Looking for the lost 32 cottages and 15 cellars, home to 208 people

Looking down Commercial Street, 2015

Now I first wandered down Commercial Street sometime in the 1980s looking for Omega Street, and its neighbours Alpha Street and Fogg’s Place.

And I must have missed them by just a few years.

That said I don’t think they would have featured in any glossy guide to comfortable inner city living.

In 1853 they had formed a complex of back to back housing consisting of 32 cottages and fifteen cellars inhabited by 208 people.*

Commercial  Omega Street, 1849

Directly opposite was the Egerton Mill, while behind them there were two more and the surrounding area was dominated by more textile mills, a handful of iron works and the Hulme Brewery.

And I doubt even the most optimistic estate agent could gloss over the noise from the nearby railway or the smell from the river Medlock which flowed in a curve close by.

Back in the 1980s you could still see the outline of the house walls in what at the time was a temporary car park but when I returned some 20 years later these had vanished under new tarmac and there was nothing left to show what had once been there.

Looking across to Omega Street from Commercial Street, 2002

Now another eighteen years on and the surrounding buildings had either been demolished or made genteel and the worst I suspect in the form of pollution comes from the noise of loud music in the flats opposite or the conversation of the office workers making their way home.

And even that car park is now boarded up which may soon mean even space inhabited by those three streets and 32 cottages will be lost for ever.

Location, Manchester

Pictures; Commercial Street, 2014 courtesy of Andy Robertson, Omega Street, 2003 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and area in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Report of the Manchester and Salford Sanitary Association 1853

When fast food predated the 20th century …..instant meals for the workers on our Victorian streets

We take for granted that breakfast was and still is for many something you have at home but this has not always been the case.  

Throughout history people and it does tend to be the poor have eaten out, often from fast food vendors and not I suspect always out of choice.

You can pick any one of a number of reasons, which usually come down to the early start of their day or the simple fact that the means to cook much in a shared room was limited.

Street food was available in Pompeii before it vanished under the ash of Vesuvius, and similar shops and stalls can be found across the Roman Empire, while Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor, published in 1851 devoted eighty-eight pages to the purveyors of almost every imaginable fast food, from fruit, fried fish, coffee and “green stuff”.”*

And tomorrow I will explore those London street sellers courtesy of Mr. Mayhew, but today I am revisiting The Victorian City, Everyday Life in Dickens’ London by Judith Flanders. **

I came across it back in 2012 and it is a prefect companion to that older survey of the capital’s eating habits.

Today eating out can be expensive and a life choice, but back in the early 19th century it was pretty much of a necessity.  Most of the working-class lived-in rooms of shared houses with just a fire place for rudimentary cooking extending to boiling a kettle or a pot of something, and anyway lighting a fire was a costly affair which would then continue to burn long after everyone had left for work.  

Added to which Likewise water was not always readily available and might only be obtained from a street pump and then not all the time.

By contrast on the way to work there were  coffee stalls which had the added bonus that in cold weather the mugs would warm the hands as well.

Some stalls were just simply a board laid over a pair of sawhorses and a can of coffee kept warm by a charcoal burner and others elaborate tent like structures.  A cup of coffee and “two thin” – two pieces of bread and butter might cost half a penny.

Nor was this way of life restricted to London.  Across Manchester and indeed all our cities and towns could be found similar fast food sellers

Picture;  Hot food on sale on the streets, the pictures date from the 1890s which takes them a little out of the time frame of the book, The Infirmary Corner at the top of Market Street, The Rovers Return, Shudehill, and Angel Meadow, by H.E. Tidmarsh from the book Manchester Old & New, Arthur William Shaw 1894

*Mayhew, Henry, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851

**Flanders, Judith, The Victorian City Everyday Life in Dickens’ 2012

So were you in the Eltham Hill Gaumont on Sunday September 12 1965?

Now you pretty much know it’s time to get a life when you go looking for the date for a film listing for the Eltham Hill Gaumont.

Eltham Hill Gaumont, 1998

The listing was posted recently by Kath May and advertised the four films showing for the week beginning September 12.

For those with time on their hands on that Sunday the cinema was showing for just the one day The Unknown with Dean Jagger and Teenage Frankenstein with Whit Bissell, Phyllis Coates and Gary Conway.

With titles like that they were of course X rated under the old Board of Censorship classification and if there was anyone still unsure the listing carried the warning Adults only.

Now I have never really given it much thought but I suppose Sunday in the cinema in the 1950s and 60s would be a slow day.

The cinema , circa 1938

Most people would have gone on a Friday or Saturday night and the week would be given over to a more discerning audience, leaving Sunday for those just over 18 with money left in their pockets and with a taste for the macabre.

For the rest of the week starting on the Monday and running for a full six days there was Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn in Last Train from Gun Hill which was an A and Yul Brynner in Escape from Zahrain.

I went looking for the plots of the four films and wish I hadn’t bothered.  Suffice to say that today I doubt that even the most desperate of TV executives would look to showing them on even the graveyard slot.

So as a reward and in answer to Kath’s musings of when this week was I went off and roamed the records.  

Film poster, 1957

Now the films themselves were no clue.  The Unknown dated from 1956, Teenage Frankenstein from the following year and Last Train from 1959 which left Escape from Zahrain which was made in 1962.

But given that you can on the internet find a day if you have the month and the year with just a little bit of fiddling it was possible to place Sunday September 12 in 1965.

Which just leaves me to record that the Gaumont had opened on April 14 1938 showing Queen Victoria with Anna Neagle and closed on June 19 1967 with David Niven in Happy Go Lovely and Dana Andrews in Duel in the Jungle.*

It reopened as a Mecca Bingo Club and the rest as they say is a down to two fat ladies and a joyful shout of Bingo.

But I wouldn't have done the job properly if I didn't also try to date the second picture of the cinema.

It was showing Will Hay's film Oh Mr Porter which was released in 1937 and so I am guessing it will be the late 1930s.

And that's all I am going to say except to thank Kath for finding and posting the film listing leaving me to go off and watch the paint dry on the back door.

Picture; the old cinema November 1998 courtesy of David Simpson and sometime before 1952, cousinadnab taken from Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991 and film poster for Teenage Frankenstein, 1957 which is in the public domain

* Gaumont Eltham Hill, Cinema Treasures, http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/14991

The 1893 Brass Band ............ lives revealed.

There has been a brass band in Chorlton since the 1820s which must make it one of the earliest.

 During the first half of the 19th century Chorlton was still a rural community and many of those who played in the band earned their living from the land and had been born in the township.

But as Chorlton grew and attracted new people who made their living from other trades so the composition of the band changed.

 And it was the chance discovery of a photograph of the band dated 1893 which has revealed the story of this band. It has been possible to track almost all of the men from that picture. Most had not been born here and some still lived elsewhere.

They were clerks and warehouseman, with just a few still working on the farms and market gardens.

Like many bands ours was a close knit group with a few families supplying many of those who played, and again like other brass bands these men lived close together, concentrated off Crossland Road and Beech Road.

Picture; from  the collection of Alan Brown,1893

A Chorlton wedding in the April of 1913 and a tiny mystery

I doubt I would ever have got to know about Mr Hugget Billing and Miss Vivien Horsfall Attwood if it weren’t for Sally’s wedding photograph.

The couple were married at St Clements Church in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on April 16th 1913, and on that Wednesday the Manchester Courier was on hand to record the event which according to the paper was “crowded.”

And I think that may have been down to Vivien’s father who was a journalist and newspaper editor.

As such he will have been well known, added to which the family had lived in Chorlton on Cavendish Road from at least 1901 and so I guess there would have been plenty of local well wishers.

Mr Herbert Huggins Billing was a salesman who had been born in Rusholme, lived in Ancoats and in 1911 was residing in Longsight.

The couple settled in Chorlton and lived at 42 Claude Road.  Vivien died in 1930 and Herbert Huggins fourteen years later.

In time I will delve deeper into their stories.  I know they had two daughters and just before his death Vivien’s father was living opposite them at number 55 Claude Road.

Of course all such research runs the danger of becoming intrusive especially if there are direct living relatives and so I am minded to concentrate on what their lives might tell us about Chorlton and Manchester during the first half of the 20th century.

The records of how much all three left when they died reveal something of their financial background and a future hunt will tell us which paper Vivien’s father edited, and in time I might solve the little mystery of why her parents and her husband are all buried in Southern Cemetery but she is missing from the family plot.

That maybe because she died at Oakmore in Cheshire but I can’t be sure.

That said even I have to own up to a little curiosity and wonder why Miss Attwood gave her age as 28 in 1913 when she was in fact 31.



Picture; A Chorlton Wedding, the Manchester Courier, April 17 1913, from the collection of Sally Dervan

Stories from a century and a bit of making what we eat ….....…

 The story of what we eat and what we are sold to eat over the last 126 years has seen regular fads and fashions dominated by diets, “healthy living” options along with the not so healthy, and increasingly dominated by processed foods, global trade and the power of advertising.

Instant food, The Golden Egg, 1966

It is a topic I keep returning to. *

And at 76 I guess like many of my generation I have seen the lot.  From the end of war time rationing and seasonal food, to the abundance and variety on offer, which brings with it a reliance on the quick ready meal and the quest for the new and different.

No more the excitement of the first strawberries or new potatoes of the year, nor the easy and familiar foods of my childhood and that of my parents.

And in the process, we seem ever more distanced from the field and the fun of taking raw ingredients and turning them into something we enjoy and above all knowing exactly what went into the meal.

Green beans slowly cooking in tomato sauce, 2026

At which point it is important to introduce the caveat that this is against the backdrop that we live in a part of the developed world, where famine and food shortages are not at present a reality. 

But some processed foods do creep into my kitchen whether it be cheese or ready-made pastry.  The first in all its rich diversity is something I would miss, while I confess shop bought pastry does make life easier.  But there I think I draw the line.

Yesterday I wrote about “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available”. **

And today I want to develop that theme and in particular the starting point of what is available.

Spicey vegetables, cracked wheat and mint, 2026

It was the TV chef Keith Floyd that happy and at times irreverent man of food who brought it home to me that you don’t start with the cookbook but instead focus on what you see on the market stall or in the supermarket.

Now back in the 1980s I was just beginning to be serious about cooking and on the night before the next meal I would pour over a heap of cookbooks make a choice and carefully record the ingredients dismissing Keith Floyd’s advice.

But the following day I would find that some of those vital parts were not available and others were decidedly sad looking.

By contrast the Floyd approach not only meant you came away with the best that was fresh, but it offered up the challenge of what can I do with a pile of white beans, the freshest of the fresh green beans and the newly arrived on offer Greek halloumi?

And while all the books can offer up well tested ideas there remains no substitute for a big chunk of experimentation guided by that simple of all advice, what if I mix this with that?

Gigantes, with feata cheese, 2026

The Greeks do gigantes which is just white beans cooked slowly in a rich tomato sauce to which I add a bit of paprika dribble with olive oil and eat warm or cold. 

And along the same lines using those freshest of fresh green beans I add a heap of slowly cooking tomatoes with plenty of healthy-looking basil leaves.

Fried halloumi, and salad, 2026

Both can be starters or when combined with some fried halloumi, a portion of rice or cracked wheat you have a wonderful main dish.

And then there is the humble potato which I have been known to cook adding some avocado to create a plate of green mash which will go nicely with salad and spicy roasted cauliflower.

None of them take long to prepare and make.  In the process you know what has got into them and if you do want to add salt, sugar or anything else it’s down to you to judge the quantity.

But I draw the line at tofu and polenta, both of which I have cooked, cooked again and cooked again and despite variations in the method and what I add to the stuff I remain unconvinced.

What all of these meals from gigantes, avocada mash, and green beans have in common is that they don’t take long to make, and you are the arbiter of the quantities of addiatives.  

Added to which most of them cost little to buy, combine and cook.

Pictures; The Golden Egg menu, Andy Robertson, 1966, and stuff I cook and eat, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Avocado and potato mash, peas cucumber, sliced tomato and peas, 2026

*Food History, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Food%20History

**Stories from a Greek table and that food advice, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2026/07/stories-from-greek-table-and-that-food.html

Looking for Mr. Henry Charles Digby of Eltham ……… you go looking for one …. and you find two

I am the first to say that history is messy and just when you think you have got a story from the past just right, the past throws you a wobbler.

And that is what happened today when I decided to follow up a post from yesterday.

I first came across a picture of the Old King’s Head in the catalogue of Greenwich Heritage Centre, wrote a story on the pub and moved on, fully intending to go back and write some more.

Of course, I never did, but after reposting the story  yesterday, I was drawn back by the name of the postcard publisher, who was a C.H. Digby of Eltham.

Finding Henry Charles Digby proved relatively easy.  He was born in Walworth in 1854, and was living in Camberwell in 1891, working as a clerk.

A full ten years later he was married with a daughter and lived in Beckenham where he worked as a “Printer’s manager”

By 1910 he was on Eltham High Street at no. 31 and from at least 1918 was at no. 6 Glenlea Road where he died in 1936.

All text book research, and the connection with printing, made the story of the postcard publisher.

Except that also in Eltham, at the same time was another Henry Charles Digby.  Both appear on the electoral rolls from the 1919 onwards with the second Mr. Digby living at Footscray Road and later Southwood Road.

What distinguishes them is that my first Henry Charles was married to Rachael, while the second was married to Beatrice Deborah, but both were living in Eltham with their respective wives from 1919

At first I missed the glaring fact that there were two wives, and two different addresses, and only spotted that something was not quite right, when one Henry Charles died in 1936 and the other was still alive two years later.

So, there remains a mystery, but it will be one that someone will help solve, perhaps coming up with more picture postcards, marketed by one of our Mr. Digbys, and locating both on the 1911 census which I have failed to do.

Location Eltham

Picture; the Old Kings Head, High Street Eltham, GRW 276, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/
courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Sources; Census records, Enu 11 15 Camberwell, Cambewell, London, Enu 16 51, Beckenham, Kent, Electoral Rolls for Woolwich, 1910-38, Burial Register St John's Eltham, 1936, Directory 1925, Probate, 1936

*At the Kings Arms waiting for Fred Wisdom to pull a pint, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/05/at-kings-arms-waiting-for-fred-wisdom.html?spref=fb&fbclid=IwAR3GYAPWiZaK8PRGUZ0kbHOnpuKKzx3mmp9r52SxI6-alog4zdsJrZeKzHU

What we have lost ....... inside the Corn Exchange

I really liked this metal and glass structure.

It was in the Corn Exchange beside Exchange Square, and I always thought it was an innovative way to fill a space.

Added to that I rather enjoyed sitting in there sipping an espresso and waiting for the shopping expedition to finish.

But it has gone since then the space around it was transformed from a retail centre to a series of themed restaurants from Italian, to Thai, and many more.

The Corn Exchange is a listed grade II building and was originally the Corn and Produce Exchange built in 1897 and opened in 1903.

Its role as an important centre for business suffered during the 1920 and 30s and and by the time I arrived in Manchester in 1969 its role as a trading floor were over.

But I remember it as a place full of independent traders ranging from second records and comics to clothes and jewellery.

You could spend hours wandering the stalls on the trading floor and in the surrounding rooms, but that IRA bomb did for all this.

The building was severely damaged and many of the traders relocated to what has become the Northern Quarter, and the building was redeveloped as the Triangle specialising in swish retailing, but it never seemed as busy in later years, and despite a re branding in 2012 seemed to miss a trick.

And then it closed reopening as an interesting place to eat.


Location; Manchester









Pictures; interior of the Triangle, July 2013

*Corn Exchange, Manchester, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Exchange,_Manchester

Stories from a Greek table and that food advice

 "Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Simple dish, 2026

It’s the sort of advice that could roll off the tongue of any one of a range of TV cooks or from the pages of those glossy recipe books.

And just for good measure the message is accompanied by heaps of pictures of far away places and the odd real story of authentic farmers in remote villages as yet untouched by the modern world.

Put all of that together and some happy suburban chef will not only offer up the meal to stun friends and family but regale them with tales of cooking over a stove in a rural village.

Always it will be from a friend of a friend  who passed through the place  before the young villagers disappeared off to the towns and cities.

Leaving the old, less adventurous and traditionalist to live amongst the abandoned cottages falling into ruin.

Abandoned in Assos, 2019

And that brings me tonight’s pasta dish. 

It took roughly 15 minutes to make and transported me back to a tiny taverna off the beaten track on an adventure across one of the Greek islands.

Ten minutes out from the Piraeus, bound for the islands,1981

Back then the holidays like the food we ate were simple.  

You flew into Athens on a midnight flight, waited around the Piraeus till the ferries started and by degree island hopped.

After which you caught a local bus or splashed out on a taxi.

On one occasion the bus set us down in a small town square, and that was where we came across the restaurant.  

It was small, the menu limited to what had been brought in from the fields and the local wine came to the table in an old recycled juice bottle.

The place to eat, beyond the square by the sea, 2017

And on that day in that taverna  what was on offer was pasta tossed in tomato sauce with a handful of olives.

Simple quick and perfect.

And this evening because l had some tomatoes and olives I replicated that dish.

Pasta, tomatoes, olives, capers and cauliflower, 2026

The tomatoes made a light sauce to which I added the olives a handful of capers and some peas, and a bit of  cauliflower. 

It was essentially just bits waiting to be used up, and probably the next time because the bits will be different the dish will also go off in a new direction.

And so to the pasta.

Our cupboard is full of different types and while I know each should be used for different dishes  I just please myself, and so on a whim, I used my new favourite, a thick long pasta with a hollow centre, called Bucatini.  It has that added attraction that bits of the sauce end up in the hollow tube.

It wasn’t quite that long past Greek meal, but it delivered that mantra “Keep it simple, keep it fresh and use whatever is available".

Location; our kitchen

Pictures; scenes from the Piraeus, some Greek islands, and that pasta dish, 1981-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Buying your meat from Mr Unsworth of 2 Chorlton Green in 1909 .... Chorlton's corner shop nu 10

The caption on the picture just says “James Unsworth’s butcher shop on the corner of the Green Albermarle Road.  This shop later became and still is a barbers shop. Private photograph, origin unknown.”

Now I remember it as a barber’s shop, regularly visiting it during the 70s and 80s and even taking my eldest.

Bob who had the business when I went there had been born in Chorlton and had plenty of stories about the place.

I can date the picture from sometime after 1903 and before 1911.

This I can be certain of because back in 1903 the terrace of three shops and houses had yet to be built and from at least 1911 this butcher’s shop was run by Mr Mark Glazerbrook who was recorded in the directories from the start of 1911 at no 2 Chorlton Green.

A decade earlier he had been helping his father run the family butcher’s shop in Railway Street in Ardwick, and in 1910 he married Lillian Carr.

So just perhaps this was their first married home.

That said within another ten years he was trading in Reddish all of which points to the high turnover of some of these small family businesses.

Mr Unsworth was at number 2 in 1909 when his neighbours were Ernest Bugler, cycle maker at number 4 and Stanley Moss, grocer at number 6.

Two years later both James and Mr Moss had moved on.

I don’t suppose we should be surprised for back in the early 20th century there were plenty of butchers, grocers and green grocers in close proximity in Chorlton and competition must have been fierce.

Just opposite was Whittaker’s the grocers and up along Beech Road there were more grocery and butchers shops with even more across the green and behind.

And that is about it except to say I got through the story without commenting on the meat on display in the open air, the sand on the shop floor or  Mr Unsworth’s long knife.

On the other hand, here is the shop in 1979, when those of us who wanted a haircut and a good natter would call in at Bob's.

And that really is it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; of Mr Unsworths' shop circa 1909 from the Lloyd collection and Bobs's in 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Eltham High Street ......... looking for Mr Brown

Now, it is so easy to get lost in an old picture of Eltham.

Eltham Village, date unknown

This is one that my friend Tricia found and posted recently.

The caption says Eltham Village and the post mark on the back is 1904.

That said I think the photograph maybe much older, given that the picture has been heavily retouched.

It is a familiar one showing the old brewery and the High Street.

And as you do I went looking for clues, and there on the corner of the wall on the southern side is a shop sign for Thomas Brown.

The shop of Mr Thomas Brown

This usually offers up a way of anchoring the scene in a time, because Mr Brown should show up on a census return and a street directory.

But he doesn’t.

There is a Thomas Brown and this one lives on Eltham High Street but in the 1880s and 90s he was residing in Sun Yard and gave his occupation variously as a road labourer and gardener.

Nor did he appear to have a son called Thomas.

The earliest street directories I can access are from 1914 and no shop keeper called Thomas Brown appears on the list.

That said I did discover that four doors up from the old Chequers pub were the “dining rooms” run by a Mr Charles Wollard who was still there four years later.

His near businesses included a cycle manufacturer, a watch maker, two confectioners, an oilman, a linen draper, and Mrs Alice Brotherton’s refreshment rooms.

Eltham Brewery

I will in due course go looking for Mr Wollard’s dining rooms which may have been a cut above his rival.  Mrs Alice’s premise were a modest affair and no doubt consisted just of the front room of her five roomed house.

She was there from 1911 and it may well have been a way of making an income after her husband who was a parish road builder had died.

They had lived just over the road in Jubilee Cottages and it would be nice to think that some of her neighbours might have dropped in or that she had a small order delivered from the brewery opposite

Of course that is just fanciful tosh and gets me no nearer a date for the picture postcard, which does not even provide the name of the manufacturer of the card.

Still it is a nice picture and I thank Tricia for finding it.

Location; Eltham

Picture; Eltham Village, circa 1904 from the collection of Tricia Leslie

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 20 ............. Market Place

New Cathedral Street, 2016

Now I like the way that history has a habit of repeating itself.

So here is New Cathedral Street which runs from Market Street to Exchange Square.

Like me there will be many who remember it being cut in the 1990s following the IRA bomb.

But I had totally forgotten that less than a century ago there was a similar thoroughfare that pretty much followed the same route from Market Street towards the Cathedral.

Market Place, 1900

Back then it was called Market Place and continued as Old Millgate before joining Cateaton Street at Cathedral Gates.

In the 1850s a stroll down the two streets would have taken you past the Wellington Inn, the Black Boy and the Falstaff Taverns, as well as offering up the Fish Market, Fruit Market and the Poultry and Meat Market.

A full fifty years later and while some of the buildings and their usage might have changed the route was still as narrow and twisty leading to the Old Shambles.

And for those of a more adventurous or careless approach  running parallel was a short stretch of Corporation Street which gave access to a string of tiny streets and courts with names like Bull’s Head Yard, Blue Boar Court Sun Entry and Paradise Court.

Market Place, 1851

Now none of those have been recreated, they sit under the new Marks and Spencer and Selfridge stores.

But armed with a few old maps and with a bit of imagination you can at least walk along New Cathedral Street and the ghost of Market Place.

And of course at certain times of the year when the outdoor Markets have come to town there is that added bit of interest from the stalls which might just give up a flavour of the area as it was in the past.

Location; Manchester

Picture, New Cathedral Street, 2016, & Market Place, 1900, from Goad’s Fire Insurance Maps, and in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 16 down along Scotland by the Irk

Now I wonder how many people who live in the high rise blocks of flats on Scotland have much knowledge of its past.

Scotland, 2016

It is one of those odd streets in Manchester which run down from Red Bank following the bend in the river Irk.

I first came across it in the late 1970s when the old slums that had once dominated Red Bank had vanished leaving just a vast expanse of empty space waiting for something to happen.

Once the area had been a dense warren of streets home to part of the Jewish Community who had settled here and across in Strangeways.

To the west just over Ducie Street was the Workhouse and to the south the river and the railway lines of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway.

Scotland, 1851

In the 1890s looking out from the row of back to back houses that ran along Scotland its residents were just a short walk from a tannery, the Red Bank Spring and Axel Works and a shed load of small workshops.

Go back just fifty years and you could have added a piggery, lime pits, timber yard and a rope works to the industrial scene.

In time I shall go looking for the inhabitants of Scotland, trawling the census returns for the details of their lives, although I doubt that any will appear in the directories.   In 1911 Salter’s Directory never bothered to include it in the list of streets which says a lot of the level of poverty of the area.

All of which will be in direct contrast today.

Pictures; Scotland, 2016 from the collection of Antony Mills, and Scotland, 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, 1851 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Will those responsible ……… return the drinking fountain to the Rec on Beech Road

It is one of those silly stories which started with a couple of pictures of the Rec in the early morning.

Early morning on the Rec, 2021

And progressed through to a newspaper report from September 1897 of an ordinary meeting of the Withington Urban District Council at which Mr. Burgess “intimated that a gentleman in Manchester, whose name he would not at present mention, had offered to give a drinking fountain to be placed in Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.*

I had been looking for information about the early years of the Recreation Ground on Beech Road.**

It had been opened in the May of 1896, and was gift form Lord Egerton of a strip of land which had for centuries been known as Row Acre.***

And here I went very  wrong, because so engrossed was I in the research that the fountain and the Rec came together and for a brief while I went searching for just where the drinking fountain might have been located on what is now called Beech Road Park.

Waiting for something to happen, 2021

All of which will allow Mr. Pedantic of Provis Road to mumble that the story is a nonsense, and artificially connects pictures of the Rec on a Tuesday morning with the real drinking fountain which was on Chorlton Green.

And he would be right, leaving me to reflect on that earlier bit of public open space which is surrounded by two pubs, the old parish burial ground, the village school along with two former farm houses.

Today most of us think of Chorlton green as an open space of grass ringed by trees but this was not how it has always been.

Before the turn of the 19th century it may have been much bigger and indeed for most of that century was not even open to the people of the village, having been enclosed by Samuel Wilton and not returned to public use until the 1890s.

And then for a great stretch of time remained without grass but did have a pretty neat water fountain.

The Green, circa 1900

The picture dates from 1906 when the Horse and Jockey was still just a set of beer rooms on either side of the main door, Miss Wilton’s outhouse still jutted out from the building and the space between the main entrance and the sweet shop was still a private residence.

I have always liked the lamp which stands on the green, with its hint of Narnia.

And back in the May of 1986 I can remember walking past it in the early evening and coming across a string quartet playing around its base.  Today people would just take it in their stride mutter something about it being typically Chorlton, but back then it struck me as the promise of things to come.

Which later that night with the defeat of the Conservative candidate and the election of the first Labour Councillor it  indeed seem to herald something new.

But being a historian I have to own up to the fact that the following year the Conservatives were back but they were on borrowed time, and 1987 marked the final year that a Conservative would be elected from Chorlton to the Town Hall.

The year before may have been the first string quartet on the green but it has not been the last.

The drinking fountain, circa 190o

I have to say I prefer the grass but lament the loss of the fountain.  

First it lost its cups and then vanished sometime in the 1920s or 30s.  To my mind that was a loss.  Public fountains are wonderful places to meet people, spend time chatting and just having a drink on a hot day.

Once it would have been the village pump which offered all three and which on hot summer days had the added bonus of a place the kids could play.

Now there is a lot more history to explore in the photograph of the fountain but I rather think I will leave that for another time.

To which Michael Wood has added, "My recollection is that the fountain on the rec was located centrally outside the shelter, as on the attached snip from the georeferenced maps website showing OS 25” 1892-1914 series.  

It was the same design as was used in Chorlton Park near the tennis courts, a perfunctory iron structure with domed hoods over the outlets, operated by a button on top -  nothing like the elaborate ornamental feature on the Green.  Can’t find an image at the moment, but I could draw one!  

The Rec, 1914

They must have been a common municipal feature in their time, but by the mid-sixties they were semi-functioning or defunct. "

And I hope he does, as it is I never knew about the bandstand.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Rec very early on a Tuesday morning from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the drinking fountain on the green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection

*District Councils, Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1897

**Public Recreation Grounds at Withington, Manchester Guardian, May 18th, 1896

***Breaking News ……….. the Rec on Beech Road is officially opened, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/breaking-news-rec-on-beech-road-is.html

Shopping on Well Hall Road in the summer of 1907

Well Hall Parade in 1907

Now I am back with two more from Greenwich’s collection of old photographs.

They are both of Well Hall Road and are separated by just eight years.

Of the two the first offers up much more detail of what this row of shops looked like just over a century ago.

And it is a world away from today.

It starts with those ornate lamps protruding from the shop fronts which may have been lit by oil but I suspect will have been gas.

The chemist,  the fancy draper and the watchmaker, 1907

Then there are the large windows  with their iron frames which have just a hint of ornate decoration, which are topped by the names of the owners some of which will have been painted but others might have been etched on glass.

And finally there are the shop displays some of which adhere to that old Edwardian maxim of pile them high and sell them cheap.

Now I rather think it must either be a Sunday or early one morning as most of the shops have their blinds down, even though some have opened their large canopies.

On balance I would go for a Sunday afternoon sometime in the summer judging by the number of  pedestrians and the way the light is falling.

And for those with an even keener eye for detail there are no tram lines and of course a total absence of traffic bar the solitary horse and cart.

The caption says 1907 and assuming that there hasn’t ben a rapid turn over of shop keepers the shop on the corner with Greenvale Road opposite the Co-op was Mr William’s who was a cycle maker and seems to have left his shop signs propped up outside.

Little change in 1915 on Well Hall Road

And using the same street directory for 1908 it is possible to identify all the shops and their owners up to the chemists run by the London Drug Company.

Nor has much changed in the eight years that takes us up to the second picture taken in 1915.

By then the tram has arrived, there is a little more traffic which might just be explained by the fact that the shops are open and there are a fair few people about.

It is easy to forget that our parade of shops would have been as colourful as those of today and each would have displayed their names on the awnings which on this sunny day were pretty much all down.

Picture; Well Hall Road in 1907, GRW 378, and 1915, GWR380 http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

Lost in the attic .............. a new collection of photographs of Chorlton........ nu 1 Whitelow Road

This is Whitelow Road sometime in the early 20th century and with the picture comes one of those intriguing little stories.

It is one of a collection of images which were donated to St Clements Church and were found in the attic of a house.

And that is about all I know of the history of the twenty or so photographs of Chorlton.

All except one date from sometime after 1900 and measure 25.5 cms by 42 cms and have been reproduced from picture postcards.

I would love to know who went to all the trouble of first collecting and then enlarging the images and later storing them away.

Now there will be a story there but I doubt it will ever come to light.

So instead I shall concentrate on this one which shows a gang of labourers at work.

I don’t have a date but the company whose name plate appears on the steam engines was Davies Brothers, Asphalt Road Makers who were listed in the 1911 directory with an office on Princess Street and a depot on Green Lane.

Green Lane ran from Brook Street to the Garratt Bridge by the River Medlock in Chorlton on Medlock and long ago was swept away by new developments which included the old BBC Broadcasting building.

What makes the picture interesting is that it is one I have never seen before and comes with a companion photograph which also shows Whitelow Road with the same team of workmen.

Both contain a wealth of detail from the steam engines, barrels of tar to the wooden sets and the large number of labourers.

This was after all at a time when much of the work still relied on muscle power and so despite the steam engines it was still down to shovels, wheelbarrows and a lot of effort.

But the pictures also include that small band of spectators who have been drawn to the scene.

Like the workman they stare back at the camera with that mix of poses, some stopped in their tracks, a few looking curious and the rest those who just can’t miss the opportunity to be in the picture.

And of these the one I am drawn to is the chap in uniform pausing with his parcels to be caught on camera.

Now I am sure there will be someone who can help explains the use of the long wooden beam across the road and others who will want to speculate exactly where along Whitelow Road the pictures were taken from so I shall close by reflecting on how many more pictures of old Chorlton are sitting in attics across the township.

Pictures; Whitelow Road date unknown, from the Simpson Collection