It started with two medals and a name ........... Moses Bianco 1892-1969

Now the medals were awarded to Moses Bianco who served from 1914 through to 1920 in the British Army.

The medals 

And right from the beginning I was drawn in by the name.

I thought there might be a Jewish and Italian connection but it turns out that Mr Bianco’s parents came from Syria when it was still part of the old Ottoman Empire.

I can’t be sure where his father was born but I do know that his mother, Simha, was born in Alleppo in 1848.

When the two came to Britain is also unclear but they married in the January of 1867 in Manchester when Simha was just 18 and became British citizens three years later.

Mr Bianco was a merchant but in 1883 he established the Cafe Royal just up from South Street on the northern side of Peter Street.

And it was a good choice of location given that next door was the Gaiety Theatre of Varieties and opposite was the Theatre Royal.

cafe Royal, date unknown

In 1883 he applied for permission to sell beer and wine on the premise and in 1905 Mrs Bianco sought to extend the music license from 10 pm to 11 pm because “her customers came in after the theatres were closed” and some of her trade went across the road to the newly opened Midland Hotel.*

There is no doubting Simha’s enterprise.  She had been running the Cafe Royal since the death of her husband in 1891 and four years later drew up plans to spend £10,000 and “pull down the existing premises, and a warehouse at the back ... and erect a first class hotel”.**

The Cafe Royal, 1895

She argued that this would enhance the success of the business which “had grown with the growth of Manchester, and which dined on average one hundred persons a day”.

Many of these were “commercial travellers who travelled by the Midland railway, to Central Station” which was close by and might be expected to stay at the proposed hotel given that “there was no residential hotel nearer than 600 or 700 yards away in Deansgate".

But the application was turned down with the suggestion that Mrs Bianco’s real motive was the acquisition of a spirits license which would sit beside the existing beer and wine license.

The Bianco family, 1911

And that for now is all there is.

She died in 1923 and it is unclear whether the family retained the business and what part Moses played.

Before the war he and his three brothers had worked as clothes salesmen possibly in the family business which by 1911 was being run by Albert who was the eldest brother.  Moses might alternatively have been working for his other brother Isaac who in the same year had a catering business.

The medals

I just don’t as yet know.

Nor do I have any idea how his war went, or what happened to him after he left the army.

So far there is a record of his marriage in 1920, the birth of his son three years later and the death of his wife in 1944.  I also know that he died in 1969.

Not much I know but a start.  Later I will trawl the directories  and obituaries to find our more.

Pictures; medal of Moses Bianco, courtesy of David Harrop, and the Cafe Royal, Peter Street, date unknown from Goads Fire Insurance Maps, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*A Question of Competition, Manchester Guardian, December 8, 1905

**The Cafe Royal Peter-Street, the Manchester Guardian, August 23, 1895

On Court Yard in 1911 with Mrs Morris and memories of Eltham in the 19th century

I am looking at number 25 Court Yard, and there in the picture are Mrs Annie Morris and her sons David and Harold.

I don’t know the date but I reckon it will have been sometime around 1911 because in that year David would have been 33 and Harold 24 which pretty much fits with their appearance in the picture.

And there is much more that this image can help us about the history of Eltham.

Number 25 was a five roomed house just past the Crown on Court Yard and it was one of twelve houses running from the pub to a slightly grander set of houses.

The first five or so properties commanded rents of 4 shillings a week and it was here that Mr and Mrs Morris moved sometime in 1900.

This was number 17 Court Yard, but with two years they had moved to number 25 and paid 2 shillings and sixpence in rent.

Either way this was an improvement on Ram Alley where they had lived and which had been condemned as unfit for habitation in 1895, a decision which meant little given that they were still standing in 1930.

These twelve were a mix of four, five and six roomed houses which were home to a mix of occupations including a caretaker, baker, porter, a butcher and two gardeners along with house painters, a general labourer, domestic servant and retired carpenter.

On the surface just your average range of jobs, but of course they reflect the changes that were beginning to push Eltham out of its rural past into something closer to what we know today.

And so while Annie’s husband had been a carpenter one of her sons worked at the Woolwich Arsenal.

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.”*

She had been born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place and recalled that when she was young “Eltham was but a village and children and young people then were forbidden by their parents to be out after dark. When Mrs Morris was two years old a Mrs Miller kept the school in Back Lane. 

The old inns and taverns of Eltham are still of the same identity except for structural changes.”*

Now there is much more of Mrs Morris’s memories and in due course I will come back to them.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Eltham District Times, June 1931

It started with a picture and became a story.......... Charles Ireland

The Palais de Luxe, circa 1928

It started with a picture and became a story.

The picture was of the Palais de Luxe Cinema on Barlow Moor Road and is not one I had seen before.

In that usual way of things it was in the possession of the archives and public records centre of East Dunbartonshire Council and got there because the fine iron and glass canopy which fronted the cinema had been made by the Lion Foundry in Kirkintilloch.

The story unfolded as the archivist and I sought to resolve the copyright issue of the photograph.

Ms Janice Miller was keen for me to see the picture but quite rightly was concerned that this might contravene the 70 year rule on copyright usage.

The photograph was by C Ireland and may have been taken around 1928 and that was all there was to go on. He might have been a local photographer or one especially commissioned by the Lion Foundry who came down from Scotland or just possibly one of those travelling photographers who captured local scenes to be converted into post cards.

Now both of us were fully prepared for a disappointment. After all we had just a name which is not much to go on.

But a Charles Ireland ran a photographic shop at 25 Lower Mosley Street in town during the first decade of the last century and continued in business there to at least 1927. The same set of telephone directories also revealed that by 1921 he was living at 76 High Lane here in Chorlton.

It is one of those amazing things about detective work that once the first secrets of a person’s life come to light others bubble up in front of you.

He had died in 1930 aged 63, left £5,330 to his widow and was buried in Southern Cemetery. He had been born in Newton in Manchester in 1867 and by 1891 the family were living here on St Clements Road.

This seems to have been a step up. The family home on Oldham Road in Newton was at the heart of an industrial area. Just to the north was the large carriage and wagon works of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and to the south and east there were brick works cotton mills, bleach works as well a glass works.

25 Lower Mosley Street, 1964

Charles’s father Edward was in partnership as a pawnbroker although he also described himself as a photographer, and by 1891 this appears to have been his sole occupation.

There were as yet few photographers listed in the directories for Manchester in the 1880s and they are still described as artists.

By 1895 he had opened the shop on Lower Mosley Street which Charles still ran until the late 1920s.

The family continued to prosper and by 1911 they have moved to that large detached house on the corner of Edge Lane and Kingshill Road.

76 High Lane, date unknown

As ever the romantic in me fastened on the fact that in 1913 Charles married his photographic assistant. Edith May Hindley was 32 years old and like him had been born in Newton.

Sometime perhaps around 1918 they moved into 76 High Lane which had been the home of the artist Tom Mostyn the artist.

 It is still there having benefited from the addition of the large upstairs window and studio which I guess was the work of Tom Mostyn and which Charles in turn may have used.

I have yet to visit the grave in Southern Cemetery but it is on my list of things to do. Here he was buried along with his father and mother in law, his sister and finally in 1948 his wife

So far no other pictures accredited to Charles have turned up but they will. His working life stretched back over 40 years and the picture of 76 High Lane may even be his although sadly there is no date and the quality is pretty poor.

But I travel in hope that out there in a collection I will come across more of his pictures. Ms Janice Miller and the East Dunbartonshire archive can only be the first.

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; the Palais de Luxe cinema, circa 1928 GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, 25 Lower Mosley Street by H W Beaumont 1964 m02915, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, & 76 High Lane, date unknown, from the Lloyd collection

Oysters from London on sale in Smithy Door

It is a long time since I featured an advert from the 1850s. 

So here is one for Oysters sold by William Whitaker who “guarantees the FISH he sells, so that the Public may have confidence in all purchases made at his Establishment.”  Well you can’t say fairer than that.

Picture; from Slater’s Manchester & Salford Directory, 1850

The story that is 232 years old …… the Horse & Jockey reopens

I for one am keen to see the new Horse & Jockey which reopens on October 20th.

Summer 2022

The pub dates back to 1793, in a building which was already old when Henry V111 walked up the aisle with Anne Boleyn.

I have been going in for over half a century, and have written about   it on and off for the last two decades.*

The Jockey Gang, 1938

It also featured in the book I wrote with Peter Topping on Chorlton pubs, and because of his historic significance was the first in a new series on our pubs and bars.**

It was the venue for inquests, was the scene of an historic arrest and once had its own bowling green.

In 1793 it was just one of four cottages and the eastern end was until the early 1890s the home of the family who stole Chorlton Green and turned it into their own private garden.

All of which you can read on the blog.

Leaving me just to say the full report on the refurbished Jockey can be read by following the link to yesterday's Manchester Evening News.***

 Pictures; The Jockey 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and A 'gang' of 'teenagers' outside the Horse and Jockey circa 1936 courtesy of Yvonne Richardson

*The Horse and Jockey, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Horse%20and%20Jockey

**The  book is available at www.pubbooks.co.uk or the old-fashioned way on 07521 557888 or from Chorlton Bookshop, and costs £4.99.

***Historic Greater Manchester pub to reopen its doors as opening date revealed, Jenna Campbell, Manchester Evening News, October 14th, 2025, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/historic-greater-manchester-pub-reopen-32672167

A will ……. the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War

There are always stories, and some are more unexpected than others.

Well Hall Road and the hutments circa 1920

This one concerns a will, the Eltham Hutments and a soldier of the Great War.

Now as someone who had grown up in the Progress Estate I was well aware of its connection with the Royal Arsenal and the Great War, but didn’t know that there had been a whole set of “Hutments” constructed at the same time.

They were more temporary and all had gone before we settled in 294 Well Hall, so it was a revelation when I firs came across them and more so when I discovered a connection between them and George Davison, from Manchester who served in the Royal Artillery and was stationed in Woolwich.**

The Will, 1918

In the March of 1918 he made his will shortly before embarking for the Western Front.

It was witnessed by H M Drinkhall and V L Dade, and was hand written in a single sheet of note paper and is simple and the point. “This is the last will and testament of me George Gurnel Davison of Birch Vale Cottage, Romily, Cheshire.

I give devise and bequeath to my dear wife Mary Ellen all my property whatsoever and wheresoever and I appoint her sole Executor of this my will.”

By the time he made the will he had served with the Royal Artillery for four years and spent time in London and Ireland but now with the German offensive in full swing he was about to go to France, and as we know would be killed just three months later.

In one of his letters to his wife he had mentioned the Drinkhall family and how they were looking forward to her coming back to stay.

And that set me off looking for them, and in that I was helped by my friend Tricia, who located them to one of the hutments on what is now the site of the old Well Hall Odeon, which is just a few minutes walk from our old house.

That hutment will be one of those near the top of our picture, and takes me off on a number of different directions.

Detail of the hutments, circa 1920

In time Tricia and I will go looking for more on the Drinkhall’s, but for now I like the idea that someone I was writing about in connection with a book should have spent time just yards from where I lived.***

But it also points to an interesting aspect of the war, which was that Mrs. Davison visited her husband while he was stationed around the country.

As well as staying with the Drinkhall’s, she spent time in Ireland, where the one surviving photograph of the couple and their son was taken in 1916.

I have no idea if this was a common practice but given the restrictions of train travel and the cost of such journey’s it should be a fascinating area of study.

The Davison family, 1916

For now, I shall just gaze on Tricia’s picture with renewed interest.

Location; Eltham, London


Pictures, Will, 1918, of George Davison and the Davison family, 1916, from the collection of David Harrop, and picture postcard of Well Hall Road, date unknown courtesy of Tricia Leslie

* The Eltham Hutments by John Kennett, 1985 The Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/

**George Davison, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/George%20Davison

***A new book on Manchester and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

In Manchester voting in the Parliamentary election of 1844

“This day may be characterised as one of great activity, bustle and preliminary preparation, on both sides, for the completion of the canvas, and for bringing up the voters”*

Manchester Guardian, May 1844

And in the 171 years since the election of 1844 little has changed for the election team, the candidates and the voters.

So while there is not the violence or the bribery and voting is carried out in secret there is much that would be familiar to a voter from 1844 looking at an election today.

They might be surprised at how restrained the candidates were when talking about each other and mystified at the lack of dirty tricks and intimidation practised by the leading members of the political factions.

But they would be at home with the banners and posters and the sheer excitement of the outcome.

Yesterday we followed our 27 voters into Manchester from Chorlton where they voted at the Bush Inn on Deansgate.

James Bracegirdle, Methodist

They were a mixed bunch of “gentlemen,” business types and farmers.  Over half qualified to vote by virtue of owning property while the remainder were tenant farmers.

But only two were absentee voters, which contrasts with another rural area down south where just fifty percent lived in the place they cast their vote.**

It is a practice which sits a little uncomfortably with our modern ideas of democracy as does the practice of voting openly and having your vote recorded in the Poll Books.

Now not all of these Poll Books have survived but where they do they give a fascinating insight into how a community might vote.  Of course some care has to be taken with them.

Our 27 represented about 9% of the entire adult population and there is plenty of evidence that the open nature of voting led to some tenants feeling that they could be intimidated by the landlords.

Just nine years earlier the vote in Chorlton mirrored the wishes of the big Tory grandees who forcibly expressed their preferences.  So of the sixteen tenant farmers who were qualified to vote, twelve farmed land from one of these big Tory landowners.

They may not have voted for the “big family’s wishes” and it is equally possible that they shared the same outlook, but as we saw yesterday the Tory candidate received 72% of the vote here.

Jeremiah Brundrit, Methodist

Of course some of our electors were well off enough to be independent of any such intimidation and this may have included the small group of Methodists.

In total we have the names of 72 Methodist families who were active in the years up to 1851 out of a total of 119 families.  Not all of these have revealed their occupations but of those who have, seventeen  were farmers and market gardeners, nine  in trade and retail, forty four were labourers, one, Betty Moores was a charwoman and one a servant.***  
There were also a policeman, a coachman and a sailor.

Few of the farmers worked large amounts of land; most were market gardeners making a living from less than 5 acres.

But even given this middling to lowly economic status Chorlton Methodists represented a large number of those entitled to vote in the reformed Parliament.

In 1832 of the 21 electors, eight were Methodists of which 5 were freeholders and three tenant farmers.

I doubt that will ever know whether they went together to Manchester to vote and sadly the Poll Book for 1844 is not available so it is impossible to hazard who they voted for or if they all voted the same way.

At least we know that James Holt of Beech House consistently voted Tory.  He had a fine house in a large estate stretching from the corner of Beech Road, down to High Lane, along High lane almost to Cross Road and back along Cross Road to Beech Road.  He had made his money in calico engraving in Manchester and moved from his fine house in St John’s Street to Chorlton in the 1830s.

But he retained his right to vote in Manchester and had two votes.  And his story is for another time.

Pictures; from the Manchester Guardian, May 1844, Jeremiah Brundrit and James Bracegirdle from the Wesleyan Handbook, 1909, data from the electoral register for 1832

*The Manchester Guardian May 29 1844
** This was Eltham in Kent where only 35 of the 67 electors lived in the district.
*** Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1847 from The Register of Baptisms, In the Wesleyan Chapel Radnor Street Circuit 1830-1837, microfilm MFPR2120, Local History Library Manchester City Council Libraries, Beech Road Baptismal Records 1807-1850,

430 years of history …. 30 appreciative listeners ….. and one more talk

Hough End Hall, that Elizabethan pile on the edge of Chorlton has been in and out of history for centuries and yesterday its story was unveiled to an audience at Chorlton Good Neighbours.*

Awaiting an audience, 2025

Four hundred years and a bit is not a wink in time and there was much to discover about the families that occupied it along with the stories of those who played in it in the 1960s as well as the fond memories of many who wined and dined there and finally to the campaign to save it as a venue for community use.

Added to which we explored the life of the chap who built it in 1596.

This was Sir Nicholas Mosley a Manchester man who did “gooder” in London, walked with the people of power and was rewarded not only by a fine fortune but gifts from the first Elizabeth which included the marriage bed of her grandparents, Henry V111 and Elizabeth of York.

All you ever wanted to know ... 2025

The story is not all happy, because during the Civil War Mosley’s chose the wrong side in the Civil War and were eventually forced to sell the hall and land to the Egerton estate in the 18th century to allay gambling debts.

The story unfolds, 2025  .....

What followed were the “sleeping years” when for 250 years the hall was a farmhouse and its occupants were tenant farmers. 

In the 20th century it was nearly demolished to make way for Mauldeth Road West, was proposed as a museum cum art gallery, before being sold off to a succession of developers who hid it from view by two giant office blocks.

Even given this the Hall still shone for decades as a restaurant and briefly as a suite of offices before going up for sale in around 2012.

A local campaign to buy the building and convert it into a community centre was pipped at the post by a faith group.

.......to an appreciative audience

All and more wasrevealed in the hour and a bit, followed as ever by a heap of questions.

Leaving me just to thank Helen and Chorlton Good Neighbours for the invite, Bernard who did the technical stuff and Angela who stood guardian at the door.

And as unaccustomed as I am to self-promotion I will just close with a comment from Helen who wrote “Thank you again Andrew for your talk yesterday ; I hear people say what a brilliant speaker you are and Bernard said it was an excellent talk 

The Hall, 1849

Many thanks again - I'll ask you again next year if you could do another one (or two) as I know people will turn out for you !”

Location; Chorlton Good Neighbours

Pictures; awaiting an audience and screen shot from the power point talk, 2024-25, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and an appreciative audience, 2025, courtesy of Helen from Chorlton Good Neighbours and the Hall in 1849, from Mosley, Sir Oswald, Family Memoirs, 1849, Printed for Private Circulation

*Chorlton Good Neighbours, https://chorltongoodneighbours.org/

Lives revealed, commitments rediscovered

“they were robbed of their childhood and of the opportunity of a sound education .... the emigration of young children for working purposes savoured of a traffic in child labour carried on between agencies in this country and agencies in Canada and children would not be allowed to go from the care of the Guardians to anything like such conditions in this country.”

I have been thinking that William Edward Skivington deserves to be remembered. His was a short life spanning just 42 years from 1869 to 1911.

 There are no blue plaques to him in the city, nor to my knowledge has he been honoured in any way for his work on behalf of the unemployed and poor of Manchester.

 No photographs of him have survived and even the mean little streets in Hulme where he grew up and lived are long gone. But some of what he said and did and something of his political ideas do exist and from these I want to tell a little of his history.

 I first discovered him as one the three socialist Guardians on the board of the Chorlton Union which administered the Poor Law across south Manchester. Time and time again the three spoke out against the sending of young children from our workhouse to Canada to work on farms and as a domestic labour. They questioned the often petty but humiliating practices that existed, demanded better conditions and opposed any perceived cuts in the provision of relief to the inmates.

Now admission into the workhouse for working people was just an accident away, be it unemployment, ill heath, old age or just bad luck. And it was a scenario which William Skivington would have been all too close to himself.

His father was a bookbinder, his mother a bookfolder, and both he and his brother had worked as iron turners. He began his married life in a one up one down back to back in Hulme and his brother died at the early age of 17 from an industrial accident.

He was a member of the Socialist Democratic Federation which was formed in 1884 and was the first Marxist political group in Britain. The membership included trade unionists like Tom Mann, John Burns and Ben Tillet as well George Lansbury, William Morris and Eleanor Marx. During the mid 1880s against a backdrop of economic depression the SDF campaigned for “the Right to Work" and demanded the establishment of state directed co-operative colonies.

Now I don’t know when he joined but in 1896 he nominated an SDF candidate in the municipal elections and may have already been in the party when he unsuccessfully stood for election as a Poor Law Guardian two years earlier.

 The SDF experienced splits and defections along with short periods of greater political unity. In 1900 it had come together with the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and some trade unions to form the Labour Representation Committee, but left just seven years later. William remained in the SDF speaking at its meetings and on occasion arguing against members of the Independent Labour Party within the unemployed movement.

And it was the unemployed movement which dominated much of his political life during the first decade of the 20th century. In the winter of 1904 in Manchester something like “7,000 heads of families were out of work, and that probably twenty-one thousand children were on the verge of starvation”* and William was at the centre of the campaign to publicize the situation and argue for change.

Over the next seven years he was on delegations which met the Prime Minister and leading Government Ministers, organised mass meetings, as well as marches and sat on the Distress Committee which had been set up by the Unemployment Act of 1905. He argued for improved rates of pay for the unemployed in the public works schemes, highlighted poor working conditions, constantly pushed for the adoption of new opportunities for the jobless and the rights of women workers.

Above all it was not just about the right to a job but about a person’s dignity. So when the Distress Committee found work for some men carrying sandwich boards at eighteen pence a day, “it was not right that human beings should be employed as perambulating hoardings.”**

Likewise “He was opposed to emigration as he thought its only use was to supply Canada with cheap labour so necessary to that country. He had received a letter from a friend out there, who said the prison in the town where he was was filled with boys from a well known charity organisation in the country and the asylum with young men who had been homesteading.”***

Which is pretty much where we came in.

I would like to end on a positive note but stories don’t always end such. Unemployment remained an issue and by 1910 -11 we were locked into a period of industrial unrest which highlighted the class fault lines.

And William was dead at 42. His obituary notes that “as his home was in the working class district of Hulme he was constrained by his interests in the improvement of the conditions of living there to bring forward many propositions for an active policy in the provision of work by the municipality” **** 

Which is a fine if brief record of a man’s commitment.

But nor is this quite the end. William it seems died of neglect, at the hands of the Royal Infirmary after he had attended feeling ill. It could almost have been one of his own campaigns to highlight the disparity between different health services. But that is another story for another day.

 *J B Hitchen speaking at a mass rally in Stevenson Square quoted from the Manchester Guardian November 17th 1904. **Manchester Guardian March 21st 1906 *** Manchester Guardian June 26th 1905 **** Manchester Guardian November 17th 1910

Connections ...... Edith Nesbit of Well Hall and William Barefoot Labour politican and councillor for Eltham

Edith Nesbit, circa 1890

Now I like the way that history continues to surprise you, often taking you in directions which you could not have imagined.

Until recently I was not aware that Edith Nesbit had lived at Well Hall and knew only that she had written the Railway Children.

But she was far more than just someone who wrote children’s books.

Her marriage appears to be what we might today describe as an open one and she adopted two children from her husband’s relationship with another woman who was employed as their house keeper.

She was one of the founder members of the Fabian Society, a member of the Social Democratic Federation and wrote and spoke regularly on socialism.

Amongst her friends were H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw and the Webb’s, all of whom visited the house in Well Hall.

She was also a member of the local Labour Party and it was here she met Tommy Tucker an engineer on the Woolwich Ferry, who she married three years after the death of her husband Hubert.

All of which fits nicely as like Edith, Hubert and Tommy I was also a member of the same local Labour Party.

Woolwich Labour Party was formed in 1903.  At that time the Woolwich constiuency took in Woolwich and Eltham, and even when it was split between Woolwich East and Woolwich West for the 1918 General Election the Labour Party took the decision to stay as one party.

So when I joined in 1966 aged just 16 I was walking with Edith, Hubert and Tommy.

William Barefoot, date unknown

And also William Barefoot who will have known Edith and may well have been a guest at her home in Well Hall.

He was one of the leading forces in the Woolwich Labour Party having been its secretary from 1903 till 1941.*

He had become secretary of the Woolwich Trades Council in 1899 a post he held until 1921, was editor of The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer a weekly paper.**

Now if I were prone to idle speculation I might well go ‘off on one’ pondering on how well Ms Nebit and

Mr Barefoot knew each other and whether she contributed to either The Woolwich Labour Journal and the Pioneer.

Now the Greenwich Heritage Centre holds both the Journal and the Pioneer but the collection only cover the years 1919-1926, and I am not sure when she left Well Hall.

I know she married Mr Tucker in 1917 and later moved to Friston in East Sussex, and later to East Kent, and died in 1924.

That said I shall go digging elsewhere for both journals and the first port of call will be the archives of the People’s Museum.

Now it would really be nice to discover some of her political writing which in turn will have crossed William Barefoot’s desk and so I shall go looking.

Pictures; Edith Nesbit courtesy of The Edith Nesbit Society, http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and William Brefoot, courtesy of Archives & Study Centre, at the People’s History Museum, Manchester, http://www.phm.org.uk/

*William Barefoot and a day in the archives of the Peoples’ History Museum in Manchester, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/william-barefoot-and-day-in-archives-of.html

** ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE LABOUR PARTY AT LOCAL LEVEL, The Woolwich Labour Party, 1903-53, Dr Roger Eatwell, 1982,  http://www.microform.co.uk/guides/R97253.pdf

Picking up the packet boat from Stretford and then post haste to Castlefield on the Duke’s Canal

Now I often write about living in the township in the mid 19th century and I reckon if I had wanted to travel into Manchester it would have been by water.

The price of a package ticket

So if I could have afforded it I would have chosen one of the twice daily package boats from Stretford along the canal which transported passengers in comfort and speed.

A ticket for the front room cost 6d [2½p] and the back room 4d [1½p].*

This was travelling in style.   These packet boats were fitted with large deck cabins surrounded by windows which allowed the passengers to sit “under cover and see the country” glide by at the rate of six miles an hour, made possible by  two or sometimes three horses which pulled the packet.  And if that was not style enough the lead horse was guided by a horseman in full company livery.**

Cornbrook south towards Stretford

It was a pleasant enough journey for most of the route was still across open farm land and it was not till Cornbrook that the landscape became more industrial.

From here on there was no mistaking that the final destination was that busy, smoky and energetic city.

The chemical and dye works of Cornbrook gave way to saw mills, a textile factory, paper mill and all manner of wharves and ware houses before the packet arrived in the heart of Castlefield.

But we all know that I wouldn’t have been in the money and so there would have been no fast packet boat for me and no walk out of the village along the old road to Stretford, instead it would have been a longer and slower tramp, north through Martledge.  But that is another story for another time.

Pictures; Packet boat charges from Pigot and Slater’s Directory of Manchester and Salford 1841, and detail of the Cornbrook stretch of the Duke’s canal from the OS map of Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*This was beyond what most of our residents could afford.  A domestic servant might earn 2s 9d [13½] while that of a labourer was 13s.6d [57½p].

**Slugg, T.J., Reminiscences of Manchester, J.E.Cornish, Manchester 1881, Page 223

First posted in March 2013

All you ever wanted to know about Hough End Hall ……… But never knew who to ask …. The talk today

 Join me to celebrate the birthday of Hough End Hall today with Chorlton Good Neighbours. *

Happy birthday, Hough End Hall

Of course, I can’t be exactly sure that today 429 years ago Sir Nicholas Mosley threw open the doors to family, friends, and assorted guests but it will do for me.

Over an hour and a bit accompanied with heaps of pictures and maps there will be stories of the Elizabethan Hall including a special present from the first Queen Elizabeth, tales of avaricious land grabs, and dissolute family members, mixed with tales from its days as a farm and culminating with memories of a place for scary adventures and later of nights of good food amongst friends.

The birthday celebrations begin at 1.30pm, hosted by Chorlton Good Neighbours in St Wilbraham Ninians Church on Egerton Road South, today October 14th.

 Sir Nicholas Mosley, undated 

Location; Hough end hall at anytime between 1596 and now, and Wilbraham St Ninians Church, Egerton Road S, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 0XJ

Picture; courtesy  of Peter Tipping, 2019, and the man himself, from Mosley, Sir Oswald, Family Memoirs, 1849, Printed for Private Circulation

*Chorlton Good Neighbours, https://chorltongoodneighbours.org/

* Wilbraham St Ninians Church, https://wilbrahamstninians.com/

A Chorlton Chartist, Alexander Somerville, well almost

I think I am close to finding my Chorlton Chartist.

Or in fact two, although having said that neither was born here or lived here, but one passed through in 1847 and the other one was born in Didsbury and lived just over the Mersey in Northenden.

Perhaps a little tenuous but a link and makes the point that we were not an isolated community but just four miles from the city and would have been alive to all that was going on. Our farmers and market gardeners visited Manchester to sell their farm produce, and in return we got the carriers who transported goods in and out of the township, the itinerant traders and plenty of Sunday visitors.

So all the news, the great debates and issues of the day that occupied the nation would work their way into the village and surrounding hamlets.

The fall of the Bastille, the cry of Liberty Fraternity and Equality, and the great surge of radical demands as well as the agitation for the protection of living standards as time got harder during the 19th century would have been heard here.  And it was a soldier from Manchester walking into the township with friends who brought the message of Methodism.  Added to there was the Duke’s Canal and the railway built in 1849 both of which made us even closer to all that was being done and said in Manchester.

The wealthy businessman Thomas Walker was just one such powerful voice.  He lived at Barlow Hall and later Longford House was buried in the parish church and embraced the ideas of the French Revolution and the abolition of the slave trade.  His life was threatened his home in Manchester attacked by a mob and he was put on trial for sedition*

All of which I have written about but today I want to introduce Alexander Somerville.  He had been persuaded by Richard Cobden to join the Anti Corn Law League in August 1842 and travelled through the countryside arguing the case for free trade and an end to the Corn Laws.

In the June of 1847 he was here in Chorlton and recorded his conversations with local farmers, James Higginbotham, Thomas Holland, and Lydia Brown. He even came across a potato which went by the name “Radical” because it had been introduced by Joseph Johnson who had been active in radical politics.

Alexander Somerville while in the army had been flogged for his support of the Reform Bill in the May of 1832, was quoted by Frederick Engels in the Condition of the Working Classes and his accounts of his travels through rural England were published in three volumes under the title Whistler at the Plough between 1852-53.

And there is much more.  His autobiography published in 1848 gives a detailed account of the passing of the Reform Bill and life in the British army during that period.  In one chilling passage set against the popular agitation against Parliament’s reluctance to pass the Bill he reported that

“It was rumoured that the Birmingham political union was to march to London that night; and that we were to stop it on the road.  We had been daily and nightly booted and saddled, with ball and cartridge in each man’s possession, for three days, ready to mount and turn out at a moment’s notice..  But until this day we had rough sharpened no swords.  The purpose of so roughening their edges was to make them inflict a ragged wound.  Not since before the battle of Waterloo had the swords of the Greys undergone the same process.”**

In this very charged atmosphere Alexander and some of his compatriots debated the possibility that like the Yeomanry at Peterloo in the August of 1819 they would be ordered to “draw swords or triggers on a deliberate public meeting.”

I cannot begin to appreciate the difficulty they were in or the momentums choices that were before them, and in a shining example of courage they stood out against a repeat of the massacre in St Peter’s Field, choosing to write letters “to various parties in Birmingham and London... Some were addressed to the Duke of Wellington, some to the King, some to the War Office, and some were dropped in the streets ... [saying] that while the Greys would do their duty if riots and outrages upon property were committed, they would not draw swords or triggers upon a deliberate public meeting or kill the people of Birmingham for attempting to leave their town with a petition to London.”

It is a powerful insight into a period which many history books pass over as  “popular unrest during the passing of the Reform Bill.” and leads on to Chartism

I rather think Alexander deserves more.  He was after all flogged for his brave stand and went on to record much that was going on during the period, including a firsthand account of a British mercenary army unit that fought in the Spanish Civil War of 1839, and conditions in rural Ireland.

His is a story I knew so little about.  I had read his History of the British Legion, and War in Spain but until Lawrence sent me a copy of the Manchester Examiner for June 1847 I did not know he had been in Chorlton or that he recorded so much of  the story of radical politics.

So he was here, passing through I grant you, but if we have found him I travel in the full expectation that there will indeed be a home grown Chorlton Chartist just waiting to be discovered.

Tomorrow, Joseph Johnson who had been active in radical politics. was on the platform in St Peter’s Field, during the Peterloo Massacre was imprisoned for “assembling with unlawful banners at an unlawful meeting for the purpose of inciting discontent”  and ended his days just across the Mersey.

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/longford-hall-and-our-own-chorlton.html and http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alternative%20histories
** Somerville Alexander, The Autobiography of a Working Man, 1850  page244 Google ed page 253

Pictures; The Autobiography of a Working Man, Peterloo, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m01563, The Great Chartist Meeting on Kennington Common, April 10 1848, by William Kilburn

See also The Day I lost a Chorlton Chartist http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-day-i-lost-chorlton-chartist.html

The Tudor Barn in 1909, one for the album

The Tudor Barn in 1909

Now here is one for the picture album.

This is the Tudor Barn back in 1909 and that really is about all I want to say.

Although I find it hard to match this image with the building I knew.

It comes from Eltham Through Time.*

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford.

*Eltham Through Time, Amberley, Publishing,  2013

Ms Bedford also has an interesting web site, Ancestral Deeds, http://www.ancestraldeeds.co.uk/

“OF ALL THE GIRLS 'TIS NICE TO MEET MANCHESTER GIRLS ARE HARD TO BEAT" in 1908

I rather think it must have been a slow day in the design room of Tuck and Sons when they came up with this picture postcard.

Here were six Manchester girls and just to underline that fact we have a picture of the Town Hall.

I may go off searching for the series from which it came to see what the other “Belles” were like.

But in the meantime I shall just leave you with the card and the title which must have taxed someone’s imagination, “OF ALL THE GIRLS 'TIS NICE TO MEET MANCHESTER GIRLS ARE HARD TO BEAT”

Picture;  OF ALL THE GIRLS 'TIS NICE TO MEET MANCHESTER GIRLS ARE HARD TO BEAT MANCHESTER TOWN HALL  from the series Our Belles, marketed by Tuck & Sons, 1908, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/ 

When we made cider and perry here in Chorlton in 1847

Back in 1847, the journalist Alexander Somerville had walked the lanes of Chorlton looking for evidence of potato blight, that disease which had destroyed the crops in Ireland, and was already in parts of northern Derbyshire.

He didn’t find any but recorded his conversations with some of our local farmers, one of which was James Higginbotham whose land included a strip along what is now the Rec on the corner of Beech Road and Cross Road.

The conversation turned away from potatoes to fruit which made up a significant part of the crops we grew for the Manchester markets and included raspberries, rhubarb, currants and gooseberries and above all apples and pears and in particular the Newbridge pear, and Rose of Sharon apple.

Look at any old maps from the mid 19th century and you are struck by the number of orchards across the township.  Most would have gone to the markets, but some would have been turned into cider and perry and drunk at home.

So it was of particular concern to James Higginbotham that in the June of 1847 his apples and pears were doing well.  As he said to Somerville who dutifully reported the conversations,

“The insects had made great havoc among the fruit in the adjoining orchard during the hot sunny days of May and the first week of June but the cold of last week and the rain of this had come in time to save still a good quantity.  He pointed to his Rose of Sharon apple trees which had bloomed so profusely as to be wonderful; they had been invaded by a terrible army of insects, and had hardly been able to maintain the conflict; but the myriads of diseased invaders wrapped in their winding sheets of cobwebs and laying upon the ground, where the rain had carried them, showed how beneficial the cold and rain had been.  There was still a goodly show of apples left, and the Rose of Sharon branches were again fresh, beautiful and healthy.  The Newbridge pears clustered upon the trees as if the invaders of the orchard had never been.”*

It is a priceless piece of reporting and not just because here are the voices of the people who lived in Chorlton over 160 years ago but because it provides us with the actual names of what types of apples and pears were grown here.

And I am indebted to Mary Pennell of the National Fruit Collection** who kindly dug out some information about both crops. “Newbridge – is in fact a ‘perry pear’. It is also known as ‘White Moorcroft’. Rose of Sharon – an apple variety that was exhibited from Cheshire in 1934. Unfortunately this is the only record for this apple but at least we know that it did at least exist at some stage.”  All of which is very exciting, well to me anyway.

Our Newbridge pears are harvested from the first to the third week in October about the same time as the Rose of Sharon apples.  Now what for me is revealing is that here we have the first evidence that along with cider our farmers were growing perry pears and must have been making perry.  And for anyone unsure, perry is made in much the same way as cider.

So there you have it, and tomorrow I think I shall pursue the story but in the meantime you can look again at the Newbridge pear and pear tree.  And reflect that some of the fruit trees which are there in our gardens may be have links to those seen by Somerville and farmed by Higginbotham.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Newbridge pears and pear tree from the National Fruit Collection

*Manchester Examiner, Saturday June 19th 1847

**http://www.nationalfruitcollection.org.uk/

Looking at the parish church from the south in 1903

Now I like this picture of the parish church.  

It dates from around 1903 and comes from Some Records of Eltham 1060-1903 which is a marvellous little book written by Rev. Elphinstone Rivers who was the vicar of St John’s from 1895.*

I have written about our parish church before but what fascinates me about this photograph is that at first glance it looks just as it does today, but then there are the tiny details which I leave you to spot.

For me the added complication is that I was pass by in the summer when the mature trees pretty much obscure the view of the church so this 1903 picture does much to show the place off as it would have looked when brand new.

Picture; the parish church from the south , 1903, from Some Records of Eltham

*Some Records of Eltham 1060-1903, Rev. Elphinstone Rivers, 1903

One last look at the Clarion Cafe in 1908

I have decided to have one last look at the Clarion Cafe which was on Market Street and opened by Robert Blatchford on Saturday 31st October 1908.

It was a place I had no idea had existed, but must have been a pretty impressive place.

And so with that ever present wish to bring the forgotten past alive here are some pictures of the interior of the place from when it was opened in 1908.

According to Harry Pollitt, the Cafe was the work of ‘skilled men from eighteen trades built decorated and furnished’

The salon was imposing with a Dutch fireplace and ceiling lantern ships lanterns and the walls decorated with oak panels.

Pictures; courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Clarion Cafe 1908, m57130, 

Our Lych Gate .... and thieves in the night

Our newly restored Lych Gate is the victim of a bunch thieves who wander in the night.

Just now l recieved a call from David who was  visiting his sister here in Chorlton.

And while she was describing how this iconic part of Chorlton had been recently renovated and restored he noticed that Burglar Bill had taken some of the lead from the roof.

Our three City Councillors have been messaged and Cllr John Hacking and Cllr Mathew Benham  have reported it to the city council

Of course l can't be sure that these creepy crawly slidy creatures of the night ripped the lead in the dead of dark but its the sort of thing they do. 

Location; Our Lych Gate

Picture; our Lych Gate, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

Uncovering the story of Eltham's trams ........... and a bit more too

I have long had a fascination for trams and I have just bought Eltham and Woolwich Tramways which contains “a wealth of nostalgia with many previously unpublished photographs depicting street scenes from the past.”*

Now I don’t do nostalgia it is a shallow preoccupation which distorts the past and leads you into all sorts of pitfalls.

On the other hand there is nothing wrong in wanting to peel back your own past and match your memories with the historic record and in doing so not only relive a bit of your youth but also learn more about that time.

So it is with trams.  I was just two and bit when the last one London tram trundled into the depot at New Cross and while family legend has it that I was there I have no memory of the event.

Likewise it would be another twelve years before we moved in to Well Hall and so the story of the Eltham and Woolwich trams is all new to me.

Bits of the story I already knew but Mr Hartley’s book is as promised full of some wonderful pictures which offer up scenes of Eltham and Woolwich before I knew them and as you would expect I was more than a little thrilled at getting close to our own house on Well Hall Road.

But it is easy to get seduced by the old pictures and forget the importance of the tram.  It was a cheap and for the time efficient means of transport reflected in the fact that within a few short decades it was adopted by local authorities across the country to replace horse drawn buses and trams.

LCC Tam, 1622,  route 40 from New Cross to Westminster, 2015

And because it was cheap and fast it opened up the suburbs by allowing workers to live further away from their work place.

Now to a certain extent the railways had pioneered this development but the tram could do this better.

After all it was far cheaper to lay tram track which had the added advantage that the routes could follow the existing road network.

So when the Government settled on Well Hall for its huge housing estate for the Arsenal workers in 1915 the tram network had already been in place for five years and following the Great War the network was extended to Lee, Lewisham and London.

All of which I suppose could mean that Ruskin’s observation that "Your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only a device for making the world smaller"** could equally be applied to the tram.

And on that note I shall leave off and go back to reading the book with just a thank you to Tricia Lesley who first alerted me to it and pass on a recommendation for the book which will not only delight fellow tram buffs like me but also offer up a snap shot of an Eltham which has pretty much vanished.

Sadly the book is out of print but where there is a will there is a copy and if enough people show an interest perhaps there could be a reprint.

Pictures; cover of Eltham & Woolwich Tramways, 1996, courtesy of the publishers and LCC tram 1622, 2015, Crich Tramway Village courtesy of Andy Robertson***


*Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, Robert J Harley, Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

**John Ruskin 1856

***Crich Tramway Village, http://www.tramway.co.uk/