Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 30 ............... Butter Lane, Pork Lane & New Shambles

Butter Lane, 2016

Now you won’t find New Shambles or Pork Lane, they disappeared along with the meat markets which ran from Deansgate back to Butter Lane during the 19th century.

They were the Bridge Street Market which fronted Deansgate down to New Shambles and then the delightfully named, Pork and Carcase Market which stretched from New Shambles to Butter Lane.

And even before the markets vanished Pork Lane had became Pork Street.

But with redevelopment the street vanished for ever under a series of buildings and befitting the areas new character New Shambles became a continuation of Southgate.

Those with an eye for geography will be quick to spot that these are two very different streets, and don’t even align. The original part of Southgate is wider and even today a tad more up market boasting as it does the back of the House of Fraser.

New Shambles & Butter Lane, 1849

Still, Butter Lane  has survived and offers up a Korean restaurant at one end and a  curry house at the other.

But he real fascination for me of plunging down Butter Lane is that it comes out on to Back Bridge Street which is even narrower and by degree leads up to the Wagon and Horses on the corner of Southgate and opens up on to Motor Street Square which technically is not a square and as far as I know has no official name.

New Bridge Street, 2016

Once this was just a collection of properties bounded by Albert Place to the east, Back Bridge Street to the south and Albert Street and Lower King Street to the north and dominated by the Manchester Gas Works.

All of which might make those of a sensitive disposition in 1849 order up a shed load of perfume, or just move.

Of course none of any of that remains, although we do still have a few items of furniture from when that Korean restaurant was an antique market but that would take me back to 1972, and anyway is another story.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Butter Lane, and Back Bridge Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the Shambles in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1849, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

In search of the Rough Leech Gutter

Every winter we get the Edge Lane Lake which depending on the amount of rain that has fallen can either be a puddle or some quite extraordinary expanse of water.

Not that I ever gave it much thought but more recently it has seemed to me that this is the Rough Leech Gutter.

It’s there on the old maps from the 1840s and runs from St Werburghs, following a line which takes in Corkland Road before cutting down close to the Four Banks and heading off towards Edge Lane and on to Turn Moss.

On its course and in its time it would have provided water for Pit Brow and Clough Farms as well as the grand house at Oak Bank before emptying into a large pond by Turn Moss Farm.  Already by 1841 a small section where it crossed High Lane and Edge Lane was culverted and it may just be that this now very old brick or stone culvert is the cause for the “lake.”

And there were lots of them.

All now have vanished underground with the exception of Chorlton Brook which appears into the light at various points around Chorlton before flowing into the Mersey.

There are some that crossed what is now Chorlton Park, another which seems to have flowed close to Acres Road and others which were probably no more than ditches for most of the year.

A few might have dried up but the others will still be there quietly and unobtrusively trickling along, hidden and forgotten.

And by and large they are just that.  I asked the Corporation for any records and they passed me on the Environmental Agency who were very helpful and very thorough but could only tell me about the Chorlton and Longford Brooks.

Not that this should surprise us for many of these water courses will have gone underground from the 1840s through to the beginning of the 20^th century.

There may be records in the papers of the Egerton and Lloyd estates who owned most of the township, but I doubt there will be any other records. 

So in the absence of paperwork it’s down to looking at that maps and listening to people’s experiences, which is how I can be fairly certain that the Rough Leech Gutter follows close to the line of Wilbraham Road somewhere by Silverwood Avenue going under Brundretts Road before appearing at Edge Lane.  And it was a chance remark that I made on one of my recent walks and talks which prompted Tony who lives on Brundretts to tell me of the damp cellars at one end of the road.

And damp cellars are a possible clue.  But there are others.  Phillip Lloyd once told me that his mother could remember the sound of Longford Brook which flows further north and west of the township as it made its way underground.  But as he said to hear it you had to be up early have no surrounding noise and hope for a day of rain the evening before.

Still they are all there and I suppose the best I can say they are all in the book.

Pictures; detail of the 1841 OS for Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Christening ......... Greenwich, 1980

A christening like a wedding is a very personal event, but the passage of time can allow them to become fascinating glimpses into our collective past.

It might be the period clothes, the untold stories stretching forward over a century or just the novelty of seeing strangers being very happy at a significant point in their family’s story.

Back in 1980 the first of dad’s grandchildren was christened, an event which was followed by the birth of eleven more and now some great grandchildren.

All of which means that these pictures are not that old, nor was the occasion attended by any celebrity and nothing untoward happened, other than that we all got together had a good time and celebrated the first born of the next generation.

I had completely forgotten I had taken the pictures which only came to light as I slowly turned old black and white negatives from the days of smelly photography into digital images.

The collection consists of hundreds of photographs taken between 1978 until1984 when I pretty much stopped.

They cover demonstrations, events and just street scenes spread out across Manchester, London and Birmingham.

I don’t claim they are any better than the pictures of the great photographers but they will do for me.

Location; Greenwich, 1980






Pictures; the Christening, 1980, London from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Potato stories .... the history .... the recipes ..... the facts .... on the wireless today

All of which is an introduction to today's BBC Radio 4 edition of the Food Programme .....  Potatoes with Poppy O'Toole.*

Potatoes .... potatoes .... potatoes, 2025

Its got the lot from a bit of history to recipes and food facts.

"In this episode, social media chef and queen of potatoes, Poppy O'Toole, explores the world of her favourite ingredient, the Potato.

Last year, Poppy appeared on Mastermind, choosing the history of the potato as her specialist subject. Let’s just say… it didn’t quite go to plan. So now, she’s joining the team at The Food Programme to fill in the gaps in her knowledge.

Potatoes, mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce, 2022

Along the way, she meets historian Professor Rebecca Earle from the University of Warwick, who explains how potatoes travelled from the Andes to Europe. She visits Lima, a Peruvian restaurant in London, where she speaks with sous chef William Coz about how potatoes remain central to Peruvian cuisine. Dr Stef de Haan from the International Potato Center shares how Peru continues to cultivate thousands of potato varieties.

In Suffolk, Poppy visits James Foskett’s farm to discover how he grows both organic and conventional potatoes. And she speaks with Dr Jean Beagle Ristaino—known by some as “the Sherlock of Spuds”—about her work investigating the pathogen behind the Irish Potato Famine.

The programme includes archive from Mastermind which is co-produced for BBC 2 by Hindsight and Hat Trick.

Presented by Poppy O'Toole"

Location, BBC Radio 4

Picture; Potatoes, 2025. from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*Potatoes with Poppy O'Toole, The Food Programme BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002f8vv

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 16 down along Scotland by the Irk

Now I wonder how many people who live in the high rise blocks of flats on Scotland have much knowledge of its past.

Scotland, 2016

It is one of those odd streets in Manchester which run down from Red Bank following the bend in the river Irk.

I first came across it in the late 1970s when the old slums that had once dominated Red Bank had vanished leaving just a vast expanse of empty space waiting for something to happen.

Once the area had been a dense warren of streets home to part of the Jewish Community who had settled here and across in Strangeways.

To the west just over Ducie Street was the Workhouse and to the south the river and the railway lines of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

Scotland, 1851

In the 1890s looking out from the row of back to back houses that ran along Scotland its residents were just a short walk from a tannery, the Red Bank Spring and Axel Works and a shed load of small workshops.

Go back just fifty years and you could have added a piggery, lime pits, timber yard and a rope works to the industrial scene.

In time I shall go looking for the inhabitants of Scotland, trawling the census returns for the details of their lives, although I doubt that any will appear in the directories.   In 1911 Salter’s Directory never bothered to include it in the list of streets which says a lot of the level of poverty of the area.

All of which will be in direct contrast today.

Pictures; Scotland, 2016 from the collection of Antony Mills, and Scotland, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Of lost streams, half forgotten films and a man called Duffy in Chorlton

It is one of the things which I like about doing the blog, and that is how a post elicits a response from someone who has more to tell about a story.

So after a conversation with Tony  who lives on Brundretts Road and was interested in the story of the Chorlton's water courses, he  passed me some notes about his experiences with the Rough Leech Gutter.

This was that the watercourse which ran roughly from St Werburghs along what is now Corkland Road and then crossed close to the junction of what was the Four Banks before heading off to Edge Lane and on to Turn Moss.

I first came across it on the OS map and tithe map for the 1840s, but have found no other reference to it save a sentence in a newspaper report.

It may be responsible for the Edge Lane Lake and in its time fed into Blomely’s Fish Pond on Beech Road.  Tony believed that the evidence for it course was there in his cellar and in a dip in the road.

And once started Tony is unstoppable and has begun to see links between the building records further north which might reveal more about the Longford Brook and the many small ponds in what was once known as the Isles and is the area to the south and west of Oswald Road.

In the same way I have stories of playing in the Isles, going to the local cinemas, and a dark and sinister figure called Duffy who guarded the old brick works.

David remembered “the Clay Pits” which were “situated to the immediate east of Longford Park, just the other side of the interrupted Rye Bank Road - it was a series of mounds and gulleys, the left over from previous workings of the old brick works factory with its tall chimney.  

It was a forbidden play place and it was guarded by an almost mythical man named "Duffy"! With another 9 year old boy, I recall daring ourselves to go into this derelict building one day and even crawling under the tunnel - through rubble to a place where I could look up inside the chimney and see the small hole of daylight at the top. 

On re-emerging we continued to play until - that knowledge of being watched - made its presence felt - and we looked around to see a man who I think was called Duffy staring at us, stood on a small wall about 12 yards away. Scared witless we fled the scene, and although not chased, the memory of Duffy, the clay pits, and the old building, has played a part in several nightmares since that day!”

So just keep the stories coming and continue to fill in the little gaps in the big picture.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection close to where the Rough Leech Gutter rose

The ship …….. a lighter …. and the River

Now I am the first to admit as pictures go these might not be the ones to enter for “The most exciting picture of the century”, but they are over 40 years old and come from a time when the Thames was still a working river.

I had wandered down to Greenwich looking for the old food factory where I had worked at the beginning of the 1970s.

It was called Glenvilles and was close the Tunnel, and along the way I decided to record whatever took my interest.

Just exactly where along the water I was I can’t now remember, but in the second image there are the silos of what I think were Tunnel Refineries, which after the passage of four decades  is as close as you will get to a location

Happily I am sure someone will correct me, citing the exact spot and adding heaps more detail.

Well we shall see.

And here is the reminder that we should all record the place, date and a bit of background information each time we go out with a camera.

Leaving me just to say that before anyone sneers at the quality of the images, they were taken when I was just beginning to develop and print my own photographs, using smelly photography and the negatives have sat in the cellar for 40 years.

Location; The River

Picture; The ship …….. a barge …. and the River, circa 1978/79 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Tragic Loveland Family

This month’s history talk at Chorlton Good Neighbours given by Andrew Simpson explored the subject of British Home Children; a scheme which saw many thousands of destitute children “transferred” from Britain to (largely) Canada between 1870 and 1930. 

Thomas John Loveland’s headstone 

One of these children was Thomas John Loveland who, after the death of his father (1) impoverished his mother with five young children, was, at the tender aged of eight, sent to Canada by the Barnardo Homes. Thomas John later returned to the United Kingdom as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force which came to Britain’s aid during the First World War. He was invalided home to Britain, where he died on 6th November 1918. He is buried in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery.  Andrew also mentioned Thomas John’s family which he was separated from as they remained in England and that one of his 4 siblings, his brother Edward, was also a casualty of “The Great War”. In his case dying on 6th August 1917 of wounds suffered while serving as a Gunner / Acting Bombardier with the Royal Field Artillery. He is buried in Lussenthoek Military Cemetery, West- Vlaanderen, Belgium. (2)

Canadians returning from trenches on the Somme, November 1916

I was curious about the lives of the other family members and decided to investigate what became of them.

Starting with the 1911 census I found the mother living with a widower (3) William Smith Fearis, a house painter, at 4a, George Street, Walsoken, Norfolk.

Several factors made further progress a painstaking business. Firstly, although the village is located in the west of Norfolk it adjoins the town of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire which results in a split in the registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, with some catalogued as Cambridgeshire events and some Norfolk. Of more confusion however is the fact that although William Smith and Eleanor did not marry until the December quarter of 1915, they had several children between them. Also, I found William Smith’s last name spelt at least three different ways.

The 1911 household then comprised of William Smith and Eleanor living as man and wife, Eliza the 15- years-old daughter (4) of Mr. Fearis’s first marriage, Mary, William and Eleanor’s child and John a child of Eleanor’s first marriage. 

  Following further research in the 1911 census I discovered Thomas John’s two sisters Eliza and Harriet had both remained in London, Harriet who was 15 was living at 100, Leven Road, Poplar, London; a few doors away from where her family were residing in 1901. This was also the address Edward gave on his attestation papers at his enlistment into the army on New Years Day 1915. According to the census return Harriet was living with her aunt, a widow, Eliza Walter however, I have discovered she was more likely her great aunt as in the 1891 census, Harriet’s mother Eleanor (Hawks) was recorded in the Walter’s household. 

 Eliza Loveland, Thomas John’s other sister was, working as a general domestic servant for John Conoley, a beer seller, his wife Minnie and their five children at 5, Crosby Road, Forest Gate, West Ham, London.

The 4 years of the First World War were incredibly tragic for Eleanor Loveland / Fearis as not only did she suffer the loss of two of her sons in the conflict but two of her daughters died within months of each other in 1916, Harriet in Poplar during the June quarter, then Eliza in the December quarter in Hampstead. 

Sadly, she had also previously had to grieve the death, during the March quarter of 1899, of a third daughter, Eleanor Elizabeth who was just seven years old

It is not hard to fathom her feelings then when her remaining son was mobilised into the royal Tank Corps on 27th August 1918. He survived the war and was demobilised on 2nd December 1919 and returned to live with his, by then again widowed, mother in George Street, Walsoken.

Both Edward James and Thomas John were taken into care by Dr Barnardo's Homes, as was their younger brother George, who was born in the West Ham registration district during the December quarter of 1902.  Whilst Edward James was to remain in Britain, George was also a British Home Child. He was one of 195 such children, some as young as seven, who sailed from London on 14th March 1912 onboard the S.S. Corinthian bound for Toronto via St. John, New Brunswick. 

 Interestingly in the 1911 census he is shown as a “boarder” with an elderly couple Henry and Ann Dorsett and their unmarried son Herbert (40) and daughter Matilda (42) on the High Street, Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire. Herbert was a journeyman baker while Matilda is described as a chapel cleaner. One of George Loveland’s fellow boarders, Alfred William Dodson was also a “Barnardo's Boy” and in turn was shipped to Canada in March 1914.

William Fearis died in July 1917 and was buried in Walsoken on 6th July. His widow, Eleanor Elizabeth, remained in Walsoken until at least 1931 largely on her own though both her son John and stepson, George William briefly resided with her on the demobilisations from the army.  When she died in the March quarter of 1937 however, she had returned to Poplar, London.

 Mrs. Loveland/ Fearis had two daughters with William Smith; Mary Elizabeth born on 16th September 1909 and Eleanor E. born June 1911.  Mary Elizabeth went to live with her Aunt Eliza in Leven Road, Poplar; she later married Leonard H.W. Hutchins there in the December quarter of 1932. The 1939 register records her living at 17, Constance Road, Leicester with her half-brother John Loveland and his wife Gladys Ethel (née Cunnington) who were married in Leicester during the December quarter of 1935.

 In 1921 Eleanor E. (Nellie) was recorded as an adopted child of the Coleman family at 19, Nene Parade, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. The household was a Public House, “The Nene Inn”. The licensee was Henry James Coleman, who was married to Rebecca Ann (née Jackson). Also in the household were two sons and a daughter, one of the sons, George Henry, being married to Nellie’s half-sister Rose Emma.

 Eleanor married William Jackson during the March quarter of 1931 and gave birth to a child in the March quarter of 1933 only for tragedy to strike this extended family yet again. Eleanor at just 24-years-old died in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1936’s March quarter.

Finally, what is evident that in the face of all the hardship and loss this family suffered they steadfastly endeavoured to maintain family connections.  Desperately sad evidence of this can be seen in this request sent by Eleanor to the Army ---

  “---- can son be sent home, on leave, as sister is dying”.

Notes: - 

 “Bow Creek Mystery” -The Echo London 10th September 1903

1) Thomas John’s father Edward Loveland married his mother Eleanor Elizabeth (née Hawks) in the West Ham registration district during the June quarter of 1891.  As this cutting from “The Echo (London)”, dated 10th September 1903, reveals his death was both tragic and mysterious.

2)  Thomas John’s story and that of Arthur Wisdon Ervine, another British Home Child and soldier of the Canadian Expeditionary Force buried in a neighbouring grave in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery are covered extensively in these blog posts. 26th June 2019 and 11th November 2018.

3) William Smith’s first wife, Emma, appears on the 1891 census at 12, Morley Carr, North Bierley, Bradford, Yorkshire. It is likely she is the Emma Feairs who died in Wisbech during July 1897 and buried in the town’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery on 25th July 1897. Despite repeated searches I have found no record of their marriage.

4) Due to the variations in the spelling of William Smiths surname allied to the family moving counties regularly it is hard to be accurate concerning their pre- 1901 history.  The daughters Emma Rose and Eliza were born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire and Cleckheaton, Yorkshire respectively. Emma Rose on 12th March 1887 and Eliza during the September quarter of 1896.  According to the record of his time as a prisoner-of-war in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany George William was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire on 17th August 1891. These detailed and well-preserved German records also state alongside his home address, name, rank, and serial number that he was captured “Nicht verwundet” at Lille on 20th October 1914. However, the birth details shown on them are incorrect as George William appears with his parents on the 1891 census aged 7 months, born in North Bierley, Bradford, Yorkshire (West Riding). 

Pictures: - Thomas John Loveland’s headstone from the collection of Tony Goulding, Canadians returning from the Somme, November 1916 by Castle, W.I. (William Ivor) - Library and Archives Canada -Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33407592  “Bow Creek Mystery” -The Echo London 10th September 1903 Content provided by THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 20 ............. Market Place

New Cathedral Street, 2016

Now I like the way that history has a habit of repeating itself.

So here is New Cathedral Street which runs from Market Street to Exchange Square.

Like me there will be many who remember it being cut in the 1990s following the IRA bomb.

But I had totally forgotten that less than a century ago there was a similar thoroughfare that pretty much followed the same route from Market Street towards the Cathedral.

Market Place, 1900

Back then it was called Market Place and continued as Old Millgate before joining Cateaton Street at Cathedral Gates.

In the 1850s a stroll down the two streets would have taken you past the Wellington Inn, the Black Boy and the Falstaff Taverns, as well as offering up the Fish Market, Fruit Market and the Poultry and Meat Market.

A full fifty years later and while some of the buildings and their usage might have changed the route was still as narrow and twisty leading to the Old Shambles.

And for those of a more adventurous or careless approach  running parallel was a short stretch of Corporation Street which gave access to a string of tiny streets and courts with names like Bull’s Head Yard, Blue Boar Court Sun Entry and Paradise Court.

Market Place, 1851

Now none of those have been recreated, they sit under the new Marks and Spencer and Selfridge stores.

But armed with a few old maps and with a bit of imagination you can at least walk along New Cathedral Street and the ghost of Market Place.

And of course at certain times of the year when the outdoor Markets have come to town there is that added bit of interest from the stalls which might just give up a flavour of the area as it was in the past.

Location; Manchester

Picture, New Cathedral Street, 2016, & Market Place, 1900, from Goad’s Fire Insurance Maps, and in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Of floods and weirs and floating hay ricks

"It was," wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”

It was for this reason that the weir was built.  Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

After a heavy flood in August 1799 broke the banks where Chorlton Brook joined the Mersey, there were fears that the Bridgewater Aqueduct across the flood plain could be damaged by flooding it was decided to build an overflow channel improving the course of Kicketty Brook and build the stone weir.

Not that it always worked.  Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heighted river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning.

Later floods proved to be even more destructive, destroying a bridge across Chorlton Brook and making for six major floods between  December 1880 and October  1881. The last time the weir took an overflow of flood water was 1915.

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it is possible to sense the importance of the weir.

Stretching out from the wall is a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants.

But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir.

Pictures; Higginbotham’s field in flood, J Montgomery 1963, painted from a photograph dated 1946, m800092, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, picture of weir in 1915 from the collection of Tony Walker

Wishing you well ........... postcards from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham for the summer ..... nu 2 Greenwich

A short series with few words looking at the postcards we sent from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham.

The description on the back describes “the Parish Church of the Royal Borough of Greenwich is a handsome structure dedicated to St Alphege, which was erected in 1710 from designs by Hawksmore.  

It stands in on the site of two former bull rings dedicated to the same Saint, who suffered martyrdom on this spot at the hands of the Danes.  General Wolfe is buried within its walls.”

Location; Greenwich

Picture; Barrack Field Woolwich Common, circa 1905, Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

The sweetness of doing nothing …….

There is an Italian saying ….. “La dolcezza del non fare niente” which simply translates into the “The sweetness of doing nothing” …….

In the Rec, at Beech Road and on the Green, yesterday.

Location, around Beech Road

Pictures; The sweetness of doing nothing, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 

A blue plaque for Mary Clarke ……….. resident of 8 Alpha Place

Now, I don’t think I will ever find Mary Clarke.

Alpha Street, 2003

In 1853 she was living in the cellar of number 8 Alpha Place, which with Omega Place and Fogg’s Place formed a complex of back to back housing consisting of 32 cottages and fifteen cellars inhabited by 208 people.*

The three streets were bounded by Commercial street to the south and Jordan Street to the east and are just off Deansgate in Knott Mill.

I am not even sure how long she was there. Two years earlier she doesn’t feature on the census return and in 1854 she has gone.

And so far, while there are plenty of Mary Clarke’s living across the city in the 1850s, it is unclear which might be her.

Alpha Street, 1849

Nor am I surprised, because Alpha Place was another of those small streets where “poverty busied itself”.*

In 1853 it attracted the attention of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association which drew attention to the poor housing and lack of sanitation.**

I can’t be sure when they were built, but the first entry in the Rate Books for Commercial Street is 1836 and for Jordan Street the following year. 

All 32 properties were back to back and consisted of two rooms with the addition of a cellar.

Mary Clarke paid just 1/6d for her cellar room while the going rate for the houses ranged from 2/5d to 2/8d, which was a substantial chunk of a weekly wage.

For as along as I can remember the area has been a car park and back in the 1980s it was still possible the exposed lines of the brick walls.  On my last visit the car park had been given a make over and the evidence for those walls had vanished under tarmac.***

Alpha Street, 2022

Which is pretty much how I left it.

By the start of the new century the area had been fenced off, gained an odd-looking single-story hut in 2008, which subsequently vanished behind another fence, and since then the fences have slowly deteriorated.

Andy Robertson was down there a few days ago and pondered as he took pictures, that there was “Plenty of room for at least two 95 storey tower blocks”.

But a search of the planning portal has revealed no development plans.

So, for now the site which was home to Mary Clarke, John Fletcher, Ellen Hoole, James Brooks and another 204 people remains and empty space.

Alpha Street, 2022

Of course, I know that there will never be a blue plaque to remember Mary Clarke, but perhaps there should be, if only as a reminder of the thousands of unknown residents across the city, who lived, and worked in the menial jobs, and many of whom lived on the margins of poverty.

They are less the people who history has forgotten and more those who were never even recognized.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Commercial Street, Omega Street, 2003 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and area in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and in 2022, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Robert Roberts, The Classic Slum, Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century, 1971, Pelican edition 1973

** Report of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association 1853

***Commercial Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=commercial+street

Who stole Chorlton’s racecourse?

Now, this is a serious question, because once, according to our own Chorlton historian we did indeed possess a racecourse.

The old lane up to Hough End Hall, 2014

Writing in the December of 1885, Thomas Ellwood recorded that “Barlow Moor is celebrated in the annals of Manchester as the scene in the seventeenth century of animal races and other games prior to the establishment of the Manchester Races on Kersal Moor.  

All that remains to recall the racecourse is the field bounded by Barlow Moor-lane, and the left of the lane  leading to Hough-end Hall, still known as the ‘scaffold field’ where was formerly a low mound, which  served as a vantage point from which to view the contests”.*

And since then, John Lloyd in his book on the township also chimed in with “Horse racing was followed in the 17th century, traditionally the site being a field known as the ‘Scaffold Field’.  The field can be more accurately defined as being the area north of the path in line with the front entrance to Hough End Hall and occupied by the schools and the bowling greens."**

Riderless Races in Rome, 1817 

But Lloyd was merely repeating Ellwood and points out that “Ellwood seems to be the only source and the one frequently quoted”.

To which Eric of Sandy Lane will mutter that all of this was so far in the past that it “ain’t worth a copy of yesterdays Chorlton and Wilbrahamton News”.

And here I would disagree, if only because it does still come up in conversation.

So this much I know, Kersal Moor “achieved its greatest popularity from 1688 to 1816, the period when horse races were held on it”.  That said a later newspaper article pushed back the date to 1687 when an advertisement appeared in the London Gazette, announcing a plate of £20 to be run at Carsall (Kersal) Moor”.****

Chorlton Park, 2020

All of which does indeed push back the date when the “sport of kings” took place in what is now Chorlton Park.

Nor do I think that those events in the 17th century can  truly be equated with our idea of horse racing, because the popular idea of the sport was still in its infancy.

According to a Mr. W.G.C. Frith who was clerk to the Manchester Racecourse in 1963, the first race meeting held at Kersal Moor back in 1687 was “At a time when racing was just emerging from the stage when one man ran his horse against another’s for a private bet”.****

So, there you have it, perhaps those horsey events described by Ellwood were less a series of grand races watched by the good and the rich, and more a set of individual contests where farmers pitted their horses against each other.

I await Eric’s informed and measured response.

Leaving me just to observe that Axon in his wonderful Annals of Manchester, makes no reference horse racing at either Chorlton or Kersal Moor in the 17th century.*****

Scaffold Field and the Observatory, 1854

Although the 1854 OS map for Lancashire , does show an Observatory in front of Brookfield House just a little to the west of the lane  leading to Hough-end-Hall.

As for Scaffold Field this shows up on the Withington tithe map for 1848 as belonging to the Egerton estate and occupied by William Jackson who may have been connected to Henry Jackson who was the tenant at Hough End Hall in the 1840s.

There are a number of William Jackson’s listed as living in Withington in 1841, but none I think are our tenant of Scaffold Field.

So, that is it other than to say the painting Riderless Racers at Rome, has nothing to do with racing in Chorlton, other than it shows horses in Rome which is a city I like.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; lane  leading to Hough-end-Hall, 2014, overgrown Chorlton Park, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  detail from the 1854, OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Riderless Racers at Rome, 1817, Walters Art Museum

*Ellwood, Thomas L Horse Racing, Chapter VII Badger and Bear Baiting’s, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, December 19th, 1885, South Manchester Gazette

**Lloyd, John M, The Township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1972, page 75

***History of Kersal Moor, An Early Manchester racecourse, Manchester Guardian, September 11, 1936

****The end of 276 years of racing history, Manchester Guardian, November 9th, 1963

*****Axon, William E.A., Annals of Manchester, 1885

Wishing you well ........... postcards from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham for the summer ..... nu 5 Greenwich Park

A short series with few words looking at the postcards we sent from Woolwich, Greenwich and Eltham.

Now I don’t think this scene of the park had changed over much between when it was sent to Miss L E Thompson of Shepherds Bush and when I played there a full half century and a bit later.

It is unclear whether “C S” lived in Greenwich.  He sent the card from west London just after midday in the August of 1902 and confined himself to the simple message “Isn’t it nice.”

Location; Greenwich Park

Picture; Greenwich Park circa 1902, Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

Unearthing the Past by Sarah Dunant ..... 1. The Past Is a Foreign Country

 This is another of those wonderful radio 4 programmes which brings history alive and in the process explores just how we understand the past.

Portrait of a woman, 1500-1525

There are five episodes in the series, and "The Past Is a Foreign Country" is the firsy which was broadcast on Wednesday, with "Renaissance Menageries" going out yesterday, "Unto Us A Child is Born", today and "An Illness Probably Caused by Love", and "Fashion Icon and Ilfluencer" on subsequent days.

"The acclaimed novelist Sarah Dunant explores the craft of blending fact and fiction to understand the past in a beguiling series of essays centred on the Renaissance icon Isabella d'Este. Written and read by Sarah Dunant.

The best-selling author of the acclaimed Italian Renaissance novels The Birth of Venus, Blood and Beauty and now, The Marchesa, takes us into the archives where she uncovers a wealth of letters and other documentation charting the wonders of the high Renaissance and the life and times of its first female art collector, fashion icon and political operator, Isabella d'Este, marchesa of Mantua. 

In this illuminating series Sarah Dunant unearths wonders that bring alive the past, how people lived, their values and their beliefs. Taking as her starting point the novelist L.P. Hartley's line 'the past is a foreign country' Sarah explores how we must sometimes suspend our own judgements to understand the social, political and cultural forces that determined the outcome of world events and every day life. 

From the acquisition of assets, art and horses, to the fealty of pets, the vicissitudes of motherhood, sex and marriage, and the wielding of cultural influence, Unearthing the Past gives us insights into how we might better understand and appreciate our colourful forebears.

You can hear more from Sarah Dunant about Isabella d'Este on Not Just The Tudors, available now on BBC Sounds. From the Aztecs to witches, Prof Suzannah Lipscomb talks all aspects of the Tudor period.

Produced by Elizabeth Allard"

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; Portrait of a woman; sometimes wrongly called Portrait of Isabelle d’Este, 1500 and 1525, Department of Paintings of the Louvre, Room 710, Accession number, INV 894 and MR 109 (Department of Paintings of the Louvre) 

*Unearthing the Past by Sarah Dunant, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002f8t3  

A Viking hoard of treasure .....two detectorists ..... and a story .... Fool's Gold on the wireless now

 Now it's more than a story of Viking hidden treasure, two detectorists who fail to report the find, and a clue to a period of our history which may change how we see the period of Alfred  the Great.

 Silver penny minted during the reign of Alfred the Great875–880 

So "Fool's Gold" on BBC Radio 4 which spans eight episodes is riveting.

"June 2015, Herefordshire. Two Welsh detectorists - George Powell and Layton Davies - stumble upon a Viking hoard estimated to be worth up to £12m.

They could have become very rich and been celebrated as heroes in museums across the land. But instead, they began to hatch a criminal plot. Narrated by Aimee-Ffion Edwards (Detectorists/Slow Horses), this is the story of how to go from the luckiest treasure hunters on earth, to Newport’s most wanted.

Narrator: Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Contributors: Holly Morgan, Dawn Chipchase & Simon Wicks, Sound design: Peregrine Andrews, Production co-ordinator: Dan Marchini, Additional Research: Holly Morgan, Associate Producer: David James Smith., Producer: Aron Keller, Exec Producer: James Robinson,  A BBC Studios Audio Production."

Location; BBC Radio 4"*

*Fool's Gold, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0kz4ny8

Location BBC Radio 4

 Picture; English: Silver penny minted during the reign of Alfred the Great, struck 875–880 AD, This image has been extracted from another file: Alfred the Great, silver penny; struck 875–880.png original file, Classical Numismatic Group, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publishes it under the following licenses: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU FThis file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. Attribution: Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. http://www.cngcoins.com

That mystery house on Beech Road ........

Now number 121 Beech Road vanished a long time ago.

Hunts Croft, circa, 1960s

It was one of our more elegant early 19th century properties which was set back from Beech Road, and went sometime in the 1970s.

For a long time after its demolition the land was left an open space, with the occasional suggestion that it could be a car park, a project which came to nought when the Corporation and the local traders couldn’t agree on a funding package.

There will be a few people who remember it, but sadly I am not one of them, which means it had gone before I arrived in 1976 or like so many things I was just not that observant back then.

Either way, there is little to mark its presence, save an entry in the tithe schedule for 1845, the Rate books and official maps.

If I have this right, it was Hunt Croft House and in 1845 was the residence of Thomas White who rented it from the Lloyd Estate.

With a lot of digging it will be possible to track its history through the 19th century till its demolition. I know that in 1969 it was occupied by a Frances. J Casse, and in 1911 by Mr and Mrs Chester, their five children, and a boarder.

Looking into the garden, circa 1970s

The house had nine rooms with a biggish garden at the front, ending in a tallish stone wall which ran along Beech Road.

Back in the mid 19th century it looked at on fields.  From the rear Mr White could look out on a field and orchard, while from his front windows he could gaze across to Row Acre, which stretched up to High Lane.

But by the 20th century the fields had all gone, and on either side of this fine old house were shops.

Beech Road, circa 1970s

And here I must admit my mistake, because for years I had mistaken Croft House for Joel View which stood a little further down the road and had been built in 1859.

Many will remember Joel View as the property owned by J Johnny, which I assumed had been built much later.

I even compounded the mistake by arguing that the stone tablet which carried the  name of Joel View had been salvaged from Mr White’s former home and been added to J. Johnny’s.

Dating the picture

Now, even then I knew that this was pushing it, because our own historian Thomas Ellwood had written that Joel View was one of the new developments in the township at the end of the 1850s.

All of which goes to show that sometimes when it is easy to ignore the obvious and create an elaborate theory which is built on sand and that is really just a lead in to two pictures of Hunt’s Croft sent to me by Roger Shelley who took them sometime in the 1970s and which had lain in his negative box until yesterday.

The two images compliment an earlier one taken by N. Fife for which I don’t have a date for, but maybe from the 1960s.

That said it might be possible to date Roger’s pictures, from the shop which is up for sale.  This had been Mr Westwell’s fruit and greengrocer shop in 1969, but sometime in the next decade became The Village Wholefood Shop.

Hunt's Croft demolished, circa 1979-early 1980s

It was still trading when I took a picture around 1979, showing the shop and the site which had once been Hunts Croft.

So that is it for now, although I am hoping Roger has more pictures.

Location; Chorlton



Pictures; Hunts Croft circa 1960s, courtesy of N Fife, the Lloyd Collection and again circa 1970s from the collection of Roger Shelley, and after it had been demolished circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The lost canal ….Bert’s Café …. and the Coach and Horses ….. views across Minishull Street fifty years ago

This was one of my familiar views of the Manchester I knew in the 1970s.

Looking towards Minishull Street, 1979

To my left was the tower block of the College of Commerce which some of us affectionately called The College of Knowledge but which had just joined the Art School and John Dalton to become Manchester Polytechnic.

Over to the right was the Fire Station and Police Station on Whitworth Street West. Leaving just the tall buildings of the British Rail office block and the swirling S bend pile which was more glass than wall.

Lost view of Minishull Street, 1979

And for those really in the know hidden behind the hoardings in the first picture was Bert’s café and Placemate that night club which had once been home to the Twisted Wheel.

To which there was the Coach and Horses on London Road which my Pubs of Manchester Past and Present tells me "was originally an artisan's house with a workshop on the top floor.  It ended its life as a Tetley house at the bottom of Piccadilly Approach on the corner of Upton Street".*

We would sometimes cross the car park from the college and spend an evening in there, ostensibly discussing the next essay but quicky ending up on the football machine drinking from those old-fashioned straight glasses.

Go back to 1850, and the spot from which the pictures were taken and this was Coal Yard of the Bridgewater Canal Company, supplied by an arm of the Rochdale Canal.  The canal still exits running beside Canal Street and running  eventually in one direction to the Dale Street Basin and  Castlefield in the other.

That canal arm, 1850

But the arm which also nudged Little Davis Street has long gone.  It was still there in 1950 and may well have been filled in when the College of Knowledge was built in the 1960s.

Leaving me just to reflect that for a while the Poly occupied the warehouse which once abutted the arm of the canal while I have written about Little David Street and some of the people who lived there.*

The Rochdale Canal with the vanished arm to the right, 1980

I could again explore that history from the 1850s but instead will settle on Bert’s Café which remains with me over 50 years after we frequented the place, eating Bert’s sausage sandwiches and swapping stories of the night before.

Given that it was just a few minutes’ walk from the College and we were the archetype students, we would put a morning breakfast over the first lecture of the day. 

The place consisted of just one room with a serving hatch from which Bert delivered the orders which mainly consisted of chips with egg, or bacon or sausage with a variation of these in sandwiches.  The bread was white, the spread marg and the coffee was hot milk with a hint of the brown stuff.

In the winter the windows were always steamed up and in the summer the door was permanently open but had those plastic-coloured strips which rustled in the wind and were a concession to privacy.

The view, 2025

Location Minishull Street

Pictures, looking towards Minishull Street, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the arm of the Rochdale Canal,  1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the view in 2025, courtesy of Google Maps

*Pubs of Manchester Past and Present, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.com/2010/01/coach-horses-london-road.html

** Little David Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Little+David+