Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 4 on discovering coal mines by our front door and a dreadful pit accident

Now if I am honest they were just a bit further away and had long ago been abandoned.

I shouldn’t have been over surprised.  After all we had started our life together in the shadow of Bradford Colliery which despite having closed in1968 still maintained its surface gear as a reminder of what had been.

And of course on that long bus ride from town there was always the Snipe to pass.  Added to this Kay was from a mining family who were still working the coal when we met and married.

So coal and all that went with it was pretty much part of the backdrop of our lives.

But that said no one expects to walk out of the house onto Whiteacre Road and be confronted with a coal mine.

This was not in the surveyors report or in the happy helpful comments of the estate agent when in 1973 we became house owners.

In fact the first I knew about it was when I idly thumbed through a copy of Victorian Ashton.*

There on page 89 in the chapter on the Industrial Archaeology of Ashton-Under-Lyne were the coal mines laid out on a map both to the north east of our house and a little to east.

Of course they had long since been closed and capped and all that remained was an open space.

Given of course the history and geography of the northwest it was an obvious discovery, but a little unsettling.

That said my curiosity didn’t last too long and only 40 years after I made that discovery have I decided to dig deeper.

The shafts are clearly marked on the 1853 OS for Lancashire and appear fifty years later as “Old Pits, 1, 2 and 3” and belonged to John Kenworthy and Brothers.

Pits no 2 and 3 were on that stretch of land between Whiteacre Road and Cricket’s Lane while just across Mossley Road was  pit number 1.

This was Heys Colliery and it was here that in the March of 1851 an underground explosion resulted in the deaths of five men.

James Ogden “was killed by the explosion on Monday last, and the others have since died from the effects of the injuries which they received.”**

These were James Wright Andrew, John Booth and William Joule.

The inquest heard that the airways were not kept open and this led to a build up of gas which should not have happened.  Mr Miller, the underlooker who was responsible for this had been warned in the past but chose to ignore the warnings.  "He knew that William Joule worked with his naked lamp, and where [Joule] worked the air should be pure.”

On his own admission the Mr Miller knew that to clear the air roads would “have taken two men a fortnight to have cleared them properly” and this was not done.

Witness after witness pointed to the negligence of Mr Miller and after a short deliberation the jury decided that “these men came by their death by accident; and it is the wish of the jury that a government inspector be requested to examine the mine; and the jury consider the underlooker has neglected his duty”

So far that is about it.  Of the five who died William Joule aged 33 left a widow and three children, the historical record has yet to shed anything on James Ogden who whose only official entry is his death certificate.

That said both James Wright Andrew, and John Booth can be found in the 1841 census returns for Ashton and maybe I will return to follow them up.  As for Mr Miller and the colliery company they have  passed into the shadows.

All of which I knew nothing of until fired by the memory of those disused pits I began looking for their story.

Pictures, from the OS for Lancashire 1841-53 and the OS for South Lancashire 1888-94 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and extract from the Manchester Guardian March 22, 1851, courtesy of  Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

*Victorian Ashton, Ed Sylvia A Harrop & E A Rose, 1974

**Manchester Guardian March 22, 1851

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 1 washing up on Raynham Street

Whiteacre Road and the corner of Raynham Street

Now if you have to start off your life together at the tender age of 23 and 21 respectively then Ashton in the mid 1970s was a pretty good choice.

We had begun by renting just off the Old Road opposite Grey Mare Lane Market and when we started on the property ladder it seemed natural to start looking around there.

But the houses were not available and bit by bit we moved up Ashton Old Road and finally in 1973 crossed the municipal border and washed up in Raynham Street.

A two up two down down, close to the town centre and it even had a small Corporation allotment directly opposite.

Of course the downside was that I worked in Wythenshawe and travelled on public transport which meant that during the winter I only got to see Ashton in the daylight at the weekend.

Raynham Street

But that still left plenty of time to explore the town, the surrounding districts and to venture out into the countryside.

Not that this is some nostalgic trip seen through a rosy coloured perspective, but just an occasional piece reflecting on what the town was like for two young people who had been born at opposite ends of the country.

Raynham Street was just what we wanted and for me it was just a matter of exchanging one terraced house for another .

There was also a  sense of community which appealed to us.  We both came from close knit areas, me from south East London and Kay from a mining village in the North East, and having done our three years of rootless living in south Manchester student land we were ready for something different.

We got to know our neighbours, found our favourite stalls in the covered in market and having transferred our membership to the Ashton Labour Party made new friends.

Some were like us, first time buyers straight out of grim multi occ properties in Withington, Fallowfield and Longsight and others could count their family generations back to an earlier Ashton.

We regularly attended meetings in the old PSA building with Glyn and Hazel, introduced our families to the delights of Stamford Park and the Sycamore and occasionally managed to entice friends out of the city to come and stay.

Penny Meadow & Whiteacre Road, 1972

I could never quite understand why they thought it was such an adventure, to us it was a comfortable and easy place to settle.

And even now on those rare occasions I come back the place still has an effect on me.

It begins as the tram pulls up just short of the town centre and extends as I wander through the market place and up to St Michael’s.

That said I can’t quite get my head around the new retail park and I miss the Arcadia along with the PSA building and wonder when the mural to the jubilee in 1977 painted on the gable end of the butcher’s shop on the corner of Whiteacre and Egerton Road vanished.

All of which smacks of the nostalgic trip I promised not to take.

Instead I shall ponder for a future post on the Ashton I remember from the 1970s.

Pictures; Raynham Street, date unknown, t03175 and t03175, and Penny Meadow at the junction with Whiteacre Road and Crickets Lane, 1972, t01388, courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 3 on coming across Stamford Park and the Sycamore

Now it is all a bit different when you don’t grow up in a place, so when we discovered Stamford Park one Sunday it was special.

And given the size of our house on Raynham Street the open spaces just fitted the bill.

Now “the original park, south of Darnton Road, was opened in 1873 on land purchased for £15,000. 

The money was raised by public subscription together with a gift of 30 acres from the Earl of Stamford. The park was enlarged in 1891 by acquisition of Chadwick's Dam reservoir, the southern part of which was made into a boating lake and the northern part into a feeder lake and fishing lake. 

The last major addition was in 1929 with the donation of 4 acres which was devoted to a children's playground. The park was run by a joint committee from Ashton and Stalybridge until 1974, when it passed to Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council.”*

Now I knew none of this at the time and in fact only came across its story recently.
Back then, the walk in the park was a prelude for an evening in the Sycamore which became a favourite haunt of ours.

All of which just leaves me with the postcard which was produced by Tuck & Sons around 1909.

It was part of a set of six published by Whittaker & Sons of Stalybridge.

Sadly the card does not have a message on the back but other’s in the collection do and I rather think I shall return to these if only to report more fully on young Pattie who sent a card of Stalybridge to Miss Mary Jameson in the USA on April 25th 1909.

Pictures; Stamford Park, from the series Stalybridge, by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

*Ashton-Under-Lyne, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Ashton-Under-Lyne

**Parks and gardens UK, http://www.parksandgardens.org/places-and-people/site/3045

Ashton Market gives up its past …….

 It will be sometime after 1978, and I was back in Ashton wandering the market and snapping away with my new camera.

Now I know it was 1978 because that was when I bought the new camera and this was the first visit back after I had left for south Manchester two years earlier.

Of course it might have been a tad later, and there will be someone who can pinpoint exactly when by the stage of the building development which appears in some of the pictures.

I won’t be the only one who has a fascination for markets …. And not the twee ones that pop up every month in the well-heeled suburbs, where you can buy “interesting hand-crafted gin”, perfume using natural herbs and fragrances, and outrageously priced cakes, sausage rolls and speciality bread.

Nope, I mean the old fashioned, happy with no frills markets, dealing in everything from household products, shoes, dresses, and kid’s toys.

Along with heaps of fruit, veg and all sorts for the fridge and larder.

When we lived in Ashton, off Penny Meadow it was just part of what we did on a Saturday, followed by a trawl of the indoor market buying the cheese, fancy cakes and much much more.

And of course, the market was the place for those three screws and a wing nut which now come in packs of twenty at eye watering prices.

A few years earlier we had lived opposite Grey Mare Lane Market and it too provided everything we needed and while almost everything we bought there has gone I do still have a series of LPs which are still in the collection.

Nor have I exhausted my market memories, because growing up in Eltham there was the market in Woolwich, where stalls spilled out onto the highway forcing buses to creep gingerly along between tables piled high with underwear, heaps of different fish and shell fish and of course cheap versions of all sorts of stuff.

But while I did take a few of Woolwich, most were taken wandering the stalls in Ashton in the late 70s, early 80s and again at the turn of the century.

And that is about it other than to remember the vibrancy, fun and characters you encountered from the stall holders shouting out their wares to the customers.

Now there are fewer of those traditional markets and the stalls you can find in them have shrunk to a sad few.

Still, I have the memories.

Location; the open air market in Ashton Under Lyne, 

Pictures; busy day at the market, circa 1978, early 1980s from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Warm days in Ashton Market .... no.3

Now I don’t make any claims to the quality of the pictures.

They were taken in the days of smelly photography and sat as negatives in the cellar for 40 years.

This year I began to convert them into electronic images.

They were taken sometime around 1978 into 1980 and capture an Ashton which has changed.



Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; Ashton Market, circa 1978-80, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Home thoughts of Ashton in the 1970s, ..... part 5 looking for what has been lost

Out with the Pit and Nelson, date unknown

I went looking for that Herbalist shop on Old Street recently, and followed it up with the Deli which from memory was almost opposite, and of course both had gone.

Which I guess is the biggest confirmation you can have that going back to a place where you were happy is a mistake.

I spent three very happy years on Raynham Street and have occasionally returned since I left.

For people like me Ashton will always be frozen in a time around the long hot summer of 1976, when the streets seemed to shimmer in the mid day heat and the hills above the town appeared burnt brown.

And of special memory were visiting that old Herbalist and buying the Polish bread from opposite.  Not that I ever got to like sarsaparilla despite trying on a number of occasions.

Now I am no romantic and can also remember those cold wet days when the wind down Penny Meadow could slice through even the thickest overcoat or the mornings when you opened the front door to six inches of snow.

That Herbalist's

That said those were magic years which I guess were as much to do with being young and starting out together in a new place as they were about the town.

This seemed like one of those transitional moments when we had crossed from being students and irresponsible to becoming grownups.

All the more so because to get home meant that long bus ride from the city out along the Old Road or squeezed in with the commuters on the train from Victoria.

So having arrived in the town you had physically shed the city.

And what a time we had.

We tended to go to the Lord Napier, or the Pit and Nelson, and when we really wanted to impress family and friends it was up to the Collier’s Arms with that wonderful view from the Pike.

Looking back we never really did explore Ashton’s history, although through the Labour Party there were plenty of stories from those who could speak of family memories stretching back beyond the 1930s to the early years of the last century.

And the Deli

Even now I carry the sad after comment from Sylvia who reflecting on her teenage years during the last war did not come up with the usual mix of fond tales of American servicemen and Vera Lynn.

Instead she quietly spoke of the lost years which were pitched against the death of loved ones and the wish not to get to close to people who might never return.

They were she said “the stolen years” and that was the end of the conversation.

Not that I shall now indulge in what Ashton has become which for most people is just how it is, for when you live in a place it changes and you with it, but I do miss the Moss, the PSA and the old newsagents on Penny Meadow.

But nostalgia is no substitute for real history which is and has always been my passion, so I am off to look for the old coal mines which stood close to our house on Whiteacre Road.

Pictures; along Old Street, date unknown, t01422, t01690, t01691courtesy of Tameside Image Archive, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/history/archive.php3

Ashton-Under-Lyne, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Ashton-Under-Lyne

Warm days in Ashton Market .... no.2

Now I don’t make any claims to the quality of the pictures.

They were taken in the days of smelly photography and sat as negatives in the cellar for 40 years.

This year I began to convert them into electronic images.

They were taken sometime around 1978 into 1980 and capture an Ashton which has changed.

Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; Ashton Market, circa 1978-80, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Warm days in Ashton Market .... no.1

Now I don’t make any claims to the quality of the pictures.

They were taken in the days of smelly photography and sat as negatives in the cellar for 40 years.

This year I began to convert them into electronic images.

They were taken sometime around 1978 into 1980 and capture an Ashton which has changed.

Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; Ashton Market, circa 1978-80, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When the picture is the story ....... Ashton sometime in the late 1970s.

Now I don’t actually remember when I took the picture, but it will have been around 1978 into 1980.

The construction of the municipal building in the background will be a clue.

And that is very much all I have to say.

I left Ashton in 1976 for south Manchester and get drawn back.

Today it is a very easy journey.

I jump the tram in Chorlton and change at Deansgate-Castlefield and sit back and enjoy the trip.

Location; Ashton

Picture; the market, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Somewhere .......... a misplaced picture from 1978

Now this is a perfect example of how not to take a picture.

Or more accurately how to catalogue an image.

I think it is Ashton-Under-Lyne, but could equally be Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Back in 1978 I took a lot of pictures which I never bothered to print.  They remained negatives which with the passage of time and the end of my dark room sat in the cellar, neglected but not quite forgotten.

But with Christmas came a scanner which can turn them into an electronic image.

I have to say looking at the random group that have come out of the shadows, they are a mixed bag.  Many I remember taking, others are now just a mystery.

Added to which I was not always that good at developed the film and so some are over exposed and others very dark, but they are all a record of a lost time.

Like this one which could be Ashton or Chorlton, or somewhere else.

Location; I don’t know

Picture; back alley, 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson