The lives behind the doors ….. numbers 2-14 St Andrew’s Square

Now, it has become quite popular to take a house and tell its story over time.

St Andrew's Square, 1849

Long before a certain television series did just that with a property in Liverpool, I had done the same for our house in Chorlton, along with the two I grew up in, in south east London, and the home of our Josh and Polly who live in Leicester.

And over the years I have dipped into the history of heaps of houses, including Homer Street and Coronation Square, both of which were in Ancoats and which were developed in the late 1830s.

Back then the area was just beginning to change from what one account described as a place “of fields [where] the waters of the River Medlock which are close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” *

Within a generation the fields had been covered with mills, factories, foundries and dye works along with mean terraced housing and the Medlock began its long association with filth and pollution.

The area, 1819

And so to the challenge laid down by Bob and Del Amato to find out about what was there on the site of what is now their business. **

The warehouse of Amato Food Products stands on what was once a row of fourteen terraced houses which faced St Andrew’s Church. 

I can’t be exactly sure when the square was developed, but the church was opened in 1831 but by 1839 the properties show up in the rate books.

Eighteen years earlier according to Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

St Andrew's Square, no 2 at the bottom, 2021

But the 14 properties along the southern side of the square were a cut above their neighbours .

The houses consisted of five rooms and they commanded a weekly rent of just over 5 shillings, which is higher than the surrounding streets.

And many of the residents were drawn from the skilled working class, including a railway clerk, a tailor, a dressmaker and a bookkeeper, along with a salesmen, painter and book keeper.

Their origins were as varied as their occupations with a fair few having come from Scotland, Yorkshire and the Lakes, with others from Cheshire as well as Salford.

I could have picked any of the 14 homes but ended choosing no. 2 St Andrew’s Square for no other reason than it was the first in the row as entered the square from St Andrew’s Street.

Today it is the western end of the Amato warehouse, but in 1851 it was home to Mr. and Mrs. Cruickshank, and their five children, Elizabeth, May, Emma William and James.

Mr. Cruickshank was 43 years old, had been born in Manchester and gave his occupation as a Miller.  His wife Hannah was three years younger and was from Salford.  Three of the children were born in Chorlton on Medlock and the youngest in Oldham, and despite the fact that they ranged in age from 20 down to 13, only William who 15 is listed as working.

Looking east along the square, 2021

I doubt that any of them had attended the school at the other end of the square but certainly some of the children from the other houses will have done.  

The school appeared in an earlier blog story but deserves to be revisited.***

What is interesting is that the square does not appear in the street directories until the beginning of this century, by which time our house was occupied by Samuel Boole who was a labourer for Manchester Corporation, his wife Ethel, their five children and Ethel’s mother.  

Like many families of the period, they appear to have moved across the city, and we can track their movement by where their children were born. The eldest of the children was born in Chorlton-on Medlock and the rest in Ancoats.

In time I shall dig deeper into the stories of both the Boole family and the Cruickshank’s, as well  the occupants of the other thirteen houses.

Inside the warehouse, 2021

All of which just leaves me to ponder on what remains may lie below the warehouse.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s Square, 2021, courtesy of Angela Wallwork, and St Andrew’s Square in 1849, OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49,  and the area in 1919 from Johnson's map, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

** Amato Products Ltd, https://amatoproducts.co.uk/

***Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/07/looking-for-lost-one-street-over-time_7.html

Touching home ……… two buses and heaps of Well Hall memories

Sometimes you need nothing more than a picture to create a flood of warm memories.

So here are two from my friend Chrissy Rose who like me grew up in Well Hall.

Both the 161 and the 122 passed outside our house, and all of us used them.

They were the workhorses of our childhood. 

The 161 took us south to the High Street, while the 122 whizzed us down to the Yorkshire Grey and on to Lewisham.

And both went north to Woolwich, offering up views across the Common and then down into the town.

That said it was always the return trip, passing the old Police Station on Shooters Hill and then the descent to the stop just beyond 294 which we called home for 30 years.

So thank you Chrissy, and I invite all of you to share your memories.

To which Chrissy has added "They were so special those old buses my uncle was a conductor at Catford garage , I bet he had a few stories to tell. Imagine now all that smoke on the top deck. I wonder if it's possible to date them by the registration numbers".

Location: somewhere with the 161 and 122.

Pictures; Two Eltham buses, date unknown, from the collection of Chrissy Rose

The photograph, a house on South Meade, and a mystery

I am looking at a picture of a group or workmen outside a house on South Meade and at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything unusual about what I am looking at.

The men represent a cross section of skills, ages and experience, and may well have posed for similar photographs across Chorltonville.

But I know exactly which house this was and have already begun to discover its history which starts with the simple fact that it has been occupied by only two families in the century and a bit since it was built.

And so, while we will never know the identity of the men staring back at us, we do have the deeds, as well as a collection of documents relating to its construction, which will help tell the story of this particular house.

The first family to move in was Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  In 1939 he described himself as a “Commercial Traveller in the Gas Industry”.

Everyone will find something interesting in the picture, with some focusing on the appearance of the men, the presence of the apprentice boy, and the flat caps and pipes.

The building contractor was Thomas Whiteley and a search might turn up something about the building firm, but I doubt that will extend to a list of employees.

For now, until Laura passes over its history for me to look over, we are left with the photograph of the workmen and the image of the house.

But for now, it is exciting that we are able to pin a group of craftsmen to one house sometime in 1911.

Leaving me just to ponder on Mr. and Mrs. Jones and a mystery which might be answered by those documents.

We shall see.

Location; Chorltonville

Picture; workmen outside South Meade, 1911, courtesy of Laura Hopkins

Special thanks to Laura, who kindly showed me the picture and has promised to lend me the house documents and to Jude who lives next door, and first told me about the picture.

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 5 “debris and desolation”

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

Ancoats residents, 1920

Now I am a little closer to being able to date the end of Homer Street.

It went in the big slum clearance push in the 1930s when a large chunk of the area around St Andrew’s Church in Ancoats went in matter of a few years.

Homer Street dated from 1837 and so just missed its hundredth birthday

And while some may have mourned its passing I doubt that there were many.

According to the Corporation there were 1,045 properties in the area around St Andrew’s Church of which “990 were occupied dwellings and 47 business premises leaving eight properties either derelict or unoccupied.”**

They were in the words of the Manchester Medical Officer of Health both unfit and “dangerous or injurious to health [and in his opinion were] a clearance area.”

Homer Street, 1894

He added that “in general the dwelling houses were of a similar type throughout the area, all fronting directly on to the streets, which generally speaking were somewhat narrow.  

These were conditions one generally found in the area of this type of small houses; narrow passages and high back yard walls. 

Of the houses 872 fronted into streets 39 feet or less in width, 469 on to streets of 24 feet or less.  The yards in the majority of cases were small and the property in the majority of cases was old.

There were 154 houses over 100 years old, 109 over 90, and 723 over 60 years old.  The density was 79 houses to the acre on net area and 52 to the acre on the gross area.”

Now like many I lived in a small two up two down terraced house in the 1970s and such properties can still be found across the country are still doing the business of keeping people warm, and comfortable and will still have a long life ahead of them.

But these were built at the end of the 19th century and by and large had been well maintained.

Those like the one my grandparents occupied in Hope Street, dated back to the beginning of the 19th century and were past their sell by date by the 1930s, but lingered on into the 60s.

Not so Homer Street or it neighbours, Andrew’s Square, Gees Place, Dryden Street and Marsden Square, all of which had all gone by 1938. The Corporation judged that many were worth less than £50 and “719 in the area were verminous.”

Of course there were objections, ranging from the landlords of some of the properties to those who thought that the replacement homes in Smedley were not suitable, leading one witness to at the inquiry on the clearance plans to describe them as “barracks” adding it was not acceptable to “make the British workman, after he has done his work climb six flights of stairs.”

Back of the demolished school, 1966

Some also questioned the policy of not rebuilding new homes in the area, pointing out that for some the cost of travelling from the new estates in places like Wythenshawe was very expensive.

But the Corporation “had zoned the whole of the area for light industrial purposes” and this was pretty much how it turned out.

The old school on the corner of Homer Street which had been opened in 1836 went, and the site became a sheet metal works while the rest of Homer Street was left as open land finally becoming a bus depot in the 1960s.

That industrial development was slow to come and in the August of 1939 the Reverend A. R. Denn of St Andrew’s wrote to the Manchester Guardian that the cleared area as “a scene of debris and desolation” with “the remains of houses in various stages of demolition.  Some buildings remain standing with broken windows and derelict doors.  

All around one may see the foundations of houses and the remains of door steps and yards, brick bats and odd pieces of stone are strewn about on all sides, whist here and there nature tries to cover up this hideousness with weary looking grass.”***

Adding that it “reminds one of the pictures of Flanders during the last war, and resembles nothing so much as the after-effects of an air raid.”

And while his observations may well have been accurate and echoed many who felt “it was not a square deal for those who have to live and work amid it”, it is worth pausing to reflect on what the Corporation was trying to do.

According to Alderman Jackson that was nothing less than a programme “to tackle about 30,000 houses in Manchester” at a time when the City was still recovering in many ways from the Depression.

There is nothing now to see of Homer Street.

For a while the plan of the streets continues to appear on maps but by 1960 even these have gone.

But nature and commerce abhor a vacuum and the site had undergone new development with the empty and derelict bus depot replaced by a large modern food warehouse.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; Mothers' Outing, St Andrew’s Church,1920,  m70137, and Sheffield Street back of St Andrew's Church,  Revill and Son Ltd, 1966 Brooks T, m12041 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Homer Street, 1894, from the OS South Lancashire, 1894, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Homer Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Homer%20Street

**Ancoats Clearance Order, Manchester Guardian, September 26, 1934

***Debris and Desolation, A.R. Denn, letter to the Manchester Guardian, August 4, 1939

****Amato Food Products, http://www.amatoproducts.co.uk/

Lost scenes of Well Hall

Now this will be the last for a while of pictures of Eltham trams taken from that wonderful book on Eltham and Woolwich Tramways.*

But that said given that there are equally fascinating pictures of Woolwich, Charlton and Lee Green I reckon I will be back.

And one of the reasons is that each of the pictures reveals a lot about how we lived back nearly three quarters of a century ago.

So here is one that will be familiar to many.
We are on the platform of the old Well Hall Station looking down on the parade of shops and taking in the that climb up to the Woods.

It’s a scene I remember very well.

Of course by the time I was making that journey up from the station to 294 Well Hall the trams had long gone but I think the bakery was still there and the scene is not so different today.

That said the last time I looked 24 HOUR MINICABS were now operating from the shop but you can still make out on the side of the building the ghost sign for “Fyson’s Bakery Makers of Daren Bread” which has fared better than the chemist which once occupied the site.**

Or for that matter Daren bread which was a brown loaf popular in the 1930s and 40s which may also have been sold in the old Co-op which is just visible behind the tram.

I missed that Co-op building by a matter of months.  It had opened in 1906 and was demolished in 1964 just as we arrived.

It may still have been there but if so I don’t remember it or its successor being built,

And that is the value of the picture for despite the bits that seem familiar it is a scene which has vanished.

The tram went in the early 50s, the co-op in the 1960s and sadly for me at least the old station two decades later.

Pictures; looking down from Well Hall Station, date unknown, from the collection of E. Course and reproduced from Eltham & Woolwich Tramways, 1996

*Eltham and Woolwich Tramways, Robert J Harley, Middleton Press, 1996, https://www.middletonpress.co.uk

**Ghost signs in Well Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/ghost-signs-in-well-hall.html

The case of the missing Domestic Servants ……………..

Now it is one of those received pieces of historical truth, that the age of the domestic servant peeked in the early years of the 20th century.

South Drive, circa, 1900s

Before that date, even the most modest of homes might boast a servant.

After the Great War, the rising cost of living, the advance of labour saving devices, and the growing expectations of “the servant class” combined to shrink what had once been a source of employment for many young people.

All of which I knew from trawling the census returns for Chorlton and many other places.

But I had never gone looking for the hard evidence, and then yesterday rising out of a discussion on a blog story about Chorltonville, I decided to test the idea, and to test it through the records of the estate.

A number of people had questioned whether the residents would have employed servants, given the size of the houses and occupations of those who lived in the properties.

As a project it had much going for it, because there are a limited number of households and they are grouped in a compact and defined area.

Chorltonville from the air, circa 1930s

In the April of 1911 eighteen households on South Drive returned the census form.*

The occupations listed were pretty much what you would expect for the estate, consisting of a high proportion who described themselves as “Commercial Travellers”, a couple of clerical workers, two employers, along with an actor, one manager, and one on “private means”.

Of these eighteen households, six employed a domestic servant, who lived in the home.  Not surprisingly two worked for the two employers, another for the one householder on “private means”, but the remaining there were employed who commercial travelers and a clerk.

It is of course a very limited survey, but what is interesting is that when compared to the 1939 Register which required every householder to supply basic biographical details for all the occupants, none of the six households employed a servant.

In their place comes that familiar term “unpaid domestic duties” or “housekeeper” which in each case refers to a wife,  which of course raises an interesting debate about the role married women.

Other than that, of the full eighteen, only one household listed an individual who was described as a “housekeeper”.

Which just leaves me to report that none of the original six who employed a servant in 1911 were still living in their house by 1939.

So, that is it, other than to say in a quiet time I shall go back to the historical record to push forward our knowledge of servants in the Ville.

Location; Chorltonville

Pictures; from the Lloyd Collection, circa 1900s-30s.

* 1911 census, Enu 11, Didsbury, South Manchester & 1939 Register

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 4 the school by Homer Street

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.*

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the west.

The houses date from 1837 and just six years after the church was built.

Back in 1831 St Andrew's  Church was in “the midst of fields [when] the waters of the River Medlock which are  close by ran pure and sweet and were the home of beautiful trout.” **

At the time “the congregation of St Andrew’s was in its early years a fairly comfortable middle-class body, [with] most of the pews in the church being privately rented by people of substance. But by the middle of the century it was surrounded by rising Lancashire industry and black slums filled the parish.***

Five years later the church opened a Sunday school on the corner of Homer Street and Arundel Street which in 1846 became a day school.

The school records show that teaching there was to use that modern description “challenging.”

In 1850 there was an average attendance at the day school of about 200 and four of five hundred boys and girls attended irregularly at the Sunday school.

And in 1866 the authorities went looking for forty boys who were absent one morning  concluding  that “the parents are sadly to blame for keeping their children at home” and on another occasion observed that “130 present at a time and the teacher ill, make it rather hard work to keep things straight.”

Given all of that I can sympathise with the comment made in 1864 that the school master was “glad that the week has closed so that one might have a little rest.”

But even by the 1860s the population of St Andrew’s parish was in decline and in 1891 the school reported that "the number of children on the books was gradually diminishing owing to properties being condemned as uninhabitable", although the final clearances  only got  underway in the late 1930s.

So that by 1936 the population had fallen from 16,000 a century earlier about to 3,000 with many families having been moved out to Gorton and Clayton.

That said the school still had about 230 students on roll and their attendance was very good winning them the Entwistle Memorial Shield for the best school attendance in the city’s elementary schools which seems a nice positive point to close on.

The site is now part of the warehouse of Amato Food Products.****

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Homer Street

**Commemorative Booklet, St Andrews Church Ancoats, 1831-1931

***A Centenary in Ancoats, St Andrew’s School, Manchester Guardian, June 13 1936

Painting Well Hall and Eltham ....... nu 3 Well Hall Cottages

An occasional series featuring buildings and places I like and painted by Peter Topping.

I have always been fascinated by Well Hall Cottages which were demolished in 1923 and  date from at least the mid 18th century.*

They consisted of six properties just north of Kidbrook Lane and  formed a rough L shape with three running west from Well Hall Lane, another two pointing north with a sixth at the rear on the western side.

By 1844 one of the six was occupied by John and Mary Evans. They were in their sixties, he had been born in Wiltshire and she was from Dublin.

Tracking down the other five has been less easy, but judging from the people listed on the census returns for 1841 and ’51 the cottages may have been home to agricultural labourers, a blacksmith and a carpenter.

There are plenty of photographs of the cottages but to my knowledge no paintings of the buildings so it was fitting that Peter should paint them using a coloured picture postcard dating from the early 20th century.

Now I am not a fan of taking a monochrome image and adding colour using a software process, but as Peter has used a postcard which had already been colourized, a very long time ago, my objections fly away.

Painting; Well Hall Cottages © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph circa early 19th century.
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

*Well Hall Cottages, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Well%20Hall%20Cottages

The insurance clerk, the travelling salesmen and Mrs Buxton from the USA ....... a bit of Chorltonville in 1911

Now every bit of Chorlton has its own story and Chorltonville is no exception.

South Drive, 1913

Most people will know it began as a bold venture to supply decent homes at affordable rents on a plot of farm land at the beginning of the 20th century.

There had been a modest pilot scheme which had been built behind Upper Chorlton Road, but the ‘ville was the big one.

The houses were built in record time and by April 1911 the first residents were showing up on the census for that year.

They were tenants rather than owners but within a decade the association had been wound up and the properties began to be sold off.

The estate has remained a popular place to live and many of my friends have passed through or chosen to settle and bring up their families in this quiet secluded place.

Something of its history has featured in our  book the Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy* .

And with that in mind I went back to the records to see just what the demographic of the estate was like back at the beginning of the last century.

It is a big task and involves trawling the census returns street by street.  So far I have been looking at South Drive, and have covered just 39 homes, from numbers 1 to 65, and 2 to 22.  There are gaps which suggest some homes were vacant and I am fully aware that this is but a small sample but it’s a start.

The Tradesmen calls, 1913

What strikes you is the number of residents who gave their occupation as a commercial r travelling salesmen.
In all there were 14 of the 39 engaged in the job, along with a number of clerks, two shop keepers, two teachers and a University lecturer.

And what is particularly interesting is that some at least of these occupations reflect the new industries.

One of our salesmen was selling telephones, another electrical cables, and a third heating, ventilation and lighting, while Ms Vera Harris of South Drive was a typist.

But amongst all this “new stuff” there were the more traditional ways of earning a living of which domestic service featured highly.  Of our 39 residents, six employed a servant and one family had two.

It will be interesting to see how this small sample compares with the rest of the ‘ville and with the whole of Chorlton.  But that is a very big undertaking.  An earlier study suggested that in total 29 households in Chorltonville employed a servant.

So, for now I will just close with the reflection that a walk down South Drive in the April of 1911 would have been punctuated by a hosts of accents including more than a few from London, as well as the North East, a few from Northern Ireland and two from the USA and two more from Sweden.

All of which makes the place as cosmopolitan as it is today.

Location; Chorltonville

Pictures South Drive, early 20th century from the Lloyd Collection 

*The Qurks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson & Peter Topping, 2017

Two novels … one author ….. and the continuing story of John and Enriqueta Rylands

We are now into day seven of our Arts Festival with another seven to go, and it just keeps giving, with a variety of different events spanning all the arts.*

I have to say it can be tricky to decide what to go and enjoy given that some evenings a shed load of exciting performances vie with each other.

So far, I have done a play, listened to a musical performance and have reserved several art exhibitions, two photographic exhibitions and a poetry to night to visit.

And last night it was a talk by an author on how she had come to write two novels on the lives of John and Enriqueta Rylands,** he of a vast trading empire and she as the woman who commissioned and saw through the building of the Rylands Library on Deansgate.

The author is Juliette Tomlinson who lives next to the site of Longford Hall where Mr. and Mrs. Rylands lived.

I like meeting authors because it affords the opportunity to explore with them how they came to write their books.

And I was not disappointed last night.  Juliette ranged over the inspiration for the novels, the fascination and at times the grind of researching the factual background, and the ups and downs of which there can be many.

In her case these included losing a section of her first book in the editing which was more than compensated by corresponding with a relative of Enriqueta and sharing a secret about the plight of the two grand Longford chandeliers, which I shall leave for Juliette to recount at a future talk.

Leaving me just to add that the first novel, Longford, came out in 2024, Sunnyside, the second instalment was published last month, and the third is in the process of being written.

Location; Chorlton Arts Festival

Pictures, Two novels … one author ….. and the continuing story of John and Enriqueta Rylands from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026

*Chorlton Arts Festival, https://chorltonartsfestival.org/

**Longford, A Manchester love story, 2024, and Sunnyside The Story Continues, 2026 Juliette Tomlinson, The Squeeze Press, are available from Chorlton Bookshop or from The Squeeze Press, www.woodenbooks.com

The Garamantes ... that ancient Sahara civilization .... on the wireless today

To my shame I had never come across The Garamantes.

Ruins of the ancient city of Garma02, 2010

All of which will be put right when I listen to The Garamantes which is the latest of broadcasts from on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 today and beyond.

"Misha Glenny and guests discuss an ancient civilisation who lived over 2000 years ago in the southwest of modern-day Libya. During prehistoric times, the Sahara Desert was greener and even had large lakes, but for the last 5000 years it has been a hyperarid environment. 

Extreme swings of temperature and limited surface water might make the Sahara seem like an inhospitable place to live, but an ancient people in North Africa known to us as the Garamantes thrived there. 

Following descriptions of the Garamantes in Roman and Greek texts, the Garamantes have often been seen as pastoral nomads, or as tribal barbarians on the periphery of the Mediterranean world. But the work of archaeologists in recent decades has revealed something different. 

Evidence suggests a society with flourishing towns and cities, complex underground irrigation systems, a key role in trade routes across the Sahara – and may give us a broader view of ancient history.

With David Mattingly, Emeritus Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester, Farès Moussa, Visiting Fellow at the University of Southampton and Cultural Heritage Consultant, and Josephine Quinn, Professor of Ancient History and Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge

Producer: Martha Owen"

Location; In Our Time, BBC Radio 4

Picture; Ruins of the ancient city of Garma02, November 2010, Franzfoto, I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses: GNU head Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 3 Homer Street when the developer came knocking

The story of one street in Ancoats, and the people who lived and worked there.

North of the river, 1819

Homer Street was located just south of St Andrew’s Church and was bordered by the canal to the north, the river to the south and London Road Railway Station to the west.

A short walk in pretty much any direction would offer a mix of cotton mills, dye works and timber yards all of which provided work for the residents of our street.

I can’t be exactly sure when it was built, but St Andrews which is just one street away was opened in 1831 and by 1837 the properties show up in the rate books owned by a Mr Price.

And just eighteen years earlier on Johnson’s map of 1819 the area up from the river to the canal was still open land although already it was edged with buildings.

The area, 1966

Homer Street seems a cut above some of the others.

The houses consisted of four rooms and they commanded a rent of 1 shilling and 9d a week.

This was at a time when the best wages paid in the cotton factories in 1833, for a man in his 30s might earn 22 shillings and 8d.

Sometime between 1934 and 1988 the properties were demolished and the site is given over to a sheet metal works which continued to occupy the site until the 1960s when for a while the land was vacant.

During the 1970s and until quite recently the area was a bus depot which ceased operating at the beginning of this century.

It is now a food warehouse owned by Amato Food Products.*

It would be intriguing to know if anything the Homer Street properties still exist just below the surface.

Not that I would ask Mr Amato to dig a hole in his warehouse floor.

Location; Ancoats

Pictures; a section of Ancoats whre Homer Street was to be built in 18i6, from the Johnson’s map of Manchester, 1819 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and  St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

From New York to Well Hall, the story of the Cooper family in the 1850s

Well Hall in the April of 1844

I am fascinated by the people who history has neglected.

The rich, the powerful and those of influence have had their lives inspected, their achievements judged and their homes open to the public gaze.

But the poor and the ordinary have not fared so well.  They have been consigned to walk on parts in the great events of the past, living out little lives in great centuries.

And this pretty much sums up all we know of George and Francis Cooper who lived in Well Hall with their five children in the April of 1851.

In total they have left just two official documents to mark their existence but they are enough to shed an interesting light into the couple.

In the spring of 1851 they appear on the census and may have lived in one of the six cottages just north of Kidbrook Lane.  Neither had been born in Eltham, George who was 42 came from Surrey while Francis who had been born in 1815 came from Hove in Sussex.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

Now this was not unusual and gives the lie to that old school book myth that few travelled far.  Just under 30% of the people here in Well Hall in 1851 had been born elsewhere.  Had you walked the lanes around Well Hall in that spring you might well have heard the accents of the Home Counties mixing with those of Yorkshire, Ireland and the far south west.

And it might just have been possible to pick up a slight North American influence in the words spoken by George and Francis’s eldest two children who had been born in New York in 1839 and 1842.

I don’t suppose we will get to know why they went to America or why they returned.
Perhaps the clue is in the fact that George described himself as a servant so perhaps they crossed the Atlantic with an employer.  Either way they were back here in Greenwich by 1844 for the birth of their third child and there they still were in 1849.

And two years later they were in Well Hall but not for long, because by 1861 they are missing from the census record.

Well Hall Cottages in 1909

In fact the family disappear completely until 1891, when Francis shows up in the census return for that year living in two rooms of a six roomed house in Greenwich as a sub tenant of a Mr Read who was a Railway guard. She lived alone describing herself as a widow and “living on own means.”

I suspect there will be more, and there are tantalizing hints about the fate of the children.

But at present I shall leave Francis in her two roomed house near Ravensbourne Road determined to follow up the address on the OS Map of London for the period and to check out the Rate Books for Well Hall to pinpoint the time the family were in Eltham.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Pictures; Well Hall in 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx Well Hall Cottages from The story of Royal Eltham,  R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm, 

A little bit of our unremarkable past ...... that hut in the Rec

Now here is a little piece of our past which makes me very happy.

The picture was taken in 1980 and confirms that I wasn’t imagining that once the Rec which new comers call Beech Road Park did indeed have its own hut.

I have no idea when it was built.

I know that it doesn’t appear on photographs from the 1900s but is there by the 1940s, because it shows up in a picture of our own barrage balloon.

Nor am I quite sure when it vanished.

All of which I suppose is indicative of the state of my memory.

But there it is, and for those now in the 40s who sat on its bench on long winter’s nights passing the time till they were old enough to visit a pub, here is a memory.

And soon after the story was posted, Bruce Wemyss commented, 

"Andrew Simpson I remember it well in the sixties and would guess it was removed in the early 70s 

It was turned on by the Park Keeper each spring and back off again in the Autumn Chorlton Park and Longford park each had a couple 

They where double sided and operated by pressing a Brass button on the top of the font 

They we’re all the same design I suspect Manchester Corporation will have some pictures hidden away somewhere 

As a footnote In the sixties and early seventies we local lads played football in the Rec most weekends and summer evenings sometimes with games going on all day and well into the evening breaking off to go home for lunch and tea it was not unusual for there to be 12 to 15 on each team Great times I feel very lucky to have grown up in Chorlton back in the day"

All of which was repeated by my own kids, who did the same Bruce, and had to be called in at night
  

We even had a special box full of their friends football boots for the games, and my lads would exhaust shed loads of their friends which came and went.

Location; Chorlton.

Picture; the hut on the Rec and football games, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

On Court Yard in 1911 with Mrs Morris and memories of Eltham in the 19th century

I am looking at number 25 Court Yard, and there in the picture are Mrs Annie Morris and her sons David and Harold.

I don’t know the date but I reckon it will have been sometime around 1911 because in that year David would have been 33 and Harold 24 which pretty much fits with their appearance in the picture.

And there is much more that this image can help us about the history of Eltham.

Number 25 was a five roomed house just past the Crown on Court Yard and it was one of twelve houses running from the pub to a slightly grander set of houses.

The first five or so properties commanded rents of 4 shillings a week and it was here that Mr and Mrs Morris moved sometime in 1900.

This was number 17 Court Yard, but with two years they had moved to number 25 and paid 2 shillings and sixpence in rent.

Either way this was an improvement on Ram Alley where they had lived and which had been condemned as unfit for habitation in 1895, a decision which meant little given that they were still standing in 1930.

These twelve were a mix of four, five and six roomed houses which were home to a mix of occupations including a caretaker, baker, porter, a butcher and two gardeners along with house painters, a general labourer, domestic servant and retired carpenter.

On the surface just your average range of jobs, but of course they reflect the changes that were beginning to push Eltham out of its rural past into something closer to what we know today.

And so while Annie’s husband had been a carpenter one of her sons worked at the Woolwich Arsenal.

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.”*

She had been born in 1848 at 4 Pound Place and recalled that when she was young “Eltham was but a village and children and young people then were forbidden by their parents to be out after dark. When Mrs Morris was two years old a Mrs Miller kept the school in Back Lane. 

The old inns and taverns of Eltham are still of the same identity except for structural changes.”*

Now there is much more of Mrs Morris’s memories and in due course I will come back to them.

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Eltham District Times, June 1931

Looking for the lost ...... one street over time in Ancoats ..... no 2 Homer Street and the Ward family

Now I would like to think that one of these young people could be Ethel Ward.

Students at St Andrews School, 1920

She was living with her parents at number 9 Homer Street and it is just possible she attended St Andrew’s School which was at the end of the road.

Homer Street and in particular number 9 has over the last few days drawn me in and I want to know more.

It was just a few minutes away from Fairfield Street and on a quiet night the Ward family would have heard the distinctive clunk of railway waggons being shunted in the nearby sidings, caught the smell from the river and the dye works and worried that young Ethel might do something daft beside the canal.

Homer Street, 1894

That said I remember my old friend Norman who had been born close by telling me how he had learnt to swim by being thrown in that same canal.

I last visited number 9 in 1851 when it was home to two families.

At that time I knew little about the property but now know that it consisted of four rooms which given that there were seven of them must have made it a squeeze.

Just exactly what the condition of number 9 was like is unknown, but by 1911 it was at least 74 years old having been built as part of the swift development of the area in the early and mid 19th century.*

The class of 1920, St Andrew's School, 1920

The earliest entry in the rate books is 1837 when the block was owned by a Mr Price who is still the owner in 1851.**.

I suspect Mr and Mrs Ward counted themselves relatively lucky because many of the surrounding properties consisted of just two and three rooms and were home to large families.

He was an electrician for Manchester Corporation and as such was a skilled worker.

They had been married for eleven years and Ethel as their only child.

For Ethel there would have been little that could be said to have offered up exciting places to play.

Just a short walk down Phobe Street was a tree lined Recreational Ground which backed on to the river but it was dominated by a cotton mill off to the east and the Ancoats Goods Yard to the north delivering a fair share of noise, smells and if the wind were in the wrong direction no doubt the old cloud of smoke.

Of course there is a danger in letting your imagination over play the industrial scene and I have also to concede that by the time our school picture was taken Ethel would have been fourteen and already working, perhaps in that very textile factory that overlooked the Rec.

St Andrew's Square, 1966

Her home and the rest of the houses on Homer Street had gone by 1938 although the street and some of the surrounding ones continued to appear on maps, but by the end of the century even their imprint had vanished under a site which had various industrial uses and now is a warehouse for Armato Food Products  and it was the current owners who suggested I might be interested in the site.***

Which is almost the end, but I have to add that in wandering the neighbouring streets I did come across a Mr Simpson living with his wife and two boarders in three rooms at number 17 St Andrew’s Street.  He was no relation but I like the way a random search throws up a Simpson.****

Pictures; St Andrew’s School, Homer Street, 1920, m48646, and St Andrew’s Square from St Andrews Street, facing west, 1966, T Brooks, m10604, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Homer Street in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, 1894 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Homer Street, Enu 12 272, Central, Manchester, 1911

**Manchester Rate Books, 1837- 1851

***Amato Food Products, http://www.amatoproducts.co.uk/

****St Andrews Street, Enu 12 188, Central, Manchester, 1911

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 15. .........

 Now I am pretty confident that this one will bring up a rich collection of memories.

It continued trading into the 1980s and was a wonderful place where the chesses were piled high and there was pretty much any cheese you wanted.

And l have been corrected by John Paul Moran who tells me it continued trading well in to the 1990s. Thanks John.

Location; Wilbraham Road










Picture; the bacon and cheese shop, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Didsbury’s own brass band …… a story waiting to be told

Now, I may be wrong, but I don’t think there is a history of Didsbury’s own brass band.

The Didsbury Brass Band, 1985-1986

Of course, like all such bold statements I wait the angry letter pointing out a title and a publication date for a long-forgotten book.

I know they existed and have trawled and have found references in the local press along with a list of some of the competitions they performed in.

But so far, I have come across only one  picture of them performing to the public.  which was at the Didsbury Show in either 1985 or 1986.

Tantalizigly there is another photograph of a band from the Coronation Procession of 1911 which snaked its way through the township as part of the festivities.  But alas it is of the Alexandra Brass Band Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Co.

That said I bet our band was there.

I am not surprised at its existence, after all many of our twinships supported brass bands.

In Chorlton there had been a band from the 1820s which only folded in 1945, and along with others the Stalybridge Brass Band had marched to Peterloo in 1819.

The Alexandra Brass Band, 1911

I suspect the Didsbury band started pretty much like Chorlton’s with a small group of likeminded men coming together and playing at religious and secular events.  

In the case of Chorlton that band was reliant on local financial help and donations from rich benefactors, although this didn’t stop James Axon making a drum for his brother John which proved too big to get out of the house.

The development of the railway network during the second half of the 19th century made it possible for bands to travel out of their villages and participate in regional and nation al competitions which were eagerly reported by the media.

So far the earliest reference I have to the Didsbury band comes in 1874 when the Didsbury and Barlow Brass Band took part in a procession with St Chad’s, of York Street which was part of the annual Procession of Roman Catholic Schools.

Parading in 1911

The band was also on hand eight years later when Daniel Adamson the “chairman of the Provisional Committee to promote the construction of Manchester Ship Canal obtained a hearty welcome from the inhabitants of Didsbury on his return from London. Triumphal arches had been erected in his honour, and others erected on the way to his residence as well as one in the carriage drive leading to his house.  

He was met at Didsbury railway station by the Didsbury brass band, which immediately struck up with ‘See the conquering hero comes”.**

And this was followed up by a repeat when Mr. Adamson returned to Didsbury in the summer of the following year after the Ship Canal Bill had been passed.

But just what they made of the failed local gathering to welcome William Gladstone to Didsbury has not been recorded.  

He was due to arrive at the railways station after a meeting in town and then proceed to Ford Bank where he was staying the night.  The newspaper reported "that the inhabitants of Didsbury gathered at Didsbury station.  The members of the local Liberal Club had made extensive preparations to escort Mr. Gladstone to Ford Bank.  A brass band was in readiness, and upwards of 100 members of the club were waiting with torches, [but] unknown to everyone Mr. Gladstone had driven by road and that he had unobserved, passed through the village about the time his special train arrived” at the station with him not aboard.***

With the Band, 1985-1986

Not that this disappointment was a setback for the band who performed at the annual celebrations of Lifeboat Saturday in 1903 and 1904, and later entertained visitors to the Didsbury Flower Show of 1908 and the Didsbury Agricultural Show in 1931.

And in between and after they are listed at 20 competitions from September 1875 to December 1986.***

At which point the references cease and the database listing their appearances concludes with “This band no longer exists”.

Didsbury music in Didsbury, 1985-1986

But I am confident that there will be more.  

There are other Brass Band sites which I have used in the past and as 1986 is not that long ago, there will be people who remember the band and those who played in that band.

We shall see.

Picture; The Alexandra Brass Band Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Cofrom the Souvenir of the Coronation Festivities Held at Didsbury, June 22nd 1911, Fletcher Moss and at the Didsbury Show, courtesy of Nobby Dicks

*Procession of the Roman Catholic Schools, Manchester Guardian, May 30th, 1874

**The Manchester Ship Canal Bill, Manchester Guardian, May 26th, 1884

***Mr. Gladstone, December 4th, 1889

****Didsbury Band Competions,  https://www.brassbandresults.co.uk/bands/didsbury