Waiting for the coal man

Enoch Royle the coal man circa 1930

There is something very reassuring about hearing the fire and the kitchen range being racked out in the morning.

More so if you are seven and it is one of those cold early December mornings.

Usually in our house dad did this around six just after he had got up and just before he made his breakfast.

It was the announcement that a new day had started and in its way was far better than any alarm clock because it was part of the routine of the house.

It was also combined with that knowledge that it was still early and you could drift back to sleep all warm despite the ice that had formed in the night on the inside of the windows.

Now it is a memory which I suspect will not be shared by many who were born after the 1950s.

The gas fire, 1938

Cleaning out and setting a new fire and maintaining the range were tiring, dirty and time consuming chores added to which bringing up a bucket of coal from the cellar was heavy work and so many opted for gas and electric fires and later still central heating all of which offered easy instant heat at the touch of a button.

That said of course many mining communities continued to rely on the delivery of coal from the NCB and even now once you leave the city and drive into the country there is still that distinctive smell of coal being burned and that lazy pall of smoke lifting from chimney tops.

At which point I must declare that this is no rosy nostalgic reflection on past times, but more a comment on what has been lost in just a few decades.

Along with that fire has gone the coal man and that distinctive sound of the coal thundering down the coal hole into the cellar.

It started with a loud rumble and finished with that after noise as the coal slid and settled, followed by the all pervading smell of the stuff which worked its way up despite both cellar doors being firmly closed.

Well Hall Road, 2014

All of which was something my mother could do without.

She was the first to demand gas fires throughout the house in Peckham and again when we moved to Well Hall.

Not for her the romance of coal and steam.

She would often remark on the end of the steam locomotive as progress pointing out that while they might have thrilled school boys of all ages they played havoc with your clean washing.

And in turn many of us will remember buildings darkened by decades of grime and soot and coming home covered in the stuff after a day climbing trees in the local park.

But each generation has a habit of reinventing the past and so  for the thirty years we have returned to open fires.

True often they were just an addition to the central heating and might be regarded as cosmetic, but now that most of the children have grown up and moved out there is less need to keep the whole house heated, and so we have retreated to the one room in the evening with a blazing fire and just a hint of the central heating across the rest.

The days of teenagers spread out on the three levels of the house all doing something different and doing it away from us have gone.

For many this will still be the fallout from modern living but not here.

From the six o’clock news till the weather forecast four and half hours later we will pretty much be in the one room, stocking that fire, and mildly disputing whose turn it is to venture into the coolness of the  kitchen.

And today with the fire cleaned out and set I just await the arrival of the coal man who comes once a week with two bags of mixed smokeless fuel and bags of kindling.

So somethings have just about come full circle.

Pictures; Enoch Royle and his father on Albany Road, circa 1930s from the Lloyd Collection, advert for gas fires, 1938, from from Your City, Manchester Municipal Officers’ Guild, 1938, a January open fire fire, 2024, Well Hall Road, 2014, Chrisse Rose

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 19 ........... the unremarkable

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now there is nothing over remarkable about these two pictures of our garden in Well Hall sometime in the 1970s.

The quality is a bit iffy but then they are over 47 years old and were taken with one of those old clunky instamatic cameras, which processed the film straight away and turned out the image in minutes.

The film was expensive and from memory you only got eight or so shots, but there was something magical about the instant nature of the process.

Today the mobile phone or the digital camera will do it equally fast with the added advantage that it can be sent on to family and friends across the planet.

But in 1970 this was pretty neat, and how better to use it than a snap of our back garden.

I doubt any of us will remember who took them but they show the garden just as I remember it.  My sisters, and in particular our Stella laid out the garden and Dad was on hand to do the actual work.

And like all back gardens, there in the corner was the shed, full of all sorts of treasures and a real necessity given we didn’t have a cellar.

Dad put it up around 1964 and a full thirty years later it still had that powerful smell of creosote.

Looking at out garden and across to our neighbours there is nothing remarkable about any of them, but that actually makes the fascinating and in their own way a real history lesson.

Here is how we decided to lay out our small gardens back in 1970.

They may not be much different from the same gardens today or those of the 1950s, but they do offer up a picture of life in 1970, added to which they are our garden, which is enough for me.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; the back garden of our house on Well Hall Road, circa 1970, from the Simpson collection

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road,
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

Working a Salford Corporation Tram in 1917 ............ Salford women in uniform

I like the way that stories have a habit of reappearing and so it is with Miss Rebecca Chapman of Hodson Street who in 1918 began work with Salford Corporation as a “clippie” on the trams.

My old friend David Harrop acquired her contract, license and handbook and they featured on the blog.

And because it was such a good story she made her way into my  book on Manchester and the Great War.*

Now yes I know the title is Manchester and the Great War, but by the very nature of things people didn’t adhere to strict geographical boundaries.  

They moved from area to area, lived in Manchester but worked in Salford and Trafford and swapped homes and work places.

So a little bit of Salford has got into the book, and quite right too.

All of which is an introduction to a new short series featuring photographs of Salford women in uniform and given Miss Chapman’s contribution I have started with a picture of a clippie from 1917.

And I rather think she is holding her handbook which gave detailed instructions on how to work the tram, what to do in emergencies and the pay scales awarded to clippies.

There was even a few pages dedicated to making notes.

Miss Chapman had written soon after joining the Corporation that "she had fallen off the tram"

it was the only entry so I guess she never fell off again.

Location; Salford

Picture; Instructions to Female Conductors from the collection of David Harrop, and "uniformed woman worker with Salford Tramways," 1917, m08109,, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester and the Great War, Andrew Simpson, the History Press, was published in February 2017, ISBN -33: 9780750 978965

That deadly smog …. a Clean Air Act…. and the story today …. on the wireless

I grew up with smog.

It was just the background to living in London in the 1940ss and 50s.

Of course, all our cities and towns were prone to the stuff if atmospheric and weather conditions trapped the smoke from countless domestic fireplaces and the tall chimneys of factories and power stations leaving it to settle around the streets and houses.

At the time we just called it fog and, in my case, I enjoyed the way it blotted out buildings and other urban features, deadened sound and got us out of school early.

But smog brought it with it a potential death sentence for some and doubtless didn’t do the health of any of us any favours.

Nor for that matter did a century and more of burning coal improve the state of buildings which were became caked in a layer of black soot which incidentally also settled on the trees and was visible on your clothes after climbing them.

All of this was to change in 1956 with the coming of the Clean Air Act which regulated what could be burnt, as witnessed by a cautionary note in 1964 from the survey of a house that we were about to buy which warned mum and dad that  “this house is likely to be included in a Smokless Zone under the Clean Air Act of 1956 and approved fireplaces must be fitted into the open fireplaces in the lower rooms by October next.”*

Now over the years there have been some fascinating accounts of those years and today I was drawn to another on BBC Radio 4’s “Every Breath You Take”, from the series “Rare Earth”which the sleeve notes remarked, “It was known as the Great Smog. In 1952, London was blanketed for five days in a thick toxic layer of soot and sulphur dioxide, leading to thousands of premature deaths. 

The outcome was the Clean Air Act of 1956. 

In this programme, Helen Czerski and Tom Heap ask what's changed in the seventy years which have passed since then. How clean is the air we now breathe?

Panel: Dr Gary Fuller, Honorary Senior Lecturer, Imperial College in London, Dr Kathy Davies, Environment Historian, Northumbria University, Beth Gardiner, Journalist and author,

Producer: Emma Campbell

Assistant Producers: Toby Field and Georgia Graham"*

Pictures; a foggy not smoggy day across the Rec, Beech Road, Chorlton, 2024

*Surveyors Report, February 1964

**Every Breath You Take, Rare Earth, BBC Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

A golden childhood growing up in Well Hall in the 1960's

Lost in the woods, 1977

Now Eltham was a pretty good place to grow up in the 1960s especially when you had come from Peckham.

It was partly the opportunity to wander over large areas of open and wooded land where you could play, walk and just let your imagination out for the day.

That said I was 14 when we arrived in Well Hall which made some of the “play thing” a little old hat.

But that freedom to set off up into the woods on a warm summer’s morning with no real idea of where you would end up was magic.

Of course the first few times you took off up there it really was discovering new places, and then later it was equally special as you shared it with a girlfriend.

What started out at Well Hall could by degree take you off to Welling via the castle and offer up some stunning views.

And when you tired of trees, solitude and aimless meanderings there was always the Palace and the pleasure of walking along King John’s Walk towards Mottingham.

King John's Walk, towards Mottingham, 1977

Looking back all that didn’t last long, partly I guess because the summers were all too short and soon there were widening horizons and counter attractions.

Never underestimate just how a sixteen your old starting out a fresh at Crown Woods with a whole new set of friends can be drawn away from the simple pleasures of a walk in the woods.

But they never quite went away, after all when you live on Well Hall Road the woods dominated the view from the back window and on those storming summer nights when the sky was lit up with the jagged flashes of lightening it was hard not to be drawn up there.

Not that anyone with any sense would venture there in such a storm.

A much better attraction was the Welcome from where you could sit out the storm with a pint although all too often I was less lucky.  Those storms seemed to pick me out as I was walking back from a Friday night in Woolwich, and later still falling out of the King’s Arms in the High Street.

And now the woods and Well Hall are a long way from where I live and separated by a gulf of time but they still exert a pull and bring back a pretty perfect childhood.

Pictures; the woods and King Jon's Walk, 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons

Sunlight House “a modern building with the best of old standards maintained"

Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping

Earlier this month I was on Quay Street with Sunlight House which when it was completed in 1932 was seen as a building which combined “modern conceptions of architecture in its sleekness and in the vertical lines, yet [retained] the best of the old standards of design.”*

It was designed and built by Joseph Sunlight as the headquarters for his business and was a lavish and modern building as befitted a man who claimed to have created more than one million pounds worth of property in the  first fourteen years as an independent architect.

Not that that he had it all his own way.

Just a few years after the building was opened his application for a license to serve alcohol was turned down.

And in 1949 he failed to get planning permission to “build a 35 storey extension to Sunlight House and a new 14-storey building between Peter Street and Jackson’s Row [because] the premises would dominate existing and proposed civic buildings, exceed the appropriate density of the area, injure the amenities of near-by buildings, and prejudice possible development plans.”**

So, even the mighty, wealthy and influential do not always get their way.

On Quay Street in 1911

Nor was his Parliamentary career a long one.  He was elected as the Liberal MP for Shrewsbury in the 1923 General Election only to lose the following year in the subsequent General Election.***

It is one of those interesting little asides of history that had he retained his seat he might well have seen his Brick Bill for the making of bigger bricks pass into law.

It was a private members bill which had survived its reading by one vote but fell by the wayside with the dissolution of Parliament in 1924.
All of which is a long way from Sunlight House and from the properties it replaced.

Now the Manchester Guardian had reported in 1931 that before Sunlight House “was erected the site contained some of Manchester’s worst slums.”

Twenty years earlier these had consisted of a mix of shops and lodging houses and judging from photographs may well have had their time.

*Sunlight House, the Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1931

And some of those who lived on Quay Street

**No extension to Sunlight House, the Manchester Guardian, July 2, 1949

***December 6 1923, October 29, 1924

Maps & pictures, detail of Quay Street from the 1888-93 OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/,  and street directory from Slater’s Manchester, Salford and Suburban Directory, 1911

Painting; Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

“I make no rash promises …. promises never fulfilled and perhaps never meant to be” ……

Yesterday I wrote about the election campaign of Frank Beverley who stood as the candidate for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Labour Party in the local elections of 1937.

At the time I had yet to uncover his election address containing the outline of what he stood for.

Happily today I have that address in front of me and it makes interesting reading, partly because of its honesty but also because the points he made 85 years ago have a resonance with the problems faced by many during this “Crisis in the cost of living” and the response of some in National Government.

So here it is, along with the endorsement by the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Labour Party.

He lost, and the story of that election can be read by following the link.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Election leaflet, courtesy of Cllr Mathew Benham 

*Mr. Frank Beverley ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy .... 1937, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/01/mr-frank-beverley-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

Memories of an ancient accident … one canal …. and that steep incline … Stoney Brew

Nothing quite prepares you for the way Jutland Street just drops away in front of your eyes.

Jutland Street before the drop, 2025

It is the road that runs from Ducie Street down to Store Street and it crosses the Ashton Canal. 

I first came across it in the summer of 1975 in the company of Norman Parry who had grown up close to the canal and still remembered all his childhood haunts.

Looking up Jutland Street, 1966

It had been a conversation one dinner hour about old Manchester that prompted Norman to offer a guided tour of the back streets around Piccadilly Railway Station and the basin of the Aston Canal.

And having told me he had learnt to swim in the canal he mischievously brought me to the summit of Jutland Street and with an impish smile told me to walk ahead of him and was pleased with my stunned reaction.

The road does just fall away, and it is a marvel that in the age of the horse and cart it was not prohibited to travel down the incline.

But I guess carters did take the chance, but with a heavy load and primitive brakes it has always struck me as an accident about to happen.

And looking down, 2025

And some time in the 1930s witnessed by Norman that is what happened.  A fully loaded wagon plummeted down the road smashing into a stone pillar outside what had been a timber yard.  The carter escaped but the horse was crushed.

All of which makes the popular name for the road which was “Stoney Brew” quite apt, but I sometimes wonder whether the present residents in their fine modern apartments on either side of Jutland Street are aware of the nick name, and I certainly don’t think they have come across the accident.

Looking at that incline it makes me think that ascending the road with a full load must have been equally dangerous.

The canal and Junction/Jutland Street 1849

And yet waggons must have done the trip, because the Ashton Canal ran in to a busy basin which back in 1849 was surrounded by the warehouses of various canal companies as well as the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway and the North Staffordshire Railway, assorted coal wharfs and stone yards along with the Store Street Iron Works.

The canal had been completed in 1797 and my Priestly tells me “The Town of Manchester derives considerable advantage by the facility with which this canal and branches supply it with stone and coal at an easy rate”.*

And that for now is it.

Location; Jutland Street, formerly Junction Street

Pictures; Jutland Street from Store Street, 1966, : m02382, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Jutland Street, 2025, courtesy of Google Maps and the area in 1849, .from the OS for Manchester & Salford, 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Historical Account of the Navigable Rivers, Canals, and Railways Throughout The United Kingdom, John Priestly, 1830

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 16 ........... a revolution on wash day

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now this was Dad's welcoming present to 294 when we moved in in 1964.

I say Dad's but the reality will be that it will have been mum who insisted on this piece of cutting edge technology.

And with that "keyplate" which "automatically selects the right water temperature, the right washing action, the right number of rinses and the right spin-drying time for what ever wash you are doing" we could really feel the future had arrived.

And on top of all that here was a front loading machine which was already plumbed in and needed no endless filling of water buckets to put into the machine.

I could also comment on the rather sexist headline but won't.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; advert for the Hoover Keymatic, The Observer Magazine January 30 1966 from the collection of Andrew Simpson







*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, 

Mrs. Mary Francis Kelsall of Chorlton ……… politician ……. textile worker …… and mother

I like the way that a story I wrote just a few days ago can come back with a series of twists.*

Mary Frances Kelsall, on her 90th birthday, 1979

In this case it began with a story of a Mr. Brightman who stood for election to the City Council in the November of 1945 for the Chorlton-cum-Hardy ward. ** 

Election leaflet, Chorlton -cum-Hardy Labour Party, 1945

His running mate was a Mrs. Kellsall and I promised to return when I knew more about her.

And out of the blue Trevor James emailed me with, “I know of Mrs. Kelsall. I did quite a bit of family history work for a lady in Wisconsin – on a quid pro quo basis, as she did lots for me in the USA. 

As our research progressed, parallels grew. It ended up with finding that my mother had travelled daily into town with a distant relative of [the Wisconsin lady] – the said Mrs. Kelsall. This was immediately post-WW2. 

The Kelsall’s lived on the Barlow Hall estate, on Floyd Avenue.”***

And that was enough to spur me on, fulfil the promise, and fin her I did. 

Doreen, Frances & Mary Francis Kelsall, 1928

She was Mary Frances, born in 1889, married in 1913, with two children, and died in 1985.

In 1921 the family were at 10 Bland Street Moss Side, and she worked as a shirt machinist for Central Shirt Co, at 19 East Street, which employed 739 people.

The firm is listed in the 1911 directory in a building it shared with various companies, including a merchant, embroider hat manufacturer shipping merchants and Milling engineers.  The large building was at the end of East Street as it ran into Bale Street and stood opposite the famous Tommy Ducks pub.

By 1939 she was living at 18 Floyd Avenue off Barlow Moor Road.

And in 1945 according to the minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party she was one of six members who were invited to attend a selection meeting “for the final choice of candidates”. ****

Looking through the record of the Party for the 1940s I can at present find only one other reference to her, which was in June 1945 when she is listed as a sub agent in the forthcoming General Election.

At that particular meeting the group had discussed the “broad principles of the campaign”, along with “general arrangements for meetings, committee rooms, clerical work, literature and canvassing”.*****

Mr. Brightman had been appointed agent and the sub agents were Mr. Luly for Withington, Mr. Ball for Chorlton and Mrs. Kelsall for East Didsbury.All of which appeared in an account of Mrs. Kellar on Friday, but what was missing was a photograph and I began the piece lamenting that “I doubt I will ever turn up a picture of Mary Frances Kelsall”.

Manchester Labour and Election News, October, 1945

And now like a corporation bus I have two both of which turned up at the same time, for which I have Mary L Price of Wisconsin to that thank.

She is related to Mrs. Kelsall and kindly offered up the three images.

So finally, I can look on her, while as yet there is only Labour Party election leaflet featuring her name and policies, I am confident more will out.

And on a personal note I was the election agent for the Chorlton Labour Party from 1980 till 1987 and again during the early 1990s. As such I oversaw the historic first victory of a Labour candidate in Chorlton in 1986 and was one of the sub agents in the Manchester Withington Parliamentary election which saw Keith Bradley elected as the first Labour MP.

Chorlton Labour Party Election material, 1980

I don't know if Mrs Kelsall was still living in the area or if she retained her political beliefs but I like to think it makes a link between me and her.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures: Mary Frances Kelsall aged 90, 1979, and in 1928 with her two children, courtesy of Mary L Price, and Election material from 1945, courtesy of M G Wittard, and Chorlton Labour Party Election material, 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Mrs. Mary Frances Kelsall ……… an election …. and the search for her story, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/11/mrs-mary-frances-kelsall-election-and.html

**Mr. Brightman ….. Chorlton-cum-Hardy……… and the election of 1945, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/11/mr-brightman-chorlton-cum-hardy-and.html

***Trevor James, November 21st 2022

****Minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party September 13th, 1945

*****Minutes of the Chorlton Labour Party November 6th, 1945

Mr. Frank Beverley ……. Chorlton-cum-Hardy .... 1937

This is Frank Beverley, and in 1937 he stood as the Labour Party candidate in the Municipal Elections.

Vote for Frank Beverley, 1937

And to date there is little more I can find about him.

I think he was born in the January of 1911, and his parents were George and Ada who were living on Chester Road.  George Beverley was a cabinet maker and Frank was one of six children, and in the March of 1911, he was baptised in St Mathew’s Church.

After that a Frank Beverley is recorded in the 1939 Register as living in lodgings in Southport working as a tool maker.

There will be more but at present that is it.

Election material, 1980

Which brings me back to the 1937 election and his candidacy.  

According to the Manchester Guardian “Sixty-eight candidates – 31 Labour, 26 Conservatives, seven Liberals and four Independents were nominated for the elections, but as eight of them, four Labour, three Conservatives and one Liberal were returned unopposed there were contests in only 28 of the 36 wards into which the city is divided,”*

The results showed little change with the Tories gaining one extra seat, and Labour losing one with losses by the Liberals to both Conservative and Independent candidates.  

At the end of the night the new balance of power favoured the Tories, with 64 Conservative Councillors, 52 Labour, 22 Liberal and 6 Independents. 

I have yet to find Mr. Beverley’s election address, but the Manchester Guardian reported that “no single major issue is at stake and the campaign has largely resolved around the question of rates, and social services generally, although traffic congestion and exorbitant price demanded for land for rehousing on cleared sites near the centre of the city have had a good deal of attention from Liberal and Labour candidates.”**

The agreement between the Conservative and Liberals not to put up candidates against each other which had been a feature of the last all out Council elections in 1931 in an effort to maximize an anti Labour vote had broken down, but this did not impact on Labour’s result.

The result, 1937

As for Frank in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, he lost.  

The Tories polled 5,776 votes and Labour 2,052.

Undeterred he accepted the nomination to stand again in 1939 but withdrew in the October “owing to a change in his employment [and so] would be unable to contest the forthcoming election”***

It is unclear whether he was a member of the Chorlton branch, but the Party conveyed their best “thanks for past services and best wishes for his future success.” 

All of which suggests he was the Frank Beverley working in Southport.

Mr. Beverley, 1937

But that like so much about him remains to be discovered, including just who left the leaflet at the Town Hall for Cllr Mathew Benham who is one of the three elected Labour Councillors for Chorlton who as elected a full 85 years after Mr. Beverley contested the seat. 

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Election leaflet, courtesy of Cllr Mathew Benham and election material from 1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Independents Gain Most in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, November 2nd, 1937

**Today’s Municipal Elections, Manchester Guardian, November 1st, 1937

***Minutes of the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Labour Party, October 11th, 1939.

The class of ’68 part 7 ……. Ranger's House and a folk concert

Now, a little bit of my past has bounced back into my life in the form pf a program and a folk concert ticket.

'....... all that life can afford', 1967

And what follows is less a bit of vanity and more just a comment on how exciting it was to be at one of our big three comprehensives in the late 1960s.

The three were Crown Woods, Eltham Green and Kidbrook, and I went to Crown Woods.

And in the December of 1967 along with some close friends and lots of other people, I took part in two performances of “all that life can afford” at the Ranger’s House in Blackheath.

The house dates from the 1720s and was a fitting venue for a performance of selected verse, prose and music from the 18th century.

The show lasted for two nights, and drew on the writings of Daniel Defoe, James Boswell, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Wesley, along with Voltaire, Bernard de Mandeville and the duc de Liancourt.

From the program, cast, writers and researcher, 1967

And dominating the evening was Samuel Johnson, whose throwaway comment that “He that is tired of London is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford”, provided the title for the show.

The sequence was in two parts, the first offering up “pictures of the streets [with] gin drinking, poverty and crime and punishment”, and the second exploring “the intellectual and religious life, as well as entertaining in high society, the military and naval activities of Blackheath and Greenwich and the famous Greenwich Fair.” *

The night concluded with the sonnet Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 by William Wordsworth, which is near you will get to the perfect piece of praise for the city of London.

I remember I had been less than willing to participate and had a long conversation with Mr. Marland who was Head of English and put forward a series of reasons why I couldn’t take part, each of which was more desperate and unconvincing than the one before.

When finally, I gave in, and agreed, Mr. Marland gave me the script with my name at the top and the part I was to play already identified.

Some of the class of '68, 1968

The two nights were a great success but were only one of a number of different performances which the school had offered up.

These included, The Causian Chalk Circle by Bertolt Brecht, An Enemy of the People by Ibsen, Billy Liar, Antigone, The Peterloo Massacre, and the sixteenth century play Gammer Gurton’s Needle along with other dramatic and musical anthologies.

All of which sat beside regular evenings of poetry, prose and music performed by the staff and students of the English Department.

Ranger's House and Samuel Johnson, 1967

Now I fully accept that similar events went on at Eltham Green and Kidbrook, and I do remember the annual Sixth Form Conferences attended by schools from across the capital which featured some of the best figures from the sciences and the arts who were invited to speak.

The point is that these were put on by comprehensive schools, and not grammar or public schools and in doing so were proudly asserting that they were the equal and perhaps superior to the older and established “places of education”.

Nor did it stop there, because Crown Woods gave us the opportunity to act independently.


In the winter of 1967 Dave Hatch and I were allowed to do our own radio show, featuring folk music, which went out on the internal radio system.

And a little later, when I asked if I could run a series of folk concerts with local singers in the school library, the answer was yes.

Folk at Crown Woods, 1968

I long ago forgot the details and had just a vague memory of who performed, but here Dave came to my rescue again, by telling me “you said that you couldn't remember many details. 

The names of two performers stuck in my mind; Gordon Giltrap, who you recruited one Friday night at the Tigers Head, and Terry Yarnell, who worked with Anne's father in Silvertown at International Paints”.

All these opportunities could be replicated by countless others, but I think there was something special in being at one of the “big three” in Eltham and Kidbrook back then.

Pictures; Crown Woods School in “……. all that life can afford”, the folk concert ticket, and the picture of some of the class of ’68, program courtesy of Anne Davey who kept them in her scrap book and Dave hatch for sending them up to me

*Crown Woods School in “……. all that life can afford”. 

Sunlight House a building “which has improved the appearance of the city and given it a dignity”

Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping

Sunlight House is still a pretty impressive building and has been so since it was built in 1932 by the architect Joseph Sunlight.

It stands on Quay Street just down from Deansgate and a little before you get to the Opera House.

It was at the time according to the Manchester Guardian, “the tallest and largest building in Manchester, [standing] on a site of 3,000 square yards and rises 200 feet from the red rock foundations to its roof ridge. 

People who pass it are amazed at its massiveness.  It is a landmark which can be seen on a clear day from the Belmont Hills beyond Bolton, twenty miles distant.” 

Now I rather think I will go looking for what people thought about the building in 1931, and particularly on its impact as a landmark, if only to reflect on the response to that other tall building, which is the Beetham Tower.

The Beetham Tower is the tallest building in the Manchester dominating the sky line and can be seen from miles outside the city.

I do have mixed feelings about this modern giant alternating between that easy and lazy response that it is a blot on the landscape to marvelling at its sheer size and elegance.  But that I guess is how all new buildings are viewed.

Like Sunlight House the Tower sits on a comparatively small plot on Deansgate and is named after its developers.

But this is not about the Beetham Tower so I shall return to that article from the Guardian which writes

“It is shaped almost like a cube and is so proportioned as to be classic in form.  Modern conceptions of architecture are expressed in the sleekness and in the vertical lines.

There are sixteen storeys in the building and about a thousand rooms.  The basement, lofty and with large top-lighted dome is to be used as a restaurant and the ground floor for shops or showrooms and restaurant-café.

The occupants of the top floors will be able to enjoy fresh breezes in a healthy environment, unfamiliar in narrow streets and dark offices.

Every modern aid to cleanliness and efficiency is embodied.  The floors are of polished oak throughout the building.  

An electric vacuum cleaning apparatus draws the dust down to a receptacle in the basement.  

Express lifts are installed to travel at 450 feet per minute.  In every room there is an electric synchronised clock.

The architect has taken particular care to arrange for the most adequate lighting and ventilation.  

By widening the adjoining street to twice its previous breadth he improved the lighting at the same time as he enhanced the building perspective.  

The result is that people in the offices in Sunlight House will work under hygienic conditions.  The heating system of radiators is, further, conducive to cleanliness in the atmosphere.”

And at this point in the article I have almost lost the will to live.

Now I know that the newspaper story is a valuable contemporary account and no doubt the people who worked there were impressed but the piece reads just like a promotional extract from Mr Sunlight’s own notes.

An observation which is confirmed by the claim that

“Before this new pile was erected the site contained some of Manchester’s worst slums, and it is satisfactory to note, in view of the difficulties which Manchester and other places are having in the matter of removing slum populations and providing them with alternative accommodation that private enterprise has helped to transfer successfully the tenants of a congested area and put up a building with a rateable value of “30,000 a year.”

Which is where I shall leave Sunlight House for today, but there is more and I shall return tomorrow with just a little bit more on the building, its architect and his frustrated plans.

*Sunlight House, the Manchester Guardian, May 12, 1931


Photograph; properties on Quay Street, 1910, m68184,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council 


Painting; Sunlight House, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

When history joins science fiction …… and becomes a book for children of all ages

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that when history collides with science fiction it’s bound to be fun*.

Well Jane Austen it ain’t but it is a start and perfectly fixes Peter Topping’s new book for kids of all ages.

“Chorlton Library is an Alien Spaceship” is the story of a boy called Chortle from Chorlton-cum-Hardy. 

It starts with that well known historic building, which is our library, weaves into that the idea that its shape might just resemble a spaceship, throws in an alien and there is the  story.

So, everyone knows that Chorlton Library was opened in 1914 and partly funded by that American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie.  

Few perhaps that the original plans travelled across the Atlantic in the Titanic, only getting as far as an iceberg, thereby delaying the building of the library till new plans could be sent to Mr. Carnegie for his approval.

And I doubt anyone will be able to identify who were the inspiration for the stone heads which flank the entrance.

But if you come along to the launch at Chorlton Library on November 26th at 3.45 pm you can be part of the story, join in the fun and get a free copy of the book while stocks last.

And that is it. 

Children of all ages are welcome; it won’t cost a thing and will be fun.

Location; Chorlton Library, Manchester Road

Pictures; the launch poster by Peter Topping, strange faces and an entrance, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2026

*It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife..." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice 1813

Don't look back ... thoughts after finding Looking at Eltham, 1970

Front cover showing the High Street

Now Eltham is a long way from Chorlton but it was where I grew up and occasionally I am drawn back.

It is in south east London and was once in Kent.

It has an old Tudor barn long since converted into a restaurant, a medieval palace and a lot of my own personal history.

And I am back here again because of a tiny booklet dating from 1970 which I had entirely forgotten I had.*

I guess I must have picked it up on one of those trips to see the family and brought it back with me.

It was produced by the Eltham Society and was designed as a mix of history and current descriptions of the place.

But it is now 56 years old and so the contemporary accounts have themselves become old and dated which in its way makes it as much of a then and now publication as any which set out to mark the passage of time.

The High Street in 1910

And that is why I have come back to it, because here is a perfect time capsule, continuing old pictures of the High Street with what were once contemporary but are now also a record of an old Eltham long gone.

All of which is interesting enough to the historian but what is really fascinating is the section on  THE FUTURE for here the writers have taken the present and with a backward glance at past developments have speculated on how Eltham will change.

The High Street in 1970

What struck me was the preoccupation with the impact of the motor car both in the form of parking and congestion and of the coming motor ways.

"The motorways are not yet with us but the process of land acquisition is well advanced and corrugated hoardings and partly wrecked houses are already blighting our streets.  

It remains to be seen whether a town can survive the devastating experience of enormous engineering works which, when completed will draw a tight noose around its heart.”**

Of course the area did survive and remains a popular place to live and for many people they will not know any different.  And those like my sisters and friends who stayed have embraced the changes and still enjoy living there.

But when you are just a visitor it is different because although I missed most of the blight and certainly all of the building work when I do return I find the transition a bit odd and more than a little disconcerting.

It is a bit like someone has taken your best toy or better still your best memory and altered them.  Not enough to totally eliminate them but just enough to make them seem out of kilter with what was.

Advert for H.C.Payne

All of which is perhaps the best reason for not going back.

As they say nostalgia is a cruel thing which messes up the present and spoils the future.

H.C.Payne at 116 Eltham High Street was where I bought my first sports jacket, skinny knitted ties.  It was a place I loved and it is now a restauraunt.

So I will stick with the Eltham of 1970, after all I know what it was like I still have the book.

Location; Eltham, London

Pictures; from Looking at Eltham, Eltham Society 1970.  I haven’t asked them for permission to use the images and quote from the book but I hope they won’t mind.

* Looking at Eltham, Eltham Society 1970.  

** ibib page 55

When Esperanto came to Manchester .... Esperanto Congress, Manchester 1936 .... another story from Lawrence Beedle

 What took my interest when I spotted this poster stamp was the exonym for Manchester. 

It’s definitely Manchester. There is the Town Hall (1877), in the centre the Central Library (1934), the Ship Canal & Docks (1894) plus a couple of 5 storey cotton mills with tall chimneys. The other buildings look like stylised interpretations of the new Sunlight House (1932) and the Midland Bank building on King Street (1935). But I maybe just be imagining that. 

The stamp is approximately 5cm x 7cm. Not an official postage stamp but what is called by philatelists a Cinderella. Stamps affixed to letters for advertisement or propaganda and numerous other reasons like charity, Christmas, fund raising, private mail delivery service, etc. 

These are collected and traded just like real stamps with prices ranging from worthless to hundreds of pounds. This one has a price tag of nearly £5. I have not found who issued them, how many, or the country of origin.

The event promoted was a six day Esperanto Congress in Manchester commencing Sunday 2nd August 1936. Not the annual world conference, that was scheduled for Vienna, but one under auspices of SAT - Sennacieca Associo Tutmonda, translated as Worldwide Non-National Association. A left-wing organisation that attracted trade unionists, workers and socialists.

It was held at the large Co-Operative Hall, Downing Street, Ardwick. That was owned by the Manchester & Salford Equitable Society, and was the venue for the first annual Labour Party Conference back in February 1900. 

Newspaper reports state 200 delegates from 16 countries attended. The whole area was redeveloped in the 1970’s but there will be people who remember the stores and the hall.

The event attracted official attention. There was a civic reception at the Town Hall, fraternal greetings from Sir Walter Citrine of the TUC, and special postmarks from the Post Office. The BBC presented a short programme on the radio ‘Say it in Esperanto’ with some of the delegates.

In these modern times Esperanto is still being studied, spoken and written. There are Apps for your smart phone including Duolingo and Google Translate. Radio China International broadcasts an hour long radio programme in Esperanto on shortwave. SAT still have an annual congress and the 94th one was scheduled for Moscow this year.

Location; Manchester, 1936

Picture; The Esperanto Stamp, 1936, courtesy of Lawrence Beedle