Longford Hall and our own Chorlton radical

Here is the story of our own radical who lived on the site of what was Longford Hall at the beginning of the 19th century.

 This I have admit is an odd view of Longford Hall which was built in 1857 and demolished in 1995, but I rather like it, and it does convey something of the grandeur of the old building which Pevsner in 1969 described Longford Hall “as the only surviving example of the Italianate style of architecture in the Manchester district.” *

The Hall was built by John and Enriqueta Rylands as a fitting home to a textile manufacturer who in 1888 employed 15,000 people in 17 mills and factories.**
But before that there was an property known as Longford House which had been the home of the Walker family, of which perhaps the most interesting was Thomas Walker, one time pillar of Manchester society but also a radical politician who campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade, supported the French Revolution and was indicted for treason in 1794.

The family lived at Barlow Hall from the late 18th century spending the summer there before moving back for the winter to their town house on South Parade which faces what is now Parsonage Gardens.  And it was there that a mob attacked Walker who was forced to drive them off by discharging a pistol in the December of 1792.

This was at the height of political debate over the issues of press freedom and the French Revolution.
“Emboldened by drink and fired on by agitators, groups hostile to the radicals began to gather around the city.  Walker was in no doubt that this was pre planned.  ‘Parties were collected in different public houses, and from thence paraded in the streets with a fiddler before them, and carrying board on which was painted with CHURCH and KING in large letters’ 

On four separate occasions a mob gathered outside South Parade, broke the windows and attempted to force their way in.  Supported by friends Thomas Walker was forced to fire into the air to disperse the crowds.  The magistrates did nothing to prevent the events and while a “regiment of dragoons was in town, booted and under arms”    and ready to disperse the rioters no order was given.  As if to add insult to injury the main concern of the magistrates when they finally met Walker was that he should not fire at the crowd again if the mob returned!  These attacks had been matched by similar ones on the home of Priestly in Birmingham and in Nottingham.”***

Walker survived both the attacks and was acquitted of treason, after which he retired to the new family home at Longford House where he died in February 1817 and was buried in the parish church on the green.

Pictures; Longford Hall, 1920, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m67353, and the Walker family gravestone in the parish churchyard from the collection of Andrew Simpson.





* Pevsner N, The Buildings of England South Lancashire,

** for more on the history of the hall and park visit Friends of Longford Park @ http://friendsoflongfordpark.org.uk/
*** The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Stories of Salford Cinemas …………. Part 1 …….. A to K

This will be one of the easiest Salford stories, comes in two parts, and is nothing more than a list of all the Salford cinemas in 1928.*

The challenge should you accept it, is dredge up the pictures, with the memories.

And yes I know someone will have written the book, but where would the fun be in going there?

Instead the list is from the Kinematograpgh Year Book for 1928, which lists all the cinema’s in the country, the film companies and much else.*  I have four Year books in the collection, spanning 1914, 1928, 1929 and 1947.

Location Salford

Picture; list of Salford cinemas, 1928



* The Kinematograpgh Year Book for 1928

Cutting the grass in Mottingham …. in them olden days

I like this picture for several reasons, not least because it is one I have never seen before.

It comes from a delightful slim volume entitled Eltham Village and was published in 1984.

Happily, the authors have given me permission to use the images with of course a credit to Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson who collected the 43 images of Eltham and the surrounding villages.

And so back to number 6, Horse drawn mower, Mottingham Playing Fields, circa 1914.  

The picture carried the caption "Mr. Groves and young helper tending the pitches of the London Playing Fields Ground Court Farm Lane.  The land was presented by the Goldsmith Company to the London Playing Fields Association in 1905 to provide ‘sports facilities for Londoners’”.

If you are of a certain age you will remember those lawn mowers which didn’t rely on electricity or diesel and instead were worked with muscle power, be it a man in shirtsleeves or men in shirt sleeves with horse.

Apparently, they are making a coming back with manual lawn mowers costing  anything from £44 and heading up towards a hundred.

And for those like me who didn't know, "The London Playing Fields Foundation was formed in 1890 by visionary Victorian philanthropists concerned about the loss of green space in London and the need to provide sport and recreation for current and future generations".**

So, there you are.

Location; Mottingham

Picture; Horse drawn mower, Mottingham Playing Fields, 1914, courtesy of Eltham Village

*Eltham Village,  Gus White, Ian Murdock and Paula Richardson in 1984 and published by G & Pi Publications Eltham

****The London Playing Fields Foundation, https://www.lpff.org.uk/about/history/

Lost Manchester Streets …. Nu 98 …… the one that never was

This is Sally’s Yard and it sounds like it should have been here for ever.

Or at least from when Hulme Street was cut sometime in the early 19^th century.

Near by there was Frank Street, Mary Street and James Leigh Street, and plenty more, all reminders of a time when speculative builders and developers threw up small properties to house a local population who worked in the surrounding mills, timber yards and metal works.

And with a sense of their own importance named them after themselves or close family members.

So having passed Sally’s Yard a few days ago I pondered on its origins and whether I could find Sally in her alley.

I had hoped for one of those narrow dismal streets occupied by small residential dwellings in the shadow of dark and grimy textile mills, but which courtesy of the census returns would offer up a heap of life stories and maybe even our Sally.

It was a forlorn hope, for moving back through the 20^th century into the middle decades of the century before our alley was just a passageway into an enclosed area which served as a storage spot for a tin works, and later a glass bottle merchants and “fancy box manufacturer”.

Of course, a Sally might have worked there but I don’t think we will ever find her.

And equally frustrating it appears the name Sally’s Yard may only date from 1995 when “Urban Splash completed their first ever transformation of an old Victorian Mill in Manchester, renovating Sally’s Yard on Hulme Street, just off Oxford Road”.*

Ah well history doesn’t always turn out the way you expect or want.

Location; Hulme Street

Picture; Sally’s Yard, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Manchester's newest New York style loft apartments - 25 years in the making...By Ben Brown, November 2020, 30th Manchester's Finest, https://www.manchestersfinest.com/news/manchesters-newest-new-york-style-loft-apartments-25-years-in-the-making/

When they stole the name of Little Stable Street

History has not been kind to Little Stable Street.

Looking down Salmon Street, 2023

First it stole its name some time in the 1870s and then relegated it to just a street which goes nowhere, and has had the added indignity heaped upon it of being left with only the backs of properties.

It was cut sometime between 1772 and 1793 and by the 1850s its eastern side was entirely taken up with commercial and industrial properties as was most of its western side.

Little Stables Street, 1850

Just one small stretch of the western side was occupied by some back-to-back houses and a passage way which gave access to a series of closed courts.

All of these were swept away in the 1870s to make way for the new Wholesale Fish Market, and it will have been around then that Little Stable Street became Salmon Street an act of rebranding which ranks as one of the least imaginative examples of town planning.

But long before then it had pretty much been ignored by the street directories who saw no merit in listing any of its occupants.

More recently Google Maps have invested time and a camera in recording the street.  The first visit was back in September 2012 which captured the name of George Makin and Sons Ltd at the far end of the street.

Spice Lounge, 2023

Two years later this had become the rear of Spice Lounge whose front faces out on to Shudehill at no.60. 

I can’t be sure just exactly when the restaurant opened but in the August of 2012 a sign announced its imminent opening replacing a branch of Costcutter.

In time I will go looking for George Makin and Sons Ltd and try to locate the residents of Little Stable Street in the middle decades of the 19th century, leaving me just with the red door and the mystery of what is behind it.

Back in 2012  it was the “New Union DVD and Video Shop” specializing amongst other things in  “Fantasy Adult Gifts”

Behind the red door, 2023

And now it is a red door and a mystery.

Location, Salmon Street, off Thomas Street

Pictures; Salmon Street, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Little Stable Street, 1850, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Of Waterloo sunsets, Peckham Rye and the Pleasuance at Well Hall

Now it is just one of those things that you miss where you grew up.

Coming home, 2013

It is such an obvious statement but is none the less true.

I left south east London in 1969 for Manchester unsure what was ahead of me but convinced that I would be back, but like most plans it never happened.

Manchester is where I ended up, got married bought a house and brought up four kids.

In my twenties I can’t say I missed London and I guess it wasn’t until quite recently, long after I qualified for a concessionary bus pass and reached an age to be rewarded with the being offered a seat on the tram that I began to think of home.

Well Hall, 2011

And home really only begins when the ferry docks or the  train pulls across the river into Waterloo and then I know I am back.

Another 20 or so minutes later and after the train has taken that curve I have arrived home in Eltham.

But then because we moved around, the train could quite easily have taken me to Queens Road or New Cross and because for a long time our Elizabeth lived in Plumstead and Woolwich there was that other set of railway stations.

My kids always know which special song to play for me and ever since I first heard Waterloo Sunset it has been my tune, with a special meaning given that Kay and I would meet every Friday night under that clock.

Ten years earlier Waterloo Station would be one of the destinations along with London Bridge which would be the start of an adventure.

Woolwich, 2015

For with 2/6d pocket money and aged just ten there were lots of places you could go for a modest return fare and still have change for a variety of sweets.

Sometimes you struck gold and on other occasions you ended up in a dreary back street beside a canal with grim tall buildings all around you.

But that didn’t matter because the fun was in the expectation of where you might go and once there roaming across the city in search of anything that looked interesting.

And there were the bombsites which were still pretty much in evidence all around us.  Most of the time there wasn’t much to discover, but once we found a gas mask still in its box with the green paint and black rubber looking brand new.

Woolwich, circa 1940s

And then there was the old bombed church of St Mary’s which was a place where with a shared candle  a group of you could wander through the crypt anticipating all sorts of horrors and finding only a damp and smelly mattress.

Some adventures turned out not so well, like the time me, Jimmy O’Donnel and John Cox having walked from Lausanne Road to Greenwich, took the wrong turning by the entrance to the foot tunnel and instead of standing on the sand in front of the Naval College we turned left walked amongst the barges and sank up to our ankles in oily Thames mud.

To this day I remain ashamed that I blamed the other two when mother interrogated me on arriving home.

Worse than the interrogation was the bath that followed which seemed to take hours and involved much scrubbing to remove the dried mud from me and even longer to make my shoes half decent.

Today those trips are less perilous but no less fun and often involve a brief visit to an old haunt like the Pleasaunce at Well Hall which is only a few minute’s walk from our old house.

Cambden Church, 1904

Of course I am well aware that the places of my youth have changed and as in the case of Woolwich pretty dramatically but I don’t subscribe to that throw away judgement that places I knew are “now rubbish”, they are just different and no doubt there would be those catapulted into the 21st century from 1900 who would mourn the passing of the “smoke hole” at Woolwich and wish there were two lanes of traffic forcing their way down Powis Street.

I suppose for those of us who leave it is always a bit odd to be confronted with the disappearance of all our childhood memories.

That said I never tire of Waterloo Sunset or arriving south over the river.

Location; south of the river

Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Scott MacDonald and Elizabeth and Collin Fitzpatrick and Steve Bardrick, Camden Church Peckham Road, circa 1904, Albert Flint Photographer and Publisher, 68 Church Street, Camberwell in the series Camberwell, marked by Tuck and Sons, and reproduced courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

A lost bridge across the Brook

Now I think it is time for a walk across the meadows in search of Mosley Bridge.

It was a small bridge over the Brook put up by Charles Walker and later washed away.  Charles Walker was the son of Thomas Walker, the radical, and lived at Longford Hall and the bridge connected his land on either side of the brook.

In the 1830s it was destroyed by a flood, and a new one was built where the brook joins the Mersey which makes it easy to find.  It’s there on the old tithe map of 1845 and looks to be roughly where the bridge is today.

But I am not sure that this is our bridge.  Over the last fifty years the banks and the land on either side of where the brook runs into the Mersey have been raised a number of times but from memory the masonry looks old.  And a bridge does show up on the right spot not only the tithe map of 1845 but on the earlier OS for 1841 and the later OS of 1888-93.

So far I have not come across any old photographs of the bridge but there is a painting made by J Montgomery in 1963 looking east along the line of the Brook.  Stand on that exact spot today and to the south there is a dense collection of bushes and small trees which were entirely missing when Montgomery recorded the scene.

But neither his or the modern view are how it was.  Back in the 1840s, to the south of the Brook on what was Charles Walker’s land were water meadows, while away to our left just beyond the field was Walker’s orchard.

Now before I take a walk down to the spot I should really ask my old botanist pal David Bishop whose knowledge of the place goes back to the 1970s and whose blog at http://friendsofchorltonmeadows.blogspot.co.uk/ is a wonderful collection of information about the land and the plant life along this stretch of the Mersey on the edge of our township.

Picture; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, Junction of Gore Brook [Chorlton Brook] and the River Mersey, J Montgomery 1963, m80140

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 43 ..... the three that became two

Now anyone who knows the Salisbury will have passed James Leigh Street and its companion Cayley Street.

James Leigh Street, 2016

And I guess shed loads of commuters will pass by the two on their way up the stairs to Oxford Road Station but probably don’t give either street a second glance.

And that is a shame.

They are best approached by dropping down the slope from Oxford Road into the hollow where the Salisbury stands.

In total there were three of these narrow streets consisting of James Leigh Street, Cayley Street and Mary Street, which took in 28 small back to back properties.

And while the back to backs have long gone, the names of the people who built the houses are still there. So James Leigh, and perhaps his wife or daughter Mary left their mark as did Mr William and Mr Frank just round the corner in the streets they built.

The three streets in 1849

Usually when a name like James Leigh or Frank turn up as a street name there is more than a chance that they had a hand in either cutting the road or theirs were the properties that fronted it.

So as you do I went looking for Mr James Leigh in the Manchester Rate books and came up with a lot.

Now I can be fairly certain that the three roads post date 1819 and were there by 1849, but even so that 30 years yields up a fair few property owners called Leigh, so it will be a tedious process of elimination.

But it’s a start.

Of the three only James Leigh still exists as a place you can visit.  Cayley Street is now hidden behind a stout brown gate and Mary Street has vanished altogether.

So I shall finish with a look at the Salisbury which was originally the Tulloghgorum Tavern, a name it retained till 1895 when it became the Salisbury.

The origin of its name is obscure but there is a Scottish poem and Highland reel with the same name, and I am reliably informed that in Gaelic the word is variously spelled - Tullochgorm, Tulloch Gorm, Tulloch Gorum, Tulach Gorm. Tulach or tulloch and means a hill, hillock, knoll while Gorm is Gaelic for blue, green, or blue-green, so the meaning of the two words could be translated "blue-green hills."

All of which is way beyond me, although it is worth noting that the name of the Lass O’ Gowrie just across Oxford Street also has a Scottish connection.

I had for a while wondered about the a possible connection to Little Ireland which was just round the corner but if I have read Johnson’s map of 1819 the pub may already have been there before the that slum was aid out.

Cayley Street, 2016

Of course the license records might help but in the meantime I shall just say with certainty that the change of name is linked to the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury who formed a government in 1895.

By then most of the mean little streets had gone, cleared away by the railway company, and industry.

But it is still possible to get a sense of what it might have been like a century and a half ago.

Dop down from Oxford Street into that hollow and then as now the place is dominated by the tall railway viaduct and two of those narrow streets.

And while the back to backs have long gone, and Little Ireland is just a page in a history book at least the names of the people who built the houses are still there.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; James Leigh Street and Cayley Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the surrounding area in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester & Salford, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

A bit of the “other side” of London life in 1851 ................. stories from Henry Mayhew

"Of the thousand millions of human beings that are said to constitute  the population of the entire globe, there are – socially, morally, and perhaps even physically considered – two distinct and broadly marked races  viz., the wanders and the settlers-the vagabonds and the citizen – the nomadic and the civilized tribes.”*

Detail of a Costermonger

And with that Henry Mayhew plunges you in to the London of 1851.

The original accounts appeared first as articles in the London daily press, were then published under the title London Labour & the London Poor in 1851.

And just over a century later my edition of Mayhew’s London was issued, bought by mum and long ago passed to me.

Here are descriptions of what he called the “Street Folk” ranging from the “life of a Coster-lad," "the Dredgers or “River Finders” and the “Bird Catchers.”

Along the way there are detailed descriptions of the area like the London Street Markets, the language of the Coster mongers and much else.

So armed with Mr Mayhew’s guide I would happily have been able to know that “Flatch” was a halfpenny “Cool the esclop” meant “Look at the police” and if I was told the beer house was “Kenneteeno” it would have been stinking while the chap in the corner who was “Flach Kanurd” would have been drunk.

The Kitchen Fox Court Gray's Inn-Lane

What makes the book just that bit more fascinating is that it came out in the year 1851 which means that it is possible to crawl over the detailed census records matching his descriptions with the streets, courts and “dark places” that made up this bit of London.

If I am honest I have neglected Mr Mayhew over the years, spending my time on the equally unforgiving streets of Little Ireland, Deansgate and Angel Meadow in Manchester.

But with long summer days ahead, I rather think I shall leave the computer and sit in the garden with this slice of mid 19th century life form the city where I was born.

That said my edition according to the editors “has been designed for the convenience of the general reading public [and much] interesting material including all the longer passages has been sacrificed.”  
And that has meant the “contents of the entire fourth volume on prostitutes, thieves, swindlers and beggars have been omitted in entirety.”

Ah well you can’t have everything. Although just last week that has been sorted as our Saul has got me the full edition.

Location, London 1851

Pictures; the Kitchen Fox Court Gray’s-Inn- Lane and the London Costermonger, from London Labour & the London Poor 1851

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

Gaze upon this tarry thing ... all you in Chorlton who want to be nostalgic

Now I am never one to stop a good story, and remain fully aware that out there, some remain nostalgic about stone setts which were once a common form of road surface.

The Beech Road sett, late 19th century

So here is one of mine. I cannot now reveal how I came to acquire it, suffice to say that once a very long time ago when Beech Road was going through an earlier tar experience, this one was about to be thrown away.

I asked if I could have it as a relic of that old Chorlton and I was given two.

It will date from I suppose the late 19th century but maybe from the 1900s.

I just don’t know.

Of course some will know and there will a minute either in the records of the old Withington UDC or Manchester Corporation, but I am not going to look.

It sits in a special place beside two handmade bricks, one dating from the late 18th century which was part of a one up one down back to back house on Miller Street and the other from that grand property which once stood on Beech Road beside Acres Road which some will still call Acres Crack.

Longford Road, circa 1900

I have to admit that the old tin potty also from Miller Street was refused entry by the family, which I suspect was for the best.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; a Chorlton stone sett from the collection of Andrew Simpson and Longford Road circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 32 ............... Smithy Lane

Now until last week I had never explored Smithy Lane.

It is pretty easy to miss added to which it is not the most inviting of places.

But if you do wander down, it takes you to Garden Lane which is even narrower but widens out before joining St Mary’s Passage and also offers another diversion which is Dunlop Street which connects with Back South Parade.

And for those who leave the big NCP Car park these last two streets will be familiar enough.

Today the collection are pretty dismal bunch and I doubt that they were much better a century and a bit ago.

Back then Dunlop Street was called Greek Street and Garden Lane extended down as far as South Gate and at its eastern end took a sharp right past the Gas Works before joining Albert Street.

Once the gas works had gone the site became a Police Station for A Division.  The cells faced out on to Albert Street leaving only the tiny Gas Street on its eastern side as a reminder to what had once been.

I often wonder if any of those locked up for the night wandered over to the Turkish Baths on the corner of Albert Street and Back South Parade or fastened on a pint in the pub opposite.

But that and a few more tales of Smithy Lane or for another time.

Location; Manchester

Picture;; Smithy Lane, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Of floods and weirs and peaceful places, on the edge of Turn Moss

The weir in 1915

I really don’t do enough pictures on the blog and rarely do those then and now sort of stories.  So here with the help of Nigel Anderson and Michael J Thompson of Hardy Productions UK* are some shots of the weir on the edge of Turn Moss just where the river takes one of its dramatic twists.

Now the Mersey is prone to flooding and after a particularly bad flood in 1799 the weir was built to channel storm water across the plain and into the Kickety Brook and so lessening the danger to the aqueduct which carried the Duke’s Canal.

And floods and the story of floods regularly pop up on the blog including the tale of the weir and Kickety Brook,.

Almost the same spot today © Nigel Anderson

So when Michael told me that he and Nigel had been down at the weir I just had to ask permission to use their photographs, along with two from 1915 which was the last time it served the purpose it was built for.


Their pictures show a benign spot, but it was not always so.

The river could flood with little warning and on one occasion a farmer just had time to release his horses from the cart as the water swept across the open land.

The weir from the flood plain, 1915

Another time in the July of 1828 flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to take them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive with one destroying the bridge across Chorlton Brook.

It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit,” and he recorded six major floods between  December 1880 and October  1881.

Looking towards Kickety Brook from the weir © Michael J Thompson

Not that it always worked.  Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

This happened in 1840 and in the following year it was rebuilt by the engineer William Cubitt.

After litigation the cost of repair was borne by the Bridgewater Trust who paid out £1,500, the Turnpike Commissioners £500, Thomas de Trafford £1,000 and Wilbraham Egerton £1,000.

*Hardy Productions UK https://sites.google.com/site/hardyprodsuk/

Pictures; of the weir in 1915 from the Lloyd collection and the weir today courtesy of Nigel Anderson and Michael J Thompson

Looking at the Well Hall we have lost, Nell Gwynne's Cottages, 1908

Now I never tire of writing about Well Hall and in particular during the mid 19th century.

This will always be one of those fascinating times for me when many of our small rural communities were about to be transformed by the Industrial Revolution.

In the township of Chorlton where I live the economy had depended on supplying food for the growing giant of Manchester just four miles away but by the end of the 19th century the city had all but claimed the place.

From the 1880s much of the farm land to the north of the village was turned into houses and in 1904 we voted to join the city.

Well Hall held out longer but not by much, and so this photograph of the cottages just north of the Pleasaunce is a reminder of what we have lost.

I have written about them in the past and today want to do no more than feature this image of them.*

It has been taken from Eltham Through Time by Kristina Bedford.**

I have seen other images of the cottages but never one on colour which makes it a fascinating one.
Of course they never were Nell Gywnne's but there will be those who still like to think so.

Picture; Nell Gywnne’s Cottages, Well Hall 1908, from Eltham Through Time

*From New York to Well Hall, the story of the Cooper family in the 1850s http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/from-new-york-to-well-hall-story-of.html

Picture; courtesy of Kristina Bedford from her new book Eltham Through Time, Amberley Publishing, 2013,

Ms Bedford also has an interesting web site, Ancestral Deeds, http://www.ancestraldeeds.co.uk/

Choose your friends ....The Delian League ....power politics in 5th century Greece on the wireless

Now this is one I am going to listen to.

Hoplite 5th century, 2018

It's the latest offer from In Our Time on BBC Radio 4.

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss the origins and evolution of an alliance which transformed the geopolitics of the classical world: the Delian League. 

Since the start of the 5th Century BCE, city states across Greece had been fighting a series of armed conflicts in the Greco-Persian Wars. 

After the defeat of a second Persian invasion in 478 BCE, a league of cities across Greece came together and formed a new alliance led by Athens. That alliance is now known as the Delian League, after the island of Delos where it was established. 

In the following decades, Athens used the Delian League to grow its own wealth and formidable naval power. But cities who tried to leave the alliance found themselves violently put down and their lands confiscated by the Athenians. 

What had begun as a cooperative alliance sworn to resist the Persian Empire gradually started to seem like it may have created another imperial power: the Athenian Empire.

With Leah Lazar, Lecturer in Hellenistic Culture at the University of Manchester, Polly Low, Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, and, Paul Cartledge, AG Leventis Senior Research Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen"*

Location; In Our Time, BBC Radio 4

Pictures; Hoplite 5th century, 2018, Jona Lendering, his file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and the Thermopylae pass at the area of the Phocian Wall, Author Fkerasar, Licensing, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses

*The Delian League, In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xp5l

The tram stop …. a poem ….. and Adlestrop

Yesterday I was at Navigation Road, that tram stop and railway station on the line from Manchester to Altrincham and beyond.

The day was hot and promised to get hotter and apart from my companion I was alone.

And it evoked memories of my childhood and in particular waiting on empty platforms in the middle of summer between trains.  

Back then the railway sleepers were made of wood and after decades of being covered in engine oil and preservatives they gave off a distinctive smell as they cooked in the heat.  

Nothing stirred save the lazy buzz of insects, and the regular tick of the station clock, only interrupted by the vibration from the wires which announced the imminent arrival of a train.

You could never be quite sure whether this would be the regular stopping train or an express whizzing through on its way from the coast to the city, all noise and speed and gone in a minute.

Leaving me and the busy insects to share the peace which descended again on the still empty platform.

I could only have been ten, but the memory has stayed with me only to bubble back up when I re-read the poem Adlestrop by Edward Thomas which was inspired by the moment his train stopped 

“one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name”*

And like my moment it was one of stillness punctuated only by my bees and his by the song of a single blackbird.

But back on Navigation Road the tranquillity was replaced by the arrival of a train bound for Chester and the Bury tram.

Now my Wikipedia tells me “Navigation Road station serves the east of Altrincham … It lies on the Mid-Cheshire line and the Altrincham Line of the Manchester Metrolink network. There are two bidirectional platforms: one for heavy rail and one for light rail. A level crossing operates at the southern end of the station.

The station was opened on 20 July 1931, on the Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway (MSJAR) following the electrification of that line and was referred to as Navigation Road (Altrincham) on early tickets and timetables. 

British Rail electric multiple units between Manchester Piccadilly and Altrincham ceased on 24 December 1991. The former Altrincham-bound (down) platform has since been used for Mid-Cheshire Line trains and the former Manchester-bound (up) platform reopened as a Metrolink stop on 15 June 1992”. **

At which point I could wander off and reflect that along with Altrincham Metro stop, Navigation Road is the only other tram stop to share light and heavy rail use on the former Manchester, South Junction and Altrincham Railway, throwing in a bit of the history of that line.

Or alternatively write about Navigation Road, its own gated level crossing, the Duke’s Canal and the Timperley Brook which The River Restoration Centre describes as “a tributary of Sinderland Brook, located South of Manchester and West of Manchester Airport. It scores very low in all the criteria used to assess its quality, except for one reach, which has been restored".***. 

But I won’t, all of that and more will be in our next book in the series, Greater Manchester By Tram – The Stories At The Stops which will published later in the year under the title, Old Trafford to Altrincham.****

Location; Navigation Road

Pictures; Navigation Road, 2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Adlestrop, Edward Thomas, 1914/1915, published 1917

**Navigation Road, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navigation_Road_station

*** The River Restoration Centre, https://www.therrc.co.uk/timperley-brook-project

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

The Art of the 1970’s ….

It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.

Floral tea tray, circa 1974

For some it is the time of loons, lava lamps, messy wars in the Far East, and “The Winter of Discontent”.

And maybe that explains the lack of an all defining title.

So, there are “The Swinging Sixties”, "The Roaring Twenties" and “The Gay Nineties” [1890s] to which the Great Depression and the build up to war has framed how we see the 1930s.

But the journalists and pundits with all their superficial and instant descriptive labels don’t seem to have bothered with the 1970s.

Now I am a child of the 60s but it was the following decade that marked out my passage from student to a young married man, with a job and mortgage, and a hot potch of a stereo, with a Pioneer deck, Wharfdale speakers and that iconic Sony receiver with its large single dial set in a wooden tower.

And I retain a fondness for that ten years and like others of my generation I have a soft spot for the ephemera, like this tray.

It was sold by Marks & Spencer’s and we bought ours sometime in 1974.  It travelled with me for the next thirty years from East Manchester out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and to Chorlton, before it finally gave up the ghost.

But it’s bright floral design and heavy yellow and brown colours bring it all back.

I can’t remember how much we paid for it was a lot less than the one I came across in pop boutique on Oldham Street.

Tasteless Chicken soup advert, 1979

At which point I could wax lyrical about the loons I bought from On The Eight Day, the larva lamps in the Pit and Nelson or that Sony receiver which was the only item we lost from a burglary in the 1990s.

But instead I chose that tasteful advert for Chicken Soup seen in Chorlton and a promotional song for Leicester called “It’s a Leicester Fiesta" which has it all.

Location; the 1970s

Picture; the tea tray circa 1974, courtesy of Sue Hampson, and Chicken soup advert, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE

Walking the northern boundary of Rent Meadow in the summer of 1848 …………

Now, it is always fascinating to take a spot you know well, and try and think it back to a time before now.

Looking out towards Chorlton Brook, 2020

So here we are on that footpath that stretches from Barlow Moor Road, down to Nell Lane, with the allotments and park on one side and those roads that run off Sandy Lane on the other.

It is an ancient footpath, and is clearly visible on the OS maps of the mid and late 19th century and shows up in the 1847 tithe map.

The western end ran alongside Lime Bank which was a fine looking house and dates from at least the late 18th century.  At this point the path was more a road, but as it made its way east down to Nell Lane it pretty much petered out becoming quite narrow.

Trees, and bushes, 2020

Walk it today heading towards Barlow Moor Lane, and you get glimpses of the bank of Chorlton Brook, with its dense vegetation and it is easy to think it was always such.

But not so, because back in the 1840s, the land from the path, on either side of the brook and stretching across what we now know as Chorlton Park was fields.

Rent Meadow, [1] and Lime Bank, [3], 1847

The biggest of the two was Rent Meadow which covered 4 acres and was farmed as meadow land.

Its neighbour was Lime Bank, consisting of just 1 acre and was given over to arable farming.

Had you stood on the footpath looking south towards the brook, there would have been a clear view, down to what is now Mauldeth Road West.

But bits of that scene would have been obscures by a belt of trees and bushes which followed the line of the water course.

Beech House, 1853

Both fields belonged to James Holt, who lived in Beech House.

His grounds covered all of the land from Beech Road to High Lane, and down from Barlow Moor Road, almost to Cross Road.

Added to this he owned 17 acres of prime agricultural land in the township.

But his money and that of his family had been made in town in a factory at the bottom of Deansgate, where he made the wooden engraving blocks for calico printing.

Such was his wealth that he also owned a considerable portfolio of properties around St John Street, including the only double fronted house on that street.

As befits a man who had “made it”, he retired early, moved to Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and settled in Beech Cottage which he  redeveloped into a grand property which he renamed Beech House.

The Holt's town house, 2010

His son continued to live in the city centre in St Johns Street, managing the business, and in the fullness of time followed his father and moved into Beech House.

Now, none of this is romantic conjecture, but based on maps of the 19th century, the Rate Books, Tithe schedule and a series of legal documents belonging to the Holt’s.

Together they offer up a detailed picture of the Hot’s business along with the lie of the land by our footpath.

I would love to know who worked Rent Meadow and Lime Bank, but alas that is lost to us.

But there are the odd little glimpses of who might have laboured there.

One such clue, comes in the form of of clay pipes found on the allotments.  It is just possible that they were refuse from night soil spread over the fields which had been bought in from Manchester.

A clay pipe, 2020

But I like to think they may have been discarded by an agricultural labourer on the edge of Rent Meadow sometime in the 19th century.

And as unhistorical as it might seem I would think that the resident of the house known as Lime Bank might have taken a stroll along the footpath on a summer’s evening.  He was a Charles Morton, but more of him another day.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Rent Meadow, 2020, the Holt's town house, 2010, and clay pipe, 2016, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and in 1847, from the Tithe map, Beech Cottage in 1841, detail from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 22 .............. Milk Street

Milk Street is one of those streets I never really noticed.  

Milk Street, 2016

It runs from Marble Street to York Street but once started at Phoenix Street.

Today there is little you can say about it.  Its only notable feature is that concrete lattice wall which hides the entrance to an underground car park, otherwise you are faced with the backs of several buildings.

Now if I dig deep enough I might be able to discover the origins of its name which might have something to do with dairies and the practice of keeping cattle in the city centre.

But if so It will predate 1793 when Milk Street was already there.

By 1850 its residents consisted of six businesses ranging from manufacturers, to a paper.

Milk Street, 1849

There were plenty of other properties including two closed courts and at the junction with York Street the Concert Tavern and the Queen’s Theatre.  The latter was swept away in 1901 for the Parr’s Bank.

And that is it.

Location; Manchester



Picture; Milk Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
and in 1849 from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49 courtesy of Digital Archives Association,  http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Photographs from the Royal Herbert during the Great War ............ a unique album of pictures

The Royal Herbert, date unknown

Now the story of the Royal Herbert has just got a lot more exciting and that has a lot to do with a fascinating photograph album from the Great War.

It belongs to my old friend David Harrop who has a unique collection of memorabilia covering both world wars as well as the history of the Post Office.

And today I am looking through it with the hope that some at least of the men and the nurses in the pictures can be traced and their stories uncovered.

Christmas Day, 1915

In time I might even be able to discover the nurse responsible for the album.

A few of the nurses are named and tantalizingly two pictures are captioned “myself” so the search is on which may be made easier as the Red Cross continues to add to its online data base of those who served during the Great War.

And then there are the large number of photographs of soldiers in their “hospital blues” recovering on the wards, a few party scenes and handful from soldiers who had recovered and left the hospital.

Summer, 1916

Together they help reveal a little bit of life in the Royal Herbert during 1915 and 1916.

Given the quality of the cameras and the age of the pictures some images have not fared so well but even the poorest have a story to tell.

One of my favourites is of Sister Thomson and a group of men on a ward on Christmas Day in 1915 along with a much faded image of the garden in the summer of 1916.

Now these albums were quite common but I suspect not that many have survived.

Album cover

David has two more which contain comments, poems and drawings of men recovering from wounds and illnesses.

One remains a mystery but the other comes from a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and it has been possible to track  some of the men who made a contribution.

Their stories are as varied as I am sure will be the ones from the Herbert and include a young Canadian who survived the war and went home to live a successful and productive life and another who is buried in the military hospital outside Cairo.

And like all good stories led my friend Susan who lives in Canada to tell the story of that young Canadian and in so doing brought his drawing and his words  off the pages of the Cheltenham book and back from the past.

Now that I have to say was both exciting and moving.

The Royal Herbert album is different in that it only has photographs but in looking through it I have made a link with a hospital I knew well and which at one point in the 1970s treated our mother.

All of which makes it that bit special.

David's permanent exhibition can be seen in the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, Manchester and currently features a collection of material commemorating the Manchester Blitz.

Pictures; from the Royal Hebert collection, 1915-16 courtesy of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

The lost woods of Chorlton …… and a mystery concerning Mrs Lydia Brown and John Holland

We are looking out on John Holland’s Wood which stretched west along Chorlton Brook towards the Bowling Green Inn.

John Holland's Wood, circa 1900, looking towards Brook Farm

Today the footpath to our left is Brookburn Road which once ran east to Barlow Moor Road and west into the village and then out again to eventually cross Turn Moss to Stretford.

John Holland's Wood, formerly the Cliffs, circa 1900

I can’t be sure exactly when it became known as John Holland’s Wood, but John Holland had taken over the family farm in 1865 on the death of his father. 

The Holland family were farming 54 acres around Chorlton from at least 1841 and their holdings were dotted about the township.

These included a strip of land on Row Acre which was the large field running along Beech Road, a stretch on the northern border beyond the Longford Brook and the delightfully named Back of the World which was located where Chorlton Brook joins the Mersey to the south of the stone bridge.

The Cliffs and Brookburn Farm, 1854

Back then, according to the 1854 OS map the stretch we can see in the picture was more heavily wooded, and was known as the Cliffs, which was rented by Lydia Brown who lived at Brook Farm, and farmed across the township, on land which she owned and land she rented from the Lloyd Estate.  

Added to which she owned the smithy on what is now Beech Road, the property used by the wheelwright, Mr. Brownhill on Sandy Lane and a portfolio of cottages.

We even have a snatch of a conversation she had with the journalist Alexander Somerville who came  to Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the summer of 1847 looking for potato blight, the disease which had ravaged Ireland, and was that summer causing concern in Derbyshire.

He stopped at Brook Farm, and reported his conversation with Mrs. Brown who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Brookburn Farm, circa 1900

Mrs. Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

And what is exciting is that we know just which fields she was referring to.  These were Rye Field and New Hey which were plots 317 and 318, and ran beside the woods and today form part of Chorltonville.

Despite not yet finding her on the census record I can track her and her husband across the Rate Books from the 1840s through to the mid 1870s.

The woods and Rye Field, 1845

And here is the mystery, because while Lydia Brown lived at Brook Farm which was roughly on the site of Brookburn School, the Holland family are also recorded at a Brook Farm which was according to the tithe record on the bit of Manchester Road which  for a century and a bit was the Conservative Club.

All of which is compounded by the census records which in 1861 place the Holland farm house  on Brookburn Road.

I will leave it to Eric, and who else cares to attempt an explanation, suggesting only that perhaps Lydia had given up farming by 1861, and was happy to live off the rents from her properties, leaving the Holland family to move closer to the woods which took their name.

Sadly, it is no longer possible to recreate the scene and reproduce an image from roughly the same spot.

The trees have vanished under what is part of Chorltonville and a new residential development which was built on the old dairy.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; John Holland’s Wood, and Brook farm from the Lloyd collection and the Cliffs in 1854 from the 1854 OS map of Lancashire showing a section of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and theTithe map of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1845