A little bit of the old Assize Courts in a farm house garden in Chorlton

Now I have to confess that this picture of Manchester Assize Courts interests me more for the story behind one of the figures that adorned the roof.

And this is the stone figure which sat in the garden of Park Brow Farm at the bottom of Sandy Lane where it joins St Werburghs Road.

My friend Tony Walker maintained that it came from the old Manchester Assize Courts on Great Ducie Street in Strangeways and looking at pictures of the building the figures do look the same.

It was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and finished in 1864.

Sadly this magnificent building did not last a century and after being hit during the blitz of December 1940 and again in ’41 it was demolished in 1957.

Some of the exterior sculptures were designed by Thomas Woolner who was one of the founding members of the Pre Raphaelite Brotherhood, but I rather think our figure was the work of the Irish stonemason firm of O’Shea and Whelan.

Picture; The Assize Courts,   from the series Manchester United Kingdom, marketed by Tuck & Sons, 1903, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/ and stone figure from the collection of Tony Walker

The bridges of Salford and Manchester ....... nu 1 Blackfriars Bridge sometime in the 1850s

Now of course it does really depend on which way you cross the bridge.

But I am not a pedant.

And I am not inclined to add anything more, save to say it is another by the artist Mr C W Clennell who strolled into Salford from Manchester sometime in the 1850s and this was the result.

So far I have come across four of paintings featuring Salford.

And that is al I am going to say.

Location; Salford

Picture, Blackfriars Bridge, C W Clennell, , m77146 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Queenscroft, the one you can miss

Queenscroft, 2013 

Queenscroft is one of those places you can miss which is a pity because it has a rich history dating back to 1720 and maybe even earlier.

And not for the first time I am struck by one of the major differences between Eltham where I grew up and Chorlton cum Hardy where I have lived for the last 37 years.

Both were small rural communities on the edge of big cities, and both were seen by those with money as a good place to live.

But Chorlton had fewer of those big fine houses and all of them have now vanished save two modest properties unlike Eltham which had more and has been lucky enough to keep many of them.

During the last century most of them have changed their use but they are still there.

A once elegant home

Which brings me back to Queenscroft which stands at 150 Eltham Hill next to a larger neo Georgian block of yellow brick built in 1973.

Today the property is not seen at its best.

It is sandwiched between other properties and is close to the road, so that the only way to fully take in its splendour is to stand on the opposite side of Eltham Hill and gaze at it between passing traffic.

But just a century ago it was still set well back from the highway behind a stone wall and sixty years earlier commanded fine views at the rear across open land.

To the east and behind the house was an orchard and then just fields all the way down to the Palace.

Queens Croft in 1909 with garden wall and orginal spelling

It had fourteen rooms and a little of its former elegance can be seen from the well proportioned windows and front entrance.

At the turn of the last century it was occupied by a Colonel Tasker and then by Lieutenant Edward Beddington and his wife Elsie, their two young sons and five servants.

In 1911 Lieutenant Edward Beddington was 27 and an officer in the 16th Lancers and according to his military record was one of the “Old Contemptibles” who had fought in the opening months of the Great War in France.  Unlike so many of the British Expeditionary Force he survived the war and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel and died in 1926.

In time it should be possible track most of the families of Queenscroft over the last two centuries, and one has already come to light.

Looking east up the hill with the church in background

This was John and Elizabeth Garland who were there by 1841 and may have been living in the house on the hill by 1837.

In that year John who was a wine merchant is listed as paying land tax in Eltham and two years later is in the tithe schedule.

There after he appears in various directories, the 1851 census and the poll book for 1852 which also records that he voted Liberal in the General Election.

He died in Eltham in the January of 1854 and was buried in the parish church Elizabeth his wife survived him by another twelve years.

Queenscroft in 1874

I shall return to the people of Queenscroft because there will be other stories of the people who lived behind its front door.

And only today my friend Jean has gone off to check out more of its history including a memory of going there to arrange a visit from the sweep who lived in the place.

So that just leaves the map of the area with Queenscroft in 1870 with the house in red.

Pictures; Queenscroft,  1909,  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
Queenscroft today from the collection of Jean Gammons  and map of Eltham from the OS map of Kent, 1858-74

With Elizabeth Jane Hunt and three children in a two roomed house in Eltham in 1911

This is the White Hart on a summer’s day in 1909, and it was going to be the subject of the story.

Mrs Ann Nunn who ran the five roomed pub was 59 years old had been born in Suffolk and was a widow.

During the twenty or so years before 1909 she had run another pub on King Arthur Street a few minutes’ walk from New Cross Road.  Back then it was a densely packed part of south east London close to an iron works and in the shadow of the viaduct of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.

Now I don’t yet know when her husband died but I think it may have been in 1897.  Either way she was still in King Arthur Street in 1901 and will have moved into the White Hart sometime aftter the January of 1908 and had gone by 1918.  Now I know this because she does not show up on either the street directories for 1908 and 1918 but is there on the sign above the door of the pub in 1909 and fills in her census return two years later.

But as things do I was drawn away from Mrs Nunn and instead wandered a little further up the street, stopping first at Harry Harvey’s fruit and greengrocer’s shop next door.

It is one of those remarkable examples of just how many people can be squeezed into a small property.

Here in the two rooms above the shop lived Mr and Mrs Harvey their two young children and the 18 years old assistant Frederick Walter Saunders.

Nor were the Harvey’s the only family to juggle overcrowded conditions, for around the corner in another two properties with just two rooms each lived the Chapman family of four and Mrs Hunt and her three children.

And it is Elizabeth Jane Hunt’s story that draws you in.  Her three children were aged, 10, 8 and 6, and for her the juggling began with having to have her daughter in her bedroom leaving the two boys to share the downstairs room beside the scullery.

She had been married for eleven years and worked a charwoman, which was not an easy job.

The date of her husband’s death has eluded me so far but I know he was called Charles and worked as a “Steel and Grass Borer in the Gas Works", and in the April of 1901 Elizabeth and Charles were living on the Broadway in Bexleyheath not far from Gravel Hill.  There is a record of a Charles Hunt who died in 1907 which puts their youngest child at just two years old.

His death may have occasioned the move to 4A the High Street and those two rooms hard by the White Hart.

I don’t have a picture of the properties but they look to have been built with one room above the other and a lean to scullery or kitchen attached.

Alternatively they may have been part of number 4 which was the shop run by the Harvey's/  If so this makes that property a much larger one with six rooms which will have been subdivided.

Either way neither Elizabeth Jane or Mr amd Mrs Chapman appear on those street directories which either means the rooms were vacant or that they were not deemed important enough to be listed at number 4.

I am hoping that someone will have a picture, but in the meantime I am forced back to that of the White Hart.

Pictures; the White Hart in 1909, 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

Looking for the story of Graeme House and that Chorlton Shopping Precinct

Graeme House and Safeway, 1971

We don’t do recent history very well.

I guess it is simply because we take it for granted and don’t even see it as history.

Added to which it is sometimes quite difficult to track down the story.

So when I washed up in Chorlton in the mid 1970s the shopping precinct, Graeme House and that car park were a done deal, but only just.

They had replaced a set of houses and cut Manchester Road in two leaving just two properties as witness to what had once been.

Shops to let, 1971

You can find a few people who remember those houses and one of my friends attended a private school on that lost stretch of Manchester Road, but the memories are fading.

And to date I have found just a handful of photographs recording the demolished houses which ran along Wilbraham Road, Manchester Road, and Barlow Moor Road.

Part of the problem is that such developments don’t warrant being recorded in history books, so Mr Lloyd’s two books skip over the building of the precinct and the book written by Cliff Hayes has just a picture.*

From the Guardian, 1973

Of course the planning applications along with the deliberations of the Planning Committee should still be available but having crawled over the documents relating to the development of Hough End Hall a little earlier this can be long tedious and sometimes unrewarding.

All of which just leaves the local newspapers which will have recorded the events.

Graeme House and car park, 1973

And that has so far thrown up an advert for the remaining offices to still to be let in 1971 and a few photographs of Graeme House and the precinct.

Sadly I am no nearer to knowing why it was called Graeme House.

Intriguingly I did come across Graeme Shankand who was a planning consultant and architect who worked on projects in the North West.

It is a tenuous link but in the process did introduce me to a very interesting architect, who played an important part in founding the William Morris Society.

The precinct, 1973

But that as they say is for another time.

So for now I shall close with the memory of shopping in Safeway not long after it had opened in the precinct.

It was bright, busy and at the time the biggest supermarket in Chorlton, and for a while continued to operate after its bigger store had opened by the old railway station.

Now that should have been the end but to reaffirm that simple observation that history is messy, only hours after I posted the story Ste Passant suggested that the office block may have been named after Henry John Greame Lloyd who cropped up on a legal document.

Now I rather think that he was part of the Lloyd family that owned a large part of Chorlton coming from the same area and leaving £151,021 10s on his death in 1919.

All of which just leaves me to go off and search the records.

Pictures; the Shopping Precinct and Graeme House, H.Milligan, 1971, m17408, m19763, m17832, m17405 and Graeme House, The Guardian, October 22, 1973, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1972,  Looking Back at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, John M Lloyd, 1985, CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Cliff Hayes, 1999

** Graeme Shankand, John Kay, http://www.morrissociety.org/publications/JWMS/W84-85.6.2.Kay.pdf

*** Buldoze and be damned, Terence Bendixson, the Guardian January 8 1969

A lost pub on Fairfield Street

This is the Bridge Inn on Fairfield Street as it was in 1970.

And it is a pub I will have passed countless times on the bus on the journey to Grey Mare Lane and Ashton.

But despite living for a chunk of time in east Manchester and beyond in the 1970s, I can’t say I ever noticed the pub and certainly never went in it, and that is a shame.

I can track a pub with that name to this spot back to 1840, when it was surrounded by a mix of industrial and residential properties.

According to the 1911 census, the landlord was a Fred Lord, who with his wife Elizabeth managed the pub, assisted by Arthur Dixon who was the waiter and Ethel Jackson who was described as a domestic servant.

And along with these were the Lord’s daughter, young Vera Patricia, aged 3, and Mr. Lord’s widowed mother.

The same census offers both a   glimpse into the pub, and into its occupants.

It had eight rooms, and may already have been familiar to Elizabeth who had been born in Ardwick and to Elizabeth’s mother in law who was born just up the road in Bradford.

What strikes you are the little details.  Ethel Jackson was just sixteen, Mrs. Lord senior was already a widow at 52, and the Lord’s had moved around the city, having been in Gorton in 1908.

And for an official document Fred Lord was less than conscientious about completing the form accurately having, failed to ascertain exactly where his 22 years old waiter had been born, so while I know it was WR, which may have been Whalley Range, the county is shown just as an ?.

Of course, it may also be that Arthur Dixon didn’t know his exact birth place.

Someone I know will be able to supply a date for when it closed, but for now, that is it, other than to say there remain some stories of the surrounding buildings which we will return to.

Location; Fairfield Street

Pictures; the Bridge Inn, 1970, A. Dawson, m49287, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and in 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Just what 46 years does to a bit of Wilbraham Road

Now I can remember this bit of Wilbraham Road in the late 1970s.

I shopped in Liptons, ate in the Asian restaurant next door and bought a couple of holidays from the travel agents and the rest of the shops are a blur although I think one was a Butcher’s and of course along the row was the toy shop.

And so it makes a nice contrast to Andy Robertson picture of the same spot in 2014.

There is more I could say but will just leave you with the observation that if you look closely you can see how the mobile shop and Rainbow trade from a building which was added on to the original house.

Nor was this unique on Wilbraham Road but that is for you to find out, along of course with the fate of the buildings where Liptons and the the Post Office now stand.

For the lazy the answer is there in the blog.
And the postscript is that the mobile shop is now Chocoberry.

Pictures; Wilbraham Road circa 1979 from the Lloyd Collection and the same spot today courtesy of Andy Robertson

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 4 on discovering coal mines by our front door and a dreadful pit accident

Now if I am honest they were just a bit further away and had long ago been abandoned.

I shouldn’t have been over surprised.  After all we had started our life together in the shadow of Bradford Colliery which despite having closed in1968 still maintained its surface gear as a reminder of what had been.

And of course on that long bus ride from town there was always the Snipe to pass.  Added to this Kay was from a mining family who were still working the coal when we met and married.

So coal and all that went with it was pretty much part of the backdrop of our lives.

But that said no one expects to walk out of the house onto Whiteacre Road and be confronted with a coal mine.

This was not in the surveyors report or in the happy helpful comments of the estate agent when in 1973 we became house owners.

In fact the first I knew about it was when I idly thumbed through a copy of Victorian Ashton.*

There on page 89 in the chapter on the Industrial Archaeology of Ashton-Under-Lyne were the coal mines laid out on a map both to the north east of our house and a little to east.

Of course they had long since been closed and capped and all that remained was an open space.

Given of course the history and geography of the northwest it was an obvious discovery, but a little unsettling.

That said my curiosity didn’t last too long and only 40 years after I made that discovery have I decided to dig deeper.

The shafts are clearly marked on the 1853 OS for Lancashire and appear fifty years later as “Old Pits, 1, 2 and 3” and belonged to John Kenworthy and Brothers.

Pits no 2 and 3 were on that stretch of land between Whiteacre Road and Cricket’s Lane while just across Mossley Road was  pit number 1.

This was Heys Colliery and it was here that in the March of 1851 an underground explosion resulted in the deaths of five men.

James Ogden “was killed by the explosion on Monday last, and the others have since died from the effects of the injuries which they received.”**

These were James Wright Andrew, John Booth and William Joule.

The inquest heard that the airways were not kept open and this led to a build up of gas which should not have happened.  Mr Miller, the underlooker who was responsible for this had been warned in the past but chose to ignore the warnings.  "He knew that William Joule worked with his naked lamp, and where [Joule] worked the air should be pure.”

On his own admission the Mr Miller knew that to clear the air roads would “have taken two men a fortnight to have cleared them properly” and this was not done.

Witness after witness pointed to the negligence of Mr Miller and after a short deliberation the jury decided that “these men came by their death by accident; and it is the wish of the jury that a government inspector be requested to examine the mine; and the jury consider the underlooker has neglected his duty”

So far that is about it.  Of the five who died William Joule aged 33 left a widow and three children, the historical record has yet to shed anything on James Ogden who whose only official entry is his death certificate.

That said both James Wright Andrew, and John Booth can be found in the 1841 census returns for Ashton and maybe I will return to follow them up.  As for Mr Miller and the colliery company they have  passed into the shadows.

All of which I knew nothing of until fired by the memory of those disused pits I began looking for their story.

Pictures, from the OS for Lancashire 1841-53 and the OS for South Lancashire 1888-94 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and extract from the Manchester Guardian March 22, 1851, courtesy of  Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*Victorian Ashton, Ed Sylvia A Harrop & E A Rose, 1974

**Manchester Guardian March 22, 1851

Wishing you were here.......Eltham in the past, Nu 2 looking west from the High Street

Now if you don’t know Eltham or like me have been away from the place for a long time, there is always Google Street maps which will place you at the same spot and allow you to do your own comparisons.

Pictures; looking west towards the church   from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers 

Renshaws Buildings in Martledge

Even I have to admit that this bit of road and kerb stone is not the most exciting picture of Chorlton and yet it is all that is left of Martledge that part of the old township which ran from the four banks down to the library.

All this week I have been writing about the place and today I want to focus on the building which ran along the side of this bit of road.  It was a block of six or maybe 12 dwellings and was variously known as New Buildings or Renshaws Buildings.

It was set at right angles to what is now Barlow Moor Road and in its time must have looked the part. It had a large impressive gable end and despite being farm cottages dominated this part of Martledge.

The block was owned and may have been built by John Renshaw sometime before 1832.  He was a market gardener living in a farm house on the Row* who also owned a number of cottages around the township.  Some at least would have been wattle and daub structures but Renshaws Buildings were made of brick.

Now I can be fairly confident that they predate 1832 because they are listed as part of his property qualification which entitled him to a Parliamentary vote in the newly reformed House of Commons.

And it maybe that they represent the first building boom here in Chorlton in the 1840s and 40s by speculative tradesmen who wanted to cash in on the population increase or maybe just the desire of local people to live in a house made of brick rather than wood, mud and straw.


It is unclear how many units there were but the evidence from the census and the old maps suggests that they were one up one down back to back dwellings.  By the beginning of the 20th century part of the block had been converted into commercial use and just before their demolition this bit was a garage.

They came down sometime in the 1920s or 30s to make way for the present Royal Oak pub.  I wish we had some written memories of what they were like but sadly we don’t.  On the other hand we do have a few photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries along with details of who lived there from the 1840s and the rents they paid, but for all that it is back to the book where you can see Barris’ reconstruction picture of Renshaws Buildings in more detail.  It is based on a number of the photographs and maps and we are looking at it from the west, as if were heading into the township from Manchester.  The kerb stone and narrow road are hidden on its eastern side.

*Today this is Beech Road and his home was on the site of Ivy Court facing the Rec

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Barri Sparshot

A little bit of Eltham in the stories of Edith Nesbit, writer, socialist and resident at Well Hall House

The old Woolwich Road, 1909

Now I have set myself the task of reading the stories of Edith Nesbit and looking for Eltham.

She lived in Well Hall House from the late 19th century into the 20th and those in the know reckon they can spot the references.

I never read her books when I was growing up and have to confess that I only came to know of the Railway Children which is one of her most famous books when the film came out.

So to rectify this omission and to see if the descriptions of the house the children lived in and the countryside they played around matches the Eltham of the late 19th century I shall trawl her books.

And before someone mutters “he clearly needs to get out more,” I reckon it will fulfil a couple of goals.

Well Hall House, date unknown

First it will involve reading  some children’s classics and it will allow me to wander the lanes of Well Hall, and the fields stretching north to the woods and south to the Palace sometime between the 1890s and the 1920s.

And in all of this I shall be aided by the wonderful pictures and descriptions of Eltham from R.R.C.Gregory’s history of Eltham, published in 1909 and still a must for anyone wanting to know the history of the area.*

I doubt that there will always be an exact match and not all of the books will contain any references but perhaps enough to add to what I already know about both her home and the area over a century ago.

And  she was far more than just a little old lady 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.

Edith Nesbit

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.

And one of her books has already begun to reveal that old Eltham.

This is the Red House published in 1902, and named I guess after the home of William Morris.  But as the story unfolds it is clear that the house is Well Hall House.

It was demolished in 1928 after a fire, but the opening chapters recreate the property down to the ivy which covered part of the back,  the gardens and the interior.

Now there may be some images of the inside of the place, along with plans and descriptions but at present all I have is the Red House.

But that is an exciting start.

Pictures; The old Woolwich Road, circa 1909,  from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers,http://gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm
Well Hall House, from The Edith Nesbit Society,http://www.edithnesbit.co.uk/ and Edith Nesbit from Wikipedia Common

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 1 washing up on Raynham Street

Whiteacre Road and the corner of Raynham Street

Now if you have to start off your life together at the tender age of 23 and 21 respectively then Ashton in the mid 1970s was a pretty good choice.

We had begun by renting just off the Old Road opposite Grey Mare Lane Market and when we started on the property ladder it seemed natural to start looking around there.

But the houses were not available and bit by bit we moved up Ashton Old Road and finally in 1973 crossed the municipal border and washed up in Raynham Street.

A two up two down down, close to the town centre and it even had a small Corporation allotment directly opposite.

Of course the downside was that I worked in Wythenshawe and travelled on public transport which meant that during the winter I only got to see Ashton in the daylight at the weekend.

Raynham Street

But that still left plenty of time to explore the town, the surrounding districts and to venture out into the countryside.

Not that this is some nostalgic trip seen through a rosy coloured perspective, but just an occasional piece reflecting on what the town was like for two young people who had been born at opposite ends of the country.

Raynham Street was just what we wanted and for me it was just a matter of exchanging one terraced house for another .

There was also a  sense of community which appealed to us.  We both came from close knit areas, me from south East London and Kay from a mining village in the North East, and having done our three years of rootless living in south Manchester student land we were ready for something different.

We got to know our neighbours, found our favourite stalls in the covered in market and having transferred our membership to the Ashton Labour Party made new friends.

Some were like us, first time buyers straight out of grim multi occ properties in Withington, Fallowfield and Longsight and others could count their family generations back to an earlier Ashton.

We regularly attended meetings in the old PSA building with Glyn and Hazel, introduced our families to the delights of Stamford Park and the Sycamore and occasionally managed to entice friends out of the city to come and stay.

Penny Meadow & Whiteacre Road, 1972

I could never quite understand why they thought it was such an adventure, to us it was a comfortable and easy place to settle.

And even now on those rare occasions I come back the place still has an effect on me.

It begins as the tram pulls up just short of the town centre and extends as I wander through the market place and up to St Michael’s.

That said I can’t quite get my head around the new retail park and I miss the Arcadia along with the PSA building and wonder when the mural to the jubilee in 1977 painted on the gable end of the butcher’s shop on the corner of Whiteacre and Egerton Road vanished.

All of which smacks of the nostalgic trip I promised not to take.

Instead I shall ponder for a future post on the Ashton I remember from the 1970s.

Pictures; Raynham Street, date unknown, t03175 and t03175, and Penny Meadow at the junction with Whiteacre Road and Crickets Lane, 1972, t01388, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3

Looking for the first carol singer in Chorlton-cum-Hardy ...and other Christmas traditions

As titles go it is a bit daft even for a history blog, and I guess ranks with Carol Singer bites dog and the carol singers who started singing in Easter.

But it sets me off on a story which touches on Christmas in Chorlton across the centuries.

Mr Wittaker sells Christmas, 1906

And what better than this picture of Mr. Whitaker and his two assistants outside his grocery shop on the corner of Beech Road and Chorlton Green in the run up to a Christmas long ago.  

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.

Choice Xmas Currants, sardines and Bovril

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.

Singing on the green, 2022

All of which is becoming too complicated.  So I shall to reflect on the picture postcard of Beech Road on a summer’s day over printed with “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year” and go back to carol singing.

Before the green was stolen by Sam Wilton and turned it into his private garden in the early 19th century it had been the centre of many village activities.

Then after it reurned to community use in the 1890s, there will have been a return of events of which one will have been centred around Christmas.

Just what shape that event took has yet to be discovered.

But for now the revival of carol singing around the Christmas tree set against the backdrops of the Horse and Jockey, the Lych Gate and the Bowling Green Hotel beyond has become a popular highligh of the festive season. ..... is back.

Join us on Christmas Eve at 6.15.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Mr Wittaker sells Christmas, 1906, from the Lloyd collection carol singing on the green, 2022, courtesy of Peter Topping and Christmas Eve on Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Christmas Eve, Beech Road waiting for the carol singers, 2022

A Beech Road that has now passed out of living memory

Now I have a soft spot for Beech Road, it is after all where I have lived since 1976. 

And for years I wondered why the pavement widens briefly almost opposite Reeves Road which was of course to accommodate the big tree.

What I also like about the photograph is that it is a view that has long since passed out of living memory and part at least had not changed in perhaps 80 years.

I can be fairly sure that it dates from 1907 when the houses on the left were built and no later than 1909 when the estate of Beech House on the right was sold and the big house demolished.

Beech House had been the home of the Holt family from the 1830s until the last of the family died in 1907. By 1909 the eastern side of the garden running along Barlow Moor Road had been acquired by the Corporation, its wall demolished and a stretch of it was about to become the tram terminus.

The remaining stretch would in time be developed to include Malton Avenue the Palais de Luxe cinema opened in 1915 and the parade of shops.

But now on that winter day it was still possible to see the outline of Beech House and beyond the row of terraced houses to the south were the Bowling Green Farm and the village.

Picture; Beech Road circa 1907-1909 from the Lloyd collection

A demonstration …… and the search for a story …. Piccadilly 1943

Sometimes you come across an image that sets you off on a search for answers.

And this picture taken in 1943 in Piccadilly  is just one of those.

The caption is enigmatic to say the least, just, “Piccadilly Catholic demonstration, educational reform 1943”

I can’t get an exact date and none of the placards reveal much as to why so many Catholics assembled in the centre of Manchester at the height of the last war.

The Manchester Guardian failed to cover the event, and I have yet to trawl the local papers.

But this was during the discussions and the Parliamentary debates about what became the 1944 Education Act which “raised the school leaving age, transforming education into a continuous process from nursery to adult and aimed at suiting all talents” *

And while the Government was intent on retaining church involvement in education there arose the issue of funding for new denominational school buildings to replace many that were too small, too old and no longer adequate.

The cost of which was very high and could only be achieved by Government funding.

The White paper of 1942 had observed  “that the Churches with a financial problem greater in extent and no less urgent than that in respect of senior children. This is a problem which they have shown themselves quite unable to meet in recent years and which they are less than ever likely to be able to meet after the war.

51. If large numbers of children are not to be deprived of healthy and decent school conditions to say nothing of equal educational opportunities there is no disguising the fact that, unless a considerable number of voluntary schools are to be brought to an end and replaced by new provided schools, some further assistance from public funds must be found towards the maintenance and improvement of the premises, where such improvement is possible. 

Discussions carried on in recent months with the many interests concerned have satisfied the Government that there is a wide measure of agreement that voluntary schools should not be abolished but rather that they should be offered further financial assistance, accompanied by a corresponding extension of public control which will ensure the effective and economical, organisation and development of both primary and secondary education”.**

All of which alarmed some in the Catholic Church and led to protests including one held at The Hippodrome in Salford on September 12th 1943, which the Manchester Guardian reported “an audience of 2,500 called by the Roman Catholic Parents’ and Elector’s Association passed a resolution demanding the provision of public funds of school buildings where Roman Catholic children can be instructed in accordance with the wishes of their parents”.***

The issue was resolved but that is for another story.

In the meantime I wonder if our Piccadilly protest was linked to that meeting.

Answers on a postcard.

And answers there have been, with a promise from Lawrence Gregory to offer up more information on the issues surrounding the protest.

And Lawrence also pinpointed the event to October 10th, 1943 which was a Sunday, commentating that the demonstrators came from across the North West making up a protest of 50,000 on what was a "beautiful sunny afternoon".****

All the more remarkable given the travel restrictions and difficulties due to war time rail services and that "thousands of Catholics from this Diocese were away on active war service".

Added to which I have Bill Sumner to thank for correcting me for suggesting the demonstration occurred in Piccadilly Gardens, "they are actually on the bomb site behind the gardens where hundreds of buildings were burnt out or destroyed by the services to prevent further spread of fire due to incendiary bombs. 

The Piccadilly Gardens were surrounded by concrete air raid shelters as seen in the background and vegetable gardens for food rations instead of flowers".

Location; Piccadilly, 1943

Picture; “Piccadilly Catholic demonstration, educational reform 1943” m07352, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Schools, Manchester Guardian, December 19th, 1943

**White Paper Educational Reconstruction, 1943 pages12-13, https://www.education-uk.org/documents/official-papers/1943-wp-educational-reconstruction.html#03

***Roman Catholic Schools White Paper Protests September 13th, 1943, from the Almanac, 1944

****Henry Vincent, Bishop of Salford, 1943

Well Hall in the 1920s nu 1 ........... catching the train and watching out for the cows

A short occasional series on Well Hall in the 1920s.

Now I washed up in Eltham in the spring of 1964 and for two and half years made the daily  train journey back to New Cross and Samuel Pepys School which continued until I switched to Crown Woods.

I didn’t like Samuel Pepys over much and the trip from Well Hall to New Cross and back was pretty much the best bit of the day.

Even now I have fond memories of seeing the woods above out house come into view ast thetrain took that final bend and came into the station.

The trains were always packed but there was something about knowing you were coming home to Well Hall.

And I suspect Mr Jefferson may have shared that feeling, so here are some of his memories of the same station just 40 or so years before I used the station.

They are taken from the book he published in 1970.

“The railway station was called simply ‘Well Hall’ when we came and the platforms were not so long as they are now.  

A workman’s ticket cost 8d return to London and early workers making their way past the tumbledown ‘Well Hall’ which is now the Pleasaunce would frequently be hindered by cows coming up hawthorn-hedged Kidbrooke Lane and turning in at the wide gate in Well Hall Road.”*

Location; Well Hall

Picture; the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose

*The Woolwich Story, E.F.E. Jefferson, 1970 page 202

When they took my railway station ...........

Now, as a rule I don’t object to change and even I could see the logic of building a new railway station yards from the old one and calling it Eltham.

That old familiar entrance, circa 1960s

In the great scheme of things the coming of the motorway and the loss of the bus terminus beside the station made perfect sense.

But a little of my youth vanished when Well Hall Railway Station was demolished.
More than that, no one told me.

I had left from that wooden platform in the September of 1969 for a new life in Manchester, and while I regularly returned home during the following two decades I was not prepared for the day I alighted from what I thought was the wrong station, with the wrong name, on the wrong side of the road.

The new bridge, 2013

I should of course have been warned by the conversation at the ticket office in Charing Cross when my  request for a single to Eltham Well Hall was met with a stony look and a sarcastic comment about not keeping up with news, which was a tad unfair given that my subscription to Railway News had lapsed the month before.

Only the intervention of the nice lady buying a season ticket for Welling saved the day.

Off on a jolly, 1966

Even now on those occasions I go home I never feel quite right walking through the brick and concrete building and yearn with a bit of silly nostalgia for the wooden railway station of my youth.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; Eltham Well Hall Railway Station & the High Street circa 1960s courtesy of Steve Bardrick, the railway bridge over Well Hall Road, 2014, from the collection of Chrissie Rose and off from Well Hall, 1966, from the collection of Anne Davey

Barlow Hall, a court case and the promise of a park for Chorlton and Didsbury on the banks of the Mersey

It was one of those stories that you uncover by accident and will require lots more research but that won’t stop me beginning the tale.

Now I had been crawling over the Manchester Guardian looking for references to the opening months of the Great War and amongst other things there was a series of articles about the Corporation’s intention to buy the Barlow Hall estate and turn it into a park.

Lord Egerton had signalled his wish in the April of 1914 to sell the land for £50,000, which the Manchester Guardian reported “works out at more than a £150 an acre [and which] at present brings in an income of about £900 a year.  

The Parks Committee, in addition to inspecting the property, have had it valued at £30,800, or about £95 an acre.  

Their advisor in arriving at this figure took into consideration the fact that nearly 300 acres of the land is low lying, which raises difficulties in the matter of drainage and limits its usefulness, except of course, for such purposes as farming, recreation, and sewage treatment.”*

Added to which the Egerton estate reserved “the rights of drainage for the adjoin high land at present draining into the lower levels; provision for a quarter of the cost of maintain the river banks and certain restrictions affecting the use of the land for building, advertising and sewage purposes.  On the other hand, 

Lord Egerton would provide an entrance road, 80ft wide from Barlow Moor Road to Barlow Hall; a right of way, 50ft wide from Hardy Lane, Chorlton and an entrance to the land from Darley Avenue, in West Didsbury.”

Now there was opposition with letters to the Manchester Guardian, but at a small meeting of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ratepayers Association a decision approved the purchase but the members present were concerned about the impact on the Golf Club whose links was owned by the Egerton estate and would be part of the purchase.

Despite the cost the Parks Committee decided to recommend the purchase to the Council in the September with Alderman Harrop arguing that this was a good deal particularly as it meant the acquisition of Barlow Hall for £25,000.

And that is as far as I have got although thee are also some fascinating glimpses into the life of the Hall when it was still the residence of Cunliffe Brooks which came from a high profile court case in 1900-01 which centred around the attempt of his widow and daughter to prove that his main domicile was Scotland, but that is for another time.

Pictures; Bluebell Wood, Barlow Ley, circa 1900, and west front of Barlow Hall, circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

*The Proposed South Manchester Park, Manchester Guardian, April 30, 1914