On a warm sunny afternoon on Barlow Moor Road, sometime before 1939

I like the way that old postcards can reveal our past in many different ways.

It’s every much as good as a detective story.

You start with the picture, move on to the postmark and the message and if you are very lucky may learn something from the manufacturer.

So here we are on Barlow Moor Road, sometime before May 1939, and judging from the trees perhaps on a sunny afternoon during the summer of the year before.  The trouble with these postcards is that the image may date back even earlier and will have been reissued over the years.

This one was taken by Harold Clarke of 83 Clarence Road Chorlton, and may have been part of a series issued by Lilywhite Ltd, of Brighouse, in Yorkshire.

There are 21 of his photographs in the Greater Manchester County Records collection dating from 1926 through to 1934 and some from 1926 carry a serial number close to the one in the picture.

Any way enough of the clever stuff and back to Barlow Moor Road on that sunny summer afternoon.  There is as ever a remarkable lack of traffic, with just a few cyclists a stationary hand cart, a couple of trams and what might be either a lorry or a coach away in the distance.

It looks to be afternoon judging from the shadows and the presence of the two school girls and it is scene which has pretty much vanished.

True the right hand side of the road looks familiar enough but the corresponding wall, railings and trees on the other side have long gone.

But having said that they were only demolished some thirty years ago when the road was widened and eventually the slip road onto the Parkway was constructed.

I will remember standing here waiting for a bus into town.  In the summer with the trees and the open land beyond that stone wall this was a pretty pleasant place to wait.

Nor am I alone in thinking so, because Lily writing on the back commented on how they had all enjoyed walking “under the shade of these trees.”

She lived on Withington Road and posted the card with its “Loving birthday greetings” on May 2nd, catching the 6.o’clock collection confident that it would arrive at 39 St Luke Street, Barrow in Furness for the following morning.

And it is still there today.

As is 83 Clarence Road, Chorlton where Harold A Clarke lived.

Although in the case of Clarence Road it is now Claridge which is the one that runs from Manchester Road over Oswald Road and into Peveril Crescent thereby offering up one last intriguing fact.

For here is another of our lost roads, or more accurately one of our renamed roads.

In 1911 there were three Clarence Roads.  There was our own as well as one in Longsight and another in Withington.

So not bad for one postcard.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, date unknown

A postcard with a difference, the Cathedral from 1902

I like this postcard of the Cathedral.

It combines a picture of the building along with the coat of arms of the city and an equally attractive image of a ship on the Ship Canal.

And there is a history to it for this will have been one of the last picture post cards to have the message on the front.

Until 1899 picture postcards could only have a small picture and short message on one side with just the address and stamp on the other.  But the regulations were relaxed in 1899 so that companies could produce a larger card with an image on one side and space for the message and address on the reverse.

This was in some part due to the postcard company of Raphael Tuck and Son who spent four years  negotiating with the Post Master General for the change.

The business began with the sale of pictures and frames in 1866 and went to become as a distributor of graphic art printing.

Their first regular series of postcards was issued in 1899, and this may date from soon afterwards.

Now I say that because within a few months of the change in the regulations Tuck had begun to issue the new style of cards.

But ours has the post mark of 1902 which I guess suggests that there were still plenty of the old stock around.

Nor is that all, for the message itself says much about how these early postcards were used.

Betty who sent the card is not interested in any great events, or in communicating holiday news but simply a request to borrow a cwt of coal if “Mr Mr P has not put in the coals.”

And is a reminder that in age before the telephone the post card was the quickest way of getiing in touch.

Picture, Manchester Cathedral, from the series Manchester, a set of three, produced by Tuck & Sons Ltd, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

The walk in the park........ no. 18 ...... from the Goldsmith Collection

Our Jillian often gets her best pictures first thing in the morning when the light is sharp, the air is fresh and there is a promise of another exciting day.

Location; Greenwich Park


Picture; A walk in the park,, 2017 from the collection of Jillian Goldsmith

"Sellers of Sleep" .............

Angel Street, 1901

Sometimes a phrase captures your imagination, and so it is with "Sellers of Sleep", which is a French, term for the owners of those properties which offer up a bed and little else.

I came across the description on a Radio 4 programme about Marseilles, and it perfectly describes those places where the poor and destitute might pay for the chance to sleep under a roof for the night.

They are of course a part of history , and can be found in Ancient Rome, Medieval London and pretty much everywhere.

And it took me back to a story I had written earlier about 44 Angel Street as I wandered down the street in the company of Samuel L Coulthurst who took a series of pictures of the people and their homes including one rare shot of the inside of number 44.

And today I am back having spent my time crawling over the census return for the same street in 1901.

The pictures reveal a row of late 18th and early 19th century houses similar to those which were going up across the city in the boom years as Manchester quickly became “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution”*

Angel Street, May 1898

The south eastern side from what is now Rochdale Road up to St Michaels’s Fields had been built in 1794 and those we can see in the pictures were there by 1819**

What makes Coulthurst’s pictures all the remarkable is that having identified the houses it is possible to discover who was living in them just a few years later.


On Angel Street in 1898
Now I would love to be able to record who exactly was living at number 44 when in the May of 1897 Samuel took his pictures, but I can’t.

The best I can do is identify who was there on the night of March 31st 1901 when the census was taken.

There were thirty two of them all male ranging from William Paxton aged 22 from Wigan who described himself as a street hawker to Thomas Reed from Ireland who at 74 was still working as a labourer.

All  them earned their living from manual work or the slightly more precarious occupation of selling on the streets.

Outside 44 Angel Street, May, 1897

Most were single although a few were widowers and while the largest single group had been born here there were those from the rest of Lancashire, as well as Ireland Scotland and even London.

I try not to be sentimental but you cannot help feeling a degree of sadness that so many of these men well past middle age were living crammed together in a common lodging house with nothing but a few possessions and the knowledge that with old age, sickness or just bad luck the future might be the Workhouse.

History of course has been unkind to them and most will have few records to stand as witness to their lives and so during the course of the next few weeks I want to track some of them and discover what their lives had been like.

In the process I think we will uncover something of that shifting population at the bottom of the income pile and the extent to which they went from one overcrowded property to another.

Sadly the identities of those staring back at us are lost and so who they were and what happened to them cannot be revealed.

Patrick Corner

But that is not completely the case, because I think standing outside number 44 with his flat cap and parcel under his arm might just be Patrick Comer whose name appears above the door and who fourteen years later is still registered at the address on the street directory.

If this is him he seems to have had a varied life.  Born in Manchester sometime around 1850 he was variously a dyer, a joiner and in 1911 was both listed a step ladder maker and a clothes agent.

He never strayed far from Angel Street and can be found on Mount Street which runs into Angel Street and on Rochdale Road close by.

As for the others they are unknown and I doubt would still have been living at number 44 by 1901.

The very nature of these lodging houses meant that the residents were short term stay but we shall see.

Most of Angel Street also consisted of lodging houses and as I trawl the census return they reveal a rich cross section of those at the margins of late 19th century Manchester life.

Inside no. 44 Angel Street, 1897

And they point to number 44 being a tad unusual in that it was entirely male orientated.  The other lodging houses had more of a mix of men and women, married as well as single and some unmarried women with young children who defiantly refused to describe themselves as either married or widowed.

It will indeed be a fascinating exploration of this part of the city.

Now that should be the end but there is just one last discovery, for I have tracked Mr Samuel L Coulhurst.***

He was a book buyer from Salford, born in 1868 and living at number 4 Tootal Road Pendelton and in the fullness of time I think he also deserves a closer look.

Location, Angel Meadow, Manchester

Pictures; Angel Street, 1900, m85543 44 Angel Street, 1897, m08360, 44 Angel Street 1898, m00195, and Angel Street common lodging house, 1897, m08365, S.L.Coulthurst, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, 1963

**The south east side of Angel Street are missing from Laurent’s map of Manchester in 1793 but are there the following year on Green’s map while the side photographed by Coulthurst show up on Johnson’s map of 1819.

 ***Angel Street, Manchester artist and photographers, Manchester housing conditions, Manchester in the 1900s, Rochdale Road, Samuel L Coulthurst

Stories from our Co-operative past ………… no. 1 Chorlton and Manley Park Women’s Guild

1948

For years this banner took pride of place on a wall in the Committee Rooms above the Hardy Lane Co-op store on Barlow Moor Road.

In those quiet moments during meetings I would stare at the banner and ponder on its history.

I can’t date when the banner was made but according to Lawrence Beedle the photograph was taken during the Chorlton and Manley Park Women's Guild 25th Annual Party.

At the meeting the "Freedom of the Branch" was presented to Mrs. Lomas the Secretary and Mrs. Scott for being associated with the Guild for a quarter of a century.

The cake was presented by Mrs. Mayo who received a cake stand for her services.

And it is well worth remembering that that making the cake would have been a real challenge, given that in 1948 when the event happened, food was still being rationed.

Circa 1986

The banner which is blue is now held by the People's History Museum in their banner archive.

It has stitching on a royal blue background.

The Co-op Hall has since it was opened been a venue for meetings of the Labour Party, the Co-op Party, along with Chorlton and Manley Park Women's Guild, the Woodcraft Folk and has regularly been used as committee rooms.

And as ever, soon after the story went live, Dave King sent me these two certificates which belonged to Alice and William Lomas who were his grand parents, commenting, "Mrs. Lomas was my grandmother and she  lived at 21 Provis Road.  "She was something big in the Mothers Union and a Teetotalers organisation. 

Mrs. Lomas is awarded the Freedom of the Branch, 1947

Her husband was William (Bill) Lomas who was a builder/plumber. I have included his certification picture  .

Alice is the lady in your picture holding the knife, and the 1947 certificate was when the Co-op was on Beech Road and the one on Manchester Road next to the Royal Oak was relatively new".

And for now that is it, but given Mr. and Mrs. Lomas's involvement in the Co-operative and Labour Movements  I think with David's help there will be much more to come.

William Lomas, 1917

To which Lawrence has added, "Chorlton & Manley Park was a Women’s Co-Op Guild founded 1922 and Barlow Moor was a Mixed Guild founded 1931. Both had different banners and met in different co-op halls. The 1986 picture with you, Tom, Dave Black is at a Labour Party meeting- it might be a selection or shortlisting meeting.

I’ve not looked at the local Co-Op Guild history for years but am now inclined to write a small article about them with some photos for your blog.

I have a box of old 78 rpm records rescued from Hardy Lane before a refurbishment. They had gramophone nights and hired a record player from the Co-Op head office".

Research; Lawrence Beedle

Location; Chorlton

Picture; of the banner and the presentation, supplied by Lawrence Beedle the Manchester & Salford Herald Co-Operative Herald January 1948 page 21 and some of the Co-operative Party, circa 1986, and two certificates for Alice, and William Lomas, 1947 & 1917 courtesy of  Dave King

Memories of that other Thames ……

 I don’t know if cargo ships still berth along my bit of the River at Greenwich.

But someone will know, and I hope will tell me.

I left London in 1969 and while I still came home for holidays my visits to this bit of where I grew up became less and less.

But back in the late 1970s I did wander the water with a camera and recorded what I saw.

To some they will be dismal, and grimy but they were my part of London.

What strikes me about the berthed ship is how deep the inside compared to the men.

It’s a silly observation given that the hold had to store heaps of things, but it reminds me of just how different the Thames at Greenwich was five decades ago.

The image is one that sat as a collection of negatives in our cellar for 40 odd years, and only recently has come out of the shadows as I digitalize those pictures.

And Peter from Greenwich added "Good evening Andrew, I always enjoy your pictures of the grimy industrial part of my hometown. 

The coaster on the mud at Lovells was one of the first of a type designed with elevating wheelhouses and masts ets to work upstream on the Rhine and other European rivers. The depth of the hold would have probably been around 4 metres".

Location; The River Thames

Pictures; waiting to load, the Thames, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

  

 Today sees the publication of Chris Hall's new book on the Spanish Civil War.

He recently told me that  "my new book British Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War: ‘The Passionate Cause’, 1936-39 is available now at a reduced price. For more details about the book see below:

Ninety years ago, a Civil War broke out in a then little-known country. For thousands of British, Irish and Commonwealth people, the Spanish Civil War was their main focus for three years.

Over 2,500 “British” (including Irish and Commonwealth) men and women fought in the International Brigades or served in the medical services of the Spanish Republic. Over 500 volunteers were to die in Spain.

Other “British” volunteers served as mercenary pilots and in the revolutionary militias (including George Orwell); some even served on the side of the rebel forces.

At home, thousands participated in ‘Spanish Aid’ activities, raising funds for food ships and medical supplies for Republican Spain. During the Civil War, 4000 Basque refugee children were supported by public donations. Picasso’s Guernica painting toured England to raise funds.

This is the story of ordinary men and women, told in their own words and reflecting the whole gamut of emotions from ecstasy to despair.

Many volunteers would go on to fight in the Second World War, and some became leading figures in post-War Britain. But for many volunteers, the Spanish Civil War was the “Passionate Cause” and the outstanding episode of their lives. This is their story.

The book can be purchased from the publishers or via Amazon”.

To which I can add, it will be published on January 30th, 2026, and costs £29.99, but there is a pre order introductory offer which allows you to buy the book for £23.99 by following the link.*

This is his second book, the first was on The Nurse Who became a Spy Madge Addy's war Against Fascism, and came out in 2022.  Madge Addy lived in Chorlton.  She was a shadowy figure, who worked as a nurse on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War and went on to work for the SOE during the last World War.

All of which leaves me to write that along with Madge Addy, Chris Hall’s new book includes the story of Bernard McKenna who was also associated with the Civil War.

*Pre order https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/British-Volunteers-and-the-Spanish-Civil-War-The-Passionate-Cause-1936-39-Hardback/p/57241

**Madge Addy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Madge%20Addy

One barn ….. three stories

Someone will know the full story of the bricked-up barn in the village of Hallaton.

It looks like the large entrance was filled in on two separate occasions.

Just when those alterations were carried out I have yet to find out.

The barn is now a residential property, and there at present the story stops.

Location; Hallaton

Picture; the barn with stories 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Roman Arena ..... on the wireless today

This is another bit of history I enjoyed today.

It comes from that excellent series In Our Time and is free to listen to long after the first broadcast. 

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the countless venues across the Roman Empire which for over five hundred years drew the biggest crowds both in the Republic and under the Emperors. 

The shows there delighted the masses who knew, no matter how low their place in society, they were much better off than the gladiators about to fight or the beasts to be slaughtered. 

Some of the Roman elites were disgusted, seeing this popular entertainment as morally corrupting and un-Roman. Moral degradation was a less immediate concern though than the overspill of violence. 

There was a constant threat of gladiators being used as a private army and while those of the elite wealthy enough to stage the shows hoped to win great prestige, they risked disappointing a crowd which could quickly become a mob and turn on them.

With Kathleen Coleman, James Loeb Professor of the Classics at Harvard University, John Pearce, Reader in Archaeology at King’s College London and, Matthew Nicholls, Fellow and Senior Tutor at St John’s College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson"*

Picture; mosaic depicting a gladiatorial fight  from the villa Nennig,** dating from the first century AD, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/168399512@N02/51134391753/ Author TimeTravelRome, Licensing w:en:Creative Commons attribution This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.***

*The Roman Arena BBC Radio 4, In Our Time, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002qj85

**Nennig is a village in the Saarland, Germany, part of the municipality of Perl. It is situated on the river Moselle, opposite Remich, Luxembourg.

***Roman Villa Nennig, https://www.visitsaarland.co.uk/poi/detail/roman-villa-nennig-c859e1607c

Shops I have known

I can’t even remember when I took this photograph but it wasn’t that long ago.

Like all these types of shops there was a wonderful collection of anything and everything ranging from under a £ to a tenner.

In the pursuit of a washing line I came across a pink plastic embossed flower vase, mounds of household goods and of course that picture of New York Bridge in the early morning.

It provided cheaper versions of things and more often and not things which were unavailable in the supermarkets.  Its passing was quickly filled by other such shops and now in the last month a new You and Me has opened up beside the bus station.

Not that it has always been a shop.  Back at the beginning of the 20th century it was the home of Mrs Margaret Barber and her six children.  In those days it was a fine 11 roomed house facing out on to Maple Avenue.

But some time during the mid century the extension was added and it became a shop.

Now I will set myself the job of digging out just what Harvey’s were selling in the May of 1959 when A.H.Downes took his photograph and I guess it continued for sometime before becoming You and Me.

And for those who regularly pass the spot they too will have seen it transform into different furniture shops.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and from a series taken by A.H. Downes in May 1959,  m17594, Courtesy of Manchester , Information and Archives, Manchester City Council 

Adventures in Middle England ……… from Leicestershire into the Cotswolds …no. 3 …. starting out

All adventures start somewhere and ours started in Market Harborough which my Wikipedia tells me is “a market town in the Harborough district of Leicestershire [with a] population of 24,779 in 2021”and was settled by the Saxons*

From the Grammar School, 2024

Just when that was is unclear, but like many such places it come into history after the Normans arrived, gaining a market in 1204 an extension to its church a century later and a grammar school in the early 17th century which stands on wooden posts which allowed the space below to be used as a market.

In the same century it was chosen as the headquarters by the Royalist army during the Civil War as the base for which to confront the Parliamentarian forces camped nearby at Naseby.  This turned out to be not so good, as during the Battle of Naseby the Royalists were defeated and the chapel in the town was used to house Royalist prisoners.

People watching in the square, 2024

None of which I knew as we sat in the town square, part of which was given over to a Turkish restaurant.

The sun shone, we ate under a leafy tree and I people watched.

The memorial, 2024

I now know heaps more about its history including the war memorial, and that “in 1950 the canal basin was the venue for a week-long National Festival of Boats, the first such festival organised by the Inland Waterways Association and marking the beginning of the revival of the canal network for leisure use”.*

There is plenty more, but I leave that to you to discover.

Location; Market Harborough

Pictures; Market Harborough, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Market Harborough,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_Harborough

Another side to the remarkable Mr Banks, celebrated photographer and now artist

Trade card, 1885

Now somewhere I know I will find at least one of the three “life size busts , painted in oil on canvas, from photographs” of “Messrs, John Slagg, Jacob Bright and Robert Leake.”*

And in the fullness of time I will also unearth a picture of Cheetham Reform Club which was on the corner of Bignor Street and Heywood Street.

It was opened in 1882, and I suppose it was fitting that these three paintings should have been commissioned by the Club because back in 1880  John Slagg and Jacob Bright had laid the foundation stone for the building and with their fellow MP Robert Leake had spoken of the importance of the new club to Cheetham.

Along with a large local crowd there was a "special party" who had made their way from that other Reform Club in the centre of Manchester and had arrived in a hired coach.

Looking at maps of the period it was an impressive pile with a large bowling green set in open spaces on the edge of some densely packed housing.

From the Manchester Guardian, 1882

But the Reform Club was not what drew me into the story that was our old friend the photographer Robert Banks, who rose from fairly humble beginnings to be a well known Manchester photographer.

Many of his public photographs of the city and including lots of public events are still available as are the personal photographic images of people who attended his studios, but until now I had no idea that he also painted.

Selling Valentin Cards 1872

I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised given that he was at one time employed by the Oldham Chronicle as an “illustrated artist” and later when he opened his own studio at Uppermill in 1867 he advertised Valentine Cards.

But there is the first reference to something as grand as full scale paintings.

A royal event, 1911

All of which points up that simple observation that there is always more to find out about things and as I finish writing this I have in front of me a photograph by Mr Banks which I haven’t seen before.

It is of the visit of Edward VII and Alexandra for the official opening of the new Manchester Royal Infirmary on Oxford Road in 1909.

Now this is quite surprising given that he was very effective at publishing his own work much of which appeared in souvenir collections soon after the great event had occurred.

And in this I have been lucky in that my friend Sally came across one of these books, “much knocked about, missing its cover and spine but full of wonderful images of Manchester.”

So there you have it, another story on Mr Banks with a side of the man I knew nothing of and the hope that his paintings will emerge from the shadows.

Pictures; trade card advertising Robert Bank’s studios circa 1885 and advert from the Oldham Chroncile, 1872, courtesy of Saddleworth Museum, http://www.saddleworthmuseum.co.uk/, newspaper report from the Manchester Guardian and  the Royal visit, 1909, Robert Banks, m72040, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Cheetham Reform Club, Manchester Guardian, September 20 1882

When the Woolwich Ferry saved me from a telling off .......... 132 years of crossing the River

You can never have enough pictures of the Woolwich Ferry, and so it proved again yesterday when I posted a picture of one of the old ferries.

1905

Now I say the old ferries, but the James Newman, John Burns and Ernest Bevan were the newcomers, going into service in 1963.

Before them there was the The Squire which started ferrying passengers and things in 1923, followed by the Will Crooks, and The John Benn seven years later.  

They replaced the Gordan, the Duncan and the Hutton, the first of which began chugging across the river in 1889.

And before that, the Royal Arsenal operated their own ferry service in 1810, followed by various commercial venture.

Nor I suspect was the Royal Arsenal the first, because given the need, there must have been  plenty of enterprising people who saw a potential money making enterprise.

2012

So with all those in mind, and in honour of the Ben Woollacot and the Dame Vera Lynn which are the two new ferries which entered service in 2019, here  is another ferry story which features some of those ferries dating back to 1905.

Anyone who was born or grew up in Eltham, will have used them at sometime, and for me crossing the river by the free ferry has always been magic.

It might not take long but in the short time while on board the trip offers up spectacular views, and of course that distinctive smell that you only get from big powerful rivers.

I have never lost my love of the Woolwich Ferry, so much, that a few years ago on missing the M25 on our way north from Kent, I seized the opportunity to make the river crossing at Woolwich.

2021

Now I could have owned up straight away and blamed my map reading, but instead as you do I turned it into an adventure, confident that Tina would also fall for the magic of  the ferry.

The journey from Well Hall up to Shooters Hill was pleasant, the fall down into Woolwich quite spectacular and the river crossing something else.

Of course those of us who have used it all our lives can be a tad dismissive of the journey.

You often have to wait a long time to get on, the trip across is short and often accompanied by gust of cold river wind, but it can still be pretty good.

On the day we made thee crossing, the sun was hot, the water almost blue, and we were set up for the long drive north.

2021

But then even for that short journey the Thames didn't disappoint us.

I do miss the cranes and barges, and the busy doings of a working river.

And before I slip into romantic tosh about a bustling living water way it is as well to remember it was dirty, noisy and for those who made a livelihood beside the river it was hard dangerous work and the rewards were not always that good.

2012

But it was my river.

Location; Woolwich, London

Picture;  the Woolwich Ferry, 1905 courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/postcards, the ferry in 2012, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Dame Vera Lynn courtesy of Gary Luttman and Paula Nottle

Learning to drive a corporation tram and other stories ….. Sidney Kirven

Sidney Kirven worked for Manchester City Council from 1925 till he retired forty-one years later.

Starting out, 1925

In that time, he saw the last days of the old corporation trams, the transition to a fully motorised fleet of buses and just missed the end of the city’s transport department.

Free from Accidents, 1962

Three years after his retirement Manchester’s fleet of buses joined those of the other ten municipalities in Greater Manchester to become a single transport authority, covering southeast Lancashire and northeast Cheshire going under the title of SELNEC.

For a while the various bus fleets retained their original colours of the old eleven municipalities but slowly were repainted in the new corporate orange and white livery of SELNEC.

I don’t know what Mr. Kirven thought of the change, and even if I did that would be a different story because today I want to focus and box full of items from his career with Manchester Corporation Tramways and its successor, Manchester City Council Transport Department.

The documents were passed over to me by a family member and include his training record card while learning to drive a tram, several trade union cards, along with a copy of the 1931 Highway Code, a number of his driving licences, a Safety Award and a letter commemorating his retirement in December 1966.

Uniform Clothing Coupons, 1941-1944

To those historians dealing with the great sweep of history they may appear small fry, but for me they are a wonderful insight into how we lived.

For me the training record card is fascinating giving as it does the route of the of the old trams across the city, while the two receipts for uniform clothing coupons is a reminder that during the war rationing extended to the uniforms of bus and transport drivers.

Of course, a lot more research needs to be done to transform these bits of memorabilia into a detailed story of Mr. Kirven and how they fit into the history of Manchester’s public transport.  Otherwise, they will just have a novelty value.

But today I am just pleased to be able to share them.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Rob and Doreen Lizar

The remarkable Mr Banks from factory worker to photographer by Royal Appointment

Oldham Street looking towards New Cross

There is something magic about this picture of Oldham Street which dates from around 1900.

And I am not alone in thinking this.  My friend Sally commented that “the image draws you in” and certainly you feel right at the heart of the city on a busy working day.

We are actually just past Hilton Street looking up towards Great Ancoats Street and New Cross.

Off to our right at numbers 56-58 was Abel Heywood & Sons, the booksellers who had in their time published some of the most important books on Manchester.

Beside them at number 60 was Marks and Spencer Ltd and beyond were the businesses of White the manufacturing jewellers whose sign dominated the skyline and the equally impressive sign of Crosby Walker Ltd whose draper’s shop stretched across numbers 82-86 Oldham Street.

In between were a branch of Maypoles’ the grocery chain, a Yates’ Wine lodge, and assorted photographer’s tailors, coffee merchants and confectioners.

My own favourite, at number 62, is the premise of Miss Isabella, servants registry office which is a reminder that this is still the age when even relatively humble homes aspired to at least one servant.

What is all the more  remarkable is the number of photographers who were offering their services in this small stretch running from Hilton Street up to Warwick Street but then photography had come of age and one of its best exponent was none other than Robert Banks who took this picture.

He had been commissioned by the Corporation as early as 1878 to photograph a series of pictures of the newly opened Town Hall and went on to compile sets of albums including the opening of the Ship Canal, the unveiling of Queen Victoria’s statue, and King Edward’s visit in 1909.

Many of these appear in an old and battered book which Sally picked up recently.

The cover and binding had long ago been lost but the pictures were intact and they are a wonderful record of our city just a century and a bit ago.

Here are celebrated some of the great achievements of the Victorian period, from the towering textile warehouses, to the impressive public buildings and in between street scenes of everyday life.

But few now know much about Mr Banks.  Back in 2011 a collection of his images was published by the History Press along with a short biography but the book sadly is now out of print.*

All of which is a shame because his was an interesting life and reflects that classic view of the self made Victorian.

He was born in 1847, his father was a journeyman carpenter, and at fifteen he was employed as a woollen piercer in Upper Mill.  At the age of twenty he was an illustrated artist working for the Oldham Chronicle and in 1867 had set up as a photographer in the High Street at Uppermill.

Reception Room, Town Hall

Now that move of course glosses over a lot because the step from illustrator to photographic studio I doubt could have been easy but at present I have no idea at the capital needed to begin such a venture or how he might have financed it.

Suffice to say that by 1873 he had moved to Manchester, set up home at 73 Alexandra Road in Moss Side and was renting a studio at 73 Market Street.

Over the next thirty years the business moved from Market Street to New Cross, and on to Franklin Street and Victoria Street and in 1903 was at 126 Market Street.

Likewise the family home was variously on Alexandra Street, and later Mytton Street, but the buildings have long since been cleared.

That said it may be possible to locale the studio in Uppermill and there remains the census records from 1861 onwards and the Rate Books along with possible references in the Manchester Guardian.

I rather think I will also contact his biographer just because Mr Banks is an interesting chap who began in a factory and  along the way was given  the title By Royal Appointment.

Pictures; courtesy of Sally Dervan

Contributory research from James Stanhope-Brown

*Manchester From the Robert Banks Collection, James Stanhope-Brown, 2011, the History Press

A tram and the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood

I suppose that old W.C. Fields line, “Never work with children or animals” could be adapted to include never write stories about trams because they have a habit of taking over.

I never realized just how those old bone shakers can still attract people.

The last ran in Manchester in 1949 and the last to clunk and sway its way into the township was even earlier.

But people like looking at them so here is another.

We are at the junction of Barlow Moor Road, High Lane and Sandy Lane sometime in the early 20th century.

A generation or so before and this would have been known as Lane End or by some as Brundrett’s Corner which was its popular name dating back to the grocers shop run by the Brundrett family.

I like these old unofficial names for places which spring from people’s experiences.  If you had taken the tram back down Barlow Moor Road it would have brought you up at Kemp’s Corner named after Harry Kemp who owned the chemists on the corner.

Well into the 1960s it was one of the recognized meeting places in Chorlton, all but forgotten now and superseded by its title of  Four Bank Corner or just the Four Banks, which means more I suspect than the official name of Chorlton Cross.

This picture has all that charm of early photography when people still posed in front of the camera.  But what attracted me to the picture, is the sign in the grounds of the church announcing the business of the PSA Brotherhood.

Now I had come across the Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood back in the 1970s in Ashton Under Lyne.

They were what they said they were an organization designed to provide a pleasant afternoon with a Christian slant on a Sunday.  The first seem to have sprung up in the mid 1870s and their first national conference was in London in 1906.

Now this is another of those areas I want to dig deep into.  There was a political dimension  “The long standing relationship between political Liberalism and Nonconformity brought active Liberals into the movement. 

In the early twentieth century key Labour and Trade Union leaders became actively involved in the PSA/Brotherhood Movement. Labour MPs Arthur Henderson and Will Crooks, and the Liberal MP Theodore C. Taylor were all present at the founding of the National Association of Brotherhoods, PSAs etc in London in 1906. 

Keir Hardie, was also actively involved, he was a main speaker for a Brotherhood Crusade in Lille in 1910. Arthur Henderson MP was elected National President in 1914. The National Adult School Union’s ‘One and All’ journal reported 7 out 9 ‘adult school men’ who stood for parliament were successful in 1910.”*

And there appears to be a Temperance aspect so there is a lot to play for and find out.

I had not thought they had a presence in the south of the city but they were here.  Harry Kemp’s Chorlton Alamack for 1910 listed

“The P.S.A. (Men’s Meeting),  Macfayden Memorial Church.  Sundays, 3 p.m. William S Bradshaw, 4, Beechwood Avenue. & P.S.A. (Men’s  and Women Meeting), Wesleyan Mission Hall. Sundays, 3 p.m, Secy., E.H. Astle, 34 Reynard Road.”

And all this and a tram to.  Well worth the read.

* The Early Adult School and Brotherhood Movements in the West Midlands: Adult Education, Evangelism or Social Activism?, European Social Science History Conference, Glasgow, April 14 2012

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

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