One barn ….. three stories

Someone will know the full story of the bricked-up barn in the village of Hallaton.

It looks like the large entrance was filled in on two separate occasions.

Just when those alterations were carried out I have yet to find out.

The barn is now a residential property, and there at present the story stops.

Location; Hallaton

Picture; the barn with stories 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The pot under the bed …… and other stories

I have been thinking of what one item marks my childhood off from our kids and it is the chamber pot. 

My chamber pot, date unknown

My Wikipedia tells me it is “a portable toilet, meant for nocturnal use in the bedroom.

It was common in many cultures before the advent of indoor plumbing and flushing toilets”*

.Now I am open to all sorts of suggestions for alternative “things” of which computers, the internet, CD’s, social media, and mobiles could be considered, but I still go for the chamber pot.

At which point I must confess that at home in Peckham we did have “indoor plumbing and flushing toilets”, but not so my grandparents who had lived in Hope Street in Derby from the mid-1920s, and finally left for a posh house almost 40 years later.

And for them a visit to the loo meant the outside lavatory which had been a shared affair until sometime in the 1940s.

There will be plenty of people who are quick to shout out their experiences of sitting in all weathers while listening to the daily doings of neighbours in the shared yard.   What ever the time of year it was not the best of experiences and one which might be shared with the odd spider and curious cat.

Granddad and Nana in the back yard circa 1940

But in the middle of the night, especially in deepest winter, like the rest of the people in the street the alternative to the outside lavvy was the chamber pot.

It resided under the bed at night and was emptied as one of the early morning tasks.

Mine in Hope Street was made of porcelain and when I was very young was something I was expected to sit on, which was fine if you got your balance just right.

And in the dead of night was always cold to the touch.

Of course, chamber pots still exist even in the most up to date houses and are the main stay of those childhood steps from nappy to lavatory, and in different guises, shapes and materials can be found in hospitals and nursing homes.

But the idea that under your bed would be a “portable toilet”  to avoid the trip to the yard  is not something our children ever experienced.

On the odd occasion that the topic has come up I am met with a mix of disgust, and incomprehension.

But that is what comes of having been born in the first half of the last century.

 Happily my childhood chamber pot has long since gone, but back in 2009 in the company of my old friend Joe Callaghan we came across a much battered and corroded enamelled metal one lifted from the archaeological dig in Miller Street.  

To the bafflement of the archaeologists, I made a bid for it along with a brick from the excavation.

Joe, two archaeologists and the Miller Street Dig, 2009

The houses dated from the late 18th century, but I have no idea how old my pot was.

Suffice to say the team bad me and Joe a fond farewell as we made our way towards the cathedral each now in possession of a hand made 18th century brick, wrapped in plastic bags pondering on the story we would give to the police if stopped.

I have never asked Joe what he did with his brick, and mine is still somewhere in the cellar.

Alas the tin potty was eventually discarded, and all I have is a slightly out of focus picture.

Still it's a link with my past.

Location, My childhood, Hope Street, Derby and Miller Street, Manchester

Pictures, my chamber pot, date unknown, Granddad and Nana in the back yard of Hope Street, circa 1940, and Joe, two archaeologists and the Miller Street Dig, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chamber Pots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamber_pot

** A planned archaeological dig in Hulme and two retired teachers, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/planned-archaeological-dig-in-hulme-and.html

When the unthinkable becomes fascinating ………“and human existence was reduced to a thin strata in the geological record”

News stories ahead of Cop 26, that international meeting to discuss how to help the planet and pull it back from global catastrophe fill the airways.

A vision of the future, 1952

It is too serious a thing to make fun of so while at 72 I can be sanguine about the worst it can do to my lifestyle, I worry about our kids and their children, and the environment they will have to face.

Now I tend to be an optimist, but statements and recently announced policies of some of the powerful countries and those still reliant on fossil fuels do cast a doubt on just what can be achieved in Glasgow in a few days’ time.

When nature and humanity collide, 1952

So, my attention was drawn to a small item in the Radio 4 programme, Broadcasting House which occupies the 9am slot on Sunday, and amongst a discussion on which British City might win City of Culture status, a round up of what the Sunday newspapers had to say there was this piece on Cope 26.*

It was introduced by Justine Rowblatt with the chilling proposition that we lost that global battle, and “human existence was reduced to a thin strata in the geological record”.  In the light of the failed experiment which was the Age of the Dinosaurs, and work done to extract their fossils, it is perhaps not so fanciful an idea.

And yes I know I am cavalier with the word failed given that dinosaurs in their many different variations dominated the planet for about 165 million years.

But let’s stick with the premises, which is a sort of “if of history” which I am not over keen on but entertained me for a few minutes.

Essentially supposing some future intelligent species either of this planet or a visiting batch of tourists and interplanetary archaeologists were to explore what we left behind, roughly 100 million years into the future, what would there be for them to see?

The answer is a mixed bag.  Some of the coastal cities might have been submerged by rising waters and become “petrified”.  But what ever had survived of these vast urban areas anywhere would be limited to what existed underground, whether it be cellars, the subterranean transport networks or the deep concrete pillars which once held up the skyscrapers.

For sure there might be plastic detritus along with perhaps alarm clocks or mobile phones, but trying to make sense of their function might be beyond our visitors.  After all we know what they are because we made them.

The Succession of Life, 1952

In the same way I am often drawn back to a short story written by Arthur C. Clarke in the 1950s.  The account focuses on The Venusian Academy of Archaeology who had ponded for decades on the meaning of several objects recovered from the irradiated third planet circling the sun. 

It had been found by a research vessel high on one of the planet’s mountain ranges, consisted of part of a polished wood object, a thin strip of almost transparent celluloid and a metal object.  They had been hidden by a small band of survivors from the last of the Atom Wars, and remained undiscovered for centuries, until the small atomic clock attracted the attention of the passing Venusian spaceship.

The scientists of Venus took almost a century to create a device which would allow the strip of celluloid to be run at the right speed and project a series of images onto a giant screen, which was then beamed across the planet to all who wondered what the inhabitants of that third planet were like.

The result would keep archaeologists, behavioural scientists, and authors busy for decades, pondering on the images of two short creatures with tails and big ears, apparently shouting at each other, and jumping into a small four wheeled form of transport which they drove erratically and at great speed, bumping in to other such vehicles none of which sustained any damage.

It was a grim and frightening view and confirmed the Venusians opinion that their near neighbours had been a violent species who in all probability had destroyed themselves and the planet in an atomic Armageddon.

Many who watched the show were left with a sense of unease at the final clip which showed one of the creatures look directly into the screen, and smile, followed by the caption “That’s all Folks”.

It is a fanciful account but points to how easy we might have destroyed ourselves and still could, but also at how archaeologist and historians work from the data they have at their disposal, leading to historic descriptions as the Beaker People, and The Bronze Age.

How we think the Romans made our past, 1957

Leaving me with just one other example which comes from a BBC television schools programme which dated from the 1960s in which fictional archaeologists were trying to make sense of the artefacts they had uncovered.

Looking at a range of discoveries they concluded that from the vast collection of tea pots and coffee pots, the inhabitants of the planet were divided into the Coffee People and the Tea People.

So there you have it, reminding me of that observation of the future, written by Thomas Hobbs in 1650, who wrote “No man can have in his mind a conception of the future for the future is not yet.  But of conceptions of the past, we make a future.”**

And perhaps in some instances we make a conception of the past from what we know of the present.

Picture; from Adventure of the World, 1954, and Pictorial History, 1952, and A Valley Grows Up, Edward Osmond, 1957

*Broadcasting House, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010wl1

**Hobbs, Thomas, The Elements of Law, Natural and Politics, 1650

A little bit of machinery …….. even archaeology forgot

Now, Andy’s accompanying notes to the two pictures was simply, “a recently opened little door on Ellesmere Street”, which I grant you is intriguing, but doesn’t help explain what it is.

Of course there will be plenty of people out there who will know what it is, what it did, and its probable age.

None of which I do.

So, I invite the knowledgeable to supply a description of the object, which while it must be accurate, should not be too technical to bore the pants off most of us.

And spurred on by the challenge I hope Andy will come up with a shot which includes the bigger picture, from which the non-technical people like me could make a guess.

And that is it.  

Other than to say those who wish to recreate Andy’s adventure will have to walk halfway down Ellesmere Street, where they will come across a small extension to a bigger old building which is soon to be  the subject of loft apartments by Talbot.

Location; Ellesmere Street

Picture; the thing behind the door on Ellesmere Street, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertson

The mystery of the pub with two names and what the archaeologists found on Great Ancoats Street

Now I have to say the stretch of Great Ancoats Street up from Port Street to Dean Street hasn’t had much going for it for years.

The Paganinie, 1851

For as long as I can remember this part of Great Ancoats Street has been a car park which recently was extended with the demolition of the last building in the block.

And now the plot is being redeveloped and will eventually become a mix of residential and commercial properties.

But the foundations of modern buildings go deep and in the process of digging the work uncovered the  site of the Astley Arms which in 1821 was home to Mr Thomas Evans who dispensed beer and cheer to all who fell into his pub.

Currently the site ia an archaeological dig and a fine set of objects have been recovered including a stoneware bottle from J Moorhouse & Co, Hulme; a crockery set bearing the name of the Astley Arms and its first landlord, Thomas Evans and a glass bottle with the logo of a workman's arm.

The full story appeared in the MEN recently and not wanting to steal their thunder I suggest you follow the link where there are details of the finds along with some pictures.*

And that just leave me to puzzle over the name of the pub which as the Astley Arms was selling beer throughout the 19th century and appears so in the street directories, but on the maps of 1849 and 1851 it is recorded as the Paganinie Tavern.

Now there may be a connection with the Italian violinist Nicola Paganini who died in 1840 but the only name for a landlord in the late 1840s and early 50s is a F Webster who to confuse matters doesn’t show up on the rates, still it will all be revealed.

* The forgotten 200-year-old pub discovered under a Northern Quarter building site, September 26, 2016, Katie Butler,  http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/port-street-pub-building-site-11221280

Location; Manchester

Picture; the Paganinie Tavern, 1851 from Adshead map of Manchester, courtesy of Digital Archives, Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Going and gone, buildings I have known in the city

It is hard to see how the old Fire and Police Station complex on London Road will survive.  

True it is a listed building but I fear without lots of tender care and attention it will soon be too late to save it.  Brought down by neglect and just possibly the attraction of a prime location in the heart of the city. 

Now I have written about the place in the past* and watched it slowly empty of purpose and people.  Even the bank on the corner of London Road finally shut up shop and moved on.

And despite calls for something to be done it sits there waiting “to see better days and do better things.”  But I have a sense that time and the fabric of the building will seal its fate.  Then again I am an optimist and always travel in the sure knowledge that the bottle is always half full, there is something pleasant around the corner and old places can be saved.

Not so the building just a few minute’s walk away on Whitworth Street.  I passed it countless times and think it once held the offices of the Manchester Conservative Party.  I certainly remember it always struck me as a forlorn and forbidding place which wouldn’t have lifted my heart had I worked inside.  But then Whitworth Street always reminds me of one of those canyons in a western film, all narrow valley and tall steep sides.  I know well the books which describe how impressive these buildings are but they just overpower me and even on a sunny day it’s a dismal place.

And so having been empty for what seemed decades this one came down, served as a car park and at present is a stalled building project.  But it is an exception, even in this period of retrenchment and stagnation chunks of 19^th and 20^th century Manchester are being torn down and replaced which is a nice lead into St Peter’s Square, Central Ref, a tram station and a 1950s office block which is no more.  But that is for another time.

Pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/history-is-wasted-on-young.html

So what is it about Richard III?

Now I do have to confess that like large chunks of the media, my friends, and the general public I have been drawn to the Richard III story, not least because of all the medieval Kings he is the one that has fascinated me over the years.

This comes from that early realisation that here is the conventional story of a man which sits a little apart from might what have been the truth.

As a child I regularly visited the room where in the Tower of London the young Princes were allegedly murdered and listened to the dark tales of their deaths on the orders of their wicked uncle.

It was an image of a monster fully completed by Shakespeare’s vision of that deform'd, unfinish'd, man sent before his time into this breathing world who perhaps because of his appearance and certainly in this weak piping time of peace, chose  the path of  villainy.*

But then very early on I picked up on the alternative interpretation which sought to rescue Richard from the very successful image painted by Tudor spin doctors attempting to justify a brutal seizure of power by someone with even less claim to the throne.

For me the best and most entertaining statement of Richard’s innocence is that by the detective writer Josephine Tey whose book The Daughter of Time set out to challenge the accepted view of Richard as the villain.**

Now I don’t usually subscribe to the conspiracy theory of history, but Ms Tey’s examination of the evidence against him and her reasons for pointing the finger at Henry V11 for the murder of the Princes is quite convincing.

But the events are a long time ago, so I do ponder on why all the interest.

I suppose on one level it is just an intriguing piece of archaeology which has the added bonus that it is a well known figure from the past, and given modern techniques of facial reconstruction provides us with perhaps the best image of the man.

And it feeds that human interest, which allows all of us to crawl over the life and almost touch someone long dead.  I guess the crowds who first stared at the body of the boy King Tutankhamun felt the same.

I know I never tired of telling the story to my students. And always they responded with the same animated interest at the account of the opening of tomb, the discovery of the bright flowers on the coffin and the knowledge that the last people to breathe that air had been the priests who had attended the dead King.

But I also get the same excitement at handling the objects of the past, as well as reading the letters of Roman soldiers stationed on Hadrian’s Wall and the often obscene graffiti left with political slogans on the walls of Pompeii.

It is all good history and allows us an insight into the lives of people in the past where yes it was a different place and where they often did things differently.

And so back to the King in the car park and the continuing debate on who really was the villain along with that growing debate about whether to bury him in Leicester or York.

*Richard III, Act 1 Scene 1
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them-
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity.
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain

** Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time, 1951

Picture;  King Richard III, late 16th century, by an unknown artist, given to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1862, The Princes in the Tower, 1878 Royal Holloway collection, John Everett Millais, 1829-1896

Digging in the parish church yard

The trouble with archaeological digs is that for most of us they look just like a jumble of unconnected holes in the ground with a few bits of stone poking up out of the earth.

Which pretty much seems to be the case from this picture taken in 1981 of the old parish church during the dig conducted by Angus Bateman

He began “some exploratory and very amateurish digs, at weekends, intermittently between October 1970 and August 1972” * and concluded he needed to gain more experience in running a dig and to this end enrolled in a course in archaeology at Manchester University.  The subsequent 1977 dig formed the project for that certificate and led on to further digs culminating in the 1980-81 season which was carried out with South Trafford Archaeological Group.**

The excavations and the subsequent research undertaken by Angus have helped with an understanding of the two churches which stood on the site from about 1512 till 1949 and a possible dating sequence for the extension of the graveyard in the early nineteenth century.  The fragments from the later church were carefully analysed and recorded and in some cases Angus was able to track the manufacturers, some of whom were still trading in the 1970s.  He also undertook a very detailed record of all the gravestones, including an analysis of the style and composition of the inscriptions and some work on the light they threw on life expectancy amongst the young in the township.

Extract from, Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, due out later this year, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection and the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Bateman, Angus J., Excavations and Other Investigations at Old St Clements Church Yard Chorlton Manchester 1977, Report of work done in part fulfilment of the Certificate Course in Methods of Archaeology, Extra-mural Department, University of Manchester, held by South Trafford Archaeological Group, Page 1

** South Trafford Archaeological Group,  http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bryan.burtonbj/

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A 70 year old loaf and thoughts on recreating and representing the past

I have been making our own bread recently. It is one of those things that I have been telling myself I should do for years. But in the past the results often resembled bullets that could have been thrown at the walls of a medieval castle with more effect than a cannon ball and even the more successful ones were likely to give you indigestion.

But it is something we do here in Chorlton and over the last few weeks with a special recipe, a new type of flour it has all come together.

So imagine my interest in the news that my old friend Lawrence has been experimenting with something called the National Loaf. “It was introduced in 1942 due to a shortage of shipping space for flour from Canada and the USA. It was sold unwrapped and unsliced to save packaging. There are references to it being sold a day old despite bread being best when fresh as possible. White bread was then no longer produced so if you wanted bread you bought the National Loaf” and you can follow the full story on his blog at http://hardylane.blogspot.com/search/label/National%20Loaf


Yesterday he recreated the National loaf in his own kitchen and now that my own bread is acceptable to the family I think it is time to branch out and have ago. It is all there the recipe, and the results.

All of which got me thinking about how we present the past. Today it is a growth industry ranging from the quest to uncover family history to the recreation of coal mines, period houses and whole communities. I have stood outside an early 20th century shop in the Midlands, peered into the downstairs room of a one up and one down cottage in Salford and stood beside the rebuilt Roman gate house facing out on to Castlefield.

And I have mixed feelings. It is something I have written about before now. As correct as the detail can be are we really able to fully understand what life was like 100, 200 or 2, 000 years ago from these reproductions? And is there not a danger that what people walk away with is a sanitized view of the past neatly packaged and somehow reinforcing what we were taught at school or confirming that warm comforting view of Edwardian Britain from the Hovis advert?

This is not to rubbish experimental archaeology. I am a great fan of Peter Connolly who tried to uncover some of the details of Classical warfare recreating the equipment. In the same way I don’t denigrate all those enactment groups. I know dressing up in period costume and pretending to do battle can seem strange but certainly in the case the Ermine Guard who are “a society dedicated to research into the Roman Army and the reconstruction of Roman armour and equipment” http://www.erminestreetguard.co.uk/ESG.htm their work is both very useful and does bring the subject to a wider audience.

Now there is a danger that what the public see is just not right, a point made by Chris Haines MBE of the Ermine Guard in a recent post http://www.erminestreetguard.co.uk/Centurions%20Corner.htm

Not only do they then walk away with a sanitized view of the past but it is one that is wrong. Does it matter I hear someone mumble? Well I think it does. I know some family historians who just hoover up people who have a tenuous link to their own family because the name and date are right without fully researching the background. This of course is bad history and helps no one.

But when done well I think the recreation of the past has value. We can never be sure that we always get it right, and what is put forward today as accurate may have to be modified in the light of future research, but I guess as long as we have that simple idea in our mind we can have some fun and learn something from that cottage in Salford.

Which brings me back to Lawrence’s National loaf which I shall try making this weekend. It will be a bit of fun and get me a little closer to what my parents and grandparent ate just seven years before I was born. On a more serious note Lawrence has highlighted an aspect of the last world war which does not always get much coverage. Setting aside the battles and the air raids what people ate and why is an important part of that history.

Picture; the real thing one up one down cottages in Bradley Street, 1983 the Early Manchester Dwellings Group. The three were built in the late 18th century and were converted into offices at the close of the 20th century

A planned archaeological dig in Hulme and two retired teachers

There is something very remarkable about an object taken from the ground which belonged to someone in the past.

As I write I have in front of me an oyster shell, which you might think is nothing out of the ordinary, even given the cost of oysters today and the fact that I am a vegetarian.

But this oyster shell is over 1,000 years old and is still marked with the smears of earth when it was lifted from an archaeological site in the Viking part of York in the late ‘70s.

We had gone up for the day and been drawn to where there was a major dig underway. And beside the excavations in a tub for sale was my oyster shell, along with loads more, and the price reflected the quantity on show.

So I paid just 10p. Nothing can ever take away the feeling of excitement and awe at holding an object however so humble that was handled and causally thrown away by some so long ago.

I was reminded of this when I read of the plans to run a dig in Hulme at Birley Fields in March of this year. Hulme has a medieval history but for most of us it will be its 19th century landscape that we are more familiar with.

It grew quickly during those early decades of that century and some at least from Chorlton ended up there, either in the workhouse on Leaf Street or in the narrow terraced housing. Some even made the journey out to wander the lanes of our township, drink in the beer shops and pubs and to work on the farms.

Some are known to me like William Hodge who stood trial for the murder of local woman Mary Moore in the summer of 1838 who was killed on her way home from the Manchester markets just short of her destination at Dog House Farm.

Then there was James Jackson who lived in Hulme and was listed in the 1821-22 edition of Piggott and Dean’s New Directory of Manchester and Salford as Directory as a farmer and carrier. He owned 15 acres of land at Round Thorn which is the area north of Chorlton Brook roughly covering the stretch from the allotments and part of Chorlton Park down to Nell Lane but it was sold to in 1839 after he had gone bankrupt.

Now this isn’t the archaeology which will bring up a Roman coin or Viking oyster shell but it I reckon it will be exciting. Later in the year I plan to write about our own archaeological dig in the parish graveyard during the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

But in the meantime I will leave you with this scene.

Picture the coffee bar of the Urbis in town, with the usual group of mid morning people sipping their lattes and tapping on their lap tops or talking to friends. In one corner there are two retired teachers acting like naughty school children giggling over their latest prank.

And this was exactly what we had just been engaged in.

 My old friend Joe and I had been to Millar Street where they were finishing off an excavation of late 18th and early 19th century working class homes, hard by the CIS building. This wasn’t a day for visitors but we seemed harmless enough, were clearly very enthusiastic and above all over 60, so no danger of causing trouble.

We were politely shown round allowed to take pictures and at the end to the benign smiles of the archaeologists permitted to walk away with a brick each. Handmade, sometime I guess in the 1780s they were as much a treasure as any gold coin or piece of jewellery. Mine has pride of place on one of our bookshelves, and before we are accused of looting, the other piles of bricks were all destined for infilling and yes we had asked.

So there you have it two little pieces of history separated by 900 years give a take a decade and still guaranteed to excite me.
Later I will post a story on these and other excavations of working class homes in Manchester & Salford.

Picture; cellar dwellings at the Miller Street dig October 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson