On Edge Street in 1969 ........... waiting for something to happen

This is how I remember Edge Street, which is part of that warren of streets which is now known as the Northern Quarter.

Back in the late 1960s and early 70’s it looked tired and run down, waiting for something to happen.

The street was cut sometime before 1793, and the buildings are a mix of late 18th and early 19th century with some from succeeding decades and pretty much all of them have gone through multiple uses in their long existence.

Leaving aside the trail of litter, the street has that air of neglect, but that might just be because we have caught it on a Sunday, when everyone with any sense was elsewhere.

Of course it is very different today, the whole sale market at the end of the road closed a long time ago and is now part of a residential development, and some of the buildings lining Edge Street were demolished to make way for new ones, while the remainder have changed their use, reflecting the new Norther Quarter.

But the Bay Horse Tavern is still there on Thomas Street, and many of the residents and shopkeepers on this stretch of Edge Street, were not so different from their predecessors in 1911, who included a potato merchant at no. 32, a fruits salesmen, coal dealer, and shop keeper, although I suspect few in 1969 would have understand the need for the Patent Ice Company which operated from no.22.

Location; Edge Street, 1969,

Picture; Edge Street, 1969, Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR35NR9v6lzJfkiSsHgHdQyL2CCuQUHuCuVr8xnd403q534MNgY5g1nAZfY,

"I had been bull ward in the bull ring, and once kept one of the gamest bulls in the country,” bull baiting on Chorlton Green

Now every so often you come across accounts of the bull baiting that went on in the township.  

The Bowling Green late 19th century

The stories usually appear on a slow week in one of the local newspapers and are nothing more than a reworking of one of the articles by the historian Thomas Ellwood.

Mr Ellwood wrote twenty-six articles during 1885 and 1886 and these were printed in the South Manchester Gazette.

Part of the value of them is that they drew on the memories of people who had grown up at the beginning of the 19th century and who could recall conversations from the generations before who had lived here during the late 18th century.

So building on Mr Ellwood and avoiding the easy route of plagiarism I dug deep into newspaper reports, census returns and the directories which provided confirmation of what went on in the township on the green over 200 years ago.

"Bull baiting was where bull was pitted against dog in a ring hemmed in by spectators. Our bull ring was situated in the centre of the village green.   The bull was fastened to a chain, about twenty yards long, which allowed him enough space to fight.

The dog’s tactic was to try and seize the bull by its nose but if the bull was well practised at the business, he would endeavour to get the dog on his horns, throw him high into the air and the fall would break his neck or back, but to avoid this, the dogs friends were ready to catch him, so as to break the force of his fall.  Eye witnesses often recalled seeing dead dogs which had been killed during the contest left in the ditches and hedge-rows.

The Horse & Jockey early 20th century

If the bull was slow or just not that good, the dog would not only seize him by the nose, but would hold on till the bull stood still, which was termed “Pinning the Bull”. I suppose to give the bull a chance only one dog was allowed in the ring at a time.

Contests were usually staged during the village wakes, and also at Easter and Whit Week.  Naturally the main sponsors for such events were the landlords of the Bowling Green and Horse and Jockey who had the most to gain from a gang of excited spectators outside their pubs.  

Not that they were alone in profiteering from the event.  The owner of the dog which successfully “Pinned the Bull” was awarded a prize and no doubt some went away the richer having bet on the winner.

There were those in the 1840s who could still remember the notable contests and spoke of the victorious bulls like “Young Fury”, son of “Old Fury” who was regularly brought and baited and the “bull men” like Edward Simmer, commonly known as “Ned” who afterwards was converted to a religious life, and finally became a Methodist local preacher.  

The Bowling Green late 19th century

Or John Cookson who at the inquest of Francis Deakin in 1847 had boasted that he “had been bull ward in the bull ring, and once kept one of the gamest bulls in the country.”  

But its popularity was on the wane and for some years it had all but died out before being revived by a butcher called James Moores, from Deansgate in Manchester.  Not that its revival was greeted by everyone.

There were those who had good reason to regret the appearance of James Moores and his bulls because as he travelled south from the city he brought hundreds “of men of the very lowest character to witness the proceedings.  

The sport, if that is what we can call it suffered another blow when Samuel Wilton enclosed the green in 1818 turning it into his garden."*

*Extract from THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Pictures; The Bowling Green seen from the east from the collection of Tony Walker and the southern side of the Hotel from Alan Brown's collection, both from the late 19th century and the Horse & Jockey from the Lloyd collection early 20th century

My Eltham ………… half a century ago

Now, for all of us who left Eltham, and pretty much never really went back finding pictures of the place in the year we left can be bitter sweet.

On the one hand there are those warm nostalgic memories which are dashed by the changes, which just don’t fit with how you remember the place.

In my case it was the Eltham of the 1960s when I was growing up, attending Crown Woods and discovering the joys and pains of my first girlfriends.

And so when I left for Manchester in 1969 I rather thought the place would still be the same when I came back, which for a while it was, but in my absence, they moved the railway station, obliterated the old bus terminus, replaced Wilcox’s with a McDonald’s and over time closed most of the pubs I took my first illicit pints in.

Along the way they even destroyed the small shopping precinct which held the old Midland Bank, where I opened my first bank account.

All of those lost haunts bounced back today when I came across a series of pictures of the High Street from 1970.

The quality isn’t wonderful, but they are my Eltham, frozen in time, and gone for ever.

They come from Man & Town which was a pack of educational source material aimed at getting kids to look at original historical and contemporary documents.

The idea was rather than tell kids what to think, the documents with a set of briefing notes were aimed at getting them to make judgements about past events and present situations.

The packs were produced by Jackdaw Publications and were very popular in the 1970s, and in the way these things go I bet there will be people who remember using them.

In the case of Man & Town the challenge was to trace how towns develop and the decisions town planners might make to manage change.

Not all the documents were about our High Street but enough were, and interestingly mirrored a real exercise by the planners in the Council who were looking at how Eltham could be changed.

And that is it.

I have chosen just three pictures from the High Street collection, and I leave you to wander back the half century.

Leaving me just to say I did go looking for Jackdaw to ask permission to reproduce the images.

Copyright and seeking permission is important to me, having seen my own stuff lifted and paraded across the internet. 

But after an exhaustive search I am not sure they still exist.  There is what I think is an American company with the same name but they do not appear to be connected to the UK company.

Back copies of many of the packs are still available and command prices between £10 and £20.

Location; Eltham High Street

Pictures; Eltham in 1970, from Man & Town No. 80, courtesy of Jackdaw Publications

Manchester in the September of 1969, memories from the new boy

Manchester sky line the old and new, 1970

Now had I been born just a decade earlier the chances were I would have done my time as a conscript in the army.

As it was at the tender age of 19 in the September of 1969 I arrived in Manchester with a suitcase and an address in Withington and the promise of an academic career at the newly formed Manchester Polytechnic.

There were those at the time and since who have bemoaned the end of National Service, but not I suspect many of the young men who for eighteen months marched and drilled.

Three years after the last world war the Government decided to retain conscription which meant that healthy young men aged between 17 and 21 years old were expected to serve in the Armed Forces for 18 months, and remain on the reserve list for four years.

They could be recalled to their units for up to 20 days for no more than three occasions during these four years. Men were exempt from National Service if they worked in one of the three "essential services": coal mining, farming and the merchant navy for a period of eight years. If they quit early, they were subject to being called up.

The future College of Commerce, 1965

But all that I missed and instead a year later than most of my friends I left home with all that brash confidence of youth to do three years with John Donne, William Shakespeare the odd romantic poet and lots of dead historians.

And fifty-four years later I am still here and hence this occasional series of reflections on the city that adopted me and in particular the places I remembered as a young Londoner in the September of 1969.

Not that this will be one of those sentimental journeys into a comfortable world which was better than now.

Just a few miles from where I read Wordsworth and explored the events of the Industrial Revolution and the complexities  of the French Fifth Republic, the Corporation was sweeping away a century of sub standard housing and coffee meant a lukewarm brown liquid with a hint of beans and a mass of frothy milk.

But there was a buzz about the place.  It was there in those bright new buildings of glass and steel which were going up around the city, the modern station concourses at Oxford Road and Piccadilly and the Mancunian Way.

For me it was the contrasts.  Sitting in the old Milk Maid facing the gardens, there was a panorama of the old Victorian city with its mix of elegant show warehouses, offices and shops while above us was the impressive Piccadilly Hotel.

And yet just a few minutes away were the tiny side roads dominated by shabby industrial buildings where somehow the light and warmth of the sun rarely penetrated.

The City Barge, Rochdale Canal, 1970

Now many of these places I discovered on long walks around the city when we should have been in the library.

I guess Canal Street pretty much sums up those walks.  I was drawn to it because it was close to the college and was bounded by the Rochdale Canal.

Back then both the canal and the street were drab, non descript and a little tired looking.  The attempt at something more exciting was summed up by the City Barge Restaurant in the stretch of the canal from Chorlton Street to Princess Street.

It was of course out of our price range but had the promise of something new and exciting and something to aspire to.

Still we had those wonderful three course meals offered at lunch time in the city centre Chinese and Asian restaurants for just three shillings a head.  Even now fifty six years on I smile at how sophisticated I thought I was when eating Banana Fritter and captivated by the Chinese version of custard.

Looking at the City barge from Princess Street, 1970

Which I suspect is just beginning to border on nostalgic tosh, so I shall close with that more serious reflection that in that drive to bring Manchester into the 1960s there was a serious attempt to sweep away all that Victorian heritage.

And so between new office developments, shopping precincts and traffic flow schemes some fascinating buildings and important bits of our history disappeared.

And more of that serious stuff another time.

Pictures; the new College of Commerce in construction, W Highham, 1965, m64167, and City-Barge-Restaurant Canal-Street, Dawson-A, 1970, m49402, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

On the parish, seeking benefits in the Stretford of 1807

Mary Crowther was just 18 in 1765 when she was removed from Stretford by the authorities and sent back to Chorlton.

They did this under a removal order which gave them the power to send anyone who had settled in the parish without permission back to the place of their birth.  It was a straightforward piece of economics which was designed to root out anyone who might make a claim on the parish for support in a time of need.

And Mary may well have been just such a person.  In 1765 after arriving back in Chorlton she gave birth to the first of three children all born out of wedlock.

In a period of heightened debate about benefits and the drain on the public purse the actions of St Matthew’s Parish authorities might seem all too familiar.

Now Mary’s story has been well covered already*so instead I shall concentrate on some of the other decisions made by the overseer of Stretford.

The years just before and after Waterloo** were hard times and the parish of St Matthew’s responded to requests for help.  So in the year 1810-11, James Mee the overseer regularly paid out between £40 and £90 a month in relief, with the highest sums in the winter months when little work could be done on the land.

But it was always the bastardy payments which feature prominently.

For women like Mary Crowther who had done penance and had had three illegitimate children between 1765 and 1782 there was a greater recognition of the father’s responsibility. Mary could turn to the law for help and although we have no records for Mary there are other recorded cases.    

And it is those from Stretford which throw a light on how unmarried mothers were treated. These are the Orders for Maintenance of Bastard Children, and Bastardy Bonds which identified the adult male who would support the child as well as other miscellaneous Orders Relating to Bastardy. ***for , and across the country many of these records have survived in greater quantities.

They reveal a straightforward system designed to identify the father and bring him to court.  This might begin with an examination of the mother by a magistrate or if she was already in labour by a midwife.  These Bastardy Examinations were common in the early eighteenth century.    Having achieved the information a Bastardy Warrant was issued ordering a Constable to bring the father before the Magistrate.  If the case was successfully made then a Bastardy Order was issued which identified the man and stipulated the amount he was to pay.

The documents were pre-printed with spaces for the magistrates to write the names of the mother and father and the amount that had to be paid.  Some of the Stretford ones for the years 1702-1811 reveal the estimated costs which the father was expected to pay.  

Often the sum was decided on a yearly basis which would then be paid quarterly.  This amount varied and may have been based on circumstances.

The figure of 26 shillings [£1.30p] for the year payable until the child was fourteen appears in some of the Stretford documents but others set an initial payment to cover the birth ranging from £2 down to 10s. [50p] and specify that further payments should be made weekly.

These also varied from 30d [7p] to 7d [3p].   In some cases the mother was expected to contribute and this could be 18d [7p].

Attempting to make sense of these awards is fraught, but some idea of their monetary worth can be gauged by making a comparison with wage rates and some examples of the cost of living.  Just twenty years later in 1830 Mary Bailey and Higginbotham the farmer agreed an annual salary of £7.10s [£7.50] from which she bought  in January a pair of stays which cost 10s.6d, [52p], in May a new cap worth  1s.8d [7p] and in July repaired her shoes for 2s.8d [14p].  The cost of renting on the Row for a farm labourer varied from 10d [8p] to 5s [25p] a week.    Finally the day rate for women workers in the south west was between 7-10d [3p].

Against this backdrop of wages, and spending the magistrates determined that the cost of maintaining an illegitimate child was 7d [3p] a day and this was slightly more generous than the 26 shillings {£1.30p].

So in the year 1807 which seems typical, Catherine Ashcroft received 5/- on April 28th, the widow Pinnington 2/6d and Margaret Thompson 3/-

But the system was flawed and there were many in the early nineteenth century who said so.    The moralists argued that payments to a single mother only encouraged illegitimacy and they may even be evidence to suggest they were partly right.  Both here in the township and in the Parish of Ironville in Derbyshire and no doubt many other areas,  some woman gave birth to a number of children out of wedlock. Their story is also covered in my book.

The next task will be to trawl the records and see what happened to Catherine Ashcroft, the widow Pinnington, and Margaret Thompson.

I suspect that their stories will be like many of the women from Chorlton, who went on to get married, although in the case of Mary Crowther she did not, living out her days with one of her sons in a wattle an daub cottage on the site of the Trevor arms on Beech Road.

And as ever I stand by a correction from Bill Sumner who wrote "The Stretford records you allude to were not in the Parish of St Matthew as that church was not then built, they are the records of Stretford Old Chapel and much more can be read of similar cases in The History of the Old Chapel of Stretford by Sir Bosdin Leech. Charles Walker of Barlow Hall settled later in Longford House Stretford and became Poor Law Guardian for Sretford, he ruthlessly cut down on the number of persons receiving benefit from the town excluding all who were originally from elsewhere".

Pictures, Mary Crowther's gravestone from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  map of Stretford from Greenwoods map, courtesy of Digital Archives, 1818, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/  Bastardy Orders, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson 2012, the History Press, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton
**The Battle of Waterloo 1815
***  St Matthew Overseers of the Poor,  Manchester Archives L89/9/14

Looking out on the High Street with memories of past girlfriends

Even on a Sunday in late October our High Street can be a busy place.

And looking out from the parish church I am reminded of the countless times I stood in the shelter of that entrance waiting for a friend.

More often than not it will have been a girl friend although thinking about it there were only three steady ones.

That said the corner of Well Hall Road and the High Street was a favoured place for me and Jenny to meet up.  In term time she lived in the lodge at Crown Woods and if we were going out to the cinema this was a sensible place to meet.

And this was in that pre mobile age when once the choice of where to meet was made you had to stick to it or suffer the consequences of missing each other and trying to second guess an alternative which otherwise meant mutual recriminations on the Monday morning.

So along with the entrance to Avery Hill and the Wimpy bar this place will always have a special place in my memory.

Picture; the parish churchyard, October 2015 from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

Looking into the future of Eltham High Street in 1975

The High Street in 1910

Now I don’t normally go in for then and now pictures but I have made an exception with these two images from a 1975 document issued by the Council.*

The book was part of a planning consultation and fell through the letter box after I had long left Well Hall for Manchester.

I am not sure what my dad and sister Stella thought of the process, or the ideas but now both the planning exercise and their suggestions  are as much a piece of history as any of the stories I usually write.

The High Street in 1971

So along with the 1970s pictures there is also an insight into how the planners were thinking back then and just how far the bold new world they suggested has come about.

And for me the images have a special connection. Our Stella worked at the library and from 1964 till I left Well Hall in '69 it was a regular venue, along I remember with Marks & Spencer's where I bought my first ever fruit yogurt.

Now that is not only revealing a secret but says so much on the new horizons which were opening up for a lad from south East London.

Pictures; from A Future for Eltham Town Centre, Greenwich Borough Council, Planning Department, 1975

*Of town plans and visions of a future that never quite happened, Eltham in the 1970s and Manchester in 1945.http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/of-town-plans-and-visions-of-future.html

Travels through a lost bit of railway history ........ sixty-one years ago

 I won’t be alone in having a long love affair with the former Liverpool Road Railway Station.

The 1830 Warehouse, 1965

It opened in 1830 along with a warehouse and was the first passenger railway in the world connecting Manchester to Liverpool.

Not that passenger traffic was the reason for its construction, that decision rested with the economic priorities of providing a cheap form of transport to shift goods between the two destinations.

So successful was the venture that within a few years extra warehouses were constructed, a second passenger platform was built and just 14 years after it all began, a new station was opened at Hunts Bank and our site was given over entirely to goods.

The story is one I often return to and for two decades was a place from where I ran conducted talks and walks.

The platform with former passengerwaiting room beyound, 1965

It had been abandoned by British Rail in 1975 and bits sold off to Granada TV and later still the rest became the new home of the Greater Manchester Museum of Science and Technology. 

My first encounter with the place was in 1980 during the “Steam Expo” event, when I took a series of good and not so good pictures.

But others had come with their camera before me, including Ron Stubley and as yet unknown photographer in 1965.

The unknown photographer took four colour slides which are part of a collection which cover Manchester, Stretford and out to Chorlton and Wythenshawe and are a mix of industrial scenes, some old historic buildings and more than a few of well-known city centre sites.

Former passenger platform, 1965

The collection was donated to me by the daughter of the photographer, but somewhere along the line their identity was lost, although I am still looking for the letter, email or Facebook message which alerted me to the names of the woman who donated them and the photographer.

Those for the Liverpool Road site are a window into what was still a working area and show just how far the buildings had been knocked about over the 135 years since the  complex had opened.

The 1830 warehouse still retained the loops holes through which goods would be taken in from the rail side and the arches through which wagons would have been pulled into the building.

The plaque, 1965

But at some point, one of the arches had been lost and a much larger entrance constructed.

As late as the 1990s it was still possible to find the turntables used to turn wagons 90 degrees and transfer them inside.

Likewise, bits of the old passenger railway station had survived but all were in a vey sad state.

Along with these relics there was the commemorative plaque above the doorway on Liverpool Road, recording the site’s history and set against that washed out red paint which was part of the old British Rail livery and indeed may been remanent from the former LMS colour scheme.

On that last note I await to be corrected.

Location’ Liverpool Road

Pictures; walking the old Liverpool Railway site in 1965, from the 1965 collection

Neglected stories ........ handloom weaving in Chorlton

Now if you have been on one of those history walks around town chances are that at some point the guide will enthusiastically point to a building with long windows on the upper floor which were “to give the maximum amount of natural light for a handloom weaver.”

And then there might follow an impassioned lecture on the noble life of the handloom weavers who were to be squeezed by the coming of the factory system.  

All of which is true up to a point.  Some weaving families could command a very good standard of living into the 19th century and there is something quite attractive about a life where all the family were collectively engaged in all the processes of carding, spinning and weaving, working at their own pace and free to pursue other interests.  As Marx said “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner.”

But there is also a lot of romantic tosh written about handloom weaving.  It was by the 19th century an increasingly unprofitable way of earning where the majority of weavers were competing against the industrialization of the different processes, were at the mercy of the middlemen and had to foot the cost of maintaining a workshop.

I doubt that many have seriously researched the extent to which the townships around the south of the city had their own weavers.  But there is evidence for them in Stretford, Urmston, Withington and Burnage and here in our own village.

In some places the records are fairly slim but in others the stories are rich and detailed.  Now I want you to read the book so I shall be outrageously selfish and limit myself to stating that the evidence is there in the census records in newspapers and in the oral testimony recorded just thirty years after the last remaining weavers were plying their trade in some of our townships.

In the June of 1832 20 cottages with their loom houses  at Barlow Moor, came up for auction, while just 25 years earlier here in Chorlton, George Jones who had described his occupation as weaver baptised his two children at the Methodist chapel on the Row*.  

Nor was he alone, because during the same period he was joined by another two weavers who had walked over from Stretford and another from Withington to baptise their children in the same chapel.

*The Row is today Beech Road

Pictures; Liverpool Road, circa late 18th century from the collection of Andrew Simpson, advert from the Manchester Guardian June 9th 1832

The shop that ..... sold stories

It’s not an original tale but today l visited the shop that sold stories.

Ah my young friend you will instantly tell me l am referring to a book shop that purveyor of the imaginations of novelists, poets and scholars with countless volumes offering a window on the world.

But not so because here in a ramshackle property down an uninviting alley purpoting to be a newsagents was indeed the shop which sold stories. 

Stories to fit the demands of any customer provided by the owner who was the custodian of a thousand and one fantasies.

For a small down payment and a sinister promise our visitors could order a story of romance, light entertainment or dark horror just by supplying a title. 

And then for an hour and more as day slid into dusk the shop keeper would weave an entrancing voyage of love, laughter or unnerving terror. 

And at the end my young friend our customer would fulfil their sinister promise and depart into the night.

And the promise you ask? That is only vouched safe by the owner of the shop that sold stories.

Picture; the shop, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Each week with Look and Learn

Now if you are of certain age, old enough to remember hearing She Love You in 1963, and feeling the light had gone out of the world at the news of the death of Otis Reading then chances are you will have read Look and Learn.

I first fell across it in the winter of 1962 as I was moving away from the Eagle comic and for the rest of that decade and into the next came it came into our house each week.

It was a fine mix of useful knowledge, adventure stories and offered the work of some of the best artists.

None of the earliest copies have survived but we have something like a 100 from the early 70s.  By that time, I had left home for Manchester but on the regular visits back I would slide into reading the editions which fell through the door.

And that is all I have to say.

Location; my childhood

Pictures; Look and Learn covers, no. 576, January 27, 1973, and no. 592, May 19th, 1973, from the collection of Stella Simpson

When the media rediscovers the North

Now every so often the media discovers a place called the North.

The Dinner Hour Wigan,  Eyre Crow, 1874

In the 19th century observers from the south and indeed as far away as France and Germany made the journey north to our great industrial cities to report on how steam, machinery and textiles were transforming what had been small Georgian towns into densely populated places of enterprise and industry.

Along with creating new concentrations of people in remote valleys where a single textile mill or coal mine took advantage of fast flowing water courses and rich veins of the dark stuff.

The visitors marvelled at the new ways of production, were repelled by the awful housing conditions and shuddered at the life expectancy of many who worked in the factories, foundries, and dyeworks. 

As early as 1776 Matthew Boulton, who had teamed up with James Watt to make and sell steam engines, proudly announced to James Boswell, “I sell here, Sir, what all the world desires to have – POWER”

And just under two centuries later, the historian Asa Briggs described Manchester as “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution”*.

The Forging of the North, Observer, 1965

In between, novelists, social observers and Government officials regularly reported on the energy, novelty and squalor they found in the North, while in the years after the Great War, writers like George Orwell wrote vividly of the decline in the heavy industries, and its impact on unemployment and life chances.

Not that this should surprise anyone who lives in the North or that it remains a topical subject for political pundits, news programmes and journalists, who picked over the bones of the Northern Power House between 2010 and 2016 and more recently all the promises of “Leveling Up”.

As ever the devil is in the detail as many who have made a train journey from Manchester to Leeds or Sheffield will testify.

All of which is an introduction into a collection of old colour supplements from the Sunday Times, and the Observer, that came north with me nearly four decades ago

In 1965 the Sunday Times looked at how traditional values had changed in the North, including an iconic picture of two women out in Elland in West Yorkshire with their hair in rollers half hidden under scarves.

A year later and the Observer weighed into the topic with three part look at the North.  The first focused on “The Forging of the North” which examined “the story of the national epic”, ranging over all the basic heavy industries, the great northern cities as well as the smaller towns and villages and a collection of “Victorian worthies” most of whom have faded into obscurity.**

Sadly, the second of the three has been lost but was on the decline of the basic industries, while the third looked at “New fortunes old Myths”.  

Manchester skyline, 1965, Observer Magazine, 1965

Reading through the six articles of number three 58 years on I am struck by the mix of factual and perceptive reporting which is peppered throughout with  more than a few stereotypical assumptions.  

So, one article pointed out the inadequacy of some civic planning departments reporting that “When John Millar, Manchester’s new chief planner arrived in 1961 charged with redeveloping the crumbling central area, he had a staff of one elderly man…..[which meant that] when the development boom reached the Northern cities in the early 1960s places like Manchester hadn’t even sufficient staff to insist on comprehensive redevelopment orders.  Reluctantly they were bulldozed into accepting piecemeal schemes”.

I don’t doubt the accuracy of the statement but can’t square it with the sweeping and exciting plans of post war Manchester laid out in the City’s 1945 Plan.  But then it might be the difference between the plan and its execution.

Manchester 2021

Away from the factual reporting there was a slightly “southern prejudice” reflected in the surprise that northern working class women had discovered fashion.

And so half way through a piece on “The New North” was a caption under a photograph of some mill girls which ran “Young people in the North today follow and make fashion.  Above stylishly dressed and coiffed girls in a mill in New Mills”, as if factory girls had not always been keen on fashion and looking good.   

A cursory glance at the idealized painting the Dinner Hour, Wigan, by Eyre Crow from 1874 shows a group of young women with colourful scarves, shawls and hairdos which are carefully protected by hair nets.***

And it turns up again on a photograph of the new town of Peterlee in County Durham with its street of modern houses and piles of NCB coal which have been delivered to the curb side.  

Now having lived in the North East I know about the coal, but can’t quite escape that other historic southern notion that working class families kept their coal in the bath …… those of course of them who had a bath.

But the prize must go to the last article “Nothing Fancy in Coronation Street” where “Shirley Conran has a typical North Country meal with Violet Carson – television’s Ena Sharples”.  The dishes offered up were Bacon ribs on onion, Lancashire hotpot, Roast Beef, Yorkshire pudding and Bakewell Tart. 

The Avenue, Spinneyfields, 2021

All of which could be found anywhere in the country and certainly on the table in our house in south east London.  

Added to which was the final comment on wine in the North.

Both my parents who were from the North and the Midlands would have smiled at Cyril Ray who was then the wine columnist for the Observer who concluded the article with “Lancashire would rock with laughter if I recommended a wine to go with hot pot. Stout is the thing”.

I await stories of hair rollers, and a succession of examples where "northern life styles" are a part of essential life from Watford down to Bristol and across to Caney Island and Norfolk.

Leaving me to go off and pour over the accompanying commentaries on life in the North in the age of Levelling Up, and remember that it was Doctor Who who said, "Every planet has a North".

Location, that big place called the North

First posted 2022. 

Pictures; , The Dinner Hour, Wigan. The Forging of the North, Observer, January- February, 1966, Eyre Crowe, 1874, Manchester City Art Galleries, and Manchester in 2021 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, 1963

**The Forging of the North, Observer Magazine, January-February, 1965

***The Dinner Hour, Wigan, Eyre Crowe, 1874, Manchester City Art Gallery, https://manchesterartgallery.org/collections/title/?mag-object-2265

On the High Street with Mr Rideway in 1933

I am standing outside numbers 116 & 118 Eltham High Street in 1933.

And this I know because in that year our old friend Llwyd Roberts painted the two properties which were just up from the old Castle pub.

At 118 there was the saddler William Barnes who had occupied the property from at least 1919 while nu 114 was the business premises of Charles Rideway who ran a dairy.

I can track Mr Rideway back to 1901 on the High Street selling his milk and by 1933 he seems to have diversified into sweets, chocolate and tobacco.

His immediate neighbour had been Arthur Moody who in 1919 described himself as a picture framer, and may still have been there when Mr Roberts painted the picture.

All of which just leaves William Barnes who had taken over the business from George French around 1919.

Now I don’t know whether the saddling business of Mr French was not doing so well but sometime between 1901 and 1911 he began renting out some of the building.

In room there was Charlotte Eliza Rose who at 71 described herself as a widow and in another were Mr and Mrs Brading.

So there are a lot of leads to follow up, including when the French family moved on, why Mr Rideway decided to diversify and how long his dairy continued to deliver the milk to Eltham residents after 1933.

I know that he died in 1954 and by then was living in Park View which is now Passey Place and given that he had seven children they may be much more to be revealed.

And the children do help place when the family arrived in Eltham.  The first three were born in Somerset between 1892 and 1896 while their fourth was born in Eltham in 1898.

And the key too much of the research will be the yearly street directories along with the electoral registers which are available down at the Heritage Centre and which will allow us to follow the movements of Mr Rideway, Mr Barnes and Mr Moody.

In the course of which we may come up with advert for Mr Rideway's business.

But for now I am interested in Mrs Charlotte Eliza Rose who was born in Eltham and had been married for 51 years, but that is for another time.

Picture; 116-118 Eltham High Street 1933, Llwyd Roberts.

Source material, census returns, 1901-11, Post Office London Directory 1909, 1919, and Electoral Roll 1932

What a difference 68 years makes …….. deep in Chorlton

Now here is an image of Chorlton which will nudge some memories.

We are on that twisty path which leads off from Brookburn Road, following the line of the Brook.

I have walked it countless times over the years, but only always remember it as a tree lined route into the heart of the meadows.

As such on a wet February day with the light fading fast it can be a magical place, which is no less so in high summer when the dense vegetation makes it a place where you can feel quite alone.

Originally the road had been constructed to give access to the sewage plant which was built and enlarged from the 1870s.

Before that the area which we now call the Meadows, and which was part of the flood plain for the Mersey had been farmed as meadowland, which is a type of farming dating back to the 17th century and involves careful flooding of the land at intervals, for the production of early grass to feed the cattle.

In the 1930s, bits were used for tipping rubbish and more recently it has become part of the Mersey Valley, whose wardens dramatically altered the landscape with whole planting of trees.

So, this picture is a revelation of how it once looked.  The caption says, “Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Brookburn Road, Withington Sewage Works, Boy Scouts Hut, Entrance to Manchester Corporation (Rivers' Dept), Withington Sewage Works from Brookburn Road, Boy Scouts Hut in middle distance”.

Leaving me just to say, ......... step forward those who remember it as such.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Entrance to Manchester Corporation (Rivers' Dept), Withington Sewage Works from Brookburn Road, Boy Scouts Hut in middle distance, 1958, R.E. Stanley,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The twisty, turny tale of Elizabeth Jane Dean …….. Didsbury, Manchester and Heaton Mersey

If there were  ever any pictures of the people who lived in Warburton Street at the beginning of the last century they have all been lost, or at best sit in an album, or cupboard, unlikely ever to see daylight.

No. 4 Warburton Street, 2020

And that is a shame because we know who they were, and something of their lives and families.

By extension it is possible to uncover many of the residents of the five cottages on the south side of the street back to 1845, along with the man who built and owned them.

The question as ever, is who to pick, and just what their stories might tell us about Didsbury.

I started with 1911, partly because I had the street directory for that year in front of me, and because the 1911 census was the most detailed of the eight census returns for the years 1841-1911.

Of the five, number 2 was occupied by John Crompton and Sons, and was listed as “paint stores”, no, 4 was William Richardson, plate layer, and no.6 was Mrs. Emma Smith who described herself as “Householder, but who I know was a “launderess”.

To which I can add that later in 1911, no 8, was home to the Schofield family, and that Mr. Walter Schofield was a “night soil man", and at no. 10 were the Blomileys, two of who worked as labourers, one was a charwoman and the youngest member of the family was a “gardener’s apprentice”.

And to complete the picture, while Mrs. Smith lived alone in her four roomed cottage, the six members of the Schofields has to manage in their two up two down, and the Blomiley’s to squeeze their lot into just three rooms.

The occupations of our residents might seem at variance with the popular image of Didsbury as a well healed and comfortably prosperous suburb of Manchester, but amongst the professionals, and wealthy business families there were still many who made their living from servicing “the better off”.

Barlow Moor, 1854

Mrs. Smith would have washed their linen, young Jane Blomiley cleaned their houses, and Mr. Schofield and one of the Blomiley’s were engaged as night soil men removing the contents of the privies of the rich.

And that left Mr. William Richardson a platelayer who ensured that the tracks on the stretch of line from Didsbury Railway Station to Manchester  Central were up to the scratch.

But instead of these families it is the story of Miss Elizabeth Jane Dean who captured my interest.

In the January of 1911 she was living on the opposite side of street, by the April had moved to Countess Road, of Hardman Street and earlier had lived at both no. 4, as well as no. 1 Warburton Street.

Added to which she spent her early years in the heart of the city in the space between the Rochdale and Ashton Canals behind Great Ancoats Street.

She was born in Didsbury in 1860 and was living on Warburton Street by the following year with her mother and sister. Over the next few years, the family moved to Hardman Street, but are lost to the records after 1866, until Elizabeth Jane turned up in Ancoats on Lees Street in 1871, living with her grandmother.

Elizabeth Jane's Manchester, 1881

Just where her mother was living is unclear, and a decade later Elizabeth Jane is just a few streets away, staying with her uncle and aunt, and described herself as a “Winder”, before reappearing in Didsbury, back with her mother on Warburton Street in 1891.

Trying to unpick the story underneath the census return is complicated, open to speculation and may just not be my business.

But her mother at some point had married a Mr. Blomiley, but by 1891 was a widow.

She shared the house with a son who carried the name Blomiley, and Elizabeth Jane, and a grandson aged two, whose surname was Dean.

It would be easy to leap to the conclusion that the young grandson was Elizabeth Jane’s, and certainly a decade later Elizabeth Jane acknowledged that this was her son and records a second one born in 1896 when she would have been 36.

All of which is rather murky and leaves me reflecting on what Elizabeth Jane might have made of her life in the city, in an area sandwiched between those two canals, and surrounded by textile factories, iron works and coal yards.

It goes without saying that this new world of noise, steam, and  drab streets would have been a world away from Didsbury which in the 1870s still had the appearance of a rural community even if it was filling up with houses and people.

I cannot be sure just when Elizabeth Jane gave up the factory and the house on the street by the canal, but her eldest son was born in Didsbury in the summer of 1888, which gives us a possible date.

Her later life was spent as a “tailoress”, and the last reference to her so far comes from the 1911 census which records her living on Countess Street, just minutes away from where she began life in 1860, living with her eldest son, and an Elizabeth Ann Woods aged 31.

A decade earlier Miss Woods was described as the foster sister of our Elizabeth Jane, which raises some intriguing questions about who her parents were given that she lived at no. 4  Warburton Street with Mary Blomiley and Elizabeth Jane.

Heaton Bank House, 1851

So that is about it.

We began on Warburton Street, and have pretty much ended up there, having travelled into the city and back out again, explored the occupations of some of the residents and along the way discovered a little of the life of one Didsbury resident.

But not quite, because just as I was finishing, I came across Mary Dean, who had been born in 1828, baptized in St James Parish Church, and at the age of 32 had given birth to Elizabeth Jane. Her father was a handloom weaver, and in 1841 the family lived in Barlow Moor.

Ten years later and Mary was a employed as a house servant at Mersey Bank House in Heaton Norris, whose owner was the grand Sir Ralph Pendlebury, who proudly recorded on his census return that he was not only a Knight but a factory owner, “employing 170 hands”.

All of which I think will takes us off on a new journey.

But before I do, I am adding a comment from John S Horton, "Sir- regarding the gentleman engaged as a plate layer, being an ex railwayman born in Didsbury but growing up in Kent, 'platelayers' worked on and were allocated 'patches' of line for which they were responsible for maintaining, not only the track but also the vegetation on the embankments and drainage, but the 'patch' was only 2 miles long, and therefore the gentleman would not have been responsible nor would it be possible for him to maintain the line as far as Manchester Central. Such a distance would have engaged several Plate layers or even gangs to maintain however I am happy to be corrected if my understanding is incorrect".

Adding, "sorry to have disrupted your wonderful tale, - the platelayer would have been under the authority of the “District Engineer” . Said platelayer would notify the signalman of his “direction of work” be it towards “Withington and Albert Park” Station ( Down Line) or towards the bridge over the track carrying “Kingsway”., (Up Line). 

The signalman would notify the platelayer of any reported track issues by train crew, be it “wet patch” caused by blocked drainage, making the train bounce as it went over and if at line speed could cause a derailment, engaging the platelayer having to “dig out the offending patch and re pack with fresh ballast” or by simply jacking up the track with his portable bottle jack and placing a simple soup tin full or less of small stones/ gravel to level the track up. I could go on and on but don’t want to bore you lo

".

Location; Didsbury, Manchester, and Heaton Mersey

Pictures; No. 4 Warburton Street, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Barlow Moor, 1854, & Heaton Mersey, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1854, Elizabeth Janes’ Manchester between the two canals, 1894 from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Remembering a lost Chorlton farm from over 88 years ago

Now I am looking at two pictures of Park Brow Farm which was doing the business of growing food from before the start of the 19th century.

And what makes the two pictures all the more remarkable is that I know one of the sons of the last farmer.

He is Oliver Bailey and his family ran the farm from sometime after 1911 and before that had been on Chorlton Row from the 1760s.*

Over the years Oliver has made available a whole heap of family documents from the contract his ancestor signed with the Egerton’s back in the middle of the 18th century to receipts for night soil from the 1850s, house and farm inventories and lots more.

Added to which he was able to describe in some detail the inside of Hough End Hall before it was much knocked about by a succession of developers in the late 1960s.

And his memories have also opened up the story of Park Brow Farm before it too was developed with that small group of houses to the west of the farm house and the barn conversion.

So I shall start with the farm yard and this photograph from 1938.

Oliver tells me that one of the young lads is his brother and the building behind them with the tall chimney was “used for boiling up p food bought from the UCP,” while the two elephants Mr Bailey hosted when the travelling circus arrived were watered from the wooden pump directly in front of the building.

And given that this was the farm yard, the two downstairs rooms of the building to our left were the kitchen and office, with the living room and dining room facing south onto the garden which backed on to Sandy Lane.

Now I could go on but think I will save the rest for another day, which will include more pictures of the front of the farm house, something on the certificates the farm won and a piece of garden furniture which links the farm to the old Assize Courts in town.

Those intrigued by the idea of hosting two elephants can read the story on blog which will also offer up some fine pictures of the Bailey bulls on the land where Adastral House now stands and can summon up in their imagination an image of the young Oliver driving live stock through Chorlton back to Park Brow from the railway station.

All of which just leaves me to ponder on how rural is the scene of the farm house when this picture was taken in the summer of 1940.

Location; Park Brow Farm, Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures, the farm yard, 1938, m17381, and the farmhouse looking north, 1940, m17388, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Chorlton Row is now Beech Road

What a difference a century makes ............. looking down to Eltham Hill in 2015 and 1915

I like this view from St John’s church yard down towards Eltham Hill.

It is one I have taken for granted but nicely shows just how Eltham has changed in a century and reminds me how I have yet to track down the story of Eltham Brewery and the Kenward brothers who were listed as the owners in 1914.

The brewery was originally further up the High Street but so far I haven’t discovered much in the way of any references to either building.

And that is a bit odd given the number of people who will have once worked for the Kenward brothers.

That said I did come across a James Kenward at Rosslyn on Footscray Road in the 1890s but he appears not to have been connected with brewing, so the hunt goes on.

In the meantime I will also go in search of shop keepers who occupied the properties on the south side of the road.

Location; Eltham, London












Pictures; looking down to Eltham Hill, 2015 from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitpatrick,  and the brewery in 1915 GRW 325 in 1917, GRW 215, http://boroughphotos.org/greenwich/ courtesy of Greenwich Heritage Centre, http://www.greenwichheritage.org/site/index.php

A military academy in the High Street and that other Eltham Lodge

Cliefden House, 1909

Mr Thomas Hopkirk ran his military academy from Cliefden House in the High Street during the middle decades of the 19th century.

This grand 18th century property is still there on the High Street opposite Passey Place.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when Mr Hopkirk opened his doors but it will have been around 1849 for that was the year he and his wife Charlotte baptized their daughter in the parish Church and it may well have been Mr Hopkirk who added the extension.

Together this made for a large 17 roomed house which could accommodate “The Preparatory Military Academy” with its 32 students.

They were aged between 11 and 18 and were from all over England as well as Ireland with a significant group from the empire.  Along with Mr Hopkirk there was another teacher, a cook, a nurse and three house maids.

Originally the house was fronted with a tall wall behind which was a small garden, all of which was swept away when the High Street was widened.

Behind those walls Mr Hopkirk set about the serious business of running “a school for young gentlemen.”*

His reputation may well have been made in the school he ran in Woolwich on Frances Street and with an eye to a good location this first “Preparatory Military Academy” was sited close to the barracks.

There were 500 of these academies in Kent in 1851 with 15,411 students and in the half century before the numbers had waxed and waned, a situation which pretty much carried on during the decade before Mr Hopkirk had established himself in Eltham.**

Now this period is still a little murky but the establishment was listed in Baggot’s History, Gazetteer and Directory for Woolwich in 1847 and it will just be a matter of trawling the directories for the years before that date to determine when it was opened.

What I do know is that six years earlier Thomas had been employed as “the mathematical master” along with a classics teacher and a writing master in a school in Totteridge which was once a village in Hertfordshire and is now part of the borough of Barnet.

Like his own academy this was designed for young gentlemen of whom there were 69 aged between 9 and 17 and all born somewhere else.  Nor were they alone for during the mid 19th century there were two other private schools in the area.

Both Thomas and his colleagues were aged just 20, and there is no indication of who the owner was, nor have I come across any details on his background which makes it difficult to work out how he raised the capital to start his academies.

The west end of the High Street,in 1844,  nu 305 is Cliefden House

As ever the answers will turn up as will the date when he closed the school and moved on.

It was still there in 1861 but had gone by 1871 and it may just be that we can narrow it to sometime between 1865 when he was registered to vote in Eltham and three years later when his address is given on the register as London.

But like all research this has to be qualified with the observation that he is still listed in the Post Office Directory in 1868 on the High Street.

What makes it more difficult is that he and Charlotte are missing from the 1871 census and don’t reappear until a decade later, by which time they are in Dulwich at the appropriately named Eltham Lodge.

Such must have been impact Eltham had on the couple.  It is of course just possible that the house had already acquired the name but I doubt it.

And it was here that Thomas died in March 1881 leaving a personal estate effects valued at under £30,000 and Charlotte in 1912.

All that is left is to record that he in 1865 he voted Tory and that he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Pictures; Cliefden House Eltham 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 detail of Eltham High Street, 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

*R.R.C. Gregory, The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909

**  Census of Great Britain, 1851 Education.  Along with a similar census in religious worship this was undertaken in the April of 1851 with the general census