A synagogue ......Mr. & Mrs. Solomon ....... and Manchester's Corporation Street

So long before the construction of motorways and airports wiped out some of our favourite buildings  there was Corporation Street. 

The synagogue on Halliwell Street, 1849

It runs from Cross Street and was cut in the late 1840s, and like all such major developments resulted in the demolition of buildings and the loss of smaller streets.

One of those buildings was the synagogue on Halliwell Street which had opened in 1825.

The inaugural stone had been laid the year before at a ceremony which had started with prayers at the “temporary place of worship on Long Millgate  …. [after which] the reader and congregation walked in procession to Halliwell Street to perform the laying of the first stone of the intended new synagogue when very appropriate and impressive prayers, composed for the occasion were said by the reader, after which thirty persons sat down, at the Wilton Arms to an excellent dinner”.*

Just over a year later in the September the Manchester Guardian reported on the consecration of the new synagogue which it wrote “is in every respect suitable for the performance of divine worship”. *****

It was according to one observer an unpretenious red brick building which replaced a temporary place of worship which had been in Ainsworth Court off Long Millgate.

Access to the Court was through a narrow passage.

Sadly the Manchester Guardian didn’t comment on its closure or demolition but did give a detailed account of the new synagogue on Park Street Cheetham Hill Road on March 25th 1858.**

Halliwell Street on which the early synagogue was built was swept away with the coming of Corporation Street, but the 1851 census provides us with a very clear picture of its inhabitants, including Soloman Philips who was the appointed overseer for the synagogue, along with a Miss Levy who described herself as a Professor of Hebrew.

In all there were seventy four residents living on the street, twenty-one of whom were children under the age of 14. The seventy four had  birth places which ranged from Manchester and Salford to Liverpool, Warsaw and Hamburg. 

Their occupations were varied but erred on the side of skilled artisan, including watchmaker and milliner to a professor of Music and a veterinary surgeon alongside the more humble jobs of launderess, matchmaker and traveller along with the delightful “Ender and Mender”.

Mr. Philips had come from Warsaw, and his wife Sarah from Koosemer in Poland  No pictures have survived of their home on Halliwell Street but it commanded an annual rent of £18  which translated into a weekly rent of six shillings which was above that of properties in the surrounding streets.

And it does appear that their house survived the destruction of the synagogue and part of the road it stood on because in 1861 Philip and Sarah are still here at number 9, which sometime during the decade before had been renumbered as no. 4.

Now that remanent is part of Balloon Street which has also been much truncated, but as Balloon Street it is a reminder of that 18th century pioneer of all things ballons.  

This was James Sadler who according to my Annals of Manchester "ascended in his balloon on May 12th 1785 from a garden behind the Manchester Arms Inn Long Millgate, which was then a private house”***. 

And not content with that seven days later “made his second balloon ascent, but on alighting was obliged to let it drive in the wind”.

Indigo Hotel, Todd Street, 2025

Leaving me just to say that there is a plaque commemorating the synagogue on the wall of the Indigo Hotel on Todd Street, close to where the synagogue stood. The text says, "Manchester's First Synagogue, 1825-1858 stood near this site until its demolition in the construction of Corporation Street".

Location; Shudehill

 Picture; the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Indigo Hotel, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Manchester Guardian, August 14th, 1824

** The Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1825

***The Manchester Guardian, March 26th, 1858

****Axon, William, The Annals of Manchester, 1885

***** Davies, Ethan, Manchester's first synagogue recognised with plaque in special ceremony, Manchester Evening News, July 13th, 2022, https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/manchesters-first-synagogue-recognised-plaque-24477558

Never be surprised at what you find on Wilbraham Road ............. nurses and Red a Cross Hospital

Now this is just the start of that story of a Red Cross hospital on Wilbraham Road and at this stage I have no idea where it will lead.

Until recently I knew that during the Great War the Red Cross ran two hospitals in Chorlton, one in the Sunday school of the Baptist Church on Edge Lane and the other in the Sunday School on Manchester Road.

The first opened in 1914 and the second must date from sometime in 1916 or 1917.

But given the demand for hospital beds I have always wondered if there were not more.

Just down the road in Whalley Range and south into Didsbury a number of private homes were given over to the Red Cross so it seemed logical that Chorlton must have had its own share of smaller Red Cross establishments.

That said none have turned up in the records of which the best is a book by the Red Cross on their work in east Lancashire which offers up a wealth of detail about the hospitals they ran.

But the book was published in 1916 and concentrates on those hospitals which had been set up between 1914-15 and so while the hospital on Edge Lane is included the one on Manchester Road is absent.

So I was intrigued when Pawel Lech Michalczyk told me that “the house next to the Chorlton Conservative Club is listed as a hospital in 1917.  It was Wycombe, and described as an auxiliary military hospital in the 1917 Slater's street directory.”

Now that set me off looking and back in 1911 Wycombe was home to Mr and Mrs Barnes, their four children and Miss Mary Jane Williams who was 27 and employed as a domestic servant.

Mr Williams described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.”

Now Wycombe is a big house which was described as having 12 rooms making it large enough to have been run as a small auxiliary hospital.

And that is where the story stops, but I rather think it will only be a pause.

Picture;  picture postcard possibly Willow Bank Red Cross Hospital, circa 1914 courtesy of David Harrop,

The class of ‘68 part 1 an ending

We were the class of ’68.

Twelve young people from south east London about to leave school for the last time.

It would have been in late June or early July 1968 outside Crown Woods School in Eltham, our exams were finished and we were all preparing for that long hot summer which would end with exam results and the beginning of a new phase in our lives.

Of the twelve sitting on the car I can easily name seven of the young people staring back at me. I’m there fifth from the left, beside me was my girl friend Ann, and on my right was Anne Davey, David Hatch, and Mike Robinson while perched on the car at the edge of the picture was Crispin Rooney and behind us Karen and Richard Woods. I rather think the chap on the end was Keith Bradbury while my dear friend Anne Davey  has informed me that behind us was Jenny Turner and Ian Curle.

We have become that favoured generation, “the baby boomers”. Not for us world wars or bitter trade depressions.

 We were born in to a world our parents were determined would be better and different.

And we grew up against a backdrop of rising prosperity, looked after by a welfare system which confidently planned to care for us from “cradle to grave” and entered adult hood with the promise of full time employment and the opportunity of a university course which for some of us would be totally free.

Now there was a dark side to all this. The Korean War had begun just as most of us were coming up to our first birthday, and the ever present threat of nuclear war hovered in the distance, and as if to round off our child hood by the summer of 1968 there was the awful tragedy of the Vietnam War.

But that summer was a good one, and I have to say truly it seemed the sun shone all the way through.

 Now I was the late comer to the group along with my friend Bernard, we had washed up at Crown Woods Comprehensive in the September of 1966. Me, from a Secondary Modern School and Bernard from a grammar school.

And Crown Woods was  mixed, which pitched both of us into a series of wonderful new experiences and opened up new friendships that have survived the space of over 54 years.

Of course the intervening years have offered up both triumphs and dismal dog days and along the way some of those twelve have disappeared while we have all had to cope with a mix of disappointments as well successes.

Most stayed in the south with only me washing up in the north and never going back. We did the full range of post school careers, with some of us heading off to pursue a degree and others getting down to it directly in offices and factories.

And now most of us are on the cusp of retiring or have done so with all that that will bring. And as I stare back at the class of 68 I ponder on the stories that we made and the people we touched.

Pictures; from the collection of Anne Davey

Tomorrow, part 2, one of the class of '68 and a secondary modern school

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 4 ....the school ..... Derby Street

Of the collection of pictures I rediscovered of the streets off Cheetham Hill Road, this proved the most elusive to identify.

I remember our guide saying it had been a school and over the years I took it to be one of the Municipal Board Schools.

I had no name and wasn’t even sure whether it was on Derby Street, Bent Street or Empire Street.

To be fair the trip had been over thirty years ago, and I lost the notes and the original prints a long time ago.

But then in response to the Talmud Torah story, Michael identified it as a school on Derby Street because his mum had gone there.

From that, it was a skip and a jump to the directories where the school was listed in 1911, as the Jews School. The previous year it had space for 2,029 students and the average attendance was 668 boys, 625 girls and 581 infants.

According to the Local History Library the school was established on Derby Street “in 1869 and known as the Manchester Jews’ School [having] started off as Manchester Hebrew Association founded for religious classes in 1838 and by 1842 was established as a  school at Halliwell St., Cheetham, moving to Cheetham Hill Road in Spring 1851. 

From 1941to 1959 it shared a building with the Infants and Junior Departments of Waterloo Road, Cheetham. The school moved to Crumpsall and opened as King David High School, Crumpsall in 1959”.

The library holds a large number of records from the school including  admission registers, log books, stock books and teacher record books along with information on refugees, 1940-44, staff registers and visitors books, some of which are also available from Findmypast.

And for those who want more, Anthea Darling has posted, "Building designed by Edward Salomons, architect of what is now the Jewish Museum. Opened 1869 for 700 children, replacing earlier building in Halliwell Street. For more info go to Manchester Jews School Derby Street Cheetham.** Forgot to say it was demolished in 2012".

Location; Derby  Street, Manchester

Picture; The Jews School, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library,www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

**Manchester Jews School Derby Street, Cheetham, https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/manchester-jews-school-derby-street-cheetham?fbclid=IwAR2h6y5XyS-Ysi1olWUbf7qj8pXO2dH9A3YwRH16cP1jhNfgVgvkN10cCss

Eltham High Street in the summer of 1915 and again sometime in the 1960s

At first glance it looks familiar enough.  

We are looking at the parish church  on a warm summer’s morning sometime in 1915.

It is a picture I have grown to like and given that I have just bought the postcard I am quite pleased with myself.

Now I say bought, but in fact I have ordered it up and if it hasn’t been sold I shall soon be the proud owner of a little bit of old Eltham.*

So back to the picture which has enough detail to mark it off as an image from almost a century ago.

The tram is about to leave travelling along Well Hall Road which was cut just over a decade before and on the eastern side of the road there are none of the familiar shops while just out of the picture on the extreme right was Eltham’s third Congregational Church.

It was built in 1868 “in a strong Gothic Style with a tall spire and was demolished in 1936.”**

And while I don’t usually do then and now pictures I couldn’t resist adding the second photograph which I guess is from the 1960s.

This is the Eltham I remember.

They say you should never go back and I have to admit the first time I returned after Burton’s had gone, along with the newsagent/bookshop it was rather like a little of my childhood had been consigned to the rubbish bin..

But all of that smacks of nostalgic tosh, and no doubt any youngster who had stood beside the photographer in the summer of 1915 may well have muttered something similar when Burtons opened its grand new shop on the corner of Well Hall Road and the High Street in 1937.

Now I have to confess the shop with its great Ionic columns and pilasters at first floor level still dominates the corner even if the sleek 1960s Italian suits, jackets and ties have been replaced by fast food and soft drinks.

And while I bought my first suit from the shop it will always be the memory of the crowds turning out from the dance hall above the shop on a Saturday night that I remember along with the newsagents which occupied part of the Well Hall side of the building.

It was there that I would buy my Penguin Classics many of which still sit on the bookshelves here in Chorlton.

But again I am in danger of sliding into nostalgia so it’s best to leave these two pictures in the past, until my post card arrives from Mr Flynn which no doubt will set me off again.

And in the meantime I would welcome any images of Eltham which will provide the material for more stories.

Pictures;  Eltham in 1915, courtesy currently of Mr Flynn and Eltham in the 1960s

*MARK FLYNN POSTCARDS http://www.markfynn.com/index.html

**Spurgeon Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2000

A conversation …. the Saturday boy … and heaps of vegetables …. at Muriel and Richard’s on Beech Road

Now Muriel and Richard’s will always have be a special place for me.

Their fruit and veg was always the best, and at Christmas Muriel always did that Nativity scene where local kids were encouraged to make figures for the display.

But above that they were always very kind to me, and during a time when I was juggling work, bringing up three kids and only shopping on Beech Road they could be relied to help out.

In particular Muriel acted as my bank, advancing me cash and letting me run up a tab.

To the consternation of some I would choose the fruit and veg, Muriel would ask if I needed any money and I would leave with assorted apples, pears, potatoes and more, with cash in hand.  To which some muttered that this was not how it was done.

Shops were not supposed to hand out produce and money and wave goodbye to the customer.  But this was Muriel’s and every Saturday the tab was settled.

I shopped there regularly through the 1970s into the 1990s and beyond.

I will have to ask Muriel just when they took over the shop, because I know in 1969 it was a confectioner’s run by a F. Lyth and now it is a letting agency.

Back then at the end of the 60s their shop was flanked by Joan Newman’s hairdressers and Mr. Morgan’s off license.

And a couple of decades later, the cutting of hair would be replaced briefly by a shop selling pianos before it settled on its long and continuing relationship with serving food and alcohol, while after a time as a vacant premises Mr. Morgan’s place became the Italian deli.

And that is about it.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Muriel and Richard’s, 1979, & 2002, and Muriel, 2004, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When plastic bowls and a picture of San Francisco were a must ........ back at “Kingy”

Now I make no apology at returning to Kingspot.

If you are of a certain age and that pretty much covers everyone in Chorlton, you will remember Kingspot.

And for those who moved in after the shop closed here are two more pictures of what was an institution.

I wrote about it yesterday reflecting that “it was just one of those places we took for granted and long before Pound Shops it was somewhere you could get a bargain.

Here could be found everything from washing pegs, to happy colourful toys and that fabulous print of the San Francisco Bridge at sunset.

Much of what was on offer was plastic and sometimes I wondered whether they had their own plastic factory somewhere east of Hong Kong.

So it was no surprise that Kingspot was always full and getting round the shop could be a challenge which often involved avoiding the buggies, and shopping trollies as you worked you way down the two isles looking for a washing up bowl and ending up instead with two plastic imitation Flying Ducks to hang above the plastic water fountain.

Our kids always seemed to be in their usually when the latest craze for BB guns hit Chorlton which I suspect followed a few days after a new consignment of cheap toys had arrived from China."

And no sooner had I posted the story than  Bernard sent over two of his own pictures adding that "here are a couple of photos of Kingspot I took, I think it was Marhch1998,from data on photo. Maybe you could add them to your Kingspot blog."

Which of course I could and did.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Kingspot, 1998, from the collection of Bernard Leach

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 3 .... The Manchester Ice Palace ..... Derby Street

Now when I stumbled across the negatives of a set of photographs I took in the mid 1980s I was quite pleased with myself.

The former Manchester Ice Palace, 1986

None of the prints of that day have survived, and nor have the research notes, so these half dozen negatives were a find.

I am the first to admit that the quality is iffy and they wouldn’t win the Robert Capa Award for best pictures of 1986 but they were taken as part of a research project in to Jewish Manchester.

That said they are a moment in time, and some of the buildings have now vanished and others look very different.

The former Manchester Ice Palace, 2015

But not so the Manchester Ice Palace on Derby Street which is still there and comparing my picture from 1986 with Andy Robertson’s of 2015 the building is looking better.

Those in the know will recognise this as one of those then and now sets of pictures, which is something I don't normally do and when I do I add a story.

But the Palace has been well written about so I won't this time.
That said I bet there are plenty of people with fond memories of the place.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Manchester Ice Palace, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson.

The Dark End of the Street 1967 .............. songs you never forget

I can’t remember listening to The Dark End of the Street when it was released in 1967 and it was only years later that I came across it.*

All of which is a shame because it is the sort of song that my 17 year old self would have instantly fallen for.

And it has the lot from unrequited love mixed with a big dose of a relationship based on a lie and of course some fine music.

It begins

“At the dark end of the street
That is where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don't belong
Living in darkness, to hide alone
You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me”

And after that you are pretty much hooked.

It was written by Dan Penn and Chips Morgan and according to one source was inspired by a card game where the two were cheating and led them on to write a song on the theme of cheating.**

It took them just 30 minutes and was first recorded by James Carr and later by Percy Sledge.***

 Percy Sledge has always been one of my favourite singers but on this occasion I have to say that James Carr wins it for me.

But I am well aware that the jury will be out on that, so I shall just return to the story of  a love that they stole and the pain of having to let go.

Now you can’t get better than that either back them in 1967 or now a full 54 years later.

Picture; a young Andrew Simpson in the spring of 1966

*The Dark End of the Street, James Carr, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC3AXQ8dPJM&feature=share


**The Dark End of the Street, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_End_of_the_Street

*** The Dark End of the Street, Percy Sledge, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj3UdRmhgvM

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 2 .... The Talmud Torah School ....Bent Street

Now keeping the negatives never really seems worth it, but when the original prints get lost or damaged those negatives can prove very important.

All of which just points up how pleased I was that I found the set which I took of the streets around Cheetham Hill Road in the mid 1980s.

Not only have the prints gone but so have the notes I made of the research into the area.

This is the old Talmud Torah School opened in 1880, for “the teaching of elementary education in
Hebrew, the Scriptures and the Talmud and in the principles of the Jewish faith and practise. Talmud Torah schools were traditionally for boys only. Girls were admitted in modern times. 

The School was founded in 1880 and established in purpose built premises at No. 11 Bent Street, Cheetham, Manchester. In 1958 the Bent Street school was sold and in 1959 the new headquarters of the Manchester Central Board for Hebrew Education and Talmud Torah was opened in Upper Park Road, Salford. It closed in 2005”.*

I had half expected that the building would no longer exist but it does, still in commercial use as it when I came across it, but looking a lot better.  All but two of the big signboards have gone and these are neat and discreet.

Added to which a fair amount of the school’s records have survived, including account books payments and registers of contributions and a description of the damage done to the building during the Blitz.

And now its an exciting events place.

Location; Bent Street, Manchester

Picture; The Talmud Torah School, 1984, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

Passing Burton’s on the High Street ...... on a spring day in 1966 ............ with a thank you to Tricia

Now, there will be many people who saw this postcard of Eltham High Street and remembered the scene with fondness.

It belongs to my old friend Tricia who posted it on our “Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history” site yesterday.*

And I am one of them. 

What makes it even more special is that it is dated 1966, the year I started at Crown Woods Sixth Form.

The original postcard was undated, but that didn’t stop a few people suggesting dates for the picture.

These tended to use the vehicles as clues, and I suppose with a bit of ferocious detective work it might be possible to track the date of the advert on the side of the bus passing the church on its way down Well Hall Road.

But as it turns out there is a simpler way, because the picture postcard was produced by Judges Ltd, and it just so happens I have a full list of when each of their  cards were issued.

The list is the work of the Judges’ Postcard Study Group and was published in their September 2005 newsletter, and then reproduced in an article by SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO.**

In the case of Tricia’s postcard, the company had included the serial number which according to the list was produced in 1966.

Now, I am not quite sure if the date 1966 was the year the postcard was published or the year the photograph was added to the collection for later use.

I know in the case of the company Valentine, the date refers to when it was added to their catalogue, but I have yet to check on the list for Judges’.

And that will take me back to V & G Harris who have an extensive collection and were most helpful when I was tracking other picture postcards by the company.

But for now, I am just pleased that I can match Tricia’s card with my own trips up to the High Street, with visits to Burtons, Wilcox’s, the Library and lots more places.

Although, I am fascinated by the identity of the three young men standing at the entrance to the church.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham High Street, 1966, from the collection of Tricia Leslie

*Well Hall in Eltham, its stories and its history, facebook

** SUSSEXPOSTCARDS.INFO, www.sussexpostcards.info

The bold and the new …… down on Manchester Road in 1973

Now I am not a fan of just posting an old image and leaving it at that.

Often when I come across these on social media, it is posted with no date, no indication of where it has come from and it stands alone with no additional commentary.

All of which makes it difficult to appreciate its true significance, because without a date and a source, there is no context, other than to reflect that “here is a picture which is different from now, when they did things differently back then”.

Of course, that may sound sniffy, but if you are interested in the past you should always be after finding out as much as you can.

So, having said all of that, here is a picture with little in the way of additional information.

We are on Manchester Road where it joins Upper Chorlton Road, and the year is 1973 and it comes from the City’s Local Image Collection.*

It was one  of a series taken by H Milligan in the 1970s and what I like about the picture is the way that it records, just what a collection of “modern shopfronts” looked like back then.

Today, they look dated and even a bit amateurish but in 1973 they appeared sharp, modern and at the cutting edge of what was thought stylish.

I particularly liked the use of timber cladding seen on the bookie’s and that name which seems to topple down from the top of the sign.

Today I prefer the original shop fronts which are still visible on two of the fronts.

And that is all.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Manchester Road, 1973, H Milligan, m17964, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Remembering the Spanish Civil War .... today at Central Ref .... Manchester

 

Never throw away the negatives ....... part 1 .... the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Jewish Soup Kitchen

Now long after the prints have been damaged or worse still lost, there are always the negatives.

Manchester Jewish Working Men's Club, Empire Street, 1986

Of course most of the time, these are consigned to the back of a cupboard.

And so it was with a collection I took in the mid 1980s on the streets off Cheetham Hill Road.

They were part of a research project on the Jewish Community and sadly the pictures and the notes have long gone, but the negatives have survived.

Not so the Club which was on the corner of Empire Street and Wooley Street.

I don’t know when the building was demolished but it has been replaced by a warehouse and factory.

The club was formed in 1886 and it was here in “November 1895 a meeting was convened at the Manchester Jewish Workingmen's Club to consider ways and means to alleviate suffering in the Jewish community. The creation of the Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen in 1896 was the
result of this meeting. 

The Manchester Jewish Soup Kitchen, Southall Street, 1986

In December 1906 a building in Southall Street was completed, with a purpose built dining hall. 

The meals consisted of soup containing meat and vegetables, together with bread. 

Mrs Dolly Phillips (1903-) and her husband, Harry, were at the forefront of the organisation. Mrs Dolly Phillips first became involved in the Soup Kitchen in 1920 at the age of 17. As Honarary Secretary she introduced the meals on wheels service in 1942. 

The building on Southall Street was sold and the kitchen of the Manchester Jews Benevolent Society was used. In 1978 the service moved to Holy Law Synagogue in Rita Glickman House, Prestwich. In 1997 they had about 200 clients”.*

Location; Manchester

Pictures; the the Jewish Working Men’s Club and Soup Kitchen, 1986, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Records of the Manchester Jewish Community, 2015, Manchester Central Library, www.manchester.gov.uk/download/.../id/.../jewish_community_archives_guide.pdf

A golden childhood growing up in Well Hall in the 1960's

Lost in the woods, 1977

Now Eltham was a pretty good place to grow up in the 1960s especially when you had come from Peckham.

It was partly the opportunity to wander over large areas of open and wooded land where you could play, walk and just let your imagination out for the day.

That said I was 14 when we arrived in Well Hall which made some of the “play thing” a little old hat.

But that freedom to set off up into the woods on a warm summer’s morning with no real idea of where you would end up was magic.

Of course the first few times you took off up there it really was discovering new places, and then later it was equally special as you shared it with a girlfriend.

What started out at Well Hall could by degree take you off to Welling via the castle and offer up some stunning views.

And when you tired of trees, solitude and aimless meanderings there was always the Palace and the pleasure of walking along King John’s Walk towards Mottingham.

King John's Walk, towards Mottingham, 1977

Looking back all that didn’t last long, partly I guess because the summers were all too short and soon there were widening horizons and counter attractions.

Never underestimate just how a sixteen your old starting out a fresh at Crown Woods with a whole new set of friends can be drawn away from the simple pleasures of a walk in the woods.

But they never quite went away, after all when you live on Well Hall Road the woods dominated the view from the back window and on those storming summer nights when the sky was lit up with the jagged flashes of lightening it was hard not to be drawn up there.

Not that anyone with any sense would venture there in such a storm.

A much better attraction was the Welcome from where you could sit out the storm with a pint although all too often I was less lucky.  Those storms seemed to pick me out as I was walking back from a Friday night in Woolwich, and later still falling out of the King’s Arms in the High Street.

And now the woods and Well Hall are a long way from where I live and separated by a gulf of time but they still exert a pull and bring back a pretty perfect childhood.

Pictures; the woods and King Jon's Walk, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

A Chorlton revolution ……….. the self service shop

Now we are so familiar with the supermarket and the convenience store, that it takes a moment to  appreciate just how much self service shopping was a revolution in how we bought our groceries.

I am of that generation, who was part of that revolution, and I can remember just how liberating it felt at the time to wander the isles, and touch and choose which apples, tins of vegetables and packets of biscuits to buy.

Today we can be cynical about it all, not least the way it allowed shops to cut costs, and set the customer doing some of the work, but it was I maintain quite liberating.

Here in Chorlton, there is still a book to write about the arrival of those first self service shops, including which were the first and just what people thought about them.

The Co-op  was the first to embrace the new way of shopping, turning a department of its store in Romford over to self service in 1943 and five years later fully converting its premise in Portsea to selfservice.*

And in 1949, The Manchester & Salford Equitable Co-op  began altering its existing stores the following year, with our own Hardy Lane opening in 1959.

Until this week, I didn’t know that the shop on the corner of Manchester and Ransfield roads, was offering its customers, “Self Service” in 1961 and a quick trawl of the directories should pinpoint when the Mark Down began its new venture.
Leaving that aside, it is the shop window which is equally fascinating, offering up a range of products which are still familiar, but at prices which at first glance appear astonishing.

But those prices must be set against most people’s incomes which were of course much lower than today.
The more pertinent question would be to explore and then compare the average food bill in 1961 with today and its percentage of all house hold bills.

All of which is getting too serious and so instead I shall just leave you pondering on the prices, which are expressed in shillings and pennies, which I suspect will be a mystery to any one born just before we went decimal in 1971.

Our own kids look back at me with sheer bewilderment when I explain that 12 pennies made a shilling, that 20 shillings made a pound and that 240 pennies made a pound.  Added to which there was a coins called a threepenny bit, a sixpence, and a half crown, all of which competed with the farthing and the ha’penny.

Added to which the price of posh objects often came as guineas and not pounds.

And that neatly brings me back to self service shopping which predated our decimal coinage by just a few decades.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Manchester Road, 1961, A H Downs, m18078 and current prices, Mark Down No. 93 Manchester Road, 1961, , A H Downs, m18080, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Spotlight on Self Service, from Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

*Co-Op First Self Service UK, http://hardylane.blogspot.com/

Discovering that Shakespearean Garden in Platt Fields ….. courtesy of the new exhibition Shakespeare and Manchester

 It is a sad confession that despite living in Manchester for 57 years and visiting Platt Fields heaps of time I had never come across the city’s own Shakespearean Garden.

In the Shakespeare Gardens, 2026

The Friends of Platt Fields tell me that “A Shakespearean Garden is a themed garden which contains some or all of the 175 plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s works. 

Most of these gardens are a late 19th / early 20th century interpretation of the formal Elizabethan gardens. 

The aim being to design an historically accurate garden such as Shakespeare would have recognised.

‘Shakey’, as our garden is affectionately known, is a sunken walled garden which is entered via a central ‘staircase’. The formal garden is divided into 4 quadrants, or ‘rooms’, and surrounded by large banked areas and majestic trees.

The garden is often described as the park’s hidden gem nestled in a discreet corner, just a few moments from Wilmslow Road”*

Model of the gardens in the exhibition, 2026

My failure to know it existed is an outstanding piece of ignorance which was only corrected yesterday when Ian Nickson gave me a personal tour of the new exhibition Shakespeare and Manchester which runs until May 30th on the first floor of the Central Reference Library.

The gardens are only part of an extensive exhibition which explores Manchester’s links to the playwright from theatre producers, actors, and scholars to a description of the Theatre Royal. 

Nor is that all because contained in the glass cabinets are the stories of how it was here in Manchester that new safety designs for theatres were conceived and put into practice along with a pioneering method of photography both of which went global.

I could say lots more, but its all there on the first floor of Central Ref and is an introduction to Ian’s book on the same subject which is due out in September.

Mr. Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal, 2024

Which just leaves me to add that in Ian’s own words “one aim of this exhibition is to raise awareness of the benefits to mental and physical health conferred by the Shakespearean Garden and to obtain funding for a full-time gardener who can secure the future of the garden for the benefit of the citizens of Manchester”.

Shakespeare and Manchester: A Victorian Powerhouse Exhibition Manchester Central Library First Floor Display Cases February 12th, 2026 - May 30th 2026.

For more details please contact:

r. Ian Nickson. Honorary Research Fellow, University of Manchester, ian.nickson-2@manchester.ac.uk

Kattie Kincaid, Project Lead for the Shakespearean Garden,  kattiekincaid@hotmail.com

The Shakespeare window, 2026 

Location; Manchester Central Library, St Peter's Square, Manchester, M2 5PD

The Rosa Grindon Mural, 2026

Pictures; in the Shakespearean Garden, and the model of the gardens, 2026 courtesy of Kattie Kincaid, and Mr. Shakespeare at the Theatre Royal, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, he Shakeare Window, 2025, courtesy of Ian Nickson, and The Mural Of Rosa Grindon Facing Platt Fields Due To Her Part In The Creation Of The Shakesperian Garden, 2026, from the collection of C.Roman

Next; the story of Rosa Grindon, and her time in Manchester, her role in The Shakespeare Garden and  her contribution to Shakespeare research, with material from the exhibition

*The Shakespearean Gardens, Friends of Platt Fields,  https://friendsofplattfields.org.uk/shakespeare-garden/

The Columbian Exchange ..... on the wireless today

I am a great fan of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.  

Torta di patate, 2025

It's stated intent is to "span history, religion, culture, science and philosophy" and bring interesting and thought provoking radio to the listener

And that is what I think they will do with today's offering entitled The Columbian Exchange*, in which "Misha Glenny and guests discuss the exchange of cultures and biology across the Atlantic and Pacific after 1492. 

That was when Columbus reached the Bahamas, a time when Europe had no potatoes, tomatoes, sunflowers or, arguably, syphilis in its most virulent form; the Americas had no cattle, bananas, sugar cane or smallpox. 

The lists of what was then exchanged are long and as these flora, fauna and diseases moved between continents, their impact ranged from transformation to devastation. 

In parts of the Americas, European viruses helped kill over 90 percent of the population. In parts of Europe, Africa and Asia populations boomed on the new American foods. Sheep from Europe grazed fertile land into deserts in some parts, while the lowered populations in others led to local reforestation which, arguably, is linked to a particularly cold period in the Little Ice Age.

With Rebecca Earle, Professor of History at the University of Warwick, John Lindo, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, and, Mark Maslin, Professor of Earth System Science at University College London.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production"

Leaving me just to add that there is a purpose beihnd the image of torta di patate which for four decades I have been turning out for anyone who will eat it it.  

We simply called it Italian pie and its made from layers of cooked potato and mozzarella  cheese and topped with tomoato sauce and of course potatoes and tomotoes feature in the story.  Frivilous perhaps when set against syphilis but as the picture is mine it saves looking for a copyright free image.

Location; BBC Radio 4

Picture; torta di patate, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Columbian Exchange, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002rrvz

Walking the last 88 years of Redbank

2018

I like the idea that there will be people who remember how Redbank has gone full circle, from a place to live and work to one purely to work and after a period as an empty space is again full of residential properties.

For those who don’t know Redbank nestles behind Cheetham Hill Road, rising up from the River Irk like a series of terraced olive groves starting at Scotland which faced the river.*

Not of course that there was anything exotic about the place. The area was well developed by the middle of the 19th century and rows of back to back properties existed beside a mix of industry.

1936

In the 1850s just north of Scotland was a tannery with a nearby piggery and off to the east was the Ducie Bridge Brewery owned by Smalley & Evans while directly over the river were a series of Corn Mills, and the main railway viaduct of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

I hazard a guess that the bright sunlight of early spring struggled to lift the spirits and banish the noise of assorted industrial processes which vied with the all pervading smell from the tannery.

1930

By the time I was exploring the area most of the land from the river up towards the summit was empty waiting for the new development.

The transformation began in the late 1930s when the houses were demolished and replaced by low rise industrial units which eventually also were demolished.

Now I am not old enough to have seen that transformation but there will be people who have.

After all, a person born in 1930 will be just 88 as I write this and could have played amongst the half demolished houses in 1936, worked in one of the small factories or warehouses thirty-years later and have been invited by a grandchild to view a flat in one of the tall apartment blocks that look down on Redbank today.

1960

For the rest of us, there is that fine collection of pictures from Local Image Collection maintained by Manchester Libraries which hold photographs of the area from the 1890s from which I have chosen a few marking the changes.

Location Redbank, 1850-2018

1966

Pictures; the new developments, 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and in 1936, m5139, later in the year, J F Stirling, m05142, and 1960, m05145 and 1966, T Brooks, m60605 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*This stretch of Cheetham Hill Road was Ducie Bridge

Adventures across London …… with nothing more than a train ticket a bag of confidence and heaps of curiosity

When you are 15, some days can lie heavy.

In Well Hall waiting for something to happen, 1964

The top park, 2007

It was usually on summer days when the weather turned from being blistering hot and sunny to a muggy wet  one, and the combination of the humidity and the ever-present threat of a heavy shower made going out less than attractive.

How much easier it had all been five years earlier, when even if you were “Billy no mates” there were adventures to be had.

Of course, these usually revolved around Pepys park which was actually two.

The first was your classic Victorian public space, with the remnants of a bandstand, a fenced off lake, and a simple play area.

Pepys park circa 1900

Looking back the play area may once have been another ornamental pond, long drained and filled with the simplest of apparatus, including the hollowed-out trunk of an old tree, which could be anything from a tank to the conning tower of a submarine.

I was not alone in playing in it and letting my imagination wander, as was witnessed by the thick sides and top of the trunk which were highly polished from countless kids climbing and sliding over it.

Seldon visited, 2007

The eastern side which ran along Pepys Road was a mass of trees and dense undergrowth making it a perfect hidden place to act out all sorts of searches, while observing the other park goers and keeping an eye out for the Parkies.

By contrast the top park, had little to commend it, other than a drinking fountain and some fine views to the city in the distance.  It was also just outside the area you felt safe in, as its bordered unknowns, and at ten you were always aware that some places were someone else’s territory.

Not so the adventures across London courtesy of a cheap return ticket from Southern Region or a Red Rover.

Such trips didn’t require wonderful weather because there was always a doorway, shop, or museum to take shelter in, and friends could be a distraction from going where the fancy took you.

But for every real adventure there were those that turned sour, like the time the promise of the magic of Bermondsey took us to a canal under a railway arch on a wet dismal Saturday.

These were on balance few, compared to the winners, which included a Wednesday in high summer on a railway station in suburbia.  There was little to see outside the station but the magic came from sitting on the grassed area of the platform at midday with just a bottle of warm lemonade and the stillness of  an empty commuter stop, punctuated only by the lazy sound of bees going about their business and the smell of tar on the wooden railway sleepers.

But by 15, there was far more to cope with, starting with that sense that everyone else was more confident, was having more fun and had a girlfriend.

Woolwich, 1979

It would be another year before all that happened to me, and I had to wait to leave the school in New Cross and arrive at Crown Woods.

In the meantime, there were aimless trips up Eltham High Street, hours spent in the library and visits to Woolwich, which reminded me of Peckham and was more edgy, and different from Well Hall, and of course offered up the River.

Even now, almost sixty years on,  I can get excited at the memory of the Thames.  But  not the fashionable clean, twee tourist Thames, but the working river, with its boat building yards, factories, and wharves.

The River, 1979

And here I am the first to point out that there was nothing romantic about living by and working on the River.  The work could be hard, dangerous and the pay pitiful, while much of the accommodation close to the water has seen better days.

That said taking the ferry at Woolwich, or wandering the market was away of killing time till something better turned up, which at 15 was still a year away, and the summers of 1966, 67 and 68 when the sun shone and all seemed perfect.

The Thames, 1979

Location; Peckham, New Cross, Woolwich, Well Hall

Pictures; Andrew in 1964, and views of the River, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson Telegraph Hill Park, 2007 from the collection of Colin Fitzpatrick St Mary’s Church, 1906,from  Parish Churches and Telegraph Hill Park,  circa 1904, M G Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society, http://thehill.org.uk/society/Telegraph.htm