Friday, 7 August 2026

"down an inviting green lane [that] leads to Eltham, a pleasant walk of hardly two miles" in the company of Bradshaw's guide of 1862

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Now I never tire of guide books and so here we are with Bradshaw’s Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs which was published in 1...

King Cholera ......... stories of Public Health

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I have been reflecting on those awful diseases that stalked our cities, towns and villages just over 170 years ago. Of these Cholera was r...

The forgotten Chorlton Bookshop ……..

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Take a former front room in a house on Barlow Moor Road and in the late 1970s into the next decade you had a bookshop. It was only open on a...
Thursday, 6 August 2026

When we had a piano shop on Beech Road

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Sometimes a picture captures a moment which with hindsight allows you to see that things were just about to change .  Here is another ...

The shock of the new ...........travelling the railway in 1830

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Now I am not sure that some of the detail is completely accurate on this painting by A.B. Clayton of the “Inaugural journey of the Liver...

On Shooters Hill in 1909

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Looking down Shooters Hill in 1909 I am back on Shooters Hill in the June of 1841 thinking about the small community of 58 people who l...
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Wednesday, 5 August 2026

“Making do” …… rationing … cooking … and that lost world of 1946

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I often return to L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go Between with its story of class, romance and redemption, made more memorable for me by that li...