Of the street sellers of Ices and Ice Cream .... and the day in 1851 when Mr. Mayhew got it very wrong

Now when I want to fall back into the London of the 1850s, there is no better source than the observations of Henry Mayhew whose descriptions of London life appeared first as articles in the London daily press, and were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.*

They are a fascinating insight into how the poor lived and worked, and chief amongst these were the street sellers, and these I have already written about.**

And so as I have become interested again in the manufacture and sale of ice cream in the 19th century I turned to Mr. Mayhew, who for once didn’t quite get it right. 

"I have already treated of the street luxury of pine-apples, and have now to deal with the greater street rarity of ice creams.

A quick-witted street seller – but, not in the provision’ line- conversing with me upon this subject, and said: ‘Ices in the streets! Aye, and there will be jellies next and then mock turtle, and the real ticket, sir.  I don’t know nothing of the difference between the real thing and the mock, but I once had some cheap mock in an eating house, and it tasted like stewed tripe with a little glue.

You’ll keep your eyes open sir, at the Great Exhibition; and you’ll see a new move or two in the streets, take my word for it.  Penny glasses of champagne, I shouldn’t wonder.

Not withstanding the sanguine anticipation of my street friend, the sale of ices in the streets has not been such as to offer any great encouragement to a preservation of the traffic”.

Alas Mr. Mayhew didn’t include pictures of the ice cream sellers, so I have fallen back on The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall.

Location; London in 1851

Pictures; The Baked Potato Man, and the London Coffee Stall, 1851 from  London Labour & the London Poor 

*Henry Mayhew, Introduction, London Labour & the London Poor 1851

*London Labour and the London Poor, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/London%20Labour%20and%20the%20the%20London%20Poor

Walking along Gun Street in the spring of 1851

Gun Street in 1844

Now this is another one of the walks I would like to have taken in the spring of 1851.

It would have started just past New Cross, where Great Ancoats Street joined Oldham Road and Swan Street and running from Bond Street, crossed George Street, Blossom Street and finished at Jersey Street.

It is still there today, a narrow street, dominated by tall modern buildings a few workshops which long ago lost any entrances onto the road and some open spaces.

In total I don’t suppose it would have taken more than five minutes to walk its length in the 1850s, but in that short time there would have been all that the curious spectator might have wanted to observe.

For here were small terraced properties, the dark and secretive courts hidden from view and plenty of pubs and beer shops.

Gun Street in 1901

Here too was a cross section of the city’s working population from skilled journeyman to shop keeper, textile worker and a heap of unskilled labour.  And reminding us that Manchester still moved courtesy of the horse Gun Street had a blacksmith.  Perhaps even more surprising was that in that year of 1851 there was still a handloom weaver and an agricultural labourer.

In total there were 384 people living in just 63 houses with some crammed into the cellars.  The rents ranged from 1 shilling 6d to 4 shillings and 6d when a factory girl might earn between 7 and 9 shillings, a week a labourer 18 shillings and a police constable 20 shillings.

And along that short street you could have heard the accents of the rural north as well as London, and the Midlands but dominating all would have been that of the Irish, for here amongst our 384 inhabitants were 235 from Ireland and only 125 from Manchester.**

And as you would expect there is much more than we could uncover, from poor sanitation, adulterated food, the large numbers of pubs and beer shops and those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

But all that is for later.  Instead I shall leave you with the thought that had you tired of Gun Street and returned to New Cross you chanced at best a rowdy noisy meeting place and at worst a venue for popular discontent.

For most of the last half century, there had been protests and like that of April 1812 in Oldham Road at New Cross when a food cart carrying food for sale at the markets in Shudehill was stopped and its load carried off.

Nearby shops were also attacked and looted.  The mob was eventually dispersed by soldiers but only as far as Middleton.  There they met with an assembly of handloom weavers, miners and out of work factory operatives gathered to protest against the introduction of power loom machinery at Barton and Sons weaving mill.

The mob which had grown to 2000, was dispersed by “A party of soldiers , horse and foot, from Manchester arriving, pursued those misguided people, some of whom made a feeble stand; but here again death was the consequence, five of them being shot and many severely wounded.”    

While after the events at Peterloo in 1819 the military and the local police patrolled the streets like some occupying force, and in the early evening with tensions still high a large crowd gathered at New Cross.

Gun Street in 2011

Some of the crowd began throwing stones at the police and soldiers opened fire.  Before the crowd had dispersed, Joseph Ashworthy had been killed and several others lay injured.  Not surprisingly many of those injured in this event came from that close network of streets around Gun Street.

Next; those dark and secretive courts hidden from view.

*Rate Books
**1851 census

Location; Manchester




Pictures; part of Gun Street from the OS map of Manchester, 1842-44, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Gun Street from Blossom Street, A Bradburn, 1901  M11341, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Gun Street from Blossom Street 2011, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

1934 and inside the Independent College in Whalley Range

We are in the grounds of the Independent College in Whalley Range and the year is 1934.

Our picture is a postcard which “R” says “is a new view of the college which I thought you might like to see.  

It gives rather a good view of the grounds I think.”

He was writing to Mr and Mrs Nelson of Garston Old Road in Liverpool and he went on to say that he had “managed a good spot of work,” and was looking forward to “seeing something of a friend of mine who is preaching at Ormskirk on Sunday.”

There is nothing more to help us with the identity of “R” but given that the college had been built “educate young men of decided piety and competent talents for the Christian ministry,”* I think we can be fairly confident he was destined for a religious career.

By the time “R” was doing his spot of work the college had been open for 92 years and had continued “the preparation of young men for the ministry of the Independent church”** carrying on the work of the  Blackburn Independent Academy which had opened in 1816.

Such independent establishments had been necessary by the ban on dissenters from attending universities.  So here along with the study of theology students “will have the opportunity of gaining philosophical and scientific knowledge, in addition to the classics and mathematics.”

There were to be two resident professors and about fifty-two students the cost was to be met by public subscription and the hope was that this would in time be met by endowments.

The original design was for a gothic style building with a tall tower and a principal front 261 feet in length including two professors’ houses at either end with cloisters in between serving as an arcade in which the students can take exercise in wet weather.  There were to be three stories surmounted by battlements about 40 feet high.

“The arrangements in the interior of the College, forming a communication with different suites of rooms, are well designed and exceedingly simple consisting of corridors running the extreme length of the front and of either wing. The lower story of the building which is sufficiently high above the ground to ensure dryness is intended entirely for servants, and the corridor which connects the different offices runs along the main building.

Entering the College by the broad flight of steps in the basement of the tower we come to the entrance hall on the second or main floor which is a lofty room about 36 feet by 32 and open to the roof.”***

And I suppose this description would have been recognised by “R” as well as the countless other students who continued to study there until its closure in 1980.

Later; more stories and pictures of the college.

Pictures; of the college in 1934 from the Lloyd Collection The Assembly Hall and grounds from The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93

* resolution of the committee held in the vestry of the Mosley Street Chapel, Manchester February 1816, and quoted by Thompson, Joseph,  in The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93, Manchester 1893 Memorial Volume, p18
** The Manchester Guardian 1842
*** The Manchester Guardian 1842

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 93 ….. under the arches at Hoyle Street

To be fair Hoyle Street is still there, running from Fairfield Street down to the Ring Road.

But I think it cuts a sad appearance, and today is best known by those seeking free car parking space and the odd fan of railway viaducts, because a  big chunk of it is covered by the brick viaducts that stretch out from Piccadilly Railway Station while the rest is bordered by open land and a few industrial units.

It is a place waiting for something to happen, and no doubt that something will be blocks of apartments and perhaps even in a new “office quarter”.

And that has been its fate for over 70 years.  

In 1950, the entire stretch from Fairfield Street to Tipping Street was devoid of any buildings save one pub, and a couple of warehouses with the ominous word “Ruins” recorded on the section by the River Medlock.*

But it hadn’t always been so.  The OS map of 1894 records a line of houses the length of Hoyle Street all the way to Tipping Street and dominated halfway down by the Britannia Brewery.  

Although strictly speaking Hoyle Street ended where the Medlock crossed underneath, as  the remaining part was New York Street.

Just when Hoyle Street was cut is still unclear.  It is absent from Johnston’s map of 1818 but is there by 1840, when a Mr. Adam Jackson was living at no 3.  He described himself as a “Teacher of Mathematics and  was listed as such in Slater’s Directory for 1855.

And he rubbed shoulders with neighbours who might equally be regarded as a cut above the average.  

These included, an engraver, a manager, a solicitor’s clerk, a Professor of Music and a “superintendent of police”.  

But it was still a mixed community and there was also a shop keeper, warehouseman, a file cutter, mechanic and cooper.

It is difficult to work out just what the properties were like, but Mr. Jackson and some of his neighbours were paying 5s a week in rent. 

At which point trying to make comparisons based on total income is fraught with difficulties, but in the 1850s  a male teacher in a National School would earn a £1 a week and female teacher 6s and manual workers might bring in more or less depending on their skills and circumstance.  So a textile worker in his 30s could command a wage of 22s 8d,  which was much better than an agricultural labourer who might be paid between  15s to 21s  a week with a few on 24s.**

Just what the 5s a week brought is also difficult to work out.  Only a few of the properties on Hoyle Street had survived into 1911, when the census return recorded the number of rooms in each house.

Most of those left consisted of 5 rooms, but some were only three.

Sadly Mr. Jackson’s house is not one of those that made it onto the 1911 census and that I think must be because it was swept away by an extension to the railway viaduct in 1905.

Leaving me just to reflect on what Mr. Jackson and his wife Margaret would have seen as they walked out of their home on a summer’s day in 1851.

Their home was in the shadow of the first railway viaduct, while opposite there was a timber yard and the Ardwick Saw Mill.

The River Medlock which flowed just a few feet away was still open to the sky, and supplied water for the Britannia Brewery and a host of factories close by which included two dye works and the Mayfield Print Works.

Of course, we will never know just what they thought of where they lived, but I am guessing it was a world away from the rural Cumberland where they had both grown up.

The incessant noise from the factories, the regular sound of railway trains passing close by, and the pervading smells from the river and various dyeworks were something I doubt they ever really came to terms with.

But that is so much historical speculation and tosh and seems a good point to close.

Pictures;  Hoyle Street Bridge, 1898, H. Entwhistle, m66779, m66778, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Hoyle Street in 1851, from Adshead map of Manchester 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ Temperance Street, Hoyle Street Junction looking towards Ardwick Station; and the River Medlock, 2020 from the collection of John Anthony Hewitt

*The Corporation Inn

**Textile workers, Frow, Edmund & Ruth, Radical Salford, Neil Richardson, Swinton,1984 page 34, and agricultural labourers, Agricultural Labourers’ Earnings, Parliamentary Papers 1861

A little bit of religious dissent in Whalley Range .... The Independent Lancashire College

I like this picture of the Independent Lancashire College in Whalley Range.

It had been here since 1843 and even before it was finished it was causing a stir amongst “the Public and more especially by strangers, respecting this beautiful specimen of gothic architecture which is seen to great advantage from the roads leading westward out of Manchester.”

It origins lay in the fact that Dissenters along with the Catholics were still barred from entering the Universities, and lay professions.  They could not marry in their own places of worship and had to rely on Anglican Churches for registering births and deaths.

This had led to the establishment of an independent academy in Blackburn was opened in 1816 to “educate young men of decided piety and competent talents for the Christian ministry.”**

By 1838 the academy was no longer adequate for this purpose and a new “collegiate building affording more extensive domiciliary accommodation,”” was agreed upon which would be sited in Manchester.

A public subscription was launched to meet the cost of what was estimated would be £10,000.  It says much for the strength of dissent in the North West that within two years the sum of £14, 736 was raised which eventually exceeded £25, 000.

And with all such subscriptions the contributions ranged from the modest to the very substantial, so while Mr Joseph Taylor of Ashton handed over £2, George Hadfield from Manchester gave £2,100, Samuel Fletcher £1,300 and our own Samuel Brooks of Whalley House £1, 550.

Brooks however also benefited from selling the seven acre site for its construction for £3,650.

The foundation stone was laid In September 1840 and the college opened in 1843.

Pictures; of the college circa 1910 from the Lloyd Collection and the Blackburn Independent Academy from The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93

*Manchester Guardian 1842

** Resolution of the committee held in the vestry of the Mosley Street Chapel, Manchester February 1816, and quoted by Thompson, Joseph,  in The Lancashire Independent College, 1843-93, Manchester 1893 Memorial Volume, p18

On being 10 in the summer of 1961 with a Red Rover and a city to explore

Now if you are of a certain age this Red Rover will be your passport to many happy memories.

Andy's ticket to roam, 1965

It offered unlimited travel for a day across London and  I can think of no better thing to do than travel anywhere those old red double deckers would take you.

In 1960 we were still living on Lausanne Road and I think we would have collected the ticket from the New Cross Garage, which begs the question of where I might have picked one up in Eltham.

I am pretty sure you couldn’t buy them on the bus but I guess someone with put me right on that.

Andy sent me this one just a few minutes ago adding, “as a bus spotting nerd I used to use these lot. This one was purchased 2 days after I was 12 3/4 years old. 

I would plan my journey taking in various bus garages, leave about 7 in the morning armed with salad cream sandwiches and arrive home about 10 hours later, all on my lonesome!”

Sadly I never had the forethought to plan in advance, going off on the spur of the moment when the sun shone and the pocket money was burning a hole in my pocket.

Needless to say some at least of my adventures ended in the most disappointing places.

The White Tower in the Tower of London, 2014

It remains one of those cast iron certainties that just because a place sounds interesting and the bus goes there it doesn’t always mean that the destination will prove memorable.

Even now I shudder at the thought of the run down canal beside some sad looking buildings which proved not to be the highlight of one trip.

But then the beauty of the Red Rover was that you could just wait for the next bus and travel on to pastures new.

And all the time there were things to see from out of the window.

 So even if the front seats on the top deck were taken there was always that seat behind the driver which not only offered up the same view that he could see, but with a bit of imagination allowed to imagine you were driving the 161 down to Woolwich or the 36b across town.

In my case it would start and sometimes end at the Tower of London, but that as they is another story.

Instead I shall just reflect that having reached that magic age which qualifies me for a concessionary bus pass I can and do roam across the city making full use of both the trams and the trains.

So there you have it, one Red Rover a shed load of memories and not once did I throw in that title of a Beatles song.

Location; pretty much anywhere in London

Picture; a Red Rover, 1965 from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Tower of London, 2014 from the collection of Ryan Ginn

Travels with houmous ……

Now, I have my old friend Lois to thank for setting me off on a journey with houmous. 

Houmous, 2026

It is of course one of those foods which is served up as a starter or one of several dishes often eaten cold.

And today, she wrote about her first encounter with this dip from the Levant in her blog.*

My Wikipedia tells me that houmous is a dip,  made from cooked mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, lemon juice, and garlic. The standard garnish includes olive oil, a few whole chickpeas, parsley, and paprika”.**

And for those unfamiliar with the Levant it’s that area at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and includes Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Cyprus, Hatay Province, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Libya and Turkey.***

That said purists would limit the definition to just the first eight countries.

I grew up with the Levant, mainly through old historical maps and from the books of Eric Ambler who described the area where spies, and police chiefs mingle with petty criminals, drug dealers and dodgy bankers, set against a backdrop of seedy and romantic places between the two world wars. People die in nasty ways; no one can be trusted and always the agents of foreign powers lurk in the shadows. 

Ten minites out from the Pireaus, bound for the Levant, 1982

My favourite of the books is the "Mask of Dimitrios" written in 1939 which pretty much begins with the discovery of a body fished out of the sea and identified in an Istanbul morgue as that of a notorious criminal and by degree takes the investigator to Smyrna, and on to the Piraeus, Sofia and eventually Paris. 

Along the way he encounters more murders, the trafficking of women, a smuggling gang, a stash of heroin, a bit of blackmailing and an Italian spy. 

Nor is this all because the dead criminal faked his own death and our investigator is at various times, betrayed, framed and imprisoned. 

In the Levant, 1982

For a sixteen year old this was a world far removed from southeast London and introduced me to a mysterious but shabby place and time, which I would not begin to visit for another twenty years.

By which time like Lois I had been introduced to houmous and a whole mix of food from the Mediterranean and in the process fell in love with both olives, and olive oil and that way of eating which was all about long slow evenings with heaps of food, fine wine, and good company.

None of which is unique to me, but I suppose marked out that journey from uninviting salads and over cooked vegetables and many a mundane meal to different and exciting dishes.

Gigantes plaki 2003

But then each generation discovers their food of choice. For my parents, grand parents and great grandparents it will have been new products sourced from Britain’s empire, made possible by advances in food preservation and cheap foreign labour and enhanced for those in the armed forces who were taken to the far corners of the globe while acquiring and controlling those imperial possessions and fighting the wars of the last century.

And now the invitation to different foods comes via supermarkets, sleek media presentations and the constant desire to discover new things to eat and impress friends.

To my embarrassment I can confess that some of my introductions to new things to eat have indeed come via the supermarket and the telly, but more have been  while on holiday or in the case of humous from a chance conversation with Lois many decades ago. 

Location; The Levant

Food from the Levant, 2023

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 1982-2023

*My go-to hummus; https://loiselsden.com/2026/06/10/my-go-to-hummus/

**Levantine cuisine, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levantine_cuisine

*** The Levant, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 95 Chadwick Street ...and Mrs. Matilda Lovitt

This was Chadwick Street in 2021.

It is off Fairfield Street and faces out on to Piccadilly Railway Station.

Wyre Street, 2021

Despite being a popular place to park up and wait for someone arriving off a train, you won’t find it on any maps, and it ends pretty much soon after it starts.

Today it is called Wyre Street and dribbles out as a footpath before connecting with Travis Street.

To the casual visitor it has nothing much to commend itself, lacking any buildings bar a brick wall, the railway viaduct that cuts across it and heaps of grass.

Nor was it ever thought worthy of an entry into the directories, although back in 1850 the Stag and Pheasant was recorded in the trades section of Slater’s Directory.  The pub served the 22 houses, and surrounding streets and some closed courts, which will have provided a lot of potential customers.

Despite there being no reference to the street in the directories, I know that some of the 22 homes were back to back properties, and Chadwick Street gave access to a number of closed courts with even more small and mean houses.

Chadwick Street, 1851

We also have the names of the residents who lived there in 1851, and equally important the occupations they were engaged in.  These ranged from skilled and unskilled jobs to a clerk, the inevitable charwoman, as well as those making a living from the streets including a milk seller.

The largest group were connected to the textile trade, covering all the main areas of work and interestingly one who described himself as a handloom weaver.  This was Elias Johnson from Stretford which had been a centre for handloom weaving. 

But as he was 62 I suspect he was describing the occupation of his youth given that by 1851 machines had all but squeezed out most handloom weaving.

Just how many of these visited the Stag and Pheasant is lost, but its landlady a Mrs. Matilda Lovitt ran the place from at least 1848 and into the early years of the next decade.  The Rate Books record it separately as a Public House and also a Beer House, with the pub rated at £40 a year and the beer house at £12.

By contrast the neighbouring houses were rated at between £12 a year down to £2 suggesting that her business was indeed profitable.

We know that she was born in 1808, married her first husband in 1829, and her second in 1856, and was widowed twice.  By the age of 30 in 1841 she had three children and that two of them were still living with her at Chadwick Street in 1851.

Her second husband was also a publican who was the landlord of the Railway Inn at 221 Deansgate.  

He is listed there from at least 1850 through to 1856, but by 1863 has gone.  By which time the Stag and Peasant also does not appear on the records. 

Wyre Street, 2021

And a full thirty years later  Chadwick Street has become Worsley Street, and the Directories record only a clutch of industrial units with one beer shop, leaving yet another name change from Worsley Street to Wyre Street  sometime by 1915.

I doubt we have finished with the street, and in the fullness of time it would be fun to return to track the residents in 1851, leaving me just to add that in 1881 the former Mrs. Levitt recorded as living with one of her children in Preston at the grand old age of 71.

Location; Manchester, 

Pictures; Chadwick Street, 1851, from Adshead's map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Chadwick Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

That food factory ……. the River ……. and a conversation

Just when I spent my dinner times gazing out over the River talking about music, the chance of over time and pretty much everything is lost.

I think it will be the summer of 1970 and the location was Glenville’s the food factory down by the Blackwall Tunnel.

It could have been the year before or the year after.

Glenville’s made a variety of things from custard powder, and sachets of flavoured water you left in the freezer, to their specialty which was turning powdered milk into granules.

Of all the jobs this was the most unpleasant given that I was tasked with filling large bags of the milk granules as they shot out of a pipe.

It didn’t help that the regulating tap didn’t work very well so you used your hand to stem the flow just long enough to get a bag underneath, and that it came out very hot from being blown through a set of stainless-steel tubes.

Added to which the sweet-smelling stuff stuck to your overalls and worse still your face which on very hot days was prone to mix with your perspiration to form rivulets of milky sweat.

Nor was that all because while we were paid a basic wage there was a bonus for the amount that was produced, and there was the flaw, because on wet and damp days the granulated milk clogged the tubes and production ceased.

At other times I worked in the dispatch area on the ground floor at the end of a long conveyor belt which disappeared into the roof and on to another few floors.

Loading the boxes of assorted “stuff” was never the problem only that they came down at a ferocious pace, and if not unloaded quickly enough would cause a long jam, which the pressure of more from on high meant that sometimes the boxes burst open showering us in clouds of custard or blancmange powder.

All of which meant that breaks and dinner times took on a special place in the day.

And it will have been on one of those that I met up with a South African.

He was the first South African I had met, and I was fascinated by him.  He was a few years older than me, and he had already traveled thousands of miles across two continents, while I had just got the bus from Eltham.

Over half a century later I can’t remember what we talked about other than that song America by Simon and Garfunkel, which chronicles the journey across the US by two young lovers.

We shared the magic of their journey and each of us in our different ways conjured the trip from Saginaw, in Michigan via Pittsburgh to New Jersey.

And now all those years later I have no idea what he looked like or our other companions, and our dinner time conversations are lost.

But listening to America brings back my time in Glenville’s from the smell of the various products being made, along with that of the River to that carefree and optimistic take on life which at 20 I shared with Kathy and her lover.

I still have that optimistic take but long ago lost Glenville's, and despite frequent visits to the area its exact location remains elusive.

So I await a photo, an address or a memory from someone who like me passed a batch of his early 20s at the food factory by the River.

Location; Glenville’s, Greenwich

Pictures; by the River, 1970s, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Lost Images of Whalley Range number 9 ....... the wedding reception at the Whalley Hotel

Now I couldn’t resist using this receipt for the wedding reception of Mr and Mars Sherratt which was posted recently on facebook by their daughter who has given me permission to reproduce it.

It is dated 1953 and is one of those wonderful little bits of history which are so often lost.

And reminds me of an earlier story about the Whalley Hotel from almost the same period.

Just two years earlier the Manchester City News carried the story of “Wally of the Whalley Says Goodbye.”

Mr Wally Summer and his wife Ethel had run the pub for four years and were leaving Manchester for Anglesey, where they were to take over the Anglesey Arms.

“It's going to be a wrench leaving” he told the City News, “we’ve made hundreds of friends since we came to Brooks’ Bar.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who have come up to wish us luck.”*

The Anglesey Arms is still there just at the edge of the Menai Bridge.

But sadly the Whalley has closed its doors for good so the receipt and the story are a little of its history.

With a bit of digging I may be able to discover if Mr Bowden had succeeded Mr Summers but that is for another time.

Picture; from the collection of Jayne Sherratt Bailey

*Manchester City News November 16, 1951

Walking Withington’s past …… the new history book

For anyone who lives in Withington, has lived in Withington or is just curious about the place the latest publication from the local Civic Society is essential reading.

Entitled “Withington Village A History walk in south Manchester” by David Rydeheard is an expanded and updated story of the village based on an earlier book from 2014, which in turn was based a series of historical notes compiled by Louise Kane who was an official tour guide for Manchester City Council.

Now I have that earlier “Walk through the history of Withington”. 

It ran to 33 pages and is a fascinating mine of information which is more invaluable because it can be used to walk around the old township.

David’s new edition follows the same format, has grown to 54 pages and reflects the changes to the area over the last 25 years and acknowledges not only Louise Kane but the Withington historians Kenneth Whittaker and Roger Smith.

And like all good history books it contains extensive footnotes, references and further reading marking it out as a serious and scholarly contribution to our understanding of Withington’s past.

That said it is also a history tour allowing you “to start the tour at any place in Withington village [but] starts at Withington Green at the junction of Cotton Lane”.

And it has something for everyone from accounts of buildings, roads, and people to an entry on “Withington walls” featuring some of “the more than 100 artworks that you can see when walking around Withington village and the product of Withington Walls, a pioneering community arts project”. 

As such it is a fine addition to all those volumes dedicated to local history.

Looking back over the previous century and half these books seem to come in batches.  

In the late 19th century Thomas Ellwood in Chorlton and Mrs. W. C. Williamson  of Fallowfield were amongst a group of historians who wrote histories of their neighbourhoods.  

In part this was motivated by a wish to record the traditions and appearances of small farming communities which were being transformed by urban creep and the decline in agriculture.**

So, Thomas Ellwwod recorded the recollections of the oldest inhabitants of Chorlton-cum-Hardy who in turn drew on the collective memories of parents and grandparents which quickly took the story back to almost the time when the old King George lost the American colonies. 

His articles included accounts of bull baiting on the village green, lost rural traditions like May Songs, the Rush processions, and the Easter enactment of St George and the Dragon with the practice of “lifting” and the sometime intimidating “Riding the Stang”.

In the same vein Mrs. Williamson wrote about the last handloom weavers in Fallowfield, Burnage, and Didsbury in the middle decades of the 19th century.

Fast forward to the 1960s and 70s, and there was another clutch of history books  written for a new audience as the life styles of the early decades of the 20th century vanished under the impact of  changes in transport, consumerism and popular entertainment along with the advance or residential spawl which all but eliminated the last vestiges of the countryside.

In 1970 John Lloyd published his still popular history of Chorlton, a year before Ivor Million wrote his book on Didsbury, Kenneth Whittaker his account of Withington and there were other publications on places like Stretford, and Urmston.

All of which makes David’s book a timely addition in the 21st century to our knowledge which sits with others by Andrew Simpson on Chorlton and Michael Billington on Urmston, Flixton and Daveyhulme and a wealth of electronic descriptions from the internet.

Location; Withington, a suburb of Manchester and a former agricultural township

Pictures; extracts from David’s new book, 2026

* Withington Village A History walk in south Manchester David Rydeheard, 2026, Withington Civic Society, www.withingtoncivicsociety.org.uk 

**Ellwood, Thomas L, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-1886, South Manchester Gazette,  Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.

Back on Court Yard in 1910

Court Yard in 1910

Now you can never have enough of a good picture so I make no apologies for returning to this one of Court Yard which dates from around 1910 and is from the collection of Kristina Bedford.*

Most of what you see has long past out of living memory.

The Congregational Church away in the distance had been opened in 1868 and was demolished in 1936 and the site was redeveloped by Burton’s where I bought my first suit and later still my first grown up overcoat.

The house next to the church was swept away in 1905, demolished when the southern end of Well Hall Road was cut thereby making the route north towards Well Hall and Shooters Hill a tad quicker and more direct.

But the consequence was that the peace of the church was invaded by the noise of trams, carts and later motor vehicles all of which led to the relocation of the church and in its place the still very impressive building which has now become a McDonald’s.

And on the rare occasions I have ventured in there I still miss the wooden cabinets full of shirts and ties, the racks of ready made jackets  and trousers and the catalogues offering all manner of fashionable made to measure suits.

Still someone will mutter such is progress and I guess that also sums up the developments to the left of our picture, which saw the properties pulled down for the Grove Market.

I wish I could remember these for they would still have been standing when we first came to Eltham but they have passed from my memory and I guess in time I will be hard pressed even to remember the site as it was from the mid 60s until recently.

Annie Morris, early 20th century

So I will fall back on the historical record and stories of that row to our right.

I have written about walking past the properties already.

And it was here that Annie Morris lived when our photographer pitched up on Court Yard.

In her time she had lived at numbers 17 and 25 Court Yard and before that in Ram Alley behind the High Street.

She was born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place, and almost her whole life was spent in here Eltham.

She was a cook and may have worked for Captain North at Avery Hill and through her life we have a snap shot of what Eltham had been and what it was becoming.

Her grandfather had set up a farrier’s business in Eltham in 1803 on what is now the Library, and “attended the old Parish Church in his leather apron.”

Hers is a fascinating story which takes us back to an Eltham that even more than our picture has vanished.

And yes that is a trailer for more rural Eltham stories along with a few more about Annie.

Picture; Court Yard in 1910 courtesy of Kristina Bedford, from Eltham Through Time,  and  of Annie Morris outside her house in Court Yard from the collection of Jean Gammons.

*Eltham Through Time, Kristina Bedford, 2013,

What Miss Sarah Kate Sloane did in the Great War ..... part 1

Now, I am only at the beginning of the story of Ms Sloane, who was born in 1871 and died in 1965, but already it promises to be a fascinating piece of research.

British War Medal, 1914-1919

She was born and died in Leicester and spent most of her life there, save for those periods when as a Red Cross nurse she served in hospitals across the country and in France during the Great War.

And it was her wartime medals which drew me into her story, and while I have accumulated some biographical details, I know there is much more.

She was awarded The British War Medal, 1914-18, The Allied Victory Medal, 1914-19, The War Medal Medal, 1939-45, and the Defence Medal, 1939-45, and the first two carry an inscription which includes her name and the letters V.A.D, which refer to her role as a member of the Voluntary Aid Detachment.

Members of V.A.D. performed a variety of tasks in Red Cross Hospitals, from nursing to cleaning, washing, and cooking, as well as administration and many also took on fund raising activities in the community.

Ms Sloane came from a medical family and both her father and brother were doctors, which makes her choice of nursing and unsurprising one.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The Red Cross records show she served from 1915 through to 1917, at various Red Cross hospitals, starting at the Knighton V.A.D., hospital close to where she lived.

From 1916 she was at No.2 B.R.C. Hospital in Rouen, followed by Frensham Hill Military Hospital,  and Ullesthorpe Court, & Charnwood V.A.D. Hospitals.

After which she worked for the Discharged Soldiers & Sailors organization, which was part of the Ministry of Labour and focused on finding suitable employment for men no longer in the forces.

So far, I have no pictures of Ms Sloane, but I know where she lived in Leicester, and some at least of the houses are still standing today, as is the Knighton V.A.D Hospital which is now known as Evington House and stands in Evington Park.

Evington House, 2022, formerly Kighton V.A.D., Hospital

The house dates from the early 19th century, and bits maybe much older.  In its time it was owned by one family with links to the campaign against the slave trade, and in 1914 was lent by its then owner to the Red Cross.

There are various accounts of the house including its time as a hospital and many also include a fascinating account of the daily routines by Miss Alice Henderson who was the commandment which appeared in the Wyggeston Girls Gazette in 1919.

I suspect much of what Miss Henderson outlined in the article would have been familiar to Sarah Sloane, and was pretty much the lot of many who worked in Red Cross Hospitals.*

And that at present is pretty much all there is.  I know she arrived back from Algiers in 1931, left over £55,000 at her death in 1965 and lived for 30 years at 8 University Road, in Leicester.

Defence Medal, 1939-45

But I don’t have a clue how she voted, what she thought of the big issues of the day or how she occupied her time after war service.

That said I am confident I will find out more.  There are people who have included her in their own family history records, and I await a reply from the Leicester Records Office so there is much more to play for.

All of which leaves me with that odd reflection that history can be messy and can surprise you.

So, when I started the search for the story of Sarah Kate’s medals, I had no idea that she came from Leicester or that our Josh and Polly would turn out to live just minutes away from both Knighton V.A.D., hospital, and her home on University Road.

But then that’s the fun of the past.

Location; Leicester, and elsewhere

Pictures; Miss Sloane’s medal, courtesy of David Harrop and Evington House, formerly Knighton V.A.D., hospital, from the collection of Josh Simpson

Sources; census records, 1901-1921, Red Cross Records, 1914-1919, Baptismal record, 1871, various street directories  and electoral registers, 1920-1930, Probate Records

* Evington’s VAD Hospital, Evington Echo, December 19th, 2014, https://evingtonecho.uk/evingtons-vad-hospital/

& Evington House, Evington Park, https://storyofparksleicester.com/park-histories/evington-park/#:~:text=This%20house%20is%20said%20to,hunter%20gatherers%20roaming%20over%20it.&text=In%20Roman%20times%20and%20on,have%20been%20a%20Roman%20cemetery

Lost images of Whalley Range part 7............ the lake in the park

Now there will be the pedant who points out that the lake in Alexandra Park is still there and perhaps someone else who challenges linking the park with Whalley Range.

Added to which I bet a few will remember seeing this picture before on posts about the Alex Park and Whalley Range.

But that won’t stop me, so here from the Valentine collection produced around 1906 is that view of  the park.

Picture; the lake, Alexandra Park, from Valentine’s Snapshots of Alexandra Park, date circa 1906, courtesy of Ann Love

Two plaques …… one lost building ..... and a forgotten road

So, when you are out with the camera on a sunny and dry  morning you make the most of it.

A blue plaque, 2023

And having done the “artistic shots” I was wandering around the old commercial part of the city looking for those narrow streets and alleys which could offer up a story.

What I found were two plaques waiting to be saved on a building undergoing redevelopment.

It is a big slab of a place which has seen better days and comprises of 79 Mosley Street, 16 Princess Street and 14 Back George Street, and featured in an earlier blog story.*

I had passed it countless times but only recently became interested in it after I spotted a ghost sign for one of the previous occupants.

I did promise myself I would follow up on that story but never did, until yesterday when I came across the two plaques on the Princess Street side.

Not a blue plaque, 2023

I say plaques, but only one of them can claim to be that, the other is a poor attempt at leaving your mark on a boarded up street level window.

The real plaques records that "near this site" was the premises of F.C.Calvert which in 1857 “produced phenol, carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant in soaps and powders and for making dyes”.

All of which is linked to Frederick Crace Calvert PhD FRS who in 1846 “was Professor of Chemistry at the Manchester Royal Institution which was opposite and now houses Manchester City Art Gallery.”

And by one of those twists of history it turns out that Frederick Crace Calvert was living in Exmouth Terrace at 170 Oxford Road which is now under the present Manchester Museum.

Now despite not finding him on the 1851 census I know he was living on Oxford Street by 1849 and he was paying an annual rent of £170, while renting a workshop on Bond Street from the same year.**

Mr.  Calvert goes to France

That workshop was variously described as a “laboratory” as well as a “workshop” and appears to have been in a shared building.

And what makes him that tad more intriguing is that while he was born in London in 1819 he spent a big chunk of his life from the age of 16 in France where he remained till 1846, which “till the end of his life he spoke English with a French accent”.***

At which point rather than “lift” someone else’s research I shall just add the extract from that biography.

Location; Princess Street, Manchester

Pictures; two plaques, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mr.Calvert comes to Manchester

*The three stories behind no. 79 Mosley Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-three-stories-behind-no-79-mosley.html

**This section of Oxford Street is now Oxford Road

***National Biography Vol 3, 1901

Another day …. another trip into Manchester’s past

On a changeable day which promised sunshine interrupted by heaps of fierce and unrelenting rain showers members of Chorlton Good Neighbours braved the inclement weather to hear from Andrew Simpson and Peter Topping talk about Manchester’s past.

It was another in the series of voyages through our collective history exploring the changes to Greater Manchester during the last four centuries.

And comes with a unique approach which is  The History of Greater Manchester by Tram …. The Stories At the Stops in which the authors take all 99 Metro tram stops on all the eight routes picking out the interesting, the serious and the bizarre as well as the humours events and people at each destination which build to become a comprehensive account of the region’s past.*

At present there are four books in the series with a fifth due out later this year. 

They cover the journey into the centre from the south, crossing the city centre down to Victoria Railway Station and then east out to New Islington.

The fifth will travel from Old Trafford to Altrincham, with further books on Salford, and all the remaining towns on the network.

And judging by the reception to the talk, the questions that followed and the large sale of all the books I the series the afternoon was a success.

Location; Wilbraham St Ninian’s Church, Egerton Road South, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 0XJ

Picture; on the day with Chorlton Good Neighbours, 2026, from the collection of Peter Topping

*A History of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram