from a romantic entanglement with Rossetti or later with the poet and political activist, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who despite standing as a Tory and then a Liberal Parliamentary candidate was an anti-Imperialist, who campaigned for Irish independence, and challenged the motives of those who supported the Empire. 

Proserpina, 1876

Now I knew nothing of Jane’s romantic attachments when I first came across her in the City Art Gallery.  Nor that she had been born in what used to be called “humble circumstances”  or that her mother was illiterate and according to one source her own education had been limited, which “probably was destined to go into domestic service like her mother…… [but after her engagement to William Morris] …… she was privately educated to become a gentleman's wife. Her keen intelligence allowed her to recreate herself. 

She was a voracious reader who became proficient in French and Italian, and she became an accomplished pianist with a strong background in classical music. Her manners and speech became refined to an extent that contemporaries referred to her as ‘queenly.’ 

Later in life, she had no trouble moving in upper-class circles. She was the model for the heroine of the 1884 novel Miss Brown by Vernon Lee and may also have influenced George Bernard Shaw in creating the character of Eliza Doolittle in his play Pygmalion (1914) and the later film My Fair Lady (1964). She also became a skilled needlewoman, self-taught in ancient embroidery techniques, and later became renowned for her own embroideries.”**** 

The Meadow Bower, 1872

Although there is a suggestion that her work as an embroider with that of her sister never got the full recognition that it deserved when she worked in the firm of which William Morris was a partner.

And that pretty much is that, other than to say this has been one of those twisty turney stories which started off with a ship wreck and a mystery woman in a picture and by degrees led me to William Morris and heap of things about Jane Morris.

All of which confirms that observation that history is messy and can take you off in all sorts of directions, and along the way highlights the poverty and lost chances of so many in 19th century Britain and the lucky chance that allowed one young woman destined for domestic service to warp off in a totally different direction.

I would like to have included that stunning image of the young woman plucked from the sea, but as yet I do not have permission from the company who who hold the rights to the image to publish it.

Hence the substituted image Not the Mona Lisa

It is a shame but falls into that domain of copyright issues of which I am a staunch supporter.

That said there is perhaps a difference between a work produced by an individual and one acquired by a company even if they went to the cost of preserving it.

But if that permission does finally come through there may be a story about its preservation by the Paul Messier Studio.

We shall see.

And in the meantime there are plenty of images of the young woman out there posted by people who have secured permission or just don't care.

Another not the Mona Lisa of the Deep

Location; the 19th century

Pictures; , Astarte Syriaca, 1877, and Meadow Bower, 1872,Dante Gabriel Rossetti Manchester City Art Gallery, and Proserpina, 1876, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Tate Art Gallery 

* Doomed ship of gold’s ghostly picture gallery is plucked from the seabed, Dalya Alberge, The Guardian, February 27th, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/feb/27/doomed-ship-of-golds-ghostly-picture-gallery-is-plucked-from-the-seabed and Mona Lisa of the Deep, Professional Photographers of America, Sunken treasure, Amanda Arnold • November 2022 Issue, https://www.ppa.com/ppmag/articles/mona-lisa-of-the-deep

**Stuart Williams

***Astarte Syriaca, Manchester City Art Galley, https://manchesterartgallery.org/explore/title/?mag-object-163

****Jane Morris, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Morris

Of Waterloo sunsets, Peckham Rye and the Pleasuance at Well Hall

Now it is just one of those things that you miss where you grew up.

Coming home, 2013

It is such an obvious statement but is none the less true.

I left south east London in 1969 for Manchester unsure what was ahead of me but convinced that I would be back, but like most plans it never happened.

Manchester is where I ended up, got married bought a house and brought up four kids.

In my twenties I can’t say I missed London and I guess it wasn’t until quite recently, long after I qualified for a concessionary bus pass and reached an age to be rewarded with the being offered a seat on the tram that I began to think of home.

Well Hall, 2011

And home really only begins when the ferry docks or the  train pulls across the river into Waterloo and then I know I am back.

Another 20 or so minutes later and after the train has taken that curve I have arrived home in Eltham.

But then because we moved around, the train could quite easily have taken me to Queens Road or New Cross and because for a long time our Elizabeth lived in Plumstead and Woolwich there was that other set of railway stations.

My kids always know which special song to play for me and ever since I first heard Waterloo Sunset it has been my tune, with a special meaning given that Kay and I would meet every Friday night under that clock.

Ten years earlier Waterloo Station would be one of the destinations along with London Bridge which would be the start of an adventure.

Woolwich, 2015

For with 2/6d pocket money and aged just ten there were lots of places you could go for a modest return fare and still have change for a variety of sweets.

Sometimes you struck gold and on other occasions you ended up in a dreary back street beside a canal with grim tall buildings all around you.

But that didn’t matter because the fun was in the expectation of where you might go and once there roaming across the city in search of anything that looked interesting.

And there were the bombsites which were still pretty much in evidence all around us.  Most of the time there wasn’t much to discover, but once we found a gas mask still in its box with the green paint and black rubber looking brand new.

Woolwich, circa 1940s

And then there was the old bombed church of St Mary’s which was a place where with a shared candle  a group of you could wander through the crypt anticipating all sorts of horrors and finding only a damp and smelly mattress.

Some adventures turned out not so well, like the time me, Jimmy O’Donnel and John Cox having walked from Lausanne Road to Greenwich, took the wrong turning by the entrance to the foot tunnel and instead of standing on the sand in front of the Naval College we turned left walked amongst the barges and sank up to our ankles in oily Thames mud.

To this day I remain ashamed that I blamed the other two when mother interrogated me on arriving home.

Worse than the interrogation was the bath that followed which seemed to take hours and involved much scrubbing to remove the dried mud from me and even longer to make my shoes half decent.

Today those trips are less perilous but no less fun and often involve a brief visit to an old haunt like the Pleasaunce at Well Hall which is only a few minute’s walk from our old house.

Cambden Church, 1904

Of course I am well aware that the places of my youth have changed and as in the case of Woolwich pretty dramatically but I don’t subscribe to that throw away judgement that places I knew are “now rubbish”, they are just different and no doubt there would be those catapulted into the 21st century from 1900 who would mourn the passing of the “smoke hole” at Woolwich and wish there were two lanes of traffic forcing their way down Powis Street.

I suppose for those of us who leave it is always a bit odd to be confronted with the disappearance of all our childhood memories.

That said I never tire of Waterloo Sunset or arriving south over the river.

Location; south of the river

Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Scott MacDonald and Elizabeth and Collin Fitzpatrick and Steve Bardrick, Camden Church Peckham Road, circa 1904, Albert Flint Photographer and Publisher, 68 Church Street, Camberwell in the series Camberwell, marked by Tuck and Sons, and reproduced courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

The Typing Pool ………. gone forever?

I just wonder if the Typing Pool still exists in the same format as it did through most of the last century, and beyond.

The wide use of the type writer ushered it in, no doubt replacing the rows of clerks with pens, pots of ink, and candles.

And I suppose the arrival of the computer has pretty much killed it off.

Happily someone will know, and enlighten my ignorance, and add memories of working in the pool.

Location; a Typing pool

Picture; the Typing Pool, 1969, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number two ........ the tram terminus 1928

A short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a few paragraphs and  a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

I have chosen the tram terminus sometime around 1928.  Trams took the township out of the era of the horse drawn coach into the 20th century.  In 1903 the route from Belle Vue via Brooks’ Bar and Upper Chorlton Road was extended to West Point at Seymour Grove and four years later was extended again to Lane End,the junction of Sandy Lane and Barlow Moor Road. And in that year of 1928 Manchester trams carried 328 million passengers on 953 trams via 46 routes and along 292 miles of track.  We had indeed become part of the city.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

The Secret Suitcase ... today .... for ten days on the wireless

This series of The History Podcast, The House at Number 48 creeps up on you and peels back a dark period in European history.

Mr. & Mrs Bux, undated but circa 1930s

It starts today and runs over ten days on Radio 4.

"After the death of his enigmatic and distant father, Antony Easton finally gets to go through his Dad's secret suitcase: 'This was his life,' Antony says. 

As he forensically trawls through its contents, Antony discovers a series of clues which are about to change his life forever. 

And, after decades, a woman from Antony's childhood gets in touch. For her, time is running out. She says she must see him one last time...

The House at Number 48 is presented by Charlie Northcott.

The series producer is Jim Frank.

Sound design and mixing by Tom Brignell.

Family, undated

The Editor is Matt Willis".

And having just binge listened to all ten episodes I can confirm it is a fascinating and at times frightening account.

It is part detective story, and  part the human tragedy  of a Jewish family dispossed of almost all they possesed by the Nazis, who managed to escape from Germany via Czechoslovakia and Poland to Britain.

At each stage the family  were just one step a head of the German army,  arriving in Prague just months before the country was occupied and having settled in Warsaw they left  just weeks before the  invasion in September 1939.

Leaving me just to explain the choice of images.

The pictures accompanying the BBC series is not mine to use, and instead I chose two from the German side of our family who have no connection to the story other than that they were German and against the Nazis.

Location; Radio 4

Picture; the Bux family from the Simpson Collection

*The House At Number 48, The History Podcast, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002l45x

A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number one ...... a bridge across the Mersey 1816

Now this will be a short series featuring objects which tell a story of Chorlton in just a paragraph and is also a challenge for people to suggest some that are personal to their stories.

They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

This was the first bridge across the Mersey on the edge of the township.  Samuel Wilton built it in 1816 at a cost of £200, but the ferry and the right to transport passengers across the Mersey were still in place in 1832 when the pub and the surrounding land were put up for sale.

At the time it was the landlord of the pub who benefited from the ferry charges.  The toll of a 1d to cross the bridge was abolished in the 1940s.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection 1865

So this is 1968 and we are looking up towards St Peter’s Square

I have to admit it is a scene which is very familiar and like all good pictures from the past I seem to remember it as monochrome.

Of course that doesn’t make sense but as hard as I try I can’t picture it in colour.

It is just one of those things.

And there will be plenty of others who instantly recognise the scene, even down to the fashionable dress and hairstyle of the young woman on the right.

The picture come to light through a new project which Neil Simpson tells me is “the Town Hall Photographer's Collection Digitisation Project, which currently is Volunteer led and Volunteer staffed is in the process of taking the 200,000 negatives in the collection dating from 1956 to 2007 and digitising them.

The plan is to gradually make the scanned images available online - initially on the Manchester Local Images Collection Website".*

And almost a century later I was pretty much on the same spot and chose to replicate the shot.

Of course at the time I had no idea that someone back in 1968 had stood where I was and taken a picture.

I bet even then the photographer would have had to be careful of the traffic while I had a clear run given that back in 2016 the road was closed as the finishing touches were being made to the tram line in readiness for the Second City Crossing.

Today I wouldn't dream of standing in the middle of the road, taking my time and then taking a picture.

The trams pass that spot with a frequency that means at best I might just get a shot in but I doubt it and that as they say is progress.

Still at least I can turn in a bright colour image.

And that just leaves you to record the differences.

Location Manchester

Picture; of looking towards St peter’s Square, 1968, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and almost the same spot in 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Neil Simpson, Manchester Local Images Collection Website, https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/sets/7215766350511542

What we did in October when we were still a farming community

Cows on the meadows, 2003

An occasional series reflecting on what we did in the township when we were still a small rural community.

Now if I had been farming here in the 1850s I might well have turned to The Book of the Farm by Henry Stephens.*

It was written in 1844, and ran to countless editions. It was the manual for anyone wanting to be a farmer.

Everything is here from what crops to plant and when to how to make a well, as well as sound advice on hiring labourers, the construction of a water meadow, and the best location for the milk house and cheese room. I learned which materials were best for building a farm house and how much I could expect to pay for materials, as well as the most up to date scientific information on planting wurzels.

It was a practical book and so “the cost of digging a well in clay, eight feet in diameter and sixteen deep and building a ring three feet in diameter with dry rubble masonry is only L5 [£5] exclusive of carriage and the cost of pumps.”

He calculated that that two brood sows could produce 40 pigs between them and that retaining six for home use the remaining 34 could easily be sold at market.

So many of the smaller farmers and market gardeners in the township might well keep at least one sow and use it to supplement their income.

Nor should we forget that these animals were destined for the table and so the slaughter of pigs was best done around Martinmas in early November because “the flesh in the warm months is not sufficiently firm and is then liable to be fly born before it is cured” and doing so in early November had the added advantage that cured hams would be ready for Christmas.

But today and over the next few weeks I want to drop in to another farming book which is H Rider Haggard’s A Farmer’s Year, written in 1898 and published the following year.

Now he was farming in Norfolk a full half century later than Mr Stephens and of course Norfolk isn’t rural Chorlton or Eltham or anywhere in south east London..

Harrowing in Mustard on stubble

That said this is what he wrote for the beginning of October.

“Since harvest about 250 loads of manure have been carted from the yards direct to the various fields where they are to spread, and sundry dykes on the marshland have been drawn.  

Also a little thrashing has been done and we sold some barley at sixteen shillings and fifteen shillings according to its quality.

Today October 5th we are ploughing on the bean stubble but with the soil in its present condition it is dreadfully hard work for the horses.”


*Stephens Henry, The Book of the Farm, 1844

** Haggard, H Rider, A Farmer’s Year,  1899

Pictures; the Meadows, courtesy of David Bishop 2003, and Harrowing in Mustard on stubble from A Farmer’s Year, 1899

The Chorlton farthing, halfpenny and penny from Reynard Road …. bringing luck to the house

Now, there will be someone who can offer up a full and detailed explanation for the practice of putting coins in or around the entrance to a house.

I am guessing it will be a pre Christian practice.  

One suggestion I read referred back to “Italian folklore probably - it's so that money will flow freely into the home and that the people inside prosper”, and another reminded me that coins were placed at the foot of masts in sailing ships.

My grandparents found a coin dating from King George III under the stone step in their two up two down on Hope Street in Derby, which dated the row of terraced houses .

And Jaime who lives on Reynard Road sent over these coins adding, “Good morning Andrew, I thought I’d share another interesting thing about our house. 

We are having some work done and my builder found some old coins in the old door frame.  There’s a 1927 penny, 1939 farthing, 1942+1943 half pennies. 

They were in the old back door frame. I think at a later date a small extension was added”.

The houses date from the early 20th century, and so as Jaime says the extension will have been added later sometime after 1943, but I suspect not long afterwards, but maybe after the war.

In 1939, a Mr. Sydney Mckew who was a long distance lorry driver shared the house with Ada Faulkner and George Hayes, which for the time being is s close a we are going to get to those coins and the little back extension.  

Ada was twelve years older than Sydney and described her occupation as “Unpaid domestic duties”, while George was 29 and was “Milk Roundsman”.

In time we may find out more about the three and push forward the time when they lived in the house to when the coins were deposited.

But for now that is pretty much it, other than to reflect that there will be many like me who not only remember all of the coins Jaime sent over but will have used them until they became history with the move to decimal coinage.

Although I have come across and written about other odd objects found in houses, including the Salford shoe, and the 1910 cheese sandwich.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; “Four coins from a doorway", 2021, from the collection of Jaime Cockcroft-Bailey

Eltham Park Railway Station ........ the one I never visited

So, despite living in Eltham for an important chunk of my childhood I never visited Eltham Park Railway Station.

Eltham Park Railway Station, 1908

But then we lived on Well Hall Road and there seemed very little reason to stay on the train.

On the rare occasions when I did visit the next station on the line it was part of those adventures which led me wandering across Eltham on sunny Saturdays or in the school holidays.

All of which means I have no idea what it looked like, and so I am grateful to that smashing little book Eltham Village published in 1984.*

More so because one of the authors, Paula Richardson has given me permission to reproduce this picture, and as we all know it is always correct to seek the permission of those who first reproduced the image.

Likewise, I shall credit that excellent site Disused Stations for the history of the railway Station, which opened in 1908 by South Eastern & Chatham Railway Company and closed on March 3rd, 1983.**

By then I had done a decade in Manchester and remember my surprise when on going home later in that year the train from Charing Cross deposited me on the platform of entirely different railway station.

Not much of a story I suppose, but sometimes history is made up of the little things.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Park Railway Station, 1908, from Eltham Village

*Eltham Village,  Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson in 1984 and published by G & Pi Publications Eltham

**Eltham Park, Disused Stations, http://disused-stations.org.uk/e/eltham_park/index.shtml

A greatcoat …… works clothes and other surplus stuff …….. on Denmark Road

 This is a shop I grew up with.

It supplied Dad with a variety of work clothes, the odd selection of tools and when I was older provided me with great coats, and battle dresses which many of us students bought as cheap alternatives to High Street fashions.

You could find the shops in any town, and they were a wonderful cornucopia of cheap and durable products, many of which were Government Surplus.

Today those great coats, and combat gear, tun up in Retro shops and retail at silly prices, but in the decades just after the last war they were for sale at knock down prices, and were a good bargain.

But even then in the 1950s, there were fashions for surplus stock amongst us kids.

One year it was green fabric bags, which  might have once have held a gas mask or rounds of ammunition, but were perfect for carrying a packet of sandwiches , a bottle of lemonade or Tizer, and if we were very lucky, a slice of cake.

The bags cost just a shilling, which was still a big chunk of your pocket money which weighed in at 2/6d, but they were a must to have, and along with a balaclava, set you up for an adventure.

In the case of the balaclava, it didn’t matter that the sun was cracking the paving stones, and the last bout of rain had been a month ago, they were just a required part of what you needed to have fun.

This shop was on Denmark Road, but it is so like the ones I used to go to in Peckham and Woolwich, and  similar to ones across  Manchester.

Like the local ironmonger’s surplus stores had a distinctive smell, which I guess was derived from the musty clothes, shoe leather, and the well worn bare floor boards, added to which there was usually that lingering scent of paraffin stoves, which were lit even in summer.

Look closely and hanging up just over the door are a selection of military jackets, and I rather think the centre one might well have been scarlet, which were particularly fashionable in the mid 60s.

And here, I know there will be friends who took the path of a military career, and while I slouched around  the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street*,  for them,  those ex-surplus uniforms were just what they wore for the day job.

Our picture dates, from 1967 and it is typical of these sorts of shops, but what makes this one just that bit different are the two figures either side of the owner who stares out at the camera.

Now I have tracked the two of them across the collection and they reappear in areas zoned for house clearance, and in many of them the woman carries a map or a notepad, which suggests they are from the Architects or the Planning Department and are engaged in the survey of the area.

And their presence like the albatross in the sky may have signalled the end of S.Small & Sons, with pretty much the rest of this stretch of Denmark Road

Location, Denmark Road

Picture; great coats, work clothes and much more, Denmark Road, 1967,Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,  https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY

*The College of Knowledge was actually the College of Commerce, which became the Faculty of Commerce in 1969 when Manchester Polytechnic was established, and was where me,, Lois, John, Mike and Jack passed three happy years between 1969-72.
And as I write is being converted into residential flats.