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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alas all a long time ago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Picture; from the Lloyd collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location; The Rochdale Canal

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

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

An unfamiliar view of Court Yard around 1900

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

Court Yard circa 1900

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The art of Christmas ………. part two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location; Blackpool, 1948-1969

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

The art of Christmas ………. part one

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

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

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

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

So here over the next few days are a selection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location; Blackpool, 1948-1969

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Loation; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

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

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

Annual number 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today however I shall focus on the Girl Annual.

Woman of Action Lotte Hass

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

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

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

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

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

New foods for the 1950s's table

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

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

It was instead an exciting period when everything seemed possible.

Belle of the Ballet

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

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

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

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

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

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

Walking up from All Saints

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

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

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

In St Peter's Square

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

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

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

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

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

Passing Central Ref

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

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

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

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

Frank Allaun MP and others 

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

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

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

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

Location; Manchester

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

A happy Christmas from the 1950s

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

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

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

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

It was this years contribution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Picture; The Chestnuts, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

* The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location; Castlefield, 1980

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

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

The meadows are a special place for me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Location; Chorlton






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

Back with the Eagle in the 1950s

Now if you were born sometime between the early 1940s and the mid ‘50s, the chances are you were a fan of the Eagle comic.

It is a topic I keep coming back to and the reason is that back then it amounted to the best of British comics.

Its appeal crossed class lines as well gender and if my father was anything to go by attracted an older generation as well.

It came out each week and like other comics of the period had its own Christmas annual which was supplemented by books on some of the other leading characters.

But for me the Eagle Annual which first appeared in December 1950 was a must under the tree and it kept me going through the year, because here as well as comic strips were extended stories articles on sport , history science  and nature.

In between there were practical information on how to make a Kite-released parachute, sending secret messages using invisible ink and making your own printing set.

Never being particularly practical most of these DIY projects rated little more than a second glance.

For me it was the sections dealing with history and the stories which drew me in.

And of the stories it was Dan Dare Pilot of the Future who always was my first choice.

At this point I have to say this is no nostalgic trip. Instead is an exploration of how a popular comic managed at the same to introduce a whole pile of educational information which never led you to think you were back at school.

Nor were the books or comics aimed at the middle class, for there was enough here for any lad like me whose highest aspirations seemed to be a secondary modern school and a future mapped out in one of any one of a number of practical occupations.

The activities were all rooted in things any nine year could do and the stories were  in a world I understood.

And when they were based in space the Wild West or North Africa they were believable.

What is more the science of the future was our everyday life just a little different.

So Dan Dare’s spaceship used dial and buttons and levers, the command structure of Space Fleet including the uniforms which  mimicked the armed forces and of course many of the expressions used were rooted in the language of the 1950s.

None of which should surprise us but allowed every nine year old to feel that this imaginary world was not so far off from their own everyday life.

Of course the Eagle was ruthless in its use of its name which was marketed for all sorts of types and products, but again there is nothing new there.

So that said I shall this evening retreat into that world of the Eagle Annual leaving the cares of the 21st century behind.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Eagle, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Eagle

Stories of Hough End Hall in the 1970s

Now I am intrigued by these three images of Hough End Hall.

They are some of the last from those in the digital collection and date from 1970.

It is a period in the hall’s long history that I know very little about.

From the 1920s it had been in danger of demolition when the new road to the south was being planned and later still there were suggestions to retain the facade while knocking down the rest.

During the next decade there were counter calls for its restoration along with proposals to give it a community use but nothing happened and it remained in agricultural use up to the mid 1960s when it was sold to a development company who after two unsuccessful attempts managed to get panning permission “for the restoration of the hall with two small office blocks.”*

 The original plan had included a filling station which the Corporation opposed as “damaging to the character of this old Historic Building.”

The final deal involved the developers “signing an agreement with the corporation which would ensure the restoration of the hall” and additional conditions  “about tree protection and landscaping.”

And “stipulating that restoration should retain the original character and that  all external material must be similar to or in keeping with those originally used” with the further proviso  that there “was to be no additions or alterations.”

It was a stipulation which failed to be kept for despite the Corporation’s denials there were accusations from the Ancient Monuments Society that the restoration had been “botched including reconstituted stone for the window mullions, sills and heads and that the inside had been gutted.”

Meanwhile the office development according to the letting agents, Dunlop Heywood changed hands “so many times that nobody knew what was happening,”

Finally International Colloids sold out to Burns Anderson in association with Norwich Union and at this point the hall structure was strengthed to allow the building of Mauldeth House  which might have threatened the foundations of the old building.

And it is here that our three pictures come into play, for the first two clearly show the extent to which the exterior was “restored.”

Then and now that works stands out and hits you in the face.

But that said the Hall is now tucked away and dwarfed by the two office builds.

The first was completed in 1970 and was named Crown House and its four storeys accounted for 25,000 square feet of office space.

Three years later it was joined by the even bigger Mauldeth House with 50,000 square feet spread over seven floors.

I am not sure that it is one of those stories which has turned out well.

*Hall or nothing at all, Robert Waterhouse, Manchester Guardian, April 21 1973

Pictures; Hough End Hall in 1970 by H Milligan, m48587, m47856 and m47854, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Mrs Nellie Davison at Well Hall .......... stories behind the book nu 27 making the connection

An occasional series on the stories behind the book on Manchester and the Great War*

Places Nellie would have visited, the parish church, 1915

By now I shouldn’t be surprised at how what seem random bits of history have a habit of becoming entangled and by degree draw me into the story.

Of course I know that theory that you are only seven handshakes away from  the great and the famous but I was not prepared for just how close I came to a couple who lived in Manchester during the Great War.

They were George and Nellie Davison who were married in 1908 and settled in Romiley after living here in Chorlton-cum-Hardy and in Hulme.

George Davison enlisted in 1914, spent time in Woolwich and Ireland and died on the Western Front in 1918.

Duncan and Nellie Davison circa 1916

Over the last three years I have slowly worked my way through the letters he sent and a collection of his photographs, papers and medals.

Nellie spent time with him both in Woolwich and in Ireland which I thought must have been unusual but perhaps not.

And then yesterday I came across a comment from George that a Mrs Drinkal missed Nellie commenting that “she was lost" without the presence of his wife.  Now that letter was sent from Woolwich which offered up a tantalizing clue as to where Mrs Davison stayed and perhaps where George was billited.

Well Hall Road, 1915

And with the help of my friend Tricia from Bexleyheath we think we know where that house was.

Having found one link to a Mr Drinkal I passed the task over to Tricia who came up with the goods

He was she told me “living at 7a Elmbrook Street which appears to be hutments on the site of where the Well Hall Odeon later stood.

William Henry Drinkal and Hilda May Garrod were married in 1916 at Dunmow in Essex and had their first child in 1917.”

All of which fits because a W H Drinkhall witnessed George’s will in March 1918.

Now I know the spelling is different but the coincidences are too close and so I can now place our Nellie in Eltham in 1916 on Well Hall Road.

And the real prize for me is that the Drinkal home was just minutes from 294 Well Hall where our family lived from 1964.

294 Well Hall Road, 2015

So there you have it.......  half a century may separate me from George and Nellie but there is the link.

It would be easy get a bit silly about the connection but for someone who has spent the last few years getting to know Mr and Mrs Davison, sharing their ups and downs and his final fate there is something powerful in knowing that we share the same place.

All of which just leaves me to thank Tricia, and remind  those who live in Manchester that the George Davison collection will be part of the exhibition in July to commemorate the Battle of the Somme in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

Research by Tricia Leslie

Location, Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collections of David Harrop and Andrew Simpson

Painting; 294 Well Hall Road, © 2015 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

You wait for a vintage car and seven turn up at once .........

Now the picture credit says 1979 but I rather think we are a year or more ahead of that date.

I remember coming across the cavalcade of vintage cars but never bothered to record when or where.

And that must be a lesson to us all.

A little bit of research thirty or so years later I can confirm I was on Sackville Street and the building directly opposite is Velvet House which is now apartments.

Location; Manchester

Picture; circa 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Down by the Oven Door on Beech Road in 1976

I could have cleaned the picture up, played with the settings and achieved a clearer image but that would have been to lose something of what Lois took in the winter of 1976.*

It is, and I know Lois will forgive me for saying so a snap, taken with one of those inexpensive cameras we all had back then and at the mercy of the light and much else.

But that gives the picture something of its value.

This is how pictures often turned out and at the time we took that for granted and were still happy with the result.

For those familiar with the Beech Road of bars, restaurants and quirky, interesting little shops this is another world.

This is the Beech Road I remember, a collection of work a day shops offering everything from apples, cabbages, and fish to paraffin, and oiled string.

At the bottom to the right was the Open Door a reminder that we had a choice of where we bought our fresh bread and cakes as we did for our meat and groceries.

And I am pretty sure Lois would have taken the completed film to Joy Seal's the chemist just a little back between what had been the Police Station and the wool shop.

Location; Beech Road


Picture; looking down Beech Road in 1976 from the collection of Lois Elsden

*Chorlton in the 1970s, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20in%20the%201970s

A Christmas sometime between 1955 and 61

I don’t usually do nostalgia, but this week is an exception.

So for all those who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s here is a selection of the presents that came into our household each Christmas from 1952 till 1963.

They are not in any order and lean heavily on my own child hood experiences, but I bet they could be replicated by many who read this.

And for those whose childhoods came later there will be in another post, with images of Barbie Dolls, the Bay City Rollers and Mud annuals, along with scaletric, my little Pony and the Turtles, including all four sourced from the cellar.

Of course if I wanted to really revel in nostalgia I could invite contributions on the upstairs of Quarmby’s, the sparkling and  groaning shelves of Woolworths and that paradise for all ages which is Toys R Us.

I don’t recall doing the storehouse Father Christmas and think we avoided it when the lads came along, but I have always been a sucker for Christmas trees.

They have to be so big that you end up chopping a bit off the bottom, come from a forest somewhere and have a mismatch collection of decorations which are as much about past Christmases as they are about elegant design and appearance.

Only recently I gave up on the multi coloured tree lights and went with the wishes of our Josh that they should be all one colour.  And every year we still put the Christmas angel designed by Saul somewhere near the top.

That said there is always that debate when to buy the tree, too early and it runs the risk of losing its needles and too late and all that is left are those sad two foot specimens which have a bit missing in the middle.

But the event is as much about family traditions as anything so despite being 41 Ben will still get a Beano album in his stocking and Luca a selection of wine gums, fruit pastilles and the odd Kinder egg.

And because I grew up in the 50s and that pretty much has frozen in time the Christmas I like, we shall bring out the Monopoly board, insist that everyone tries a selection of the festive nuts, and gather to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

That said there will be the addition of those nice things to eat that Tina grew up with at home in Italy, at least three phone calls to Varese during the day and a visit from Ron and Carol.

All that and the Christmas football match which the boys and their friends play for half an hour on the Rec sometime after the presents and before the big meal.

It is a tradition which they have played for as long as I can remember, and over the years the event has pulled in friends, and anyone who is around the house on the day.

But mindful of my responsibilities I stay indoors, tending the fires, laying the table and reflecting on past family gatherings.

That said a few things have changed.  Back in the early 1950s we still attached candles to the tree, went out for a brisk walk up to Peckham Rye and ate directly after the Queen’s broadcast.

Not that it ever seemed to snow back then either.  But as they say be careful about what you wish for.  Back in the afternoon of Boxing Day in 1962 the snow fell across Peckham, New Cross and Eltham, and continued for months.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson