Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870 ......... part 2 ........Deansgate and Davenport’ Court "where scarcely a night passes but some robbery is committed”

Now I have to say the stretch of Deansgate from St Mary’s Gate down to Victoria Street Bridge is dismal.

Looking up Deansgate from Victoria Bridge Street, 1988

It starts with that Italian restaurant but pretty quickly becomes just a wall behind which rises that sloping walkway which now goes nowhere.

And the end of that dismal stretch is just the entrance to a car park.   All very different from the impressive Grosvenor Hotel and the Grosvenor Buildings which occupied the same spot but were demolished in 1972.

A full century earlier and the same site was home to the notorious Davenport Court where according to the Manchester Guardian “scarcely a night passes but some robbery is committed ........ and almost under the shadow of the Cathedral tower.”*

The Grosvenor Hotel, 1959

The court was one of those enclosed ones and “entered only by a narrow passage some four or five feet wide.

At the end of this are two houses, used for the most vicious of all trades, and of course registered as common lodging house.”

It was “well known in the police courts and goal.  

Yet for all these houses are still continued on the register as being well ordered, and go on nightly adding to the long calendar of crime and filling the lock wards of our hospitals.” 

Lock hospitals specialized in treating sexually transmitted diseases,

Ours had opened in 1819 and was replaced a by newer one which opened in 1874 off Liverpool Road, on the corner of Duke Street and Bridgewater Street, and while it postdates the Manchester Guardian description it is worth noting that a decade later it was so strapped for cash that “its walls still remain unpainted.”

But according to Mr Lowndes its “doors are always open in the first instance to anyone suffering from the disease for which it treats, but in order to prevent abuse, and to reserve its benefits for the most deserving, no patient is admitted a second time.”**

One wonders where some of those who needed its services a second time went, not that the journalist from the Manchester Guardian.

Davenport Court, 1849

Instead he continued to paint a vivid if depressing picture of life in Davenport Court, referring to one resident “seated by the kitchen fire of one of these houses who was a low browed short haired man, whose muscles and ferocity seemed well matched and who boasted that he ‘never did a day’s work this many a year, and should consider himself a fool,” with a very appropriate adjective ‘if he did.’”

And there was plenty of evidence of violent behaviour and criminal acts upon those who might stray into the court.  Such victims could not expect any help even though they might cry out and were unlikely to catch their assailant who being familiar with the court could vanish in an instant and be out on Deansgate mingling with passersby.

Added to which “at the corner of the entry. Keeping guard over it is a public house filled full to overflowing with wholly drunken men and semi-drunken women, and hard working labourers who are spending on prostitutes hard-earned money for want of which their wives and children are starving at home. 

Davenport Court and surrounding area, 1849

The whistle which gives token of the approach of suspicious-looking strangers, and the intense silence which succeeds it, indicate alike the commerce and the conversation carried on there.

The intruding and unwelcome visitor is greeted with muttered curses and regarded with furtive looks; he may be a ‘plain-clothes man’ taking stock, and too many know what that means to make his advent welcome.”

The pub was the Llangollen Castle which stood directly north of the court and the area was dominted by textile mills, metal working plant and timber yard.


Of course it may well be that our journalist for all sorts of reasons may have over egged the situation, but I doubt it for there are plenty of similar accounts.

That said I shall away and away and trawl the records for any reference to unruly behaviour in the pub and the court.

Victoria Street, 1988

Location; Deansgate

Coming soon; dark secrets and tragedies in Wood Street






Pictures; Victoria Street, 1988, E. Krieger, m 05447, Grosvenor Hotel and the Grosvenor Buildings, L. Kaye, 1959, m49730, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Davenport Court, 1849, from Manchester & Salford OS, Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1870

**Lock Hospitals and Lock Wards in General Hospitals, Frederick W. Lowndes, 1882, pages 12-14

The story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries ............. part 1 a beginning

Number 70 in 2014

Now over three centuries a building can pretty much be many things to many people and so it is with number 70 Beech Road. 

It began as a beer shop was briefly home to an upholsterer, and has also been a fish shop, a bakery and art gallery before becoming home to a jewellery and craft business.

All of which means it may well be our oldest commercial property with an unbroken record of selling various things dating back to 1832.

As such it is only beaten by the Horse & Jockey which opened its doors sometime around 1800 in a building dating back to the 16th century.

And yes the Bowling Green does date from the 1780s but is now in a building which was built in the early 20th century, while the pub over the water at Wilton's bridge is now no longer in Chorlton.

Now I can’t be sure of the exact date but 1832 is a good starting point.

Nu 70, the Travellers Rest, circa 1901

It does not show up on Hennet’s map of 1830 but was open for business just two years later when it was run as the Robin Hood.

But perhaps to distinguish it from a pub with the same name in Stretford it became the Travellers Call and by the 1840s was known as the Travellers Rest.

It fronted directly on to the road and so those who chose to visit it would walk straight in off the Row.**

Inside there was just the one room with all the natural light coming from a window beside the door.  

Judging by the size of the room which was just 3.5 metres [11.5 feet] wide by 1.75 metres [6 feet] long, and its customers were packed in sitting on simple wooden chairs and benches with just enough room for one table

It lacked the size of the Bowling Green Hotel or the position of the Horse and Jockey on the green, but it was a natural stopping off point for anyone coming down the Row.**

Grouped around about were a fair few village homes, and there was the added attraction of William Davis’s smithy just across the road.

Looking up Beech Road around 1901

For those dropping off tools to be mended or horses to be shod the “Rest” was a natural port of call, particularly for those thirsty from the heat of standing near the forge.

Like other beer shops the Travellers Rest may not even have had a bar.  It was a simple drinking room where men gathered, drank their beer and enjoyed each others’ company.

Its first “beer keeper” was Thomas White who was succeeded by Samuel and Elizabeth Nixon and they ran the place until the mid 1880s, after which it continued as a beer shop until the early years of the 20th century.

The corner of number 70 in 1979

But that is not quite all for this first chapter in the story.

Samuel’s father ran the pub over the Mersey, his son took over the post office next door at number 68 and his grandson opened the first newsagents on the corner of Beech Road and Chequers Road and had married in to the Brownlow family who had been making wheels at Lane End from early in the 19th century. ***

So less a story of one beer shop more of one family and what they did in Chorlton.

Next; from beer shop to upholster and the story of Mrs Lothian who sold fish from number 70 well into the 1930s.

Pictures; number 70 Beech Road, 2014 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Travellers Rest circa 1901 and the Oven Door, 1979 from the collection of Tony Walker.

*The story of one building in Chorlton over three centuries,  

**The Row or Chorlton Row was the name  of Beech Road

***Lane End was where High Lane and what is now Sandy Lane joined Barlow Moor Road

When a smelly sewer was just one too many

Now I am pretty much sure I am going to be corrected today or at the very least attract someone who knows more about 19th century sewer ventilation pipes than I do.

But I grew up with one at the top of our road in south east London. It is still there today as is the one my brother in law took a picture of in Plumstead. Of course when you are growing up you take bits of street furniture for granted. Well I did anyway.

Ours was tall made out of iron and was always painted a pale green although the one in Plumstead is more a pale blue. But I digress.

They were for venting the sewers of the more obnoxious and even dangerous gasses which could accumulate down below. I suppose they are still necessary today.

Our Colin reckoned he heard running water when he took one picture of the base.

Now I have not come across one in Manchester but I bet there will be someone who has, and posts the fact with perhaps a picture.

I expect they help date the area.  One source I read suggested that they were erected in the years after the Great London Stink in 1858 and this would fit roughly with when my bit of Peckham was being laid out. They were particularly necessary in hilly areas where gas could get trapped in pockets, and both my bit of Peckham and Colin’s Plumstead are built on hills.

And at least one chap got in on the act and in 1895.  Joseph Edmund Webb, of Birmingham, patented the “Webb’s Patent Sewer Gas Destructor" in  March 1895. At its top, behind a glass, burned a small flame from the town’s gas supply. This acted as a chimney, drawing the sewer gas up to the flame, where it was ignited, thus illuminating the street. The cleverness of Mr Webb’s patent was the way it regulated the supply of sewer gas.

North Tyneside council has restored ten in Whitley Bay and Monkseaton. Blyth council has restored five. Sheffield, though, is the capital of the destructor.

It was built on seven hills, so there were lots of folds and u-bends in its sewer system in which to trap gas.

From 1914 to 1935, it installed 84 destructors, of which 22 remain with three still at work, casting an orange glow on the Sheffield streets.*

And much to my surprise there is even a facebook page.

Which I think might indeed be a fitting point to close on although I have yet to find  Henry Eddie & Co Ltd or the Bow Foundry.

Pictures; from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick   

*The Northern Echo July 2008 http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/history/memories/3211527.Is_this_just_the_tip_of_the_stink_pole_/

Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870 ......... of privies closed courts and foul passages..... Ludgate Street

Now Ludgate Street which runs from Rochdale Road into Angel Meadow should have fared better.

New gates, 1908, a closed court

There are no images of the place in the City collection, it warrants only one entry in a street directory and got a pretty poor press from the Manchester Guardian back in 1870.

You can still walk down it today.  It is one of the narrower streets in the city and is fronted by a mix of tall residential properties, and until recently was home to a warehouse, car park, and some open land.

And as such is not over remarkable but back in 1870 it attracted the attention of the Manchester Guardian and appeared as No. 3 of their series “In the Slums.”*

Ludgate Street, 1851

“Ludgate-street is a principal thoroughfare leading from Rochdale Road into Angel Meadow.

From each side of this street branch off many courts, each with its open gutter down the centre; and as the houses are built back to back, forming the front street and back yard at the same time.

In each of these courts we find privies and ashpits very dilapidated and dirty, and in many cases built over with rooms.

In Church court the privies open on to the yard or court, where boys and girls are playing about. ....... Foul passages past fouler places lead from these courts and streets, passages so narrow that it is impossible to avoid contact with that which decency would shun, but which is utterly unheeded by those who dwell here, such is the debasing effect of constantly living in such places.

Back Simpson –street, Marshall’s Court and many other places we have visited could be adduced to show how horrible this district is, but it is needless to reiterate facts.  In Factory Court there is one lodging-house registered for 20 beds. And 20 beds means 40 persons and for these 40 persons there are one privy and one ashpit, and these are partially destroyed by the fall of an adjacent wall.

Church Court off Ludgate Street, 1851

In Joinery-street there is a court with a foul privy, without a door, and full ashpit within five feet of the living room; and in a court off Brabham-street one privy, without a seat or door and in such a state that it cannot be approached, is the sole provision for seven houses.”

Nor was that quite all, because our intrepid journalist moved a little distance away to Newtown which he described as a suburb of Angel Meadow which had “plenty of open spaces, spaces which might act as lungs for the overcrowded district it adjoins and where a little fresh air might be found.”

Nearby in another building were “hundreds of cows’ feet waiting to be boiled and, and separated from them by a board only, a heap of bones of those which have preceded them."

44 Angel Street 1898 which backed on to Ludgate Street

Alas this was not to be because the area was full of piggeries.

Behind one street there were sixteen in a long block “without drainage or anything to carry away the filth; it soaks through and runs the amongst the soil till the place is offensive in the extreme for yards away."

Now I could go on but I won’t.  There were plenty of more pleasant places in the city which in the fullness of time will appear in our walks but for now that is it.

Next time; Deansgate and Davenport’s Court “where “scarcely a night passes but some robbery id committed ........ and almost under the shadow of the Cathedral tower.”

Location; Manchester in 1870

Pictures; New gates, 1908, m8316, Angel Street, 1900, m85543, S.L.Coulthurst, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Ludgate Street in 1851 from Adshead map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Asscociation, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1870

The goat, the tent on the meadows and the mixed darts team

I don’t remember the goat outside the Trevor or for that matter the chap who lived on the meadows in a tent, but I do know that back in the 1970s we could still display an amazing degree of stupidity.

The Trevor, circa 1975

Our neighbour Keith and I were sitting on his front garden wall yesterday talking about what we remember of Chorlton back around 1976 when we both first moved to the area.

It turns out we inhabited the same pubs and equally avoided the same ones.

And as were talking about Stan and Mona who ran the Trevor he came up with the story of the man who brought his goat to the pub and for the price of a couple of pints hired it out  to customers who used it instead of a lawn mower.

Now that one passed me by but I do remember the chap who lived on the meadows in a tent although I had forgotten that he wandered around Chorlton in all weathers without his shirt or that late at night he would sometimes stand outside one pub on the green and begin howling which set the dogs off.

But what I do remember vividly was the level of intolerance and misguided thinking which still stalked the 1970s.

From the mid 1980s

It was there in the latent forms of racism along with what was peddled by the far right and was challenged in all sorts of ways from Rock Against Racism and the big demonstrations to everyday activities at street level.

And then there was that other powerful form of discrimination which took it for granted that women should be paid less for doing the same job as a man and regularly ignored them when opportunities arose for promotion.

I can still remember the derision and outright hostility to the Equal Pay Act of 1970 from some people and had to endure at least two colleagues who bored me stiff with their unease at working for a woman head teacher.

So I was not surprised at Keith’s memories of running dart teams in the Trevor and encountering consternation and opposition from some pubs to the fact that he fielded a mixed team.

In one case one pub grudgingly accepted the team but the landlord did so only on condition that the women did not drink.

From the late 1970s

Suffice to say Keith and the team didn’t accept any of that prejudice.

Now discrimination and hate crimes do not go away and every generation has to struggle a fresh against such intolerance, moreover we are seeing some very nasty outbreaks at present.

But some battles do seem to have receded and today would be met with sheer bewilderment.

And so it is with the idea that a dart’s team should be all male or that you could even think of refusing a drink to someone because they were a woman.

But perhaps not and it would be interesting to have more memories, and stories of mindless prejudice as well as accounts of how all of that was challenged.

Picture; the Trevor Arms in the 1970s courtesy of Lois Elsden and the political badges,1970s-80s,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Of bandstands, demolished churches and a closed pub, Plumstead Common in 1915

Now every good park should have a bandstand.

They were after all the centre of many parks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries which reflected both civic pride and that long history of listening to music in the open air.

I remember the one in Telegraph Hill Park which by the time I knew it had become a sad and forlorn thing.

It had long ago lost its cast iron pillars and roof and was pretty much just an abandoned lump which you past on the way through the park to school.

Now I have discovered an old post card of the bandstand and I think at some stage I will write about it.

But in the meantime I have fastened on another which stood on Plumstead Common.

It must be a full thirty years since I was last there and of course back then I wasn’t looking out for bandstands.

As I remember we called in at the pub on the edge of the Common.

All of which is a lead in to the picture which dates from around 1915, and shows the band stand, and St Margaret’s which was completed in 1859 and lasted just over a century and a bit. It closed in 1968 and was demolished in 1974.

I rather think the bandstand might also have gone and according to one of my sister the pub has also shut up shop.

Well that as they say is how things changes.

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford.

Ms Bedford’s book on Woolwich Through Time is published by Amberley 

Margery Kempe and English Mysticism .... on the wireless today

This is one I enjoyed listening to, and of course learned a lot about the Middle Ages, the status of women in Medieval society,and the ferment of religious ideas in the time before the Reformation. 

A page from Margery Kempe's autobiography

It is one of the repeated episodes from BBC Radio 4's In Our Time series.*  

"Margery Kempe (1373-1438) produced an account of her extraordinary life in a book she dictated, 'The Book of Margery Kempe."'

She went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Rome and Santiago de Compostela, purchasing indulgences on her way, met with the anchoress Julian of Norwich and is honoured by the Church of England each 9th November. 

She sometimes doubted the authenticity of her mystical conversations with God, as did the authorities who saw her devotional sobbing, wailing and convulsions as a sign of insanity and dissoluteness. 

Her Book was lost for centuries, before emerging in a private library in 1934.

This In Our Time episode was first broadcast in June 2016. 

With Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, Katherine Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield and Anthony Bale, Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Location; Radio 4

Pictures; The only known copy of the mystic, Margery Kempe's autobiography, telling of her life and travels in England and on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Santiago de Compostela. The original was dictated by her to a priest of Lynn and this is probably a copy made from the original, perhaps under Margery's supervision. Courtesy British Library

*Margery Kempe and English Mysticism, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4,     https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b07cyfkg  

Tram jam, ........ waiting for the shift to end at Trafford Park

The caption is not over helpful.  Just “Car 929, AEI Trafford Park.”  

But I guess we will be sometime in the late 1930s or ‘40s.

The photograph perfectly captures that moment just after the end of the shift at AEI.

The long line of trams waits for the workforce which is just appearing through the factory gates.

This was the period when Trafford Park was still a major industrial centre.  In 1945 75,000 people worked there and produced everything from bricks to electric cables, and food.

All of which is well documented, so instead I shall concentrate on the detail.  The first of the workforce is out of the factory and hurrying to catch the first tram.  It is a scene captured countless times in photographs and news reels from the period.

What is missing are the hundreds of of people who any minute will appear on their bikes, reminding us that this was still the time when the cycle was a cheap alternative to the tram or bus.  And of course what we won't see in any great numbers are workers driving home in cars.

I had hoped that the products in the shop might give a clue to a date.  But Robin cigarettes were being marketed at the beginning of the last century and were still being produced in the 1950s, long after our line of trams had gone to scrap heap.

But the shop front in its way is also a comment on the period.  Look closely and almost all of the products being advertised are cigarettes or tobacco.

A timely reminder that this was still a time when smoking was common place and when the upstairs of the bus or tram would be blue from the tobacco smoke.

Much of which would be from the roll up which like the tram is almost a thing of the past.



Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown

The Art of the 1970’s ….

It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.

Floral tea tray, circa 1974

For some it is the time of loons, lava lamps, messy wars in the Far East, and “The Winter of Discontent”.

And maybe that explains the lack of an all defining title.

So, there are “The Swinging Sixties”, "The Roaring Twenties" and “The Gay Nineties” [1890s] to which the Great Depression and the build up to war has framed how we see the 1930s.

But the journalists and pundits with all their superficial and instant descriptive labels don’t seem to have bothered with the 1970s.

Now I am a child of the 60s but it was the following decade that marked out my passage from student to a young married man, with a job and mortgage, and a hot potch of a stereo, with a Pioneer deck, Wharfdale speakers and that iconic Sony receiver with its large single dial set in a wooden tower.

And I retain a fondness for that ten years and like others of my generation I have a soft spot for the ephemera, like this tray.

It was sold by Marks & Spencer’s and we bought ours sometime in 1974.  It travelled with me for the next thirty years from East Manchester out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and to Chorlton, before it finally gave up the ghost.

But it’s bright floral design and heavy yellow and brown colours bring it all back.

I can’t remember how much we paid for it was a lot less than the one I came across in pop boutique on Oldham Street.

Tasteless Chicken soup advert, 1979

At which point I could wax lyrical about the loons I bought from On The Eight Day, the larva lamps in the Pit and Nelson or that Sony receiver which was the only item we lost from a burglary in the 1990s.

But instead I chose that tasteful advert for Chicken Soup seen in Chorlton and a promotional song for Leicester called “It’s a Leicester Fiesta" which has it all.

Location; the 1970s

Picture; the tea tray circa 1974, courtesy of Sue Hampson, and Chicken soup advert, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE

Remembering the Well Hall Odeon with a painting

Now, there has been a lot of talk recently about the cinemas of Eltham.

And like pubs on the High Street people have started championing their favourite, whether it be the ABC by Passey Place or the Gaumont on the hill.

Of course you would have to be pretty old  to remember that there was another cinema in Eltham on the corner of Westmount Road.

I must have seen it countless times on my way to school at Crown Woods but even now it does not register with me.  It opened in 1913 and was demolished in 1968

Like so many of the early cinemas it proved “not fit for purpose” when the newer, plusher and more modern looking picture houses came along later in the century.

For me the best, and the most modern looking of all our cinemas was the Well Hall Odeon.

It was just minutes away from where I lived and was somewhere I visited a lot and some where all my sisters went on a Saturday morning.

So I was pleased when Peter offered to paint the place and here is his painting.

We have been working together for a number of years now on joint ventures which have included the 80 meter History Wall installation, as well as  exhibitions and books.

Now Peter is a Preston lad always keen to tell me “that you can take the boy out of Preston, but never Preston out of the boy” which I guess is how many of us also feel about Eltham.

Work, marriage and just life may have scattered many of us across the country and beyond but this corner of south east London bounded by the river and Woolwich to the north and Kent over the county line will remain home.

So now that Peter has got a taste for Eltham we may have more of his paintings.

In the meantime just talking about Saturday morning pictures reminded him of the song he sang all those years ago.

It began with the refrain

We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile

We come along on Saturday morning
knowing it’s well worth while

And for those that want to return to those Saturdays mixing the noise, the talent contests and the old films here is a link to that lost world.  Saturday Morning Song *

Painting; The Well Hall Odeon © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

*We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile

We come along on Saturday morning
knowing it’s well worth while

Members of The Odeon Club we all intend to be
good citizens when we grow up and carriers of the free

We come along on Saturday morning
greeting everybody with a smile, smile, smile,
greeting everybody with a smile.

And as Peter points out even the screen can get it wrong.

NB the words sung by WHO? say
Members of The GB Club we all intend to be
but the words on screen where
Members of The Odeon Club we all intend to be
Found this explanation on Tinterweb as explanation for GB instead of Odeon

This one has the audio for Rank's other cinema chain (Gaumont British) hence the singer singing "GB Club" instead of "OD-EON Club". But it was the same song otherwise.

Remembering the 1970s at Valentines on Barlow Moor Road

Now the 1970s come in for a fair amount of derision which I am not sure is fair.

It was like any other decade of the 20th century good and bad, happy and sad.

I have a bit of a fond spot for it.  I may have grown up in the “swinging 60s” but it was the following decade when I passed into adulthood, graduated, got a job and got married collecting a mortgage along the way.

So in terms of “rights of passage” I reckon the 70s may well be my decade.

Added to which despite all the fun and new horizons the swinging 60s didn’t always extend to my bit of south east London.

And if you wanted to make a claim for the decade that separated us from the past you might well go for sometime in the middle 1950s, when rationing came finally to an end, the consumer society really took off and there were a shed full of new ideas, styles, and music.

But then again my mum may well have made the same claims for the late 1930s and my dad for the decade before that.

So I shall just reflect on the newspaper advert that set me going.

It was sent to me by Graham Gill and perfectly shows off one side of the 1970s.

Here is the "Exotic Revue 1976" at Valentines on Barlow Moor Road.  “A TASTEFUL MIXTURE OF GIRLS, GLAMOUR , COMEDY with “MAN IN MIND”

And the rest I shall leave for people to read and await the comments and of course I shall also thank Graham whose collection I am in awe of.

Picture; Valentines, 1976 from the collection of Graham Gill

Off to the “flicks” in the winter of 1913 and a challenge for today

Now on a dismal Saturday afternoon in Eltham during the winter of 1913 I might well have decided to take myself off to the Picturedrome where I could have seen epics like the Battle of Waterloo, stories drawn from great novels like Zola’s Germinal or melodramas loosely based on the Old Testament along with documentaries about nature, disasters at sea and much more.

The Battle of Waterloo, 1913

The obvious choice would have been the Eltham Cinema on the corner of the High Street and Westmount Road, which was run by Mr Robert Frederick Bean and which had only been open for a few months.

But with the help of the tram I might instead of ventured off into Woolwich, Greenwich and even Plumstead.

And as much as the film might have attracted me so might the name of the cinema.

Some had names which reflected this new and exciting form of entertainment ranging from the Kinemacolor Palace to those incorporating the word “electric” of which my favourite was the Bijou Electric Theatre, while others traded on exotic places like the Trocadero, and the Alhambra Pavilion.

Germinal, 1913

Most also incorporated the title “Pictuedrome” and some went through frequent name changes.

But what they all had in common was that magic of sitting in the dark and seeing moving pictures many times life size telling stories of adventure, romance set in faraway places which for most people were just names on a map.

So with that in mind the choice was pretty wide.  I could have wandered over to Plumstead and visited the Imperial on Plumstead Road or taken a chance on the Windsor Electric Theatre on Maxey Road but equally could have been drawn to either the Globe on the Common or the Cinematograph at numbers 144-6 the High Street.

Greenwich offered up another three and Woolwich had six.

Judith, 1913

A century on I rather think it might be fun to go looking for these ten.  Sadly in the case of the Three Crowns, the New Cinema and the Premier Electric Theatre they are just listed as Woolwich, but the remaining seven have full addresses.

In Woolwich there was the Arsenal Kinema, Beresford Square, the Premier Electric Theatre, at 126 Powis Street, and the New Cinema at 93 New Road.

And that just left the Greenwich three, which were the Trafalgar Cinema, 82 Trafalgar Road, Chapman’s Pictures Bridge Street, the Greenwich Hippodrome, Stockwell Street, and the Theatre Royal, on High Street.

The Terrors of the Jungle, 1913

And there is the challenge.  Not that any will still exist, but armed with a modern map, a corresponding map for 1913 and a street directory for the same year it should be possible to do a bit of detective work.

Location; Eltham, Plumstead, Greenwich and Woolwich.







Pictures; stills from films available to watch in 1913, from  The Kinematograph Year Book*

*The Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory 1914, http://www.bfi.org.uk/sites/bfi.org.uk/files/downloads/kinematograph-year-book-program-diary-and-directory-1914-2014-09-18.pdf

Finding that shop in Bury .... and a bit on youth culture ..... fashion .... and big clothes

This is the story of Chatleys of Bury with as usual a sideways reflection on all things history.

The shop, 2025

So, first Chatleys, Big Menswear Superstore.

And the giveaway is the reference to big which aptly fits me. 

After a bout of series ill health, and a tendency to overeat I have become someone who prowls the internet for clothes to suit a man of very generous proportions but who still wants clothes of style and quality.

I had all but given up and then we found Chatleys.

The staff at Chatleys

The shop is light, large and welcoming, the staff know their stock and assessed my girth, against what I wanted, and the upshot was we came away with two pairs of trousers, two shirts, a tie, a jumper along with socks and underwear.

And most importantly they made me feel at ease, reminding me of that old fashioned approach to retail where the customer has confidence in the staff, and trusts their knowledge and judgement.

The business was established in 1974, and I have a vague memory of visiting their shop in Strangeways, perhaps a decade ago.

All of which set me thinking of when did fashion get limited to clothes of a certain size?

It’s coupled with those other questions to do with why advertising executives, clothe designers and film makers advance youth, and slimness in everything they do.

Dressing like dad, aged 10, 1885

Now, I know that the preoccupation with youth, and the perfect body isn’t new, and are topics which have been discussed for years.

I also know that there has since the 1950s been a lot of money to be made from young people. 

They after all are setting out exploring who they are, and many have an earning capacity as yet freed up from paying a mortgage, buying nappies, finding affordable childcare, and juggling the cost of living, with setting money aside for the future.

Equally the image of an overweight crinkly 70-year-old may not be the perfect match for a romantic film or the face to sell a range of cosmetics, or even a new electric car.

Sadly, we are often relegated in advertising to funeral plans, moving stair chairs and footbaths.

The historian in me is reminded that down the centuries obesity has been limited to a very few, compared with today, and youth culture is but a new preoccupation.

Dressing like mum, aged 13, 1885

Go back to 1900 and while there were adverts aimed at looking young there was less of a market for specifically teenage fashions or clothes that marked you off as different from your mum and dad.  Most of us back then just aspired to wear clothes that looked pretty similar.

And while all through history there have been youth rebellions from Ancient Rome, through to the Middle Ages and onto the Scuttler’s in late 19th century Manchester who wore distinctive clothes and hairstyles, I doubt they were seen as the norm by everyone else.

I could be wrong, and I await Eric of Whalley Range to correct me, but in the meantime I shall close with knowing that my oversized body has somewhere to shop in Bury.

To which I can add that the shop is not far from the tram stop, affording me that other bonus that visits to Chatleys will encompas an adventure by Timmy Tram from Chorlton via Victoria to Bury.

But on the off chance that I choose to stay at home the store has an online alternative. 

Location; Bury

Pictures; A day at Chatleys, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and dressing like mum and dad, 1885, courtesy of the Together Trust

Chatleys, Big Menswear Superstore,1A Market Parade, Bury, BL9 0QE, 0161 764 3331- 0161 762 1113, sales@chatleys.co.uk and https://www.chatleys.co.uk/

Taking the bus ………… a silly Didsbury story

I say silly but that would be unfair on this bus destination roller board, and equally unfair to Southern Cemetery, Withington, and the White Lion which also featured as places on the route.

My old posty friend David Harrop sent it over with the covering note that it dates from 1939 and alas “the original blind has been cut up I'm afraid”.

You might be forgiven for wondering about the historical significance of what looks to be at best a  trivial piece of transport ephemera.

But not so because if I have got this right, this destination board will have been for one of the buses which replaced the old tram services on the route from town to Didsbury.  

Long before the last Manchester Corporation Tram slid into oblivion the Committee had been replacing tram by bus.

And from December 1938 through to February 1939 the 41 service  [Chorlton-Exchange/Piccadilly] and the 42 [Didsbury-Piccadilly/Exchange] were turned from tram to bus.

All of which makes this bit of roller blind quite something.

Well, that is if you mourn the passing of the old Corporation trams and are fascinated by a 1939 bus.

Of course, I might have bits wrong, and will no doubt be corrected.

I was assisted in this story by David Posty Harrop and that excellent book The Manchester Bus, by Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, which I borrowed from Andy Robertson who may want to ask for an overdue fine given the the time it has sat on our shelves.

Location; 1939

Picture; bus destination roller board, 1939, courtesy of David Harrop

*The Manchester Bus By Michael Eyre and Chris Heaps, 1989

Ki-ora, a choc ice and Bambi ...... the lost picture houses of Plumstead no 1

Now a while ago I set down a challenge to find some of our lost cinemas, and quick as a flash Tricia came back with a first and the promise to find more.

So here is what she said and what I know about the Cinematographe in Plumstead High Street.

The Cinematographe

“That sort of challenge is right up my street Andrew. 

I will dig out my many maps of Plumstead & Woolwich & find one for 1913. The first time I ever went to the pictures was at the Cinematographe in Plumstead High Street although it was called the Plaza in the 1950's. 

I saw Bambi, I still remember sitting there sobbing when his mummy died. 

The Plaza was more or less where Iceland is now. It had one screen & seated 528 people. The second time 

And just before i it was demolished in 2012

I went to the pictures was to see Tom Thumb at the Century Cinema which although was classed as being on Plumstead High Street it was set back and  I think the entrance was in Garibaldi Street. 

That was a larger cinema than the Plaza although it still only had one screen and seated 913. 

It closed in 1960 after which the building was many things, in 2012 it was demolished & is now flats. The images are of the Century the second image after it closed but before it was demolished.”

And that I think has set me off on a new series, Lost cinemas of Plumstead, which might well become Lost cinemas of south east London.**

Location; Plumstead

Pictures; from the collection of Tricia Lesley

*Off to the “flicks” in the winter of 1913 and a challenge for today https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/off-to-flicks-in-winter-of-1913-and.html

**Lost cinemas of Plumstead, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lost%20cinemas%20of%20Plumsted 
Lost cinemas of south east London. https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Lost%20cinemas%20of%20south%20east%20London

The day I thought I was in the country …… urban tales from Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now, the purist will immediately point out I was not in Chorlton nor the countryside.

But on a hot summer’s day sometime at the end of the 1970s I rather thought I was.

I had taken myself off across the meadows and discovered the old weir at that bend in the Mersey.

The weir had been built in the 18th century to break the force of a flood surge which might have damaged the aqueduct carrying the Duke’s Canal.

The river regularly flooded in earlier centuries and once in the 1840s the force of that surge was so strong it damaged the weir itself.

Even now the base of the weir can still be marshy and after a wet winter the water will stretch out into the surrounding land.

On the day I discovered the spot there was just a hint of water but enough for the cows who grazed on the grass.

And it was the cows, the pasture and the steeple that offered up the illusion of somewhere rural.

Although I did have to frame the picture to miss the tower block and get the chapel of Stretford Cemetery in the centre.*

And before any one sneers, .... yes the quality of the pictures was poor.  In my defence I was just beginning to develop and print images using smelly photography and the negatives have sat in our cellar for over 40 years.

Location; the meadows west of the Mersey, circa 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Stretford Cemetery, https://www.trafford.gov.uk/residents/births-deaths-and-marriages/burials-and-cremations/cemeteries-and-crematoria-in-Trafford/stretford-cemetery.aspx

In St Peter's Square on an August Sunday in 1937, reflecting on what was and what was to come

We are in St Peter’s Square on a Sunday.  

Now I can be certain of that because the picture is dated August 8th 1937 which was a Sunday.

And like many of the pictures in the collection there is much that you can peel back from what on the surface is just a photograph of a tram.

So starting with the obvious this is car 575 on its way to Burton Road and in the absence of a crew and passengers appears parked up.

Behind it is one of those buildings which were everywhere in the city centre, a mix of offices and shops, fronted in stone which had over half a century become grey and grimy, but with some nice arched windows on the upper storeys.

It was a solid sound building, most of which is out of view or hidden by the trams. But we can just glimpse the premises of Isaac’s Wallpapers who were at number 8.

They were an enterprising business and were quick to take advantage of the the coronation of King George V1 which had taken place in the May of that year, and so just four months after the event they were advertising as a “Coronation Offer Pure Oil Paint at 1/11d.”

David Isaacs had been trading from the shop since 1911 and I rather think there is a story here, as there will be in following up the entry from the directories for the Association Football Players Union which was at number 14 and whose secretary was Alfred S Owen.

The building has gone now, although I do remember standing on the steps of Central Ref gazing over at it on Saturday mornings as I took a break from some dusty article on the Anti Corn Law League.

By then it was a drab tired looking sort of place ready for its end waiting only to be replaced by something new and exciting.

This was to be Elisabeth House all glass and concrete walls which seem to have had few friends.  A building so misunderstood and disliked that no one can quite agree on when it went up.

Various sources suggest a date in the 1960s which does not quite fit with my memories of gazing across at it in 1970.

But recollections of events, places and buildings can so easily be wrong and I was prepared to accept that this was just one of those times when I was mistaken.

But not so. According to A Manchester View run by David Boardman,* Elisabeth House was built in 1971, which I am pleased to say means that my long term memory is fine, even if I can forget to put the wash on, turn off the lights.

I do have to say I am becoming a fan of his site offering as it does some interesting walks around buildings that have now vanished, and he has done an excellent job on chronicling the rise and demise of Elisabeth House which it is true had by the turn of this century become as tired looking as its predecessor and  it has to be said in perhaps half the time.

Now I do not have the same hard opinion of Elisabeth House as some but I will let you decide, for here is a 1924 picture of the old building taken from the Midland.

By the end it had become a sad sight, abandoned by both the Pancake and Italian restaurants and by the camera shop I occasionally visited.

One of its last episodes was to be used by a television crime series, and I rather envied the cast their view across the square to the Town Hall Extension.

All of which was a long way into the future on that August day in 1937.

But had I been there in the Square I would have felt at home on the steps of the Ref which was opened in 1934 and no doubt would have admired the Town Hall Extension which was almost finished and would be ready for its municipal staff and the public the following year.

Now us historians are always looking for continuity in the events of the past and so it is nice to reflect that just over forty years after the old majestic trams of Manchester Corporation vanished from our streets, they are back.

And that large white insurance building has also vanished although it survived until quite recently.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; St Peter’s Square in 1937 from the collection of Alan Brown, Elisabeth House, 1988,m04395,the premises of David Isaacs from the Midland Hotel, July 1924, City Engineers Department m04465 and the Town Hall Extension February 1937, m74925, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council
*http://manchesterhistory.net/manchester/tours/tour6/area6page61.html

The Milk Maid …. a train station ….. and the place that changed its name and changed it back again ….. Manchester stories ….

There are plenty of ways of telling the story of Greater Manchester’s history but no one has done it by using the tram network, and yet with eight tram routes and 99 stops it is the perfect way to do so.

The Milk Maid, from 1906

Each route and each stop have a heap of stories so find those stories, add a few more from the surrounding areas and very quickly they will by instalment build into a rich account of how we lived set against the big and small events.

Small events like visiting the Milk Maid bar in Piccadilly Plaza in the 1970s and gazing out at the historic Gardens which was once the site of a hospital and before that a place of punishment.  Or taking the tram to New Islington via a railway station and discovering its textile and canal past while pondering on how it changed its name and changed it back again.

All of which and more are contained in our new book, Piccadilly Gardens to New Islington.

It is the fourth in the series, The History of Greater Manchester By Tram and includes memorials, the old BBC building, with a look at the new Mayfield Gardens and that nightmare for motorists which is Stoney Brew.*

There is the big stuff like the Manchester Blitz, but also stories about the Doll’s Hospital and Sundays on a deckchair in Piccadilly Gardens.

And having read book four you can collect the first three, which take you on a journey out of south Manchester, into the city centre and on to Victoria Railway Station.  

In between there will be stops in rural Chorlton, industrial Cornbrook, the elegant St Peter's Square and those bold new civic enterprises from Manchester Town Hall to Exchange Square.

The books are available at £4.99 from Chorlton Bookshop, the shop at Central Ref, St Peter's Square, or from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk

Location; Piccadilly Gardens, the Railway Station and New Islington

Pictures;  Out of Manchester Piccadilly, bound for Vrewe, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, The Milk Maid, from a 1906 picture postcard from Tuck and Son, courtesy of Tuckdb, http://tuckdb.org/about

Out of Manchester Piccadilly bound for Crewe, 1979

*A new book on the History Of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram