The Art of New Year ……..

So, given that New Year’s Eve only happens once a year you only get one stab of featuring the art that said goodbye to the old year.

Now I think you are either a Christmas or New Year person, and I and my family are definitely Christmas.

There were a few years when the attractions of alcoholic excess seemed attractive but they were accompanied with a hangover and a wasted following day.

Nor did I ever feel the need to party away with a heap of strangers in in a hotel eating food that was overpriced and pretentious.

But lots of people did and still do and I wouldn’t knock them for that.

So instead, here are two pieces of New Year art, courtesy of Suzanne Morehead whose parents danced the night away having had the full menu.

Back in the day, we saw it in with the kids, and in the absence of that insane bout of fireworks would hear the ships sirens from the docks welcoming in another year. 

Location any one of a shedload of New Year’s Eves

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

Celebrating New Year ….. with turnips ….. a carrot …..Mr. Wilding ….. and a bit of humour

After 89 years I doubt I will turn up much on The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’.

The invitation to New Year fun, 1936

But then until Gill Curtis posted this delightful programme advertising their New Year’s Eve Gathering, I didn’t even know they existed, but exist they did.

As Gill wrote “I thought your members might be interested in a flyer I’ve found from 1936 proving that Chorlton cum Hardy was the place to be on New Year’s Eve. My grandfather obviously thought so as he was the piano player!”

Parker's, circa 1930s

Now, I am not surprised that there was a gardening group.  

There were plenty of other such groups in Chorlton which had developed as the township grew from a small agricultural community into a suburb of Manchester.

The transformation had begun in the mid-1860s with urban creep up from Stretford Railway Station along Edge Lane and then the newly cut Wilbraham Road.

But the real pace of change started in the 1880s around what was once the Four Banks and stretched along Barlow Moor and Manchester Roads and out towards Longford Park in one direction and Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station in the other.

The area attracted the “middling people” many of whom worked in the city but wanted to live in an area which still had a rural feel.  They included those who described themselves “professionals" and "clerks" along with businessmen.

And as they did, they set up “societies” from theatre and operatic groups to public speaking, gardening and a whole range of sporting activities.

In 1909 the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Show included in its event the best Chorlton garden.  The show continued well into the 1930s and featured agricultural as well as gardening events.*

Five and bit hours of fun, 1936

So, in 1936 The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’ staged their New Years event which was at 357 Barlow Moor Road, near to the junction with Hardy lane and Mauldeth Road West.  The parade of shops still exists.

Back then it was owned by Parker’s Bakery of Needham Avenue and was one of a number of outlets across Chorlton.

To modern eyes it may seem a tame affair, but the programme is not without a sense of humour and begs the question of whether there are other bits of memorabilia out there connected to the group.

We shall see.

Leaving me just to thank Gill.

Location, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Amateur Gardeners’, New Year’s Eve Gathering, 1936, from the collection of Gill Curtis 

*Winning the best kept garden on Nicolas Road in 1909, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2018/08/winning-best-kept-garden-on-nicholas.html

The grimy ones ........ our River

Now here is another of those short series taken from the family archive.

All were taken around 1979 and offer up scenes of the River which we knew but most tourists seldom saw.

Location; the River


Pictures; the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A Manchester first ……… John Edward Sutton .... first Labour Councillor and Manchester MP

John Edward Sutton deserves to be remembered.

John Edward Sutton, MP

He was the first Labour candidate to be elected to the Manchester City Council, went on to become the first Labour MP for Manchester East in 1910, and later represented Manchester Clayton for a short period in 1922, and again between 1923 and 1931.

All the more remarkable given that he started work in a cotton mill at seven years of age in 1871, and at 14 began work at Bradford Colliery rising to the post of checkweighman.

His obituary in the Manchester Guardian records that he was first elected to the Bradford Ward as a City Councillor in 1894, continuing as such for nearly 20 years, and was “secretary and then agent for the Bradford lodge of the Lancashire and Cheshire Miner’s Federation”.*

Today when many defeated politicians go on to utilize their Parliamentary experience and contact to carve out jobs in the media and as lobbyist, it might surprise many that  Mr. Sutton returned after his election defeats to work at the coal mine.

He was according to the newspaper “of that school of Socialists that grew out of Liberal Nonconformity through the I.L.P.  He was never a revolutionary but a strong co-operator and temperance advocate.

Labour Party Poster, 1910

Physically a somewhat frail man he had the vigour of mind and expression that belied his quiet manner and a courage that put him among the pioneers in the workers’ cause at the end of the last century.  

He was not merely Manchester’s first Labour councillor but a firm advocate of municipal ownership of essential local services and one who did much to advance the municipalizing of the transport service”.

But this does little to highlight his progressive position on a raft of issues, from support for the extension of the franchaise to women,to the need for a minimum wage and his opposition to the position of Aldermen on the City Council.

And having opposed the practice of Aldermen, rightly he turned down the offer to become one in 1909.

In time I will find out more about this remarkable man.  I know his father was a cotton spinner and one of John Edward Sutton’s first homes was on London Road, that he married Hannah in 1880 when they were both just 19 years old.

Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887

In 1911 the family were living in a five roomed house in Clayton a year after he was elected an MP and by 1939 he and his two children were living in Chorlton on Egerton Road.

Labour Party Poster, 1945

And that is it at present.  

There is one photograph of Mr. Sutton, but it is unclear if it can be used and so I have fallen back on a very poor copy from his obituary.

The next step will be visits to the Labour History Museum and Central Ref to trawl their records for more on his time as a councillor, MP and trade unionist, and if I am lucky there may be election material, correspondence and more pictures.

But I am pleased that he lived long enough to see the Labour Party returned to office in the July of 1945 with 393 MPs on a promise to carry out many of the policies he himself argued for.**

Reflecting on his his time as an elected representative he said "he had fought many municipal elections and nine Parliamentary elections and met with his first defeat in 23 years of public life".***

The occasion was a presentation at the Beswick Co-operative Society's Hall in Manchester to mark his retirement.  

Labour Poster, 1931

The hall was packed and amongst the speakers and well wishers there were many colleagues from the early days of the I.L.P.*** 

But consistent with his character, in 1939, eight years after his defeat in the 1931 General Election when Labour recorded one of its worst defeats, he listed his occupation as not former MP, but "Coal Miners Agent, Retired" 

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Solidarity, Walter Crane, 1887, Labour Party posters, 1910, 1931 & 1945, Mr. J.E. Sutton, date unknown

*Mr. J.E. Sutton, Manchester Guardian, November 30th, 1945

**The 1945 General Election was held in July 1945, and Mr. Sutton died in November of that year.

***Presentation to Mr. J.E.Sutton, 38 years of Public Service, Manchester Guardian, July 15th, 1932

Mr. Roger Hall …. last known in British Columbia has been found ….

It is the sort of discovery which would gladden the heart of anyone engaged in family history.

The Griffth farmhouse, New Brunswick, 2008

More so because Roger Hall had disappeared almost a full century ago and despite the efforts of me in the UK and my Canadian cousins, he remained the “lost relative”.

He had been born in 1898 in Birmingham to Montague and Eliza who were our great grandparents.  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship and after moving from Derby via Birmingham and London, they settled in Gravesend only to split in 1902.  He remained in Gravesend, and she returned to Derby with her three sons and it was there in the Derby Workhouse that she gave birth to her last child.

Her return was not an easy one and for most of their childhood the children were in care before being placed in occupations.  Roger and my grandfather proved more troublesome, and both were sentenced to a naval boot camp.  Granddad went but great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada, migrated as a British Home Child in 1914.*

His Attestation Papers, 1915

In a few short months he worked on three Canadian farms, being sent back twice and absconding from the third to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  In the process he changed his name, lied about his age and gave his aunt as next of kin rather than his mother.

His unwillingness to conform on the farms was replicated in the army and he court martialled four times, once for hitting an officer and three times for absence without leave.

But he survived, returned to Canada, and persuaded his sister to follow him out on an Empire Assisted Scheme in 1925, and then sometime after that we lost him.

Until our Marisa found him on the census return for the Municipality of Coquitlam in British Columbia.

One of his letters, 1916

He was lodging with a family, gave his occupation as a labourer on a farm and was single.

There is much more to find out which I know our Marisa will uncover. But its is the first real reference we have after 1925 and confirms his sister’s belief that he had headed out to the west of Canada, a place still in the making and as rough and ready with promise of new things as the western states of its neighbour.

I suspect it was somewhere that would allow a young restless man an opportunity to reinvent himself.

As it was, he had reverted to his given names of Roger and Hall, which had been dropped in favour of James Rogers when he ran away and enlisted.  That reversion seems to have muddied the search but now we have him, living in a community dominated by single men from China and Japan who were labourers.

His landlord was a James William Williams who was also from the UK and was a barber aged 42 and perhaps a search may reveal something more of his Canadian life.  I know he was married to Mary and that their daughter, Elizabeth Mary was born in BC in 1917.

There are several James William Williams who fit the date of birth in various bits of Britain which in turn may offer up more.

But essentially that is it.

To which some will mutter so what?  And follow it up with, “apart from the family what interest can there be in a man who disappeared a century ago?”

Well, whenever research brings anyone out of the shadows that is a good result and even more so when he is a member of that group of children who were migrated to Canada and later other parts of the former British Empire. 

Places he knew, St John River, NB, 2008

They were sent from 1870 and a century later some British organizations were still engaged in settling young people in Australia.

Until recently they were a virtually forgotten group and while they are still a neglected part of our history at least in Canada the study of British Home Children has become a serious area of historic study.*

That study has occasioned a serious debate about the motives of those engaged in the migration, the effects on the young people both at the time and subsequently, and the contribution they made to the countries they settled in.

And our great uncle was one of them.

Special thanks to our cousin Marisa Cooper who continued the search for Roger Hall when I had all but given up.

Location; Canada,

Pictures; One of the farms he stayed at in New Brunswick, 2008, his Attestation papers, 1915, letter from Roger James Hall/James Rogers, February 2, 1916, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of the Griffith's farmhouse, N.B., Angela Faubert, 2008

*British Home Children, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

Waiting for that fast service to Central ................ standing on the platform at Chorlton-cum-Hardy railway station

Now I am part of that generation that grew up with steam locomotives.

And I don’t mean those special heritage steam trains I mean the full on thing, when everything from the intercity express down to sedate suburban commuter links and the humble unromantic goods locos were all steam powered.

All of which makes this picture postcard of our station one to cherish particularly because there are very few of the inside of the station.

I don’t have a date for this one but it will be before 1926 when an aerial picture shows the station without the footbridge which the historian John Lloyd says was removed “to save the expense of maintaining it and the public had to use the road bridge.”**

So we have just 40 or so years to play with because the station was opened in 1880 and judging by  the quality of the picture postcard I am guessing we will be sometime in the early years of the last century.

And that quality allows you to focus in on the detail from the iron work under the bridge to the signs advising passengers to use the foot bridge to cross the tracks which proved particularly relevant after the death of Mary Jane Cockrill of Oswald Road in 1909 who was run down by "a fast train approaching the station."***

I don’t think you have to have an over vivid imagination to put yourself on that platform just over a century ago.

The place is empty save for the staff and the chap in the bowler hat who I suspect runs the kiosk, so we must be in one of those in between moments and given that there are no passenger either a train has just gone through or this is that long wait between the morning commuter rush and the evening return.

And for anyone who has ever been alone on a warm summer’s day waiting for a train the scene will be all too familiar.

There will be that silence punctuated by the odd noise from the road in the distance the clunck of a shunting engine and the sound of the platform clock.

And if you have timed it wrongly there could still be a hint of steam left from the departing train and the last solitary commuter making their way out up the approach path to Wilbraham Road.

Which means that you are left to idle the time away looking at the headlines from the newspaper posters, ponder on the promises being made by the adverts and perhaps spend a penny on that weighing machine.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, date unknown

Picture; Chorlton-cum-Hardy Railway Station, date unknown, courtesy of Mark Fynn***

*Looking Back At Chorlton-cum-Hardy, John Lloyd, 1985

**Woman Killed at Chorlton In front of a railway train, Manchester Guardian, January 11, 1909 although to be accurate her death was a suicide

***Manchester Postcards, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html, 

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.

This is the end of the journey, and features pictures I don’t think I have used before.

The Rochdale Canal runs out into the Castlefield Basin under the Castle Street Bridge, at Lock 92.

In the 1970s and into the next decade this was still a shabby, slightly edgy, but wonderful place, which was, and is, at the centre of much of our industrial past. 

It was a major switching hub, where the river, the new railways and the canal network  met, supplying the diverse industries of the city.

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

7 am on Beech Road

 Nothing more exciting than a trip to buy a bottle of milk.

H.OB. Gallery, 2025

But there is always the temptation to look in at the shop windows.

Beech Road, 2025

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; H.O.B Gallery, 2025 and Beech Road, 2025

In Beresford Square in the summer of 1978

Woolwich in 1979

Now I know I have posted this picture before, but I took it and I like it.

So that is enough for me.

But putting aside that demonstration of brash arrogance it is a candidate for that “lost images of Woolwich” series that I sometimes feature.

I took it with one of my old Pentax K 1000 cameras which are like the 1950s Morris Minor or the simple Nokia mobiles of the past.

All were robust, simple to use and a joy to look at and no matter what you did to them they continued to work quite happily.

My Nokia

The K 1000 had travelled all over Europe with me and took superb images on the hottest day in Athens and the coldest in Rome.   As for my old Nokia it may not have had connected to the internet, couldn’t take pictures and only played Snake, but you could drop it and it just bounced and the battery didn’t run out in an hour.

As for the Morris Minor, that was the chosen car of my friend Tony in the 1960s who maintained that given the huge number that had been manufactured he would never have a problem getting spares.

So “washing the prawns in Beresford Square” qualifies to be inducted into the same hall of fame.

Back then this bit of Woolwich was colourful and vibrant and there were always plenty of things to buy, people to watch and things to photograph.

I showed the picture to my lads who were horrified that something that you might buy and later eat was being washed in water from a standby tap in the open on market day.

Varese, 2012

When I added that buses regularly negotiated the square just a few yards away they muttered “health and safety” and returned to their prewashed, in date, packet of grapes which had some come via the supermarket in its own sealed container.

Not that this is a plea for the past or a rosy nostalgic rant for a real time when everything smelt better, tasted better and did you good.

My memories of our local grocer’s shop was of cheese which came as either white or red, fruit in tins and piles of spam and of course those open  tins by the counter of broken biscuits.

Varese 2012

That said open air markets can still be places where bargains are found, and they are not all farmers markets of those that trade as German/Italian/Spanish ones, which from my experience always seem to sell the same thing at ridiculously inflated prices.

But then perhaps I am showing my age.  That said those old fashioned markets still exist offering up fun, food and a bit of excitement.

So I shall close with my old image of Woolwich market taken on a warm summer's day in 1979.

Alas nearly all the pictures I took that day have been lost or given away and the few negatives I still have stubbornly refuse to offer up a decent print.

But they were made in that pre digital age when what you saw down the lens was pretty much what you created.

Of course there may be other people with similar views of Woolwich and I would love to see them.


Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 160 .... treasures from the cellar

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.*

This is a 30-amp rewireable fuse carrier and will be familiar to any one who was born in the first half of the last century.

And it would have been very familiar to Joe Scott who installed it in the house in 1915, and I don’t suppose he would have been surprised that it was still in use a full seventy years later or that in times of electrical failure I would mend the fuse the way I had been taught by dad.

But 1985 marked its demise and it was replaced by a bigger and more modern box which has in turn been consigned to electrical history.

The fuse, and its box I kept along with other fuses, and over the years they have featured in stories of the house.**

So, today I decided to return to these relics and dig deeper into their past.  

They were made by the MidlandElectric Manufacturing Company (MEM) which was founded in 1908 in Birmingham, and was known for quality electrical switchgear, fusegear, and motor controls. ***

The quality isn’t in question, given that people still buy them second hand today commanding prices of £20 and more, while the fuse box ranges upwards from £49.

But they carry that warning that they do not fit modern standards, and given that our new one installed last month almost talks back to me I can see why.

Still my porcelain fuses and their fuse box are little treasures of the history of the house, and connect me not only to how things were done but also to Joe Scott who like me on occasion would have had to fumble in the cellar with a torch and some fuse wire to retore power.

Happily our new box allows me to fall back on that simple approach I adopted about all things electrical and water ….. “leave well alone” and ask someone who knows.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; treasures from the cellar, 30-amp rewireable fuse carrier, and its companion fuse box, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 81 ...... the story the house won’t reveal, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2017/03/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in.html

*** MEM Company, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/MEM_Co

 

When Stretford was sniffy about Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now I know this will upset the residents of Stretford and no doubt bits of Chorlton too but it happened and here is the story.

Strolling by the park circa 1900

Back in 1913 the Manchester Courier reported on plans by the Stretford District Council “to establish a public museum at Longford Park”*

It was felt that “that among the residents many relics of Old Stretford, historical and literary, and probably natives who had removed further afield might have in their possession objects which would be of great interest to the present generation.”

And to this end one room of Longford Hall would be given over to the exhibits.

So far so good, but the chair of the Stretford District Council also chose to take a swipe at the residents of Chorlton commenting that the said Chorlton residents were “making a footpath across the park from the Ryecroft road entrance to that in Edge Lane.  If it still persisted he should feel it his duty to recommend to the Council to close the entrance from Chorlton-cum-Hardy.”

And that is all I shall say.

Location Stretford

Picture; on Edge Lane strolling by Longford Park in the early 1900s, courtesy of Sally Dervan

*Local Art Collection in Longford Park, Manchester Courier, July 2, 1913

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.

We are now about to go under Century Street and travel along the Gaythorn Tunnel, before reappearing in daylight beyond Deansgate.

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

The Eltham we have lost, part 4........ Avery Hill

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

Well I say that but there will be a few who will mutter that Avery Hill is still here, which of course it is, but not Colonel North who incidentally had his meals prepared by Mrs Morris who lived on Court Road and had been born in Pound Place in 1848, but that of course is another story.*


So I shall just leave you with the picture of Avery Hill in 1909, and a memory of walking the grounds on Sunday afternoons with Jennifer, Ann and Kay, not I hasten to add all at the same time.

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.

And, so have the half sunken vessels which lay where they had sunk slowly rotting away.

It always amazed me that long after the restoration of the canal the three were still there, although as befitting the new tidied up canal they have finally gone.

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

Miss Caroline Kane ..... a dress, a cake and a steam ship....... Chorlton in the 1900s

Now I came across Miss Caroline Kane while looking for a relative of someone who lives in Chorlton.

Miss Kane's shop,trading in 1960 as Meadow's

The brief was that the Kane’s had lived in Chorlton and had a shop.

Finding Miss Kane who ran a dress making business from 24 Wilbraham Road proved relatively easy except that my Miss Kane didn’t belong to the family I was researching.

And that of course is how it often goes.  At which point anyone who has gone looking for their family will know that out there, there are the desperate who will hoover up anyone who vaguely seems connected which might tick a box but is pretty pointless.

So back to Miss Kane, who’s life like everyone’s is fascinating and offers up an interesting take on how a single woman in the early 20th century made her living.

She was born in Shropshire in 1874 and was one of eight children born to Mary and Arthur Kane who was a French polisher.

Sometime between 1879 and 1880, they settled in Pendleton in Salford and by 1901 Miss Kane describes her occupation as “Confectionary Bakery” adding “on her own account” which suggests she was working for herself.

But to what degree is unclear, because she is not listed in the business directory before 1907 when she has changed direction and is selling dresses on Wilbraham Road.

And in 1979 as Budget Wallpapers.

The change may have been connected with her sister Martha who six years earlier is listed a “Tailoress” and who in 1911 is working in the Wilbraham Road business as a “shop assistant”.

The devil will now be in the detail because to track her after 1911 will mean visiting Central Ref and trawling through the hard copies of the street and business directories.

I know that in 1930 she returned from New York aboard the Cunard steam ship Scythia having visited Boston, and her address is listed as Cranbourne Road which where she is still living nine years later in the company of a Louise Keogh.

By 1939 Miss Kane describes her occupation as “unpaid domestic duties” while Ms Keogh was a retired accounts clerk.

And there for now the trail goes cold, although I do know she died in 1967 in Manchester leaving me to ponder on when her shop became Meadows which then became Kyle’s the wallpaper shop and changed its name to Budget Wallpapers.

Leaving me just to thank Luisse who set me off on the search for the Kane's and led me to Miss Caroline

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Wilbraham Road, 1960, A E Landers, m18302, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and in 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Back on Court Yard in 1910

Court Yard in 1910

Now you can never have enough of a good picture so I make no apologies for returning to this one of Court Yard which dates from around 1910 and is from the collection of Kristina Bedford.*

Most of what you see has long past out of living memory.

The Congregational Church away in the distance had been opened in 1868 and was demolished in 1936 and the site was redeveloped by Burton’s where I bought my first suit and later still my first grown up overcoat.

The house next to the church was swept away in 1905, demolished when the southern end of Well Hall Road was cut thereby making the route north towards Well Hall and Shooters Hill a tad quicker and more direct.

But the consequence was that the peace of the church was invaded by the noise of trams, carts and later motor vehicles all of which led to the relocation of the church and in its place the still very impressive building which has now become a McDonald’s.

And on the rare occasions I have ventured in there I still miss the wooden cabinets full of shirts and ties, the racks of ready made jackets  and trousers and the catalogues offering all manner of fashionable made to measure suits.

Still someone will mutter such is progress and I guess that also sums up the developments to the left of our picture, which saw the properties pulled down for the Grove Market.

I wish I could remember these for they would still have been standing when we first came to Eltham but they have passed from my memory and I guess in time I will be hard pressed even to remember the site as it was from the mid 60s until recently.

Annie Morris, early 20th century

So I will fall back on the historical record and stories of that row to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.

And it was here that Annie Morris lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.

In her time she had lived at numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

Hers is a fascinating story which takes us back to an Eltham that even more than our picture has vanished.

And yes that is a trailer for more rural Eltham stories along with a few more about Annie.

Picture; Court Yard in 1910 courtesy of Kristina Bedford, from Eltham Through Time,  and  of Annie Morris outside her house in Court Yard from the collection of Jean Gammons.

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013,

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 159 .... the wireless makes a reappearance

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.*

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’”**

And that pretty much is what I think when I use the word wireless which has always meant the radio.

My Wikipedia tells me that “wireless is the transfer of information (telecommunication) between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer. The most common wireless technologies use radio waves”.***

But me, Joe and Mary Ann Scott will always associate it with the box in the corner which offered up a window on the world, via the news, music and talking programmes.  

In the first house I can remember in Peckham in the 1950s dad, or someone had installed a system where each of the radios across the place were tuned into the three channels from the Home Service, The Light Programme and the Third Programme.

It's an old memory which has resurfaced with the discovery that you can now recharge your mobile phone using “wireless”, the very same “wireless” that allows us to pick up the internet from any where in the house and send messages, and receive pictures, TV and YouTube from a heap of different devices.

At which point I am beginning to sound like one of those aged relatives from my youth who marvelled at the automatic washing machine, and the presence of a television in the front room.

And I fully accept that my wireless in the corner and the router in the kitchen are essentially just the same thing … things designed to receive “the transfer of information between two or more points without the use of an electrical conductor, optical fiber or other continuous guided medium for the transfer”.

If I stop to think about it, it still strikes me as a bit like magic, but a sort of magic I take for granted along with the telly and the phone.

And this house has over the century, and a bit embraced a lot of that magic.  

Joe chose to light the house with electricity back in 1915 when some homes were still using gas, never installed a range in the kitchen but went for a gas cooker and by the early 1920s had a telephone followed a few decades later by a TV.

So I suppose the reappearance of the word wireless shouldn’t surprise me given that essentially it is really just a “doing” word for something that makes life a little easier and a bit more fun.

The wireless cradle, 2025

To which I can add an Amazon Alexa which was one of our Christmas presents.

It is as everyone knows “a virtual assistant technology marketed by Amazon and implemented in software applications for smart phones, tablets, wireless smart speakers, and other electronic appliances.

Alexa was largely developed from a Polish speech synthesizer named Ivona, acquired by Amazon on January 24, 2013”.****

I will never know what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of Alexa but given their acceptance of new technology I bet they would have had one, leaving me just to ponder on whether it would have been known as Alexa, the wireless or something else

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; advert for radios, 1949, from the collection of Graham Gill, and a wireless cradle, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2025/12/one-hundred-years-of-one-house-in_27.html

**“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

 “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

 “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.” Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass

***Wireless,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless

****Amazon Alexa, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Alexa

Cleaning, polishing and answering the door ........... domestic service in Chorlton in 1927

I have long been interested in domestic service, ever since I researched the working conditions in rural Chorlton in the first half of the 19th century.*

By the end of that century even the most humble of families sought the prestige of at least one domestic servant.

And in many households there was just the one, who often went under the title of maid of all work and that was exactly what her job entailed.

So in a large house hold where there might gradations of servants from butlers, and housekeepers to kitchen staff and many more in the more modest homes there was but one and she did it all.

Now I have come across descriptions of the work of such servants from the 19th century but here courtesy of Bob Jones is one from 1927.

In that year his mum came across from Yorkshire and began work in the big house on Alexandra Road.

In the fullness of time I will go looking for that house and the family that lived there but for now I shall just leave you with her job description.

I could reflect on the many tasks that had to be undertaken or the degree to which new home appliances like the "vac" and the telephone would change the working day, but perhaps I will just point out that missing day which was the Wednesday, her day off.

Pictures; job description for a maid, 19267, courtesy of Bob Jones

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

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.

The real surprise was the conversion of the railway arches into Deansgate Locks which are described as the “Trendy nightspot for those who want to party the night away. You'll find establishments such as The Comedy Store, Revolution and Baa Bar. This canal side location is perfect for those who want to stay in one area, find DJ's playing all night and plenty of cocktails".**

All a bit brighter than 40 years ago when the best you could hope for was a passingboat.

Location; The Rochdale Canal

Pictures; The Rochdale Canal, 1979, 2003, 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

**Deansgate Locks, https://www.visitmanchester.com/things-to-see-and-do/deansgate-locks-p37991