Barlow Moor Road, Mrs Helen Burt and the postcard makers of Chorlton

It all began with this picture postcard and ended with a chance discovery.

The picture is remarkable enough but not an uncommon one of Barlow Moor Road some time in the first years of the 20th century or maybe even earlier.

To our right is the church and on the left what were still private residences.

The appearance of a photographer is still a bit of novelty judging by the way the three workmen are staring back at him.

Two have paused from pulling the hand cart while the third stands behind his ladders. In the distance is a policeman and even further away a tradesman’s cart.

Like many of these early pictures it has been taken on a summer’s morning when the light was good and there were fewer people about.

All of which makes it a magic moment captured when Barlow Moor Road was still a quiet and elegant place to live.

And that really might have been all there was to say.

A photograph which captures one of those moments taking us back to 1904 when the card was sent or perhaps even earlier.

But of course that isn’t all there is.  On the reverse is an enigmatic message which leaves the romantic and the detective in me wandering down countless avenues of speculation.  Chris had “arrived here safely.  Mr and Mrs W [were] here [she] was having a good time and Joe was married on Fri to Mrs P.  Don’t say anything.”

Now how could you not ponder on that, and in the fullness of time weave all sorts of stories?  But the historian in me stops short of such unhistorical thinking after all as Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times reflecting on teaching children reminds me “Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service ...... This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.”

And yes there is one fact and it is that the card was published or perhaps taken by H Burt of Chorlton.  I checked the directories for a photographer by the name of Burt and even pondered on whether he might have been a newsagent or stationer.  After all the Lloyd family who ran the post office on Upper Chorlton Road sold their own postcards. But it led nowhere.

The only Burt was Harry Trevethhan Burt who opened his family business in Chorlton in 1895 and traded from the shop on Wilbraham Road until 2011.  His is fascinating story not least because he was a farmer’s son from Sussex who’s farther farmed 130 acres of land.  Harry trained at Kendal and Milne’s in Manchester before opening his own shop here in Chorlton.  There will be many who have fond memories of that shop.

But it is the fact that the Burt name appears on the postcard which interests me and looking through the collection I discovered a number which variously had “Published by Mrs H. Burt, Chorlton-cum-Hardy” or “H Burt Stationers.”

Helen Burt was the wife of Harry and described herself as a “Stationers shopkeeper” on the 1901 census.

So while Harry was building a family business which would last a century Helen was marketing postcards from just across the road from 1903 and most likely 1901.

All of which makes perfect sense but was something I had never clocked and in turn led me to look more closely at the small print on the back of the cards.

And here alongside the big companies were other names like the Lloyd family and Baylis, photographers of 49 Wilbraham Road and 26 Edge Lane as well as  W. A. Cooper of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Harold Clarke of 83 Clarence Road.

Now a part from Harold Clarke who was working in the 1920s and 30s all the others come from that early pioneering period of photography. And there is really something exciting in discovering just how many people were engaged capturing the images and selling them on.

All of which leads me to conclude that a whole new avenue of research has opened up all thanks to Helen Burt and her postcard of Barlow Moor Road.  And that is not all because Helen I now discover was another of those traders who offered a private lending library and that opens up even more Chorlton history.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Picture; from the Lloyd collection and St Clements Bazaar Handbook for 1928

A little bit of retail history ………. in the Arndale

Now I have never lost my liking for this bit of early 21st century retail technology.

It is in part the quirky shape, and the bold colours which I know someone will point out was less silly and more the demands of  logical technical design.

But I liked it, and now its gone.

Location; the Arndale, Manchester

Picture; Retail furniture, Manchester, 2003, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, part 1, reflections

Well Hall Road and our house 2014

The story of one house over a century and a bit.*

2015 was the birthday of the house we lived in for thirty years.

We moved into 294 Well Hall Road in March 1964 and while us kids slowly moved out over the years it remained my dad’s home till 1994.

So this will be the start of a series of stories about the house which next year will celebrate its centenary.

Now despite spending most days digging deep into the past and uncovering the lives of those who interest me I have to confess that the people who occupied our house for the first forty-nine years are unknown to me.

But their lives will span the two world wars, along with the uncertain years that followed the end of the first war and the growing prosperity that came in the decades after 1945.

In the garden 1964

And more than anything it will be about the house and how it changed from a fairly basic but well built early 20th century property to one which was adapted to the growth in consumer products, central heating and the revolution in leisure.

So when we moved in in 1964, there was still a water heater which had been run off a solid fuel stove, the kitchen possessed just two power points and the windows were the originals that had come with the house in 1915.

The first residents would have gone off to work on the tram, and no doubt welcomed the new Well Hall Odeon which offered up evenings of excitement and was far closer than the first picture house up along the High Street.

And on those fine warm summer evenings there would still have been plenty of open spaces to enjoy.

The real discoveries will also be in just how their lives in the late 1920s and 30s matched and contrasted with those of the people I so often deal with who lived in the north  in the more challenged old industries of textiles, coal mining and ship building.

So it is all there to search out, and on the way I am well aware that George, Jean and Chrissie will be on hand to offer up their memories of their bit of Well Hall and Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1964  and Chrissie Rose 2015

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

When me and Leonardo da Vinci walked the same way

Yep ….. it is a little-known fact that me and that Italian master of all things were vegetarians. *

Roast peppers

That said some clever traveller of obscure knowledge will correct me with arguing he merely advocated it.

Either way it got me reflecting on my choice which I took over four decades ago.

There wasn’t one burning reason for giving up meat it just happened and I have never missed meat or fish nor regretted the decision.

And in so doing I have discovered those great meatless cuisines of the world which have their roots in an abhorrence to eating living things and the more basic one that in most peasant communities’ meat was a very expensive item, and almost out of reach of many.

I can’t say I have been a vociferous advocate but when challenged I have stepped up to the mark.

And of challenges there have been many.  Most are cheap jibes thrown out in expectation that they are witty and clever comments but are in fact banal uttered by people who would be better employed cataloguing their collection of dried worms.

Moreover, they miss the rich variety of dishes that are out there.

Pasta, garlic and chilli

My favourites are invariably those from southern Italy an area which as late as the 1960s was far poorer than the northern regions of the country.

Pasta and beans

Roasted peppers, aubergines cooked in a heap of different ways and those old staples of pasta, beans and chickpeas.

Of all these my go to choice is simply pasta and olive oil with perhaps a bit of garlic and chilli thrown in and sometimes some homemade tomato sauce.

And what I find amusing is that it is often the deriding meat eaters who fall on these dishes.  Which takes me back to an event many years ago.  

We were in the Sangam in Didsbury and sharing our table were a mix of meat eaters and vegetarians, and by bad luck the vegetarian starters came first, which everyone fell upon and all pronounced excellent.  

Sadly, the arrival of the meat starters left some of us with nothing more to eat and reduced to watching.  The added insult was the comment from one meat eater that she was finding it difficult to finish her starters because of the number of our dishes she had already consumed.

                                                             Green beans

At which point I should really launch into a description of the history of vegetarianism but it is out there for all to read.*

Instead, I will venture into that dark area of convenience foods and share my own non animal convenience.  I don’t eat many but will when lazy fall on those alternative sausage and burgers.  It’s not that I am wanting pretend meat it’s just simply that they are quick.

It was as George who ran Sunflowers on Beech Road once said to me, “why should meat eaters have all the convenience foods”.

Tivall convenience

Location; where ever there are vegetarians

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*History of vegetarianism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_vegetarianism

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

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

Looking towards Minishull Street, 1979

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

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

Lost view of Minishull Street, 1979

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

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

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

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

That canal arm, 1850

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The view, 2025

Location Minishull Street

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

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

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

Chorlton’s mysterious eight ………. and an insight into our past

Now the history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy just keeps giving.

“Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H”

So I am back looking again at eight paintings which were loaned to me by Julie Gaskell.

Each is of a time before now and range across Chorlton, from the small hamlet of Hardy across to the southern end of the old village and back along what is now Beech Road and east toward Hough End Hall.

And they include wattle and daub cottages, the smithy, as well as the old Bowling Green pub, and Barlow Hall.

The artist is unnamed, but I think they are by J Montgomery who painted a huge number of Chorlton scenes from sometime in the 1940s through to the mid-1960s.  

He remains a bit of a mystery with no one owning up to have known him.  Manchester Libraries who hold a collection of his paintings have no biographical information on him.

“Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy”

But with the help of Andy Robertson, I am fairly confident he lived in Chorlton, and pretty much only painted scenes of the township.

The quality of his work is erratic, but together they offer up images of what Chorlton was like in the 19th century.

Some look to be imaginative reconstruction loosely based on photographs while most seem to be a faithful reproduction taken from picture postcards.

So the painting “Ale House in 1618 at Hough End Hall before Hough End Hall was built” drifts into pure speculation and is historically inaccurate given that our Hough End Hall was built in the 1590s.

In the same way “Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H” is quite clearly based on at least one photograph from the late 19th century. 

As is “Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy” which is Sutton’s Cottages which stood on the present site of the Launderette bar and restaurant.  The cottage dates from sometime in the 18th century and was demolished in the early 1890s.

"Barlow Hall, view from the meadows"

Others “Hough End Hall Old Hall or Manor House of Manchester” resemble photographs I have seen to suggest they are fairly accurate.

An even “Pitts Brow Edge Lane where new church and Stockton Range now stand” for which there will be no photographic evidence might be a mix of the artist’s imagination and descriptions which appeared in T Ellwood’s History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy which appeared over 26 weeks in the South Manchester Gazette between the winter of 1885 and the spring of the following year.

So there you have it ….. eight mystery paintings most of which look to be based on old photographs, some of which have themselves been lost, and take us back to that rural Chorlton of the mid 19th century.

"Behind the Smithy, Beech Road C c H"

In some cases, it is difficult to guarantee their accuracy, but using maps, and written records I think we can be confident that we are almost back to the Chorlton cum Hardy of the 1850s.

Leaving me just to say the eight look to be reproductions of originals, have been laminated and framed.

So thank you Julie who spotted them in a shop and had to buy all eight.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, eight paintings, by an unknown artist, courtesy of Julie Gaskell.

A little bit of our history down at the Co-op

2d token issued by the R.A.C.S., date unknown

It’s so easy to lose so much of our history.

Now the big things like the homes of the great and good, as well as the not so good but still very powerful and rich usually survive, as do their possessions.

In the same way those important papers of State, the letters and records of government from Roman tax records to Magana Carta and much else have come down to us.

Although I do have to concede sometimes it is a dam close thing and often it is down to accident rather than design that these things are still around to tell us something of the past.

Of course in the great sweep of history more rather than less has gone forever.

1£ Co-op book of stamps circa 1970

And amongst all that lost material are the overwhelming majority of everyday objects each with their own unique story.

I could have picked almost anything to explore these vanished objects but in the end choose the humble trading token and its modern equivalent the trading stamp.

It began with a sheet of those Green Shield Stamps posted on facebook which if you are of a certain age will bring back vivid memories of collecting them, then sticking them in books and eventually exchanging shed loads of them for a range of goods.

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

And into the game came the Co-op which had been operating its own reward system since its inception.

This was the dividend which gave every member a share of the stores profits.  All you needed to do was quote your “divi number” and the amount you spent would be recorded.

Talk to many people and they can instantly remember their family number and even quote it back.

Sadly I was never one of them and so for me the introduction of the divi stamp was to be welcomed.  So instead of holding up a line of shoppers down at the Well Hall Co-op opposite the Pleasaunce I could now vanish with the groceries secure in the knowledge that all was well with our divi reward.

A token issued by  Bolden Industrial Co-op, date uknown

“Dividend Stamps were introduced in 1965. 

It was an alternative to the traditional methods of paying the 'divi', and as a response to the adoption of trading stamps by other food retailers like Tesco who adopted the Green Shield stamps scheme. 

Some individual Co-operative societies operated their own stamp schemes but the CWS National scheme was in use from 1969.”*

Running alongside the number and then later the stamps were the old tokens, made of very thin metal.

"Coop members would go into their local society shops to buy the tokens for bread, milk, coal etc. The amount they spent would then be registered for their dividend payments.  The members would then give the token to the milkman, bread man or coal roundsman etc in return for the items they wanted."**

Co-op stamps, circa 1970

In our house some at least never made it back to the Co-op and instead were used as toys and even took the place of playing cards.


So for those who remember them and a lot more who are totally baffled by them here is a selection taken from my friend Lawrence’s blog* and the Bolden History site.*

They were an important part of many peoples' way of budgeting and marked a commitment to a co-operative way of life which I still think is the way forward.

Pictures; Co-op trading stamps, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle, and trading tokens from Boldon History

*Hardy Lane Scrapbook, http://hardylane.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/co-op-stamps.html

**Boldon History, http://www.boldonhistory.co.uk/Boldon-Colliery-ID11/The%20Co-op-IDI141

Travels with my DNA ……. history ….. geography …. and a lost Simpson

 When you do family history sooner or later you embrace the DNA test.

Where we woz from

I first began seriously researching the family history almost 20 years ago but only dipped into the DNA search to all things genealogical in December.

My late arrival was partly down to the cost of taking the test, but also a slight mistrust of the process and I suppose a big dollop of old-fashioned scepticism.

The scepticism arose out of that simple observation that I had done pretty well with dusty records and family memorabilia which had brought forth a heap of new ancestors, the uncovering of several mysteries, more than a few “lost relatives” and a whole new field of historical research.

That new field was the study of British Home Children who were those young people migrated to Canada and other parts of the old British Empire from Poor Law Unions and children’s charities.

And from there I explored one of Manchester children’s charity which in turn led to writing a book on its history.

But one of my Canadian cousins was keen for me to join her in the DNA journey and it has been interesting.

It confirmed that I am a Celt, with origins starting in the Highlands and Central Scotland and moving by degree into the Northeast of England which came from my father and the Midlands courtesy of mum.

Along the way it minimized the German side of the family and trashed the notion that a bit of us had originated on the sub-continent.

George Bradford Simpson, circa 1918

So pretty much as the census records and family tradition had already established.

Of course, there is also the opportunity to connect with others as Ancestry offers up possible relatives with matching DNA and in following up the connections have found some with elements of their family tree, replicating mine.

And then there was a suggested link to a  lost “first cousin once removed or half first cousin”.  Now technically he wasn’t lost.  I knew of his existence but had never spoken to him or even where he lived.

As you do, I reached out and yes, he is the son of my cousin Mary which has been a pleasant surprise to both my sisters and my kids.

Willian Ferguson Fergus Simpson, circa 1914

At which point I could launch into a detailed description of how that DNA test is reflected in my own research, the stories from my parents and uncles along with a treasured family tree produced by Uncle Fergus and shared with me and my “first cousin once removed”.  But I won’t.  One person’s fascinating family story is another person’s yawn.

Instead, I reflect that the DNA test has confirmed what I already knew about where we came from, making me one of those indigenous peoples who were here in these islands before the Romans and those upstart Anglo Saxons.

To which some in England will mutter “go back to your ancestral home”, which would be both prejudiced and unfair given that the maternal side of me has strong connections with both the west and east Midlands.

In time the journey back to Germany via my German grandmother may offer new sides to the family.

But for now I shall close with the knowledge that Marisa one of my Canadian cousins will be pleased that I have finally taken up her suggestion to “do the test Andrew”   and have shared with my kids and sisters the slightly odd, bizarre and maybe misleading “94 traits” which are most likely or unlikely to be in my make up.  Some are laughable and don’t match us, but alas male hair loss seems to fit the bill, to which one of my son’s replied “thanks dad something to look forward to”.

To which the only answer might be "its in the DNA, next July we'll reveal  it all"*

Location; in the Ancestry DNA lab

Pictures; confirmation by map of our Celtic origins, courtesy of Ancestry, Uncle George in the uniform of the Black Watch circa 1918, and Uncle Fergus in the uniform of the Black Watch, circa 1914

*"Have you heard it's in the stars

Next July we collide with Mars" .... Well, Did You Evah, Cole Porter, 1939

or with a nod to Julius Caesar "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars,

But in ourselves..."   Julius Caesar  Act 1 Scene 2 William Shakespeare 1599

When your life comes packaged in just eight pages…….

 It’s a silly title really but it sprang to mind after seeing Michael Kay’s post featuring the brochure for Manchester Polytechnic.

It is dated 1970 and must have been produced just a few months after I washed up in the city to do an Arts degree at the College of Knowledge on Aytoun Street.*

I had arrived in the September of the previous year, with a suitcase, an address for a bed sit and no idea what was ahead of me.

Indeed, as a lad from southeast London Manchester was only the second city I had ever experienced.

And pretty much soon after I arrived, I embraced the place spending the hours when I should have been in the library wandering the city centre, which gave me a fascination for the buildings, and the history. 

Along the way I made some lasting friendships and many more which have dropped away over the years.

As for the degree, well I learned a few things, but like others not as much as I had done during A levels.

But the three years also introduced me to the other two faculties that made up the Poly, and while I did visit John Dalton the science place, it was the Art College, All Saints and the old Till Kennedy Building which were a second home.

The three faculties of Art, Commerce and Science had been separate educational institutions and mine betrayed its origin with the title of Commerce which offered many vocational courses, making it an odd mix of students.

Till Kennedy, Student's Union, 2015

Over the years I have written about the famous Saturday nights which hosted a pile of groups which straddled the late 60s and early 70s, along with equally memorable times at the Students Union which to many of us will always just be the Till Kennedy Building.*

It was built in 1905 for William Righton whose name appears above the main entrance.

He was a draper and the building offers up plenty of clues to its origins as a drapers shop.

The spacious ground floor was perfect for accommodating a vast range of fabrics while the large windows allowed the maximum amount of daylight into the building, a feature complimented by the top-lit gallery with the cutaway floor providing extra light to penetrate down into the main shop.

The Art College, 2024

Now this had always puzzled me as had the benching around the gallery and only now have I discovered that these benches were where “the cloth was measured.”***

The College of Knowledge, 1969

Over the years I have explored the history not only of the College of Commerce but also the Art College with its links to many of the artist I admire, as well as Mr. Dalton.

Much of which came flooding back with the brochure with its images of the city and its optimistic take on Manchester in the 1970s.

And what is remarkable is that a full fifty-six years after it was published many of the buildings and places it featured are still there.

Sadly, my own College was found wanting and now is at the centre of a residential complex, while On the Eight Day has moved slightly further up Oxford Road and now inhabits a new build, while Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station was transformed by a make over at the start of this century.

Still the eight pages make for an interesting read, but not a nostalgic one, after all I never left the city and so took the changes in my stride.

That said I do remember that two years after the Poly came into existence, its entire collection of student accommodation comprised six flats for six married couples in the former Fireman’s block of the Mill Street Police Station off Grey Mare Lane.

We had married in the December of 1972 and moved in a few months later as one of the first six couples.  

For all of us living in east Manchester was a tad different from the south of the city but perfectly fitted with how we saw ourselves.

Leaving me just to thank for posting and giving me permission to use the pictures.

Location; Manchester in 1970

Pictures; Manchester Poly brochure, courtesy of Michael Kay, The College of Commerce, 1969, Butterworth Street, Luft M 1991, m55776, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, The Art College, 2024, and the former College of Commerce, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the former Till Kennedy Building, 2015 courtesy of Andy Robertson

The College of knowledge in 2023

*The College of Commerce.

The entire student accomodation in 1972

**Manchester Polytechnic, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Manchester%20Polytechnic

****Manchester An architectural history, John K Parkinson-Bailey, 2000, Page 317

Travelling by tram round the Well Hall Circus

Now I have no idea when this picture was taken. 

I do know that it will date from after 1931 when the roundabout was built which according to Eltham and Woolwich Tramways was constructed as part of the Westhorne Avenue extension.*

And if I wanted to be more specific I guess it can be no earlier than 1938 a date which cinema buffs will confirm.

The Odeon was opened in 1936 and of the two films showing that week The Dark Horse was made in 1932 and I’ll give a million six years later.

I can’t say either would have got me walking down from our house.

The Dark Horse was a political comedy starring Bette Davies and turned on the efforts of Ms Davies and others to find a candidate for Governor at the Progressive Party convention and ran through a series of improbable plot lines.

Not to be out done its running mate that week centred around Warner Baxter who played a millionaire saving a tramp from suicide, and then taking the tramps clothes and disappearing with a rumour that he would give a million dollars to anyone who is kind to a tramp.

But perhaps I am being unfair.  I can sit through endless episodes of Coronation Street, have bought at least two DVDs of Downton Abbey and can pretty much quote James T Kirk word for word in all his Star Trek films and plenty of the TV shows.

And having demonstrated my unnerving attention to detail I can offer up the names of all those who occupied the shops stretching down from the cinema to the Pleasaunce when Ms Davies was at the Odeon.**

But I am on firmer ground with the second which dates from December 29 1948 and I have to say it doesn’t look so different from when I walked up Well Hall Road in the mid 1960s.

From memory the path across the roundabout had gone, along with the tram poles although I suspect under the tarmac still lurked the tramlines.

And for all I know they may still be there.

Like all good stories I learnt something knew because back in the 1940s our roundabout was, according to the London Transport timetable known as Well Hall Circus.

So that is all I shall say, except to thank Middleton Press for giving me permission to reproduce the pictures from their book Eltham and Woolwich Tramways and promise you more later.

Oh and a thank you to Tricia Leslie who first came across the pictures and posted them and then introduced me to the tram book.

Pictures; Arriving at the Well Odeon,  circa 1938, A J Watkins, and Well hall Circus, 1948, H B Priestley reproduced from Eltham and Woolwich Tramways

* Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, R J Harley Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk/

** A car, a row of shops and a little bit more is revealed about the history of Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/a-car-row-of-shops-and-liitle-bit-more.html

On Chorlton Green with Derrick A Lea in 1957

We are on the green sometime between 1955 and 1958 outside the Horse and Jockey.

Now I know this because the artist who drew the scene completed a series of pictures of Chorlton during this period.

He was Derrick A Lea and he is one of those local artist who has slipped out of our history.

He lived here during the 1950s through to the ‘70s, and that is about it.  So for now it is his pictures that will have to speak for him.

And today it is this one of the pub on the green.

It is a picture which I like partly because the style reminds me of so many that I grew up with in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Often they were the sort which appeared as adverts in magazines or in prints that were displayed in railway carriages on the trains of the Southern Region.

Most were of the countryside and most showed southern England in full summer.

So this one is somewhat different and what draws me in is not just the wintry scene but the way Mr Lea captures the brisk movement of the couple on the right.  It’s partly their stride as they follow the dog but also the way the woman’s coat spills out covering as it would an equally expansive dress underneath.

This was that period when in direct contrast to the fashions of the war everything was bigger and more showy, as if to say “we are done with rationing and making do.”

And the historian in me is fascinated by the picture of the pub itself which is almost the one we know today but not quite.

In the 1950s it had not extended into the building to right of the entrance below the sign.

This was still a private residence and so had not yet been given the wooden beam effect.  Nor had the top floor of what had once been Miss Wilton’s home been taken down.

But not all in the picture is completely accurate for what looks like a pond in front of the trees is  an invention of Mr Lea’s imagination.

There were village ponds but sadly not here.  There was one further to the south by the Bowling Green Hotel and another on Beech Road stretching from Acres Road up to Chequers Road but not outside the Horse and Jockey.

Not that I am over bothered by the deliberate error.

It remains a pretty neat picture of a moment in the mid 1950s which will be one most of us never knew, and I do like his depiction of the pub and the green on a wintery snowy night.

So it just remains to close by repeating  the image he drew.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester








Picture; the Horse and Jockey, Chorlton Green, by Derrick A Lea taken from a greetings card in the possession of my old friend Margaret.

The lost Eltham & Woolwich pictures ...... no.16 looking out from Well Hall Station

A short series on the pictures of Eltham and Woolwich in 1976.

For four decades the pictures I took of Eltham and Woolwich in the mid ‘70’s sat undisturbed in our cellar.

But all good things eventually come to light.

They were colour slides which have been transferred electronically.

The quality of the original lighting and the sharpness is sometimes iffy, but they are a record of a lost Eltham and Woolwich.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; Well Hall circa 1976, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Booth family .............. a new family for a New Chorlton

I have been trying to clear up a few little mysteries about the Booth family who lived here on Manchester Road during the time when the township went through its most dramatic transformation.

This was when we leapt from being a small rural community into a suburb of Manchester and those tall rows of terraced and semi detached properties in long roads went up catering for the middling people who worked in the city but still wanted to live on the edge of the countryside. The Booth family saw all of that and despite still being here in the early 1940s I lose them after The Great War.

I came across Aaron Booth some years ago when I added four of his photographs to the collection.  They were taken in the summer and winter of 1882 of Martledge which was that part of the township from the four banks down to the Library.

And that was pretty much it.  I knew he and his family lived at Sedge Lynn which was an impressive Victorian house on Manchester Road and that he was businessman.

Then as you do I became more curious.  They were one of those new families with money behind them and business interests in the city who had made their home here just as the housing boom of the 1880s was about to take off.

We can track the family across the city from 1861 and during the next twenty years they lived in a succession of comfortable addresses on the edges of the city finally moving to Sedge Lynn in the November of 1881.
Before that date the evidence trail is a little vague but I am fairly confident that Aaron married Emma in 1853 and their first child was born two years later followed by another ten children.

These were the years when the family firm prospered.  In 1861 his packing company employed four men and seven boys and over the next few decades his work force increased as did the number of premises.  So while in 1863 he was located on the corner of South Street* and Albert Square by the 1890s he was listed at “3 & 6 Hall street, 20 Oxford st, St Peter’s, 12 St Peter’s square and 1 & 47 Lower Mosley Street.”

And by 1911 at the whole corner of Oxford Street and Lower Mosley Street as well as Hall Street and Chepstow Street.  On his death in 1912 he left £1,827 in personal effects.

All of which suggests that they were a comfortably well of Victorian family.  Sedge Lane was a detached house which in 1881 stood in splendid isolation in what was pretty much open land.  To the rear were the Isles a mix of ponds, tiny streams and fields which stretched up to Longford Hall, and to the west and east they were bordered by farms. It had had eleven rooms as well as a bathroom and kitchen and commanded an annual rent of £28.

And I have no doubt that they participated in the life of the community.  Aaron was an amateur photographer and it is reasonable to suppose that the rest of the family filled their leisure time with all sorts.  The 1911 Kemp’s Almanac for Chorlton boasted a host of cultural organisations from operatic and drama societies to a range of sporting ones and the city with its theatres was less than 15 minutes away on the train.

The children either followed their father into the family business or took up that increasingly suitable occupation for young women of teaching.  All of the girls lived at home and so is tantalizing to speculate on whether they taught in the local school or one of the new academies or crammers which were opening up across Chorlton to cater for the young middle class.

In a grimmer way they were also typical of the period.  Emma was just 49 when she died, and two of the children died even younger at 21 and 22.  In all ten of the family are in Southern Cemetery.  They were buried there between 1881 and 1942 in two plots close to Nell Lane.

But two of the children are not there and so far have eluded me as has the identity of the Miss Booth who originally made available the four 1882 photographs.  And then there is the mystery of where they lived after the Great War.  Aaron died in 1912 but there is evidence that they were still there at Sedge Lynn a little later, but by 1919 or 1920 they had gone.  This much I can be confident of because by 1920 the new impressive Savoy cinema had opened on the site of Sedge Lynn.

In the way of things some of the mysteries will be solved.  Out there in a parish magazine or in the local press will be a reference to them and when I next get into Central Library there will be the electoral registers which may place all of the children in the years after 1928, so still a lot to go on then.  And on the next fine day I will take myself off to the cemetery.

Which just leaves one last loose end.  In May 1969 the company Shepley Booth & Associates Ltd was wound up in Birmingham.  I have no way of knowing the connection but I am sure there is one, as each of the male sons of Aaron and Emma were given Shepley as a second name, so one more mystery.

And here is an addition which has only just occurred to me and changes the date of when I thought this picture was taken. As late as 1894 what we now call Nicolas Road was a thin strip of land with trees, running back from where the old bit of Manchester Road joined Barlow Moor Road ad onto open land.  At this stage Oswald Road stopped just beyond Vincent Avenue.

By 1907 it is shown as a path and possibly an unmade road with houses roughly where the Health Centre is.

All of which changes the date of the picture which I had always assumed was 1882 which is the date on a similar print but there in the distance is what I think is Oswald Road School which was completed in 1908.  Just goes to show!

Pictures; Sedge Lynn the Lloyd collection, the work place of the Booth family on the corner of Oxford Street and Lower Mosley Street, circa 1900 from Goads Fire Insurance Maps, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and 47 Lower Mosley Street where the Booths were also listed in 1895, photograph by H W Beaumont 1964, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m02925

*now Southmill Street