When Gas was glamorous ............ in the show rooms of the South Metropolitan Gas Company at 36 Powis Street

Now the gas cooker, the central heating and the gas fired water boiler are pretty much taken for granted by most people.

Even given the ever increasing price of the stuff many of us will just get with using it, thankful that barring an accident the systems will come on at the push of a button or turn of the tap.

Most appliances are fairly utilitarian come in a number of shades of white and just do the business.

But back in the late 19th and early twentieth century’s gas could still be glamorous and it was the fuel of the future.

Read any of the handouts from the municipally controlled gas boards and you enter a world of cheap clean and safe living whether it be lighting the home or feeding the family.

Manchester Corporation both sold and rented gas cookers and in time did the same for electricity offering also very competitive rates for wring old houses.

All of which takes me to the show rooms of the South Metropolitan Gas Company at 36 Powis Street in Woolwich.

The South Metropolitan Gas Company was founded in 1829 and began an ambition programme of building gasworks at Vauxhall, Bankside and Thames St, Greenwich. These were extended by mergers with other companies, and bring me nicely back to the show rooms.*

The provision of gas along with its appliances was big money and to win over customers the show rooms had to look the part.

So I shall leave you with these scenes, all from postcards produced by Tuck & Sons in a series titled London, South Metropolitan Gas Company.

Now there is a piece of hard sell which can’t be bettered.

And just to doubly remind you of all the wonders of the place each picture post card had the times of opening on the back.

I think even I would have been impressed.

Pictures; from Tuck & Sons in a series titled London, South Metropolitan Gas Company, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

*The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=1866-sesom&cid=0#0

A bridge, a missing street……. and Mr. Samuel Moore ....... baker in residence for over half a century

Now it began with a request for information about a plaque on the wall of the Boardman Street Bridge, and quickly became something else.

The plaque commemorates the building of the bridge over the River Medlock in that area between London Road and Fairfield Street, and is a reminder that once the river marked the boundary between Manchester and Chorlton Upon Medlock.

That in itself is  a fascinating story and drew me into research on Boardman Street, which today is pretty much an uninspiring bit of road which runs from Fairfield Street twisting  and turning on itself till it joins London Road.

Some time in the past it exchanged its historic name of Boardman Street and became Baring Street and gained a bridge.

The bridge and the original plaque were built after 1851 and before that the road stopped at the river where it joined Buxton Street.

I have yet to find out when the bridge was built but it was there by 1894, while the original line of Boardman Street was by the 1840s a mix of back to back properties some larger houses, a pub and a sprinkling of industrial units.

And so far it has yet to yield anything more.  It doesn’t appear in the early street directories, which in turn means I can’t find any names of lived there and that in turn hampers a search for the census returns for the street.

So as you do I turned to Buxton Street, which is in the Directory for 1851 and offered up a series of names for residents along its stretch from London Road past Boardman Street.

But none of those names can be found in the census records for that year, and after a long trawl of the existing enumerator districts, I could only turn up half of Buxton Street for 1861.

They will be there, it will just take more time to find them, and in particular to locate a Mr. Samuel Moore who was photographed outside his baker’s shop in 1895.  

He looks to be quite elderly, and so he should given that he first appears in the Rate Books in 1847 on Buxton Street renting a house and shop from a J. Campton.

And there he still is fifty-three years later.

So, I will continue to go looking for him in the census records, and when I do , I will be able to discover more about his life, that of his neighbours and the photographs of the houses from 1895.

But in the way these things work, someone will come up with the details, and that is the fun of it.

Location; Manchester

Pictures;  Mr. Samuel Moore, 6, Buxton Street, 1895, m00653, 3, 5 Buxton Street, 1895, H. Entwhistle, Plaque, Boardman Street, 1971, Ann Jackson, m11046, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, Buxton Street in 1851, from Adshead map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Buxton Street was in the London Road Registration District, but the rest of it may be in Aedwick, we shall see 

Shopping in Chorlton at Adsega …… which became Tesco and Hanbury’s ……. Supermarkets I have known

Now, I have to admit I never shopped at Adsega in Chorlton, but friends did and have told me so.

Marion Jackson was the first telling me “When Adsega/Tesco opened at Chorlton office my mother carefully obeyed the sign telling her to take a basket. We had it for years!”,

Which was followed by Craig who commented “People don't believe me when I say there was a Supermarket called Adsega. Thank you!!”, and David who added “Remember my mother shopped there when I was young, when she mentioned Adsega some thought she meant Asda".

So, that set me going and the first port of call was Company House, from which I discovered that Adsega was registered in 1959, “to carry on business as wholesale and retail grocers” as well as "producers, manufacturers and importers” of a variety of food". *

It had a short life and its 47 stores were acquired by Tesco in 1965, which I guess was when its shop in the former cinema on Barlow Moor Road became part of the new retail empire before the building was sold on to, Hanbury’s.**

At present I don’t have a picture of the Chorlton Adsega, but I bet someone has a photograph of the shop on Barlow Moor Road, or maybe even other bits of ephemera, from shopping bags, receipts a loyalty card.

In the meantime, I like the way, a little bit of our forgotten past as come out of the shadows.

And it follows on from an earlier story about self service stores in Chorlton, which included the comment that the book on the arrival of supermarkets and how they were greeted has yet to be written.

So, thank you to Marion Jackson,  Craig Henderson and David Wilson with the expectation that this is just the beginning.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; the former cinema on Barlow Moor Road which became an Adsega, m09248, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass


*Adsega, 

** How Many Companies Does Tesco Own?


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

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

A little bit of Manchester in Eltham Palace

Now I do miss Eltham, it was where I grew up and it is a place I was very happy.

But at the age of 19 I went north following a girlfriend who had started a course at Manchester Polytechnic, which on reflection was not the best way for me to choose a degree course especially as she left for London just three months later.

The Sentry, 2007

I stayed and the city has been my home ever since and I do think of it as home, but like all ex pats I have never forgotten Eltham and in particular Well Hall.

All of which made the discovery that one of the City’s war memorials was replicated in miniature and sits on a table in the study of Eltham Palace a source for thought.

I came across it recently while working on the new book.*

The original was commissioned by S & J Watts to commemorate those who worked for the company and died in the Great War.

The memorial was erected  in 1922 in the main entrance of the company’s building on Portland Street.

The Sentry is a bronze sculpture, which stands in an arched niche just inside the building and faces a marble plaque commemorating the dead.

It depicts the sentry standing on duty, and was commissioned from the British sculptor Charles Sargeant Jagger who also designed the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner, London.

Eltham Palace, 1961

And to my surprise and pleasure there is a small version of the figure in the study of Eltham Palace, where it was displayed by Stephen Courtauld, who like Mr Jagger was a member of the Artists' Rifles.

So there you have it a little bit of Manchester in the heart of Eltham.

But I can’t close without a reference to the building which holds the orginal statue.

This  is the  large, Victorian Grade II listed building known as Watts Warehouse.

It opened in 1856 as a textile warehouse for the wholesale drapery business of S & J Watts, and was the largest single-occupancy textile warehouse in Manchester.

Today the building is part of the Britannia Hotels chain.

Watts Warehouse, 1973

One source has referred to its ornate style as being typical of
“the extravagant confidence of many Mancunian warehouses of this period, but the Watts Warehouse is notable for its peculiarly eclectic design. Designed in the form of a Venetian palazzo, the building has five storeys, each decorated in a different style – Italian Renaissance, Elizabethan, French Renaissance and Flemish – and roof pavilions featuring large Gothic wheel windows.

The interior was similarly lavish in its decoration, with a sweeping iron cantilever staircase, balconied stairwell, and mahogany counters for displaying merchandise.”*

And that makes it a sort of palace.

Location, Manchester and Eltham in London

Pictures; the Sentry, Cnbrb, 2007 Wikipedia Commons, Eltham Palace, from Eltham Palace Ministry of Works Guide Book, 1961and the Watts Warehouse, 1973, m56859 , courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

** Watts Warehouse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Warehouse

101 Beech Road ….. one shop ….. and a heap of stories …….

Now, when Ian Collier posted this picture on social media  of his family outside 101 Beech Road I knew there was a story.

101 Beech Road

Today the premises is Beech Road Pharmacy but in 1901 it was home to Mrs Elizabeth Clayton and her five children. 

Mrs. Clayton described herself as a widow, and her children were variously employed as a “dressmaker”, “Blouse machinist”, and fishmongers.

And it is the 25 year old George Clayton who may well be the tall young man staring back at us with what may be his brother Arthur.

A decade later the census returns record only George, his brother William and sister Ethel in the property, with George describing himself as “Fishmonger” along with William who was a “Fishmonger, Salesman” and Ethel who had given up her job as “Blouse machinist” in return for running the family home.

Fruit, veg and Mr. Clayton

Ian tells me that “the shop was owned by George Clayton, my grandmother's second husband as her first husband, my grandfather was tragically killed by fire shortly after the birth of my father. 

The photo shows my great-grandmother, grandmother and father as a child. I am uncertain how long they stayed in Chorlton as they moved to Bacup after George Clayton died”.

The census record show that by 1921 no. 101 was occupied by Mr. & Mrs. Degman.  He was a hairdresser but gave his work address as 13 Lever Street in town and there is no hint as to who or what the shop was selling.

But in 1929 an Arthur Collier is listed as a greengrocer at the address.

That said Arthur Clayton now aged 44 had own green grocers at 119 Beech Road, which was still trading as such but under a different name thirty years later, and indeed had morphed into a wholesale food emporium in 1979.

Fresh To Day

Leaving aside the story of the Clayton family which I am sure Ian will be able to help piece together I am intrigued by the picture.

I am fairly convinced its dates from after 1903, because in that year a William Henry Bratby is listed as a Cycle agent, next door at 103, but six years later the shop is a drapery run by Mrs. Rosa Wagstaff and there does appear to be clothes in the window of the neighbouring  shop.

All of which just leaves me to reflect on the detail in the picture, from the sign advertising a range of fish, "Fresh Today" to the heap of fruit, veg and more fish on display both inside and outside the shop.

Location; Beech Road

119 Beech Road, 1979

Pictures, 101 Beech Road, circa 1901-1921, courtesy of Ian Collier, and 119 Beech Road, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Go east young professional and grow up with a town half as old as time

So yes, Go east young professional and grow up with a town half as old as time mangles an injunction often attributed to Horace Greeley about westward expansion and the Manifest Destiny of the United States with that poem about Petra in Jordan.*

Looking down on Hebden Bridge, 2026

Hebden Bridge from Nutclough Road, 2026

To which Eric of Todmorden will mutter "self-indulgent nonsense, and I guess he would be right".  

But all stories need an introduction and in a sense this one hits the button because for ages young professionals have been heading east from Manchester to this small community in West Yorkshire.

My Wikipedia tells me that “during the 1970s and 1980s the town saw an influx of artists, writers, photographers, musicians, alternative practitioners, teachers, Green and New Age activists and more recently, wealthier 'yuppie' types. 

The town centre, 2026

This in turn saw a boom in tourism to the area. During the 1990s Hebden Bridge became a commuter town, because of its proximity to major towns and cities both sides of the Pennines and its rail links to Manchester, Bradford and Leeds”**

I will leave residents to correct or agree with the description but that does seem to be the perspective of outsiders some of whom I count as friends.

That said having visited the place over the years I can see how it is an attractive place to settle down in despite the ever-rising house prices, risk of flooding and unpopular development plans.

Houses that climb the valley, 2026

But who wouldn’t be drawn to what the British Airways flight magazine in 2025 named as the fourth quirkiest place in the world and described as ‘modern and stylish in an unconventional and stylish way’".**

At which point I could launch into a full description of its old English origins, its rise to prominence during the Industrial Revolution and its place today as a cultural, and retail centre, but then I would only be lifting the account from other people’s research all of which is easily available.

So instead, I will content myself with these   paintings by my artist pal Peter Topping.

Crossing the water, 2026

He ventured east from Chorlton recently to reacquaint himself with the place and meet up with one of his sons who now lives there.

And that pretty much is it.

Location; Hebden Bridge

Paintings; Hebden Bridge, @ Peter Topping, 2026, https://paintingsfrompictures.co.uk/

*"Go West,  young man go West and grow up with the country” Horace Greeley, 1854 and “a rose red city half as old as time” John William Burgon, 1845

**Hebden Bridge, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebden_Bridge

Nutclough Road, 2026

A classic story of a rural world we have lost ….. Akenfield

Today I am going to revisit Akenfield by Ronald Blythe a favourite book which I first came across in the mid-1970s.

By then it had been on the bookshelves since 1969 and proved a best seller.

To quote the publisher’s description it is a “perceptive portrayal of English country life reverberates with the voices of the village inhabitants, from the reminiscences of survivors of the Great War evoking days gone by, to the concerns of a younger generation of farm-workers and the fascinating and personal recollections of, among others, the local schoolteacher, doctor, blacksmith, saddler, district nurse and magistrate. 

Providing insights into farming, education, welfare, class, religion and death, Akenfield forms a unique document of a way of life that has, in many ways, disappeared”.

And here is the confession, I only got part way through which was nothing to do with the quality of the book, the writing or the content, but simply because my social life was full, and work very busy.

The result was that it was put aside, first on the coffee table, then the to do read on the bookshelf and finally filed away.

Then during a clear out it went and now its back, or at least a new copy.

In the interim it was adapted into a film and later a play, neither of which I saw.

And perhaps I should stop at this point till I have read it but when I came to write my first book I drew on the format.

That book was The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy which was a study of a small rural community on the edge of Manchester during the first half of the 19th century.

And Mr. Blythe’s wish to record life in a small Suffolk village was the inspiration for my book.

I suspect his will be the better writing and he wrote from first hand experience while mine was a labour of research.

So while I can not claim to match his work I shall read it to learn about rural life in his community up to the end of the 1960s.

Picture; cover of Akenfield, Penguin Classics, £12.99

Lost and forgotten breweries of Manchester ......... nu 1 what a lot

It began as a discussion with Paul over the identity of this brewery on the corner of Ledger Street which was behind Miller Street. 

Ledger Street and that brewery. 1849

It shows up on both the 1849 OS map of Manchester and Salford and Mr Adshead’s  Twenty four Illustrated Maps of the Township of Manchester published two years later.

And as you do I went looking for it, staring with the 1850 street directory which along with listing most of the streets of Manchester & Salford, also includes the principal trades and householders.

Sadly the brewery on Ledger Street was not there but then nor was Ledger Street.

Some of our breweies, 1850

Instead I had to content myself with looking through the breweries which were in the directory, of which there were eight six.  Twenty two were in Salford and the rest were in Manchester.

To these could be added the very small enterprises which were no more than a family and a front room, who made their own beer and served it directly from their their home.

In time I am minded to go looking for all sixty four, finding out something about who they were and how long they survived.

I suspect some will have gone within a decade while others lasted into the following century and a few  will have survived until quite recently.

All of which brings me to  James Deakin’s brewery on Kenyon Street which was off Rochdale Road.

Now why I got Kenyon Street and Ledger Street mixed up I have no idea, but I did and for an hour roamed over the documents connected with Mr Deakin and there were a fair few.

He is there in the Rate Books in 1850 owning the “brewhouse” which had a rateable value of £33 which put his premises way above the neighbouring “workshops” but a minnow compared to the ironworks of John Rowcroft who paid £100.

Kenyon Street and Deakin's Brewey, 1850

That said Mr Deakin was doing well enough to live with his wife and son in Rusholme employing three servants.

A decade later they had moved to one of the posh bits of Ardwick living in a house which was big enough to accommodate their five children and three servants.

In time I will find out more about his business, but for now I uncovered a reference to the firm which “by the late 1880's the business was being run by James Henry Deakin, son of the brewer Henry Deakin. 

The title of the Manchester Brewery Company Limited was given to a newly-registered firm in 1888 when it was created to acquire the business of James Henry Deakin. The firm were based at the Britannia Brewery in Brodie Street, Ardwick, Manchester.”*

So that offers up a wealth of research opportunities and also opens up another line of enquiry because there was a George Deakin operating a brewery from 62 Butler Street just round the corner on Oldham Road.

None of which perhaps helps with finding our brewery on Ledger Street.

For that I suspect it will have to be a trawl of the Rates Books on a cold set day down at Central Ref.

Still someone has to do it.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; detail of Ledger Street 1849 from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, 1844-49 and detail of Kenyon Street, 1851 from  Adshead’s map of 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Pubs and Breweries of the Midlands,  http://www.midlandspubs.co.uk/breweries/lancashire/manchester-brewery.htm

A lost Eltham Palace ........... nu 3 Eltham Palace from the north west

Now I have decided to run a few pictures of what Eltham Palace looked like in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It had long been abandoned as a home for royalty and its grand days were thing of the past.

The occasional tourist up from London called in along with an interested artist keen to capture its former splendour but that was about it.

All very different from now, and a prelude to more stories of the building and its history.*

But in the meantime here then over the next few days are the Palace as you might have seen it during the early 19th century, all taken from that wonderful book on the history of Eltham published in 1909.**

Picture; Eltham Palace from the north west from an old engraving, from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*The Story of Eltham Palace, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-story-of-eltham-palace.html

** The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

Cycling to a beauty contest …….. “the pretty entrants” of 1937

I bet there will be someone who remembers Riding’s Stores Ltd.

They sold cycles and advertised themselves as “The largest Quality Cycle Specialists in the North of England”, with branches on Deansgate, Corporation Street, Market Street and Swan Street, with shops in Moss Side, Rusholme and Stretford as well as here at 362 Barlow Moor Road.

And in their drive to bring cycles to the world they boasted “No Risk - No Bother – No Fuss – It’s so easy, so simple Riding’s ‘Best of All’ Easy Ways”, which meant that from 1/6 a week you could have any Hercules model , with the added bonus of no deposit and a ”Seven Day Free Riding Trial”.

The advertisement appeared in the Chorlton and Wilbrahampton News for July  16th, 1937, but what caught my eye was an additional notice drawing attention to “More Pretty Entrants in Riding’s Great Northern Cycle Queen Contest”, which featured eleven young women, with one posing with a cycle, another in a swim suit and another talking on the telephone.

And in an act of overkill, the company posted yet another reference to the contest calling on women to “Send in your photographs now!  Adding, “Waste no time. This is a marvelous opportunity for some local girl to gain fame and popularity”.

All that was required was a  name and an address on the back of the picture which was to be sent in a “1½d. sealed envelope to Riding’s” main showrooms on Stockport Road. 

The company also embraced all the modern technology, promising that “Elimination contests will be filmed and the final selection will take place at the New Manchester Hippodrome”, which I suppose opened up the potential for a cinema news story.

But if that was not enticement enough there was the promise “handsome cash prizes” and the simply direct question “Will You Be Queen?”

So, there you have it and by one of those little quirky twists, the Riding’s shop on Barlow Moor Road was just four doors down from Ken Foster’s cycle shop.  Now that is a bit of historical continuity,

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; addverts from the Chorlton and Wilbrahampton News, July 1937 from the collection of Maggie Watson

Lost stories in a forgotten street ……. the one behind Deansgate

Now it is easy to shudder and feel outrage at the accounts of housing conditions in the poor parts of Manchester in the first half of the 19th century.

New Gates, Manchester,  1908

Overcrowding, back-to-back houses, closed courts where the sun fought to penetrate, and of course a lack of sanitation matched only by parts of the developing world are the stuff of social history.

But the history books and rarely the social observers of the time burrowed deep to offer up the personal stories of those who lived in the cellar dwellings and the one up one down properties, often built in the shadow of textile mills, and iron foundries and bounded by the polluted rivers that ran through the city.  

Dr Kay, Frederick Engels and a few foreign visitors did paint a grim picture.

And more revealing is the case notes of Dr Henry Gaulter who experienced the first outbreak of Cholera during the May to December of 1832. 

He kept a detailed record of the first three hundred patients he attended describing their physical condition, the onset of the disease and their living conditions but was forced to abandon the exercise as the numbers increased.*

Royton Street, 1851

So, with that in mind I have plunged back into one street off Deansgate in 1851.  In that year it was home to 408 people who lived in 46 houses, nine of which were one roomed back-to-back properties, and the remainder, consisted of four rooms with weekly rents ranging from 1 shilling [5p] to 5s [25p].

The street was Royton Street, and history has not been kind to it.  It never featured in any of the street directories for the 19th century, and progressively lost its houses and half its length to industrial development and finally vanished under the Spinnyfields project at the start of this century.

There are only two photographs of it in the City’s digital collection, and one of those I think has either been misplaced from somewhere else or is much older than the published date.**

I came across the place by chance a few days ago, wrote about it and planned to move on but the detail is as they say in the detail and so I trawled the 20 pages of the 1851 census and then went back for some of the surrounding closed courts.***

One bit of detail was the presence of a Catholic day and Sunday school in the middle of the street, which made perfect sense given that 36% of the street’s residents were born in Ireland and a cursory look at the surrounding area suggest that this was typical.

Royton Street, circa 1880-1900

Nor would the Irish accent be the only one you could hear, for while 50% were from Manchester, there were significant numbers of residents from Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire, as well other parts of Lancashire, seven from London, nine from Cheshire, and even one from Prussia.

Their occupations were as varied as their origins, with a mix of textile workers, four policemen, an architect’s apprentice, and two teachers.

And there were the usual range of skilled trades from carpenters, painters, and glaziers to those engaged in the book and shoe trades, as well as tailors, dress makers, a blacksmith, oastler, and “brick setters.” 

But we are in one of the poorer areas of the city, and so here were labourers, house servants, and those on pensions, and poor relief.

To which we can add children, for over a third of the street were young people under the age of 15, and while plenty of these were attending school others by the age of 11, were employed as errand boys, apprentices, and servants.

Birth places of Royton Street residents, 1851

The census also records the degree of overcrowding, so our 408 inhabitants lived in just 46 houses made up of 89 households.  

Nor does this deliver the true degree of overcrowding.  So picking just three houses, which were numbers one, three, and four, together they were home to 38 people.  

At number one there were 18, divided into three households, at number three, eight divided into two households, and at number four there were 12 living in three households.

It is a picture replicated across the entire street, and while there were some big families, there were also many lodgers.  In total the figure was 72, most of whom were unmarried, were not related, and were occupied in a variety of skilled and non-skilled occupations.  

Of the 72, only 11% were from Manchester, with the rest drawn from all parts of the country, with 43% from Ireland.

Age Profile of Royton Street residents, 1851

Almost every household included some lodgers, and while there were a few “lodging houses” most families shared their home with people they were unrelated to.

All of which raises the question of how big the houses were.  

There were 14 back to back properties which might have had three rooms but equally might have had just two, and the census return is silent on the total number of rooms for these or the remaining houses.  

The surviving properties listed in 1901 indicate that they consisted of four rooms, but by then there were only 14 left which leaves the other 32 a mystery.

Royton Street, 1849

Nor it appears were there any cellars, recorded on the 1851 census.  Now cellar dwellings do show up for other parts of the city, and people are recorded as living in them, so it seems Royton Street was cellar free, or at least, from cellar occupants.

For the curious Royton Street was located between Hardman and Cumberland Streets and its course roughly follows the route of the Avenue in Spinneyfields

In the vicinity of Royton Street, Spinningfields, 2020

Occupations of Royton Street residents, 1851

Next, I have a fancy to explore some of the families and try to delve into what their lives were like.

Location; Off Deansgate, Manchester

Pictures; New Gates, 1908, m8316,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, Spinneyfields, 2020, from  the collection of Andrew Simpson and Royton Street in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49, and Royton Street circa 1880-1900 from Goad's Fire Insurance maps, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/and Royton Street 1951, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford

All that was left, 1951

*Gaultier Henry, The Origin and Progress of the Malignant Cholera, 1833, London, & Appendix A, To the Report of the General Board of Health on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848 & 1849, 1850, London

**Royton Street, Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

***Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 95 Royton Street, 1951 https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/02/lost-and-forgotten-streets-of.html 

A little bit of history in the back garden ……. “Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia”

Two bottles ..... with Scrubbs to the left, 2023

It is a given that if you have a garden at some point something will turn up, and if you are lucky it will have a story.

In ours we have unearthed heaps of animal bones, most of which belonged to Joe and Mary Ann Scott who lived in our house for 58 years and were so keen on their pets that they left bits of them in the garden and the property to the P.D.S.A.

That said in our 46 years of living here, we too have added two dead cats, and a a Superman toy which we bought in Greece and buried in the garden after his head parted from his body.

The reverse of the two bottles, 2023

These I have never gone looking for, but like many I have come across fragments of porcelain with those blue figures of Chinese pagodas and elegant bridges, to which there was the bowl of a clay pipe.

Not a great haul I must admit, and pale when compared to what a builder on Wilton Road has come across.

These include a bottle with the imprint of Mason and Burrows who sold beer, wine, and groceries and had a branch on Beech Road from 1892.*

To these according to Declan can be added, “an old ashtray, a broken wine glass & two more bottles. One is completely free of markings, but very thick glass coloured dark blue, so presumably medicine or poisonous!

The other has a raised glass ‘label’; “Scrubbs Cloudy Ammonia”, so I reckon that wouldn’t have been for drinking either!”

And Declan is right. A trawl of the internet threw up plenty of adverts for the product, all of which seem to have had a battery of uses.

In 1927 one advert suggested “After A Strenuous Game of [golf] a refreshing bath with SCRUBB’S CLOUDY AMONNIA  It also ALLAYS IRRITATION FROM MOSQUITO BITES", while the full range of its uses can be attested by another advert which promised it was 

Scrubb and Co, Southwark Street, London, 2009

“Refreshing as a Turkish bath, Invaluable for toilet purposes, Splendid Cleansing Preparation for the Hair, Removes Stains and Grease Spots from Clothing, Allays Irritation from Mosquito Bites, Invigorating in Hot Climates, Restores the Colour of Carpets, Cleans Plate and Jewellery”.

After which I guess you would be a fool not to slip down to your local grocery store where you could buy it in two sizes confident that one bottle would do for 10 baths.

And keep a stock in for that special time of the year when you would want to “CLEAN UP FOR CHRISTMAS [with] SCRUBB’S CLOUDY AMMONIA IN ONE BOTTLE All cleaning needs two sizes 10d and 1/4d”

John Williams & Son, Beech Road, 1932

Scrubb & Co were variously at 32 Southwark Street in Southwark in southeast London.  The building is still there, and id bounded by the main railway viaduct and stretched along Red Cross Way. 

Today it is a swish Portuguese restaurant but back in 2009 its origins are still very much there to see.

All of which just leaves me the thought of where our bottle would have been bought.

I guess it would be from a shop on Beech Road which might have been Mason and Burrows or perhaps John Williams and Son on the corner of Beech and Wilton, which was a chain of shops across the south of the city and were here by 1932.

John Williams & Co, 2015

For the curious their tiled name is till there in the present Launderette.

And that is it.

Location. Wilton Road

Pictures; the bottles from Wilton Road, 2023, courtesy of Declan McGuire,Scrubb & Co former works, Southwark Street, London, 2009,  John Williams and Son, Beech Road, 1932 from the Lloyd Collection, and Joth Williams & Co tiled sign, 2015 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*A lost Chorlton bottle ….. the Beech Road offi ……… and a trip back to a Dickensian Manchester, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/08/a-lost-chorlton-bottle-beech-road-offi.html

A lost Eltham Palace nu 2 .............. The Banqueting Hall in 1782

Now I have decided to run a few pictures of what Eltham Palace looked like in the 18th and 19th centuries.

It had long been abandoned as a home for royalty and its grand days were thing of the past.

The occasional tourist up from London called in along with an interested artist keen to capture its former splendour but that was about it.

All very different from now, and a prelude to more stories of the building and its history.*

But in the meantime here then over the next few days are the Palace as you might have seen it during the early 19th century, all taken from that wonderful book on the history of Eltham published in 1909.**

Picture; the Banqueting Hall West end, from an engraving in Archeologica 1772, , from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*The Story of Eltham Palace, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/the-story-of-eltham-palace.html
** The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

D Day ...... AD 43 .......Portrait Of An Age ..... and the death of General Gordan

Pan Edition 1961

I have begun re-reading The Great Invasion by Leonard Cottrell.

It was first published in 1958 and describes the Roman invasion and conquest of Britain.*

Now Mr Cottrell had himself been a war correspondent and this book was written only 13 years after the end of the last world war and must have had a real resonance.

“Among the readers of this book may be some who have known what it is like to wade on to an enemy beach under heavy fire. 

Others may have commanded troops in such actions, and experienced that nerve racking moment when all hangs in the balance, when the defenders have the advantage of protected positions, and the attackers have not had time to establish their fighting formations.” 

And in quoting Julius Caesar’s account of the military expedition to Britain in 55 BC Mr Cottrell observed that it “could almost describe an attack on the Normandy beaches or a Japanese island in the Pacific.”

So  there is a directness and a sense of authenticity about the account which other such later books on the subject do not give me.

Michael and Susan Henchard artist Robert Barnes, 1886

Now we all have our favourite books, the ones we return to time and time again to the point that we can  quote back at the author the opening lines or know just what awaits the leading characters just around the next page.

I never tire of those first few lines from A Tale of Two Cities and the sinister and chilling warning at the start of The War of The Worlds

In the same way I am still moved to indignation when the drunken  Michael Henchard sells his wife and daughter at the beginning of Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge.

But history books are different, and mainly because the scholarship moves on and what was fresh and new is at best old and tired and all too often has been proved wrong by new discoveries.

Some of course survive because of the style, wit and elegance of the writing.
Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s social history and Young’s Portrait of An Age are still a joy to read.

I do not think you can better the opening of Young’s Portrait of An Age, **

O.U.P., edition, 1960

“A BOY born in 1810, in time to have seen the rejoicings after Waterloo and the canal boats carrying the wounded to hospital, to remember the crowds cheering for Queen Caroline, and to have felt that the light had gone out of the world when Byron died, entered manhood with the ground rocking under his feet as it had done in 1789.  

Paris had risen against the Bourbons; Bologna against the Pope, Poland against Russia, the Belgians against the Dutch.  

Even in well drilled Germany little dynasts were shaking on their thrones and Niebuhr,*** who had seen one world revolution, sickened and died from fear of another.  

At home, forty years of Tory domination were ending in panic and dismay; Ireland, unappeased by Catholic Emancipation was smouldering with rebellion; from Kent to Dorset the skies were a light with burning ricks.”

And I still enjoy  the closing lines of the essay on the Death of General Gordan by
Lytton Strachey in his Eminent Victorians which having surveyed Gordan’s life and the campaign to avenge his death concludes that “General Gordan had always been a contradictious person – even a little off his head, perhaps, though a hero; and besides he was no longer there to contradict .... At any rate it all ended very happily – in a slaughter of twenty thousand Arabs, a vast addition to  the British Empire, and a step in the Peerage for Sir Evelyn Baring.”****

Penguin Classics, 1989

Set against the measured, and dry writings of so many here is a sweeping comment on British imperialism and a cynical examination of the later Victorian period.

All of which is a long way I know from D-Day AD 43 and the great Roman Invasion.

On the other hand these are the sorts of history books which capture the imagination and want you to read more leading you on to even greater study, if only to know whether Lytton Strachey was fair or Mr Cotteril accurate.

And of course are as entertaining as the those first few lines from A tale of Two Cities and the sinister and chilling warning at the start of The War of The Worlds*****

Pictures covers from Pan Books, The Mayor of Casterbridge, the O.U.P. and Penguin Classics

*The Great Invasion, Leonard Cottrell, 1958

**Portrait of an Age, G.M. Young, 1936

***Barthold George Niebuhr, August 27 1776 – January 2  1831, was a Danish-German statesman and historian who became Germany's leading historian of Ancient Rome and a founding father of modern scholarly historiography.

****Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey, 1918

*****“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.”