In the midst of plenty ........ two children sleeping rough “one under a Salford Railway arch and the other below an old staircase in a Deansgate entry”

It still beggars belief that in a city some called the “second city of the Empire,” which proudly displayed its trade links to the world in its brand new Town Hall and would ambitiously build its own route to the sea children slept rough on the streets,  making a pitiful living selling matches, and shoe laces later in to the night.

First Shelter, Quay Street, 1870

But of course it happened and in response to the stories of children sleeping under a Salford Railway arch and another below an old staircase in a Deansgate entry, the Night Refuge for Homeless Boys opened its doors.

Its full title was “The Boys’ Refuge and Industrial Brigade” and on January 4 1870 if offered a handful of boys found on the streets of the twin cities, a bed and breakfast, before turning them out on to the streets again.

Within a decade the organisers had expanded into a  ranges of activities designed to help young people and a full half century later could point to a whole series of achievements, from rescuing children  off the streets to residential and vocational homes,  seaside holidays, and involvement both in the courts and in legislation to protect young people.

Along the way it also migrated some young people to Canada.

But it began with that one building.

It was on Quay Street off Deansgate and a quarter of century later Mr Shaw one of the prime movers in the shelter reflected on those early days.

“In a dark little room on the ground floor of the house was a living room where meals were served.  A front collar was a living-room by day and a school and band room at night.  The back cellar, described as being dark and damp as a cavern, was made to serve the purpose of a bathroom and lavatory .  

The sleeping accommodation was almost amusingly primitive. 

It took the shape of hammocks hung out round the upper room from strong hooks in the wall, each hammock having two iron legs which fitted into sockets in the floor.    [and] when the boys jumped into bed ‘with a burst’ away went the held fasts and sockets and even a portion of the wall too, and that a dusty heap in the middle of the floor was generally the rest.

Mr Shaw and a group of Boys, 1883

In the year 1870 there were some forty inmates of the Refuge.  Today nearly 500 boys and girls are being cared for and trained within the institution to a life of usefulness, while according to the last report issued in 1894 , not less than 2,595 children come more or less under the influence of the Society and its branches in the course of 12 months.”*

Those involved were motivated by strong religious convictions, but also by that simple and obvious response that not only was the plight of destitute and neglected children and an abomination but “while we leave the little children practically uncared for we shall never want for a fully supply of candidates for our reformatories, workhouses and goals.”

The building had a short life and the organisation relocated to Strangeways but the scale of the problem was such that one refuge was not enough.

That lack of provision was highlighted “in the winter months of 1871 when three boys applied at the Refuge looking for shelter.

Major Street Shelter, 1905

As the home was already full, they had to be turned away. Seeking warmth and shelter and being unable to afford three pence to stay in a lodging house for the night they had wandered up to the brickfields of Cheetham.

A few days later a newspaper reported on the demise of a young boy who had been burned to death at one of the brick kilns in the neighbourhood. This boy was one of the three who had, had to be turned away much to the consternation of the committee.

It was this incident that convinced the charity that they needed another building in which to receive any child in need of help, whatever the hour and this led to the opening of another on Major Street.

"Open all day and all night children in need of shelter could be brought and receive food and a bed for the night, whilst their individual circumstances were investigated. It ensured that no child requesting aid would ever be turned away again.”



Location; Manchester & Salford

Pictures; the first refuge opened in 1870 and a group of young boys from the charity in 1883, and the Major Street Shelter 1905 courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

* The Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges A quarter of a century’s progress, Manchester Guardian, January 4 1895

**A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

One big House on the High Street

2015

Now I have written about Cliefden House on several occasions, and will go back again in due course.

In the meantime here are three photographs over a full century and a bit and each has it’s own story to tell.

The first was taken recentlt by Ryan and despite the changes of businesses it is not so different from Jean Gammon’s taken 38 years earlier.

1977

Step back another 60 years to 1909 and the transformation is pretty stunning.

Back then it was a private residence and in the middle of the 19th century had been a military academy.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century and together this made for a large 17 roomed house.

In the 20th century the front garden and wall were lost when the High Street was widened and more recently with scant disregard for such an elegant old property businesses have set about about adding the most appalling signage to the exterior.

1909

Pictures; Cliefden House, 2015 courtesy of Ryan Ginn, back in 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons, and in 1909, 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 

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 9. ......... Beech Road

Now I had quite forgotten this picture, which had sat as a negative in the cellar for four decades.

And I am rather pleased it has come to light.

We are on Acres Road and to our right is the box factory which had once been a laundry, and opposite is the hair dressers which was to become Cafe on the Green.

Directly ahead is the pet shop which closed earlier in 2019, and beside it The Village Wholefood Shop.

Back then there was a debate about that bit of open land, with some of the traders urging the Corporation to make it into a car park which the Council agreed to if the traders made a contribution to the cost.

This never happened and what had once been a fine house before it was demolished remain open land for another decade.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Beech Road, 1979 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870 ......... part 3 ........testing the story of dark secrets and awful tragedies in Wood Street

Now it is very easy to fall into the trap of using newspaper reports to draw a picture of the past.

And so far that is what I have done in the new series on walking the streets of Manchester in 1870.

As everyone knows, just yards from the broad and affluent main thoroughfares of the city, was another world where unless you were very poor you dared not venture.

Wood Street was one of those.

It was and is a narrow street off Deansgate and is best known for the Wood Street Mission which sought to provide basic support for the very poor.

The charity was established in 1869 and is still going today.

Its activities included running a soup kitchen, a rescue society and home for neglected boys, and a night shelter for the homeless.  It handed over thousands of clogs and items of clothing each year, as well as hundreds of toys at Christmas.

Around the Mission poverty not only busied its self but was pretty much what defined the street, and those newspaper reports dug deep into the squalor and human misery.

There were five articles published by the Manchester Guardian from February to March 1870 and they ranged over the back streets of Deansgate, across to Angel Meadow and up Market Street and down to London Road.**

The descriptions of awful living conditions, drunkenness and prostitution are as shocking to day as they were nearly 150 years ago.

And the reports are essential reading for those wanting to know more about living conditions amongst the very poor and in particular as a backdrop to the growing movement to care for the legion of abandoned, destitute and abused children.

But nothing should be taken at face value, which meant trawling the records to test how far the vivid descriptions matched reality.

The starting point as ever were the street directories which list householders and with names you can search the census returns to find the families which in turn will offer up information on occupations, the numbers of people living in each house and the density of housing.

Wood Street, 1849

And that data can be matched with maps of the area, making it possible to follow our journalist along Wood Street.

Not that it is that simple, because in 1870 the entire residents of Wood Street were not worthy of inclusion in the street directory which meant looking instead for the nearest properties on Deansgate, and using the name of the householder to visit the census return for the area.

43-49 Wood Street, 1903

Happily it paid off and just over half of the twenty pages of the particular census return were for Wood Street.  In total there were 276 people living in forty four properties, many of which were in closed courts off Wood Street and accessed by dark narrow passages.***

Some of the courts had names like Smith’s Court, Bradley Court and Pilkington’s while others didn’t even rate a name.

Most of the properties were back to back and consisted of just two rooms and will have been in various states of repair.

And at random I fastened on the Ellis family who lived at number 3 Robinson’s Court which was at the western end of Wood Street hard by a Hide and Skin Yard.

The court was accessed through one of those narrow passages off Wood Street and in turn led off to another and unnamed court.

Robinson's Court, 1849

Robinson’s Court would have been dark, admitting little sunshine or fresh air and its occupants would have had daily to cope with the smell of the Hide and Skin Yard, just yards away.

Mr Thomas Ellis was a stone mason’s labourer, aged 33 from Manchester.

His wife Mary had been born in Dublin and was a silk winder.

Together with their four children they occupied the two rooms which made up number 3.

No photographs exist of their home but by exploring the rate books we know that they paid one shilling a week and that their landlord was John Highams who owned all six properties in the court.

33 & 35  Wood Street, 1903

A further search of the rate books will reveal the extent of Mr Higham’s property portfolio and by finding out just how much Mr Ellis earned it should be possible to judge how significant that shilling was to the family budget.

What is interesting about Wood Street is the number of lodging houses which according to the article were at the bottom end of the market with overcrowding being the norm and some verging on “vice shops.”****

I think it may be impossible now to ascertain how accurate was the journalist’s observation of “drunken women standing about the doorway, or coming in with some drunken man whom the gin shops of Deansgate have half maddened.”****

But I suspect the discovery of a group of women in another house is all too true.  “On the knees of the centre figure of this strange group lies a little month-old baby, dying-the last of twins.  It is miserably thin and the yellow skin shows the articulation of its frame.... the eyelids are drawn close down, and a long bony arm weakly and painfully raises itself.”****

One of the courts off Wood Street, 1903

We will never know the identity of any of the group or the final fate of the child, but a few days later the mother had taken refuge in the most debased of lodging houses.

Today Wood Street is still narrow, the Mission building is still there but as for the rest it has long ago vanished.

Location; Manchester, 1870







Pictures; Wood Street, 2007, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, numbers 43-49, 1904, m05386,numbers 33 &35, m05389, backs of numbers 33 & 35 m05391, A Bradburn courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Wood Street, 1849, from Manchester & Salford OS, Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Walking Manchester in 1870

**In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3 1870

***Wood Street, from the 1871 census, Enu 2, 9-20, Deansgate, St Mary’s

****In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3 1870

The Romans really were in Well Hall .... 1,900 years ago

The discovery of what could be the remains of a Roman hypocaust system has been uncovered in an archaeological dig in the back garden of a house in Well Hall.

Elena Verdi of the 'Istituto di antichità classica di Napoli, announced this morning that "the find is very significant and raises the possibility that this was part of a villa complex or even the bathhouse of a previously unknown Roman military establishment".

BREAKING NEWS

It can now be revealed in advance of the press conference to be held in Naples at the offices of the Istituto di antichità classica di Napoli at midday, that the remains discovered in the garden of a Well Hall house are not Roman.

A saddened Elena Verdi, will announce that her team were a little hasty in their conclusions.  "I think we were all too excited by a metal box inscribed with an advert in Latin for 'Mario's take away fish paste', and in retrospect concede the remains appear to be an early 20th century  black pudding mine, which were known to be extensive in the Well Hall area at the time."

It is also believed she has withdrawn the souvenir plastic models of Roman soldiers carrying the inscription. "Visit Well Hall and take a break from all that conquering" which were found at the dig site.

Location; Well Hall

Picture; the remains, 2019 courtesy, Istituto di antichità classica di Napoli

Lost Tudor home found in Chorlton ..............

Now there are many myths, and half-truths about both Hough End Hall and Barlow Hall which circulate and pop up for debate from time to time.

The young Henry VIII, 1530-35

The most persistent are the tunnels which are supposed to connect the two, along with another which runs from the Horse and Jockey on the Green to the site of the old church.

So, the story goes they were dug during the Reformation and Counter Reformation as an escape route during religious persecution, while the pub tunnel allowed expensive and illegal casks of French brandy to be stored in the vaults of the church during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

Of course, they are total tosh.  The residents of Barlow Hall were Catholics and those of Hough End Hall were Protestants and so hardly likely to conspire in challenging which ever form of Christianity was official during the 1540s into the 1590s, and neither the old St Clements nor its later replacement had a vault.

But it now turns out that there maybe more than a little truth in the story that Henry VIII had a hunting lodge somewhere close to the western side of Chorlton Park.

A chance find in the Royal Library of a book listing where the King visited during his Royal Progresses suggests that in 1539 on a trip to the North he commissioned the construction of a grand lodge close to an unnamed stream near what is thought to be Barlow Moor Road.

The building predates the second Hough End Hall which was built just over fifty years later and may have used some of the timbers and glass from the King’s house.

Sadly, nothing now remains of the lodge according to Eric Thistlewaite who was a superintendent at Manchester Parks and Recreational Grounds [retired]. He confirmed that prior to the laying out of Chorlton Park in the 1920s an extensive programme of digging in the location had found nothing.

Hough End Hall, 1849, all that is left of Henry's hunting lodge?

The most plausible explanation for the lack of any evidence is the simple one, that the lodge would have been made of prefabricated units which were assembled on site, and sometime in the mid-1590s Queen Elizabeth sold off everything including the fittings, furniture, and the fabric of the building to recoup losses made during the costly battle to defeat the Spanish Armada.

But the presence of the lodge has led  Mrs Trellis of Sandy Lane to call a meeting to petition King Charles to honour the township with the prefix Royal.  “I think” she said “it would be a great honour to live in the Royal Township of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, and who knows one day we may even be able to find out who the King entertained in his lodge, which I believe would have been just before his ill-fated fourth marriage”.

The exact location and time of tonight’s meeting has yet to be announced.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Henry VIII, circa, 1530-37, by Joos van Cleve,   Royal Collection RCIN 403368, and Hough End Hall in 1849, from The Family Memoirs, Sir Oswald Mosley, 1849

Will Didsbury lose its name?

There is a growing interest in renaming the old township of Didsbury.

Saxton's map of Lancashire, 1577

The smart money is on that older spelling of Diddesbury which appears on Saxton’s map of 1577.

This would be more accurate, and some have argued would lend greater gravitas to our suburb, be more in line with its historical origins and be a powerful marketing ploy to attract tourists from China, the Sub-Continent and the powerful economies of south east Asia.

The cost of changing to the new name would be outweighed by interest from Tourist Boards and travel companies looking for somewhere new to sell holidays to families who are tiring of places in the sun and overcrowded and expensive destinations.

But a small and vociferous group have gone further and would prefer to see the name eliminated from all maps, road signs and official documents in favour of Northenden and Barlow Moor.

Mr. Renfrew of the Ancient Association of Topographical and Projectionists said at their annual meeting, “Too long have we laboured under the name of Didsbury, and it is time to shake off the vestiges of the clinging past and be ‘bloody, bold and resolute’.  

To this end we want the rehabilitation of the names Barlow Moor and Northenden.  We support the division of Didsbury into two self-governing entities on the model of the old Scottish Burgh.  We would leave the actual division of Didsbury and the new boundaries between Barlow Moor and Northenden to a Convocation of the Good and Wise”

We shall see

Location; Barlow Moor and Northenden

Picture; extract from Saxton’s map of Lancashire, 1577, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

Rediscovering our recent past the Coldharbour Estate in Eltham sometime in the 1950s

I rather think that we often overlook our most recent past.

There was one history teacher of mine at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School who maintained that if wasn’t at least a hundred years old it didn’t class as history.

Now I know what he was getting at but that ignores so much of ore recent past, a past still vivid in the memories of many people.

So today I have decided to look at the Coldharbour Estate some of which will have clocked up sixty-six years of history which makes it older than even me.

The estate is “a large and spacious estate developed on the site of the Coldharbour Farm by the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich from 1947.  It is sliced in two by a major road, William Barefoot Drive, where the small shopping centre and community buildings are located.

The estate was planned as a ‘garden suburb’, and there are many attractive greens.  From the open space at the Court there is a magnificent view of Eltham Lodge.”*

And there is the St Albans Church, “a small red brick church designed by Ralph Covell in 1953 it has a nice square tower and gently bowed window, and is linked by an arcade to the original vicarage.”*

The estate was not some where I knew well but only because none of my friends lived there so I had no reason to visit it, and when you are sixteen there are far more interesting places that call you over.

So I never went and now forty-seven years on and 230 miles further north I guess I won’t.
But that is not to say I have ignored the place.

Like many other post war developments it was a part of that determined effort to provide decent housing in pleasant surroundings.

And Coldharbour must have been significant enough a place to warrant a set of postcards by Tuck and Sons Ltd.

My favourite is the one of Witherstone Way mainly because of what was written on the back which announces that “The HOUSE MARKED X IS MY HOUSE. La maison c’est chez moi”

It has been dated to 1976 but the card must be older and is in that tradition of local communities getting their own visual record of what they were like, along with that even older habit dating back to the beginning of post card of marking the spot where you lived.

And reminds us that once the image had been created the company continued using it despite the fact that by 1976 the cars and the fashions had moved on a full twenty years if or more.

Pictures; Witherstone Way and St Albans Church and the Mound, courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/postcards

*Spurgeon Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2000

When nostalgia gets it wrong

Historically there may have been a time when Beech Road was empty of parked cars, vans and scooters.

Beech Road, 1979

And lots of people will tell you that they remember just such a time.

But you will have to go back a long time.... perhaps to sometime just after the last war or one Sunday before the arrival of the Beech Road bar and coffee culture.

And even then  you might be hard pressed to find the entire road from the Rec down to the Green totally empty.

For proof here is Beech Road in 1979. 

I have no idea now what day or what time but busy it was.

And that offers up a corrective to all those who remark that there were no cars then when seeing an old photograph.

That advert seen on the side of Walker's barn, the Green, 1979 

In the same way lets not pretend that street adverts were any better all that tme ago.

Neither photograph is the best, but then the negatives sat in our cellar for over 40 years, and were taken when I was just begining to snap away.

But they make the point.

And let's not forget that on Friday and Saturday the overflow from the Irish clun stretched along Cross Road, Beaumont Road and Beech Road.

Location; Chorlton, 1979

Pictues; Beech Road and a poster, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870 ......... part 2 ........Deansgate and Davenport’ Court "where scarcely a night passes but some robbery is committed”

Now I have to say the stretch of Deansgate from St Mary’s Gate down to Victoria Street Bridge is dismal.

Looking up Deansgate from Victoria Bridge Street, 1988

It starts with that Italian restaurant but pretty quickly becomes just a wall behind which rises that sloping walkway which now goes nowhere.

And the end of that dismal stretch is just the entrance to a car park.   All very different from the impressive Grosvenor Hotel and the Grosvenor Buildings which occupied the same spot but were demolished in 1972.

A full century earlier and the same site was home to the notorious Davenport Court where according to the Manchester Guardian “scarcely a night passes but some robbery is committed ........ and almost under the shadow of the Cathedral tower.”*

The Grosvenor Hotel, 1959

The court was one of those enclosed ones and “entered only by a narrow passage some four or five feet wide.

At the end of this are two houses, used for the most vicious of all trades, and of course registered as common lodging house.”

It was “well known in the police courts and goal.  

Yet for all these houses are still continued on the register as being well ordered, and go on nightly adding to the long calendar of crime and filling the lock wards of our hospitals.” 

Lock hospitals specialized in treating sexually transmitted diseases,

Ours had opened in 1819 and was replaced a by newer one which opened in 1874 off Liverpool Road, on the corner of Duke Street and Bridgewater Street, and while it postdates the Manchester Guardian description it is worth noting that a decade later it was so strapped for cash that “its walls still remain unpainted.”

But according to Mr Lowndes its “doors are always open in the first instance to anyone suffering from the disease for which it treats, but in order to prevent abuse, and to reserve its benefits for the most deserving, no patient is admitted a second time.”**

One wonders where some of those who needed its services a second time went, not that the journalist from the Manchester Guardian.

Davenport Court, 1849

Instead he continued to paint a vivid if depressing picture of life in Davenport Court, referring to one resident “seated by the kitchen fire of one of these houses who was a low browed short haired man, whose muscles and ferocity seemed well matched and who boasted that he ‘never did a day’s work this many a year, and should consider himself a fool,” with a very appropriate adjective ‘if he did.’”

And there was plenty of evidence of violent behaviour and criminal acts upon those who might stray into the court.  Such victims could not expect any help even though they might cry out and were unlikely to catch their assailant who being familiar with the court could vanish in an instant and be out on Deansgate mingling with passersby.

Added to which “at the corner of the entry. Keeping guard over it is a public house filled full to overflowing with wholly drunken men and semi-drunken women, and hard working labourers who are spending on prostitutes hard-earned money for want of which their wives and children are starving at home. 

Davenport Court and surrounding area, 1849

The whistle which gives token of the approach of suspicious-looking strangers, and the intense silence which succeeds it, indicate alike the commerce and the conversation carried on there.

The intruding and unwelcome visitor is greeted with muttered curses and regarded with furtive looks; he may be a ‘plain-clothes man’ taking stock, and too many know what that means to make his advent welcome.”

The pub was the Llangollen Castle which stood directly north of the court and the area was dominted by textile mills, metal working plant and timber yard.


Of course it may well be that our journalist for all sorts of reasons may have over egged the situation, but I doubt it for there are plenty of similar accounts.

That said I shall away and away and trawl the records for any reference to unruly behaviour in the pub and the court.

Victoria Street, 1988

Location; Deansgate

Coming soon; dark secrets and tragedies in Wood Street






Pictures; Victoria Street, 1988, E. Krieger, m 05447, Grosvenor Hotel and the Grosvenor Buildings, L. Kaye, 1959, m49730, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass  and Davenport Court, 1849, from Manchester & Salford OS, Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1870

**Lock Hospitals and Lock Wards in General Hospitals, Frederick W. Lowndes, 1882, pages 12-14

The Lost Chorlton pictures ......... no 2. ......... on the corner of Stockton Road

This is the second in the short series of the lost and forgotten pictures of Chorlton.

It sat in our cellar with a heap of other old negatives, waiting for the moment I began using chemicals again to make prints.

Instead I got a scanner for Christmas which does the job without smelling out the house.

This one was taken on the corner of Beech and Stockton Road, long before the shop became a deli after being a gift shop.

There may even be some who remember it as a part of the Co-op which occupied the corner plot.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Stockton Road, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Eltham and Woolwich ………… 76 years ago

Eltham High Street

The quality of the images is a bit iffy, but that has more to do with me than the originals.  

As our scanner has taken a holiday, I was forced back on taking a picture from a picture, using a camera.

Still they capture scenes which have almost passed out of living memory, because while neither Woolwich or Eltham changed that much during the 1950 and 60s, these three images date from the very early 1950s if not back into the decade before.

And that makes them quite special, but for me there is another reason and that is they come from a book I thought lost.

Hare Street

It is the Official Guide to the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, and while there is no date, judging from the images I guess it was produced soon after the last world war.

It is a fascinating book which is now a piece of history.  Along with detailed descriptions of Woolwich, Eltham and Plumstead, there is a wealth of information on the services the borough operated, and a shedload of adverts for firms many of which will have ceased trading ages ago.

These include the Pioneer Bookshop at 3 Woolwich New Road, Court Studio in the Arcade in Eltham, and J.A. Proctor Ltd Builders and Contractors of Plumstead.

Thomas Street

So over the next few weeks I shall be returning to the Official Guide.

Leaving me just to observe that the presence of tram tracks and overhead cables might fix the time to some time before that last tram ran.

Although both rails and cables didn't vanish straight away.

Location; the Borough of Woolwich

Pictures, Eltham High Street, Hare Street and Thomas Street, circa 1950, from the Official Guide to the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, Wells of Woolwich

Walking the streets of Manchester in 1870 ......... of privies closed courts and foul passages..... Ludgate Street

Now Ludgate Street which runs from Rochdale Road into Angel Meadow should have fared better.

New gates, 1908, a closed court

There are no images of the place in the City collection, it warrants only one entry in a street directory and got a pretty poor press from the Manchester Guardian back in 1870.

You can still walk down it today.  It is one of the narrower streets in the city and is fronted by a mix of tall residential properties, and until recently was home to a warehouse, car park, and some open land.

And as such is not over remarkable but back in 1870 it attracted the attention of the Manchester Guardian and appeared as No. 3 of their series “In the Slums.”*

Ludgate Street, 1851

“Ludgate-street is a principal thoroughfare leading from Rochdale Road into Angel Meadow.

From each side of this street branch off many courts, each with its open gutter down the centre; and as the houses are built back to back, forming the front street and back yard at the same time.

In each of these courts we find privies and ashpits very dilapidated and dirty, and in many cases built over with rooms.

In Church court the privies open on to the yard or court, where boys and girls are playing about. ....... Foul passages past fouler places lead from these courts and streets, passages so narrow that it is impossible to avoid contact with that which decency would shun, but which is utterly unheeded by those who dwell here, such is the debasing effect of constantly living in such places.

Back Simpson –street, Marshall’s Court and many other places we have visited could be adduced to show how horrible this district is, but it is needless to reiterate facts.  In Factory Court there is one lodging-house registered for 20 beds. And 20 beds means 40 persons and for these 40 persons there are one privy and one ashpit, and these are partially destroyed by the fall of an adjacent wall.

Church Court off Ludgate Street, 1851

In Joinery-street there is a court with a foul privy, without a door, and full ashpit within five feet of the living room; and in a court off Brabham-street one privy, without a seat or door and in such a state that it cannot be approached, is the sole provision for seven houses.”

Nor was that quite all, because our intrepid journalist moved a little distance away to Newtown which he described as a suburb of Angel Meadow which had “plenty of open spaces, spaces which might act as lungs for the overcrowded district it adjoins and where a little fresh air might be found.”

Nearby in another building were “hundreds of cows’ feet waiting to be boiled and, and separated from them by a board only, a heap of bones of those which have preceded them."

44 Angel Street 1898 which backed on to Ludgate Street

Alas this was not to be because the area was full of piggeries.

Behind one street there were sixteen in a long block “without drainage or anything to carry away the filth; it soaks through and runs the amongst the soil till the place is offensive in the extreme for yards away."

Now I could go on but I won’t.  There were plenty of more pleasant places in the city which in the fullness of time will appear in our walks but for now that is it.

Next time; Deansgate and Davenport’s Court “where “scarcely a night passes but some robbery id committed ........ and almost under the shadow of the Cathedral tower.”

Location; Manchester in 1870

Pictures; New gates, 1908, m8316, Angel Street, 1900, m85543, S.L.Coulthurst, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Ludgate Street in 1851 from Adshead map of Manchester, 1851, courtesy of Digital Archives Asscociation, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*In the Slums, Manchester Guardian, March 3, 1870

When the Horse and Jockey had a football team

Now I have to say that I was a little intrigued when a story on the blog of the Horse and Jockey in the early 1970s was sent on its way across the social media under the caption of “before the pub became trendy.”

It was an interesting take on how the place has changed.

I rather liked the makeover when it was bought from the brewery some years ago and given the addition of a restaurant and micro brewery.

Of course not everyone likes change and I do have some reservations about the way it has gone since it became part of another brewery chain.

But for those few years after it became “the inn on the green” I did enjoy going in there not least because it was possible to think it back to something like it had been during the middle years of the 19th century when it was a much smaller place and doubled up for inquests.

All that said here is another picture from the collection of Bob Jones.

It dates from the 1970s and shows the pub football team and I am equally intrigued by Bob's comment that "one of the barman we called chopper, his son is on this picture and I would be interested to see if any come up with other names."

After all after his story on "Chippy Madge" we had "Blind Bob the barber", and "Bob the cobbler."

So I await the stories, memories and follow up photographs, which point to the fact that history can be about any time,, any event and just plain fun.

And Bob who lent me the photograph has followed it up with the names of some of the team including another of those wonderful nicknames.
"Rod Hudson right of the cup Malc Dawes bottom row right, fag in hand.

Bob Jones E and F DAWES Insurance Agents & Companies. 35 Liverpool Road m/c The above was run by Farther and Malc and Paul sons for many years , at football.

Malc’s  nick name was the Mars Bar kid as he always had one in his mouth, they lived in Chorlton
Bob Jones Terry Tynan Ralf Darlinton Barry Brunton."

Keep the pictures coming Bob and thank you.

Picture; the Horse and Jockey football team sometime in the 1970s, from the collection of Bob Jones

“A single to Well Hall” ...... travelling the tram in the “Last Tram Week”

History comes in many shapes and sizes, from serious books on great events to the humble object which offers up an insight into how we lived.

So I am indebted to Lesley, who on the back of a recent tram story told me that she still had a collection of tram tickets her mum bought during the “Last Tram Week in July 1952”.

Now I always get excited about seeing and especially handling bits of our collective past.

Back in the late 1970s I walked away from the excavations at Viking York with a genuine Viking oyster shell.  The archaeologists had unearthed so many that they were being sold in a barrel for 10p each.

On a more studious note, while writing the book on the Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy in the early 19th century I used the hand written minutes of the local Poor Law Committee.

The volume began in 1834 and ran through to 1852 and I think apart from the chap who wrote up the minutes and perhaps a few others I will have been the only person to turn the pages in almost 170 years.

So looking at Lesley’s tram tickets is a fascinating link with that last week that London Transport ran trams through the city.

I was just short of my third birthday and though there is a family story that Dad took me down to the New Cross Depot, I have no memory of the event.

But like so many people of my generation, those tall stately trams have a lasting romantic pull and have of course now been resurrected by  by fleets of sleek new trams which have returned to many of our cities.

These are more comfortable, and faster but a bit of me would yearn to hop on one outside the old family home on Well Hall Road and rattle up to the High Street and north into Woolwich.

I can’t, so Lesley’s tickets will have to do.

Leaving me just to reiterate that old observation ...... be careful what you throw away for today’s rubbish will be someone’s priceless piece of history in the future.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; tram tickets from “The Last Tram Week”, July 1952, from the collection of Lesley Ross, 2018

Glenton Tours …… the coach company that was the luxury motor holiday

Our dad worked for Glenton Tours for over half a century and the story of his part in that company and its part in the modern holiday industry is fascinating.*

Dad and Elizabeth recieving awards, date unknown

It started with an estate agent settling a debt and acquiring five motor coaches which became the core of a business which ran sight seeing tours across Britain and into Europe from 1929.

Elizabeth and Dad, date unknown

The company was in the right place at the right time, as rising disposable income allowed midddle class families the opportunity to go on a new type of coach holiday.

Not that these were run of the mill excursions, but carefully planned tours which lasted for seven, twelve and fourteen days and guaranteed the customers first class hotels, three good meals a day and an itinerary which provided the travellers with all they might want to do about the places of interest.

Added to which there were commentaries which offered up instant historical information along the way.  

These were provided by the driver on home tours and by a courier on the Continental journeys.

Father did both, starting with trips across Britain at the start of the season but slipping in to the Continental tours in late Spring and through to autumn.

Elizabeth, Dad, Frank and unknown courier, date unknown

We still have many of the notebooks and pictures he used for the home tours, and these are now a wonderful insight into the Britain of the 1930s and 40s.

He was pretty there from the start, and so we also have photographs which record the different coaches the company used from the beginning and the differing style of uniforms, from the peaked hat and white long coat to the fitted and style uniforms of the 1950s and 1960s.

And because father kept everything we also have some of the brochures which advertised the individual tours, prices and helpful information.

So from the 1951 brochure came the reassuring comments that “You do not have to bother about luggage, frontier, monetary or language difficulties” and the cost included “the inclusive charge provided for all food and accommodation, the sea crossing and gratuities to hotel staff."

Dad and unknown courier, date unknown

But given that this was soon after the war passengers were informed that “Ration Books are not necessary on any of our tours” but that passengers are advised take "a towel and soap in case some hotels are still unable to supply them.”**

All of which has reignited my interest in the company after receiving a collection of photographs from the grandson of the founder of Glenton Tours.  

Some of the pictures are of a Brighton Coach Rally which I can date to sometime in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 

 In his covering note he  wrote  “If your Father went to Brighton Coach Rallies there is a good chance that there is a picture of him”.

And there are heaps of him, mostly holding trophies he had won for successfully competing against other drivers in demonstrating driving skills before the public.***

Interior of one of the 1950s fleet, date unknown

What makes the pictures even more significant is that in the group pictures I can identify not only Dad but also his fellow Continental driver who was called Frank and who lived very close to us on Queens Road, and one of the couriers who we knew as Elizabeth.

One of the Glenton fleet, date unknown

All of which is a nice Sunday afternoon trip back through the story of Glenton Tours and our dad.

Pictures; Brighton Coach Rally, date unknown, courtesy of Peregrine Smith

*Glenton Tours, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

*Motor Coach Holiday Tours, 1951

** UK Coach Rally, https://coachdisplays.co.uk/history/

Memories of the Co-op, a tram journey and a live eel

I am always on the lookout for memories of Eltham and Woolwich before today, and so I was pleased when Jean shared some of her childhood ones.

Now if you are of a certain age you will more than likely remember your Co-op Divi number, this you offered up every time you purchased something from the local store.  There were also those light weight brass and tin tokens.

It always seemed to fall to me to slip down Well Hall Road to the RACS for the odd thing which of course meant remembering the number.  But then they went over to those blue stamps which long ago had their day and now I have a card which I hand over at the till.

But enough of me.  Jean also had those Co-op chores.

"I remember the tin tokens my granny used to get from the Co-op in Welling- she always let my cousin and I sort them all out around Christmas time and then she took us both to the Co-op in Woolwich to exchange them for real money. 

I used to love seeing the little brass things whizzing around that Co-op taking cash from one place to another, I suppose. 

We used to get to Woolwich by Trolley Bus - once and only once she took us on to a Tram, I loved every minute of this but Bryan was sick as a dog so the experience was never repeated.  

She always used to tell us as we got on the Trolley Bus that we would have to leave Woolwich by four o'clock as that was when the knives came out. Amusing this, years ago, but not so funny now in the light of that dreadful killing in Woolwich of that poor soldier recently.  

Thinking of Trams reminds me of a story she told me about my Grandfather (one of Granny Morris's sons and the baby on her lap in the old photo I think I sent you). 

He worked in the Woolwich Arsenal and came home to Welling by Tram. 

He loved eels and often bought some live ones in Beresford Market. One day they fell out of the container straight into a lady's lap!!  

Hysterics all round (I would have died)."

Pictures; number 46 tram, courtesy of the Eltham Society on its way to Woolwich circa 1940s and Beresford Square, in the middle decades of the last century, courtesy of Mark Flynn, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm