Rediscovering our rural past, Thomas Ellwood and Mrs W C Williamson

We owe a great debt to the historians of the late 19th century who captured the memories of the people who lived in south Manchester when most of it was still countryside.

Thomas Ellwood and Mrs Williamson were working at a time when the rural communities of Chorlton, Burnage, Fallowfield and Rusholme were on the cusp of disappearing.

Within a generation they had all but gone and with it was went a rich storehouse of stories and popular culture.

Today what was left is fast fading from living memory, so with in another decade I doubt that there will be any left who remember the blacksmith on Beech Road or being sent to one of the local farms to collect fresh milk and butter.

This makes it exciting when there comes along an opportunity to give a wider audience the chance to read about that rural past.

Thomas Ellwood lived here in Chorlton and during the winter of 1885 into the spring of ’86 he collected and wrote accounts of Chorlton dating back into the 17th century.

These were published in the South Manchester Gazette and are available in Central Library, but they are on microfilm which makes them a tad more difficult to read.  Some of the articles reappeared in various church magazines but I have yet to find a complete set outside the Gazette.

In the case of Mrs Williamson her work appeared in a slender edition in 1888 and I have only been able to put my hands on one copy again from Central Library.

However Bruce Anderson whose local history site I have mentioned from time to time has digitized his own copy along with a number of other histories of Burnage, Fallowfield and Rusholme and they appear on Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive at  http://rusholmearchive.org/

‘Sketches of Fallowfield and the surrounding Manors, Past & Present’ By Mrs Williamson, “gives a very interesting account of how Fallowfield developed from fields between Rusholme & Withington in the 14th century, gradually becoming a desirable neighbourhood with church, chapel & schools in the third quarter of the 19th century. 

There are three maps, 1818, 1843 and 1885 that illustrate the changes during these years.”

She lived in Fallowfield with her husband, Professor William Crawford Williamson FRS. He was an eminent Victorian scientist who was appointed as the first Professor of Natural History (Geology, Zoology and Botany) at Manchester in 1851. 

Williamson was one of the great Victorian naturalists who knew and actively corresponded with Charles Darwin, Louis Agassiz, T.H. Huxley and other great scientists of the day. 

He also knew John Dalton and famously tended the great man during his final days, feeding him broth and other liquid sustenance. Williamson trained as a doctor and practised as an eye surgeon as well as pursuing his studies in the natural sciences.”

It is a wonderful book because it draws on the memories of those who experienced that rural life, and was a great help to me when writing my own account of Chorlton in the first half of the 19th century.*

And so for anyone wanting a vivid firsthand account of the handloom weavers of Burnage or the rush cart ceremony of Rusholme, Mrs Williamson and Bruce’s site have got to be worth a visit.

*THE STORY OF CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy-new.html

Pictures; Chorlton from the collection of Tony Walker, cover of Mrs Williamson's book from the collection of Bruce Anderson

Dr. Cathreine Chisholm C.B.E. M.D. F.R.C.P. another story from Tony Goulding

Catherine Chisholm was the first woman (1) to obtain a medical degree from Manchester University which she received on Tuesday 28th July 1904.

Dr. Catherine Chisholm in 1912

She became a major force in the development of children’s medicine, particularly neo-natal care.

Catherine was born on 2nd January 1878 in Radcliffe Nr. Bury, Lancashire and was baptised in the town’s St. Thomas’s Church on 20th February 1878. She was the eldest of the four daughters of Kenneth Mckenzie, a physician and surgeon from Munlochy, Ross-shire, Scotland and his wife Mary (née Thornley) the eldest daughter of a local cotton manufacturer. 

Catherine lived her early life in Pilkington, Bury, Lancashire where her father had a surgery at Rock House, Stand Lane. She entered Owens College, Manchester University in 1895, being granted a B.A. degree in classics before entering the medical school. 

Following her graduation Dr, Chisholm’s found obtaining a post difficult as most hospitals remained reluctant to appoint female doctors. 

As a result, she had to move to London where she worked for a year at the Clapham Maternity Hospital, an institution which employed only women. In 1905 she was briefly the resident medical officer for the Eldwick Cottage Sanatorium for Women and Children, Bingley, Nr. Bradford, Yorkshire (West Riding). During 1906 Catherine returned to Manchester and started her own G.P. practice mainly treating female students at the university.   

Also in July 1908, she was appointed to a new post as Medical Inspector for the Manchester High School for Girls. a position she remained in 40 years. (2) For this purpose, she occupied a building at 339, Oxford Road, Manchester. This was to serve as the family home or the best part of two decades. Catherine lived here with her mother, Mary, (until her death on 6th July 1918) and her only surviving sister Alice Thornley. Her father had died on 23rd October 1902 and both her younger sisters died in infancy; Flora McDonald aged 2years and 6 months in 1883 and Eleanor aged 15 months in 1884.

Manchester Babies Hospital, Burnage Lane, Burnage (28/4/1924)

It was possibly these traumatic events in her early years which prompted her future work on the healthcare of babies and children in general. In any case she was the driving force behind the opening of The Manchester Babies Hospital (3) on 4th August 1914. 

Despite, an inauspicious opening date, the new facility thrived; initially at 77, Clarendon Road, Chorlton-on-Medlock, then on Slade Lane, Levenshulme before moving to accommodate the growing number of patients to larger premises, Cringle Hall, Burnage Lane, Manchester while retaining the original building on Slade Lane.

It was funded in part by Manchester Corporation and fund-raising efforts by local prominent women such as Olga Hertz, Sheila Simon, and Margaret Ashton, the latter being one of the institution’s vice-presidents while Mrs. Simon was the“chairman” of its committee.

Manchester Babies Hospital List of Officers 1916-17

Alongside her hospital work, Dr Chisholm was active in the promotion of the education of young mothers in health and hygiene as a preventative measure. She was also a pioneer in the development of women’s sport, according to her entry on Wikipedia this began when she was instrumental in the founding of the University of Manchester’s Women Students’ and Athletics’ Union in 1899.

Outside of Health, Catherine was also a supporter of women’s suffrage and involved in disarmament campaigns.

Besides addressing various meetings in support of these causes, she variously hosted meetings of the local society of National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies at her home on Oxford Road in November 1912 and June 1914, assisted in the establishment of a new Suffrage Club in Ancoats,   Manchester, and acted as the co-treasurer of the Manchester group supporting the nationwide “Pilgrimage for Peace” in 1926. 

N.U.W.S.S. Poster 1913

Dr Chisholm made a more direct appeal for peace when she addressed a meeting at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall on Monday 18th October 1920 which was convened to welcome a delegation of British women, including Dr. Chisholm, returning from investigating the impact of the war in Ireland. After the women had reported back on the material damage and some graphic descriptions of the behaviour of Britain’s irregular soldiers (“The Black and Tans”) she proposed the following motion, which was subsequently passed.

 “That this meeting of Manchester citizens urges the government to set free all Irish political prisoners and offer a truce, during which all armed forces shall be withdrawn and the keeping of order be placed in the hands of the Irish local elected bodies- thus creating conditions under which the Irish people may determine their own form of government.”

 Throughout the 1920s and 1930s Dr Chisholm continued to lecture widely on medical issues and speak out on social issues. Her interests were varied, warning against overindulgence in tea and coffee, opposition to aggressive advertising aimed at young men by the brewery industry, promoting the importance of fresh air in the care of babies and exercise for schoolchildren, particularly girls among others. She was particularly keen that girls should be educated about their reproductive system.

  In pursuing these affairs, she was quick to embrace the new opportunity available through radio broadcasts.

 In the George V New Year’s Honours list of 1935, she was awarded the C.B.E. citing her rôle as consulting physician at the Manchester Northern Hospital for Women and Children.

  Also in January 19355, she was one of the inaugural signatories in the formation of a Manchester branch off the National Council for Civil Liberties. She was also a member of the Manchester Gaels and the Soroptimists.

 Catherine was certainly a local celebrity in much demand to appear at fundraising events, especially for child welfare and medical charities. There was, however, a downside to her fame as she became an early victim of “identity theft”. The Manchester Evening News of 11th May 1936 reported the case of an Ardwick woman, Mary Fellows, who was imprisoned for 6 weeks at Manchester Magistrates Court; she had obtained  three meals on credit by pretending she was Dr. Chisholm and saying she was short of cash as she was hurrying to perform an operation. In her evidence Catherine stated that, “she knew Fellows quite well and had had trouble with her for many years, through posing and ordering things in her name.”

Catherine never married and continued living with her sister on Oxford Road before moving to 34, Broadway, Didsbury, Manchester in 1923. She died there on Monay 21st July 1952 and was cremated at Manchester Crematorium on Thursday 24th July. Her sister Alice Thornley predeceased her on 15th February 1945. 

Dr Chisholm’s estate was valued at £17,790 -9s –3d (equal to £449,650 today).

Pictures: -Dr. Catherine Chisholm (1912) portrait, unknown artist m 72643 and Manchester Babies Hospital, Burnage Lane, Burnage Manchester City Council’s City Engineers Departmentm 52817 images courtesy of Manchester Libraries. Creative Commons Attribution International (CC BY 4.0) licence, Manchester Babies Hospital List of Officers 1916-17, 'Image provided by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, The University of Manchester’  N.U.W.S.S. Poster 1913 in public domain. By NUWSS - Original publication: published by the NUWSS in 1913 in the UK. Immediate source: British Library http://www.bl.uk/learning/images/makeanimpact/suffragettes/large12625.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45443664

Notes: -

1) Dr. Chisholm shared this distinction with another woman Dr Catherine Corbett, who herself has a fascinating story which I hope to write of in a future post.

2) Catherine’s sister Alice Thornley was also a member of staff at Manchester High School for Girls; she taught French there for more than twenty years and was also the school’s medical clerk.

3) The Manchester Babies Hospital was renamed The Duchess of York Hospital in 1935. This honour was bestowed after she had opened a new nurses’ home and a medical wing on 10th July 1935. The Duchess, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon soon become George VI's queen consort and on his death was for 50 years simply "The Queen Mother".

The Fallowfield handloom weavers

There is much of the history of south Manchester which has sunk without trace.

In the way these things work we have rather been eclipsed by the story of Manchester just a few miles to the north.

And yet there was much going on in these small rural communities.

A little of this can be gleamed from the accounts written at the end of the 19th century which tried to recreate what life had been like in the early 1800s.*

And of all the lost stories I think it is hand loom weaving that has completely become ignored.

Now don’t get me wrong there are excellent accounts of the trade and in particular its decline but all are centred on Manchester and the townships to the north and east with no reference to what went on here in Chorlton, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Burnage.

There is not one handloom weaver recorded in the 1841 census for Chorlton, but dig a little further back and we have a name and names for those across south Manchester.  Not that this should surprise us.  If it was going on north and east of Manchester it should be here, and it is.

All of which I have written** about along with the speculation that just as there were people from Urmston at Peterloo there must have been some from other parts of south Manchester.  It is just that they have yet to surface. All of which brings me to my Fallowfield and Burnage weavers.

I first came across them in Mrs Williamson’s book, Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present published in 1888.

“Returning to the village  we find opposite Back Lane the footpath leading through fields to Chorlton, which had been Lover’s Walk of so many centuries.  On this footpath which is the present Sherwood Street, two of the oldest existing Fallowfield houses were built by Mr Langford, of Withington, for Mr Burrows, father of the man to whom we are indebted for the greater part of these reminiscences.

These cottages were specially arranged for handloom weaving; not only the Burrows family, but all the inhabitants of Fallowfield, except a few coachman or gardeners, and some agricultural labourers, gained their livelihood by weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams, an occupation which gave to the village its pleasant click-click, an association with old weaving villages, never lost to those who have once known it.

The woman carried the produce of their looms on foot to Manchester on market day, disposed of it, and with the money bought at Smithy Door or in the Apple Market, food and clothes for the family use during the following week; these necessaries they carried home also on foot.”

In most cases weaving was the main economic activity but in some households it seems to have been a secondary one undertaken by the wife or adult children, and there is much evidence that many weavers combined working at the loom with other occupations of which farming was the most common but not the only one.

And this may explain why there were only 19 listed in the Fallowfield area in 1841.  This census had been undertaken in June when there would have been work again in the fields and some who might have described themselves as weavers in the slack months of the agricultural year were now minded to call themselves agricultural labourers.

And there were some families in both Lady Barn and near the Sherwood Inn where both husband and wife and even children worked a loom.

But it was an ageing workforce and of the 19 weavers twelve were 40 years or older.

And like everywhere in south Manchester the numbers were falling away and so by 1851 there were only three weavers left in Fallowfield of whom only one was still active and he was fifty.

All of which meant that by the time Mrs Williamson was writing it was a trade of the past.

Pictures; detail of Fallowfield from the OS for Lancashire 1841-54, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Hymns Cottages © Barri Sparshot
* Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.
** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Handloom%20weaving

Of rush carts and "the sodden mass of intemperance," Fallowfield in 1830

I have been re-reading Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs C. Williamson which she published in 1888.

It began as a series of lectures about the Fallowfield that was almost beyond living memory.

It is a wonderful description of the immediate rural past and like all good local history books is not afraid to stray into the neighbouring townships.

Above; Old Hall Lane , 1926

It is one of a number of accounts which tried to capture what life had been like fifty years earlier.  In the same way our own Thomas Ellwood had set about at almost the same time to record the Chorlton of the early 19th century, while his near neighbour J.T. Slugg had done much the same for Manchester.**

What all had in common was that they drew on the recollections of people who had grown up in the first half of the century and in turn could pull on the collective memories of friends and families stretching back into the late 18th century.

So for Thomas Ellwood “the greater portion of the information I have obtained [was] from that interesting individual ‘the oldest inhabitant’ and many  pleasant evenings have been spent in gathering facts from this source.”  While for Annie Williamson it was her husband and his “own picturesque reminiscences [who] knew whom to ask for all else and how to ask them.” As well as “Mr Burrows, the oldest living man in the village, whose clear recitals of what has been were invaluable.”

Her account like so many of the period starts with the “great and good” and there are chapters on Barlow Hall and the Barlow’s, Hough End, Platt Hall and Birch Hall. But there is also much here about the life of the farmers, labourers, and weavers, and much that might dispel that over nostalgic view of rural life.
In an age before piped water, it was the lot of many to collect their water from a well, pump or pond, so the women of Lady Barn visited the nearby hay field which “had a pool at its lowest end, where the village folk came with buckets of water to clean their houses, this being as yet the only supply of any but rain and spring water.”

And there are the local traditions like the rush cart which carried rushes which would be spread on the floor of the church and was at the core of the Wakes festivities.  “Rush bearing originally took place when the rushes were ripe, and in this part of England was accompanied by such processions, dances and decoration.”

The rushes would be “built on a farmer’s flat cart, decorated with garlands, branches of oak, ribbons, flags, tinsel, everything that ingenuity and bad taste could devise, and often completed by a Robin Good and Maid Marian, who, more grotesque than all else seated on the top of the rushes.  This rush cart, which had been built on a piece of spare ground near Burton Road, Withington was drawn by twenty or thirty young men, also festooned and garlanded and harnessed in pairs.  These youths were the heroes of the day, and as they passed were quick enough to catch the eyes of the prettiest girls.”

And there was a carnival atmosphere as befitted one of the high points of the year, and so, “the cart was accompanied by men also carrying banners, sometimes of enormous size, by pipers and drummers and bell ringers.  The noise was deafening as the motley crowd slowly entered the village.  Pipers played the well-known Rush Dance, clogs, which then everyone wore, beat time; children’s penny whistles accompanied; and the shouts of all the people drowned or tried to do so the medley of sound.”

It is a vivid description whose strength comes from the fact that it was a firsthand account, but amidst all the detail I sense a slight hint of disapproval, as if there was too much shouting and “medley of sound” and too many “young heroes” catching the eyes of the prettiest girls”

All of which is given a way a little later when Mrs Williams records the arrival in turn  of “a Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday School, a Church Sunday and Day School, and a Working Men’s Club, combined to lighten the sodden mass of intemperance this place had become , and, the leaven once introduced must spread.”

Ah well in the midst of factual reporting creeps moral opinion.

Later; the weavers of Burnage, and the punishments awaiting apple stealers.

Pictures; Old Hall Lane Fallowfield, November 1924, City Engineers, m77453, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and map of Fallowfield in 1818 from Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present

* Williamson Mrs C., Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present 1888
**Ellwood, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-86, South Manchester Gazette, Slugg, J.T., Reminiscences of Manchester, 1881

You can find out more about Rusholme and Fallowfield’s history at http://www.rfcf.org.uk/archives/directory/rusholme-and-fallowfield-civic-society

The lost pub on the edge of Didsbury ............. the Kingsway Hotel

I suppose most of us rather like to think of our pubs as cherished old things, which have survived the test of time, having seen off world wars, depressions and two Brexit debates and votes.

1959

And certainly when Peter and I came to write our new book on Didsbury‘s pubs and bars, we were confident that the majority would have clocked their first century and a bit and some like the Old Cock and the Didsbury Hotel could trace their origins back beyond the time that King George lost the American colonies.

But of course, there is a big chunk of the township which owes its existence to the inter war housing boom of the 1920s and 30s.

Out in East Didsbury and onto Burnage and Withington, private developers and the Corporation built new homes, and with these came schools, churches, a cinema and a clutch of brand-new pubs, like the Gateway and the Parrs Wood Hotel.

1995

These two we fell on with abandon, and because we could, we crossed the border into Burnage, and described The Mauldeth Hotel and the Kingsway, reasoning that many in Didsbury might well have traveled to the two for a change of scene, or perhaps a romantic tryst.

These were pubs built for the motor car age with carparks, and an eye to coach parties.

And like the cinemas of the period, the pubs were large, plush and designed to be places of comfort.

2019

Sadly, both The Mauldeth and the Kingsway had closed before we wrote the book.

I had first noticed the To Let sign on the Mauldeth Hotel back in 2014., and while it stayed there into the following year it later closed, reopening as a children’s nursery.

The Kingsway closed in 2018, and I did wonder its fate.

But how that wondering is over, because a few days ago Tony Kelzo posted three pictures of the demolition of the pub.

2019

I haven’t yet checked with the City Council’s planning portal to see what might go up on the site, but rest assured something will.

Leaving me just to mention the book again, Manchester Pubs The Stories Behind the Doors Didsbury, which neatly recounts the history of 49 pubs and bars, across Didsbury and Withington as well as the lost ones.

Together they help tell the story of how these areas changed over time.

The book is available from us at www.pubbooks.co.uk 

Location; Burnage

Pictures; The Kingsway in 1959, H W Beaumont, m49830, again in 1995, M Luft, m47481, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and the Kingsway in June 2019, from the collection of Tony Kelzo

“thrashed many a time by Bower’s servants” childhood memories in Fallowfield

It is easy to forget that south Manchester was not always just a sprawling set of suburbs on the edge of the city centre.

Once upon a time and really not that long ago it was a distinct group of townships, each with its own rural traditions set apart from its big neighbour but with close links none the less.

Our farmers and market gardeners went into the Manchester markets with their agricultural produce and we in turn received the Sunday trade out for a day in the countryside, along with the carriers and itinerant tradesmen.  Then there were the increasing number of wealthy Manchester families moving out to the fields and meadows away from the grime, smoke and noise of the city.

What always surprises me is that these rural communities lasted into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  There are still people here who remember our blacksmith on Beech Road and can tell stories of being sent for milk from the local farms.

So I have decided to spend a little time in Fallowfield in the 1840s getting an idea of how they did things.  Like our own Thomas Ellwood, Fallowfield had  Mrs Williamson who in the 1880s collected the memories of older inhabitants of what the place was like in the early part of that century.*

Here were stories of handloom weavers and of the apple plantation at Lady Barn where children collected crab apples, and one woman confessed to being “thrashed many a time by Bower’s servants” for stealing the fruit.

And if you had washed up in Fallowfied in early August you would have been right in the middle of the wakes.

This was once popular all over England and was linked to the local saint to whom the parish church was dedicated. In Chorlton’s case this was the third Sunday in July when we celebrated St Clements’s Day, but here in Fallowfied it was August 5th in memory of St James.

It was the custom whereby villagers brought fresh rushes to spread on the church floor after the old ones had been swept out gave the day its other name of rush bearing.

The rushes were brought on a rush cart which was a farmer’s flat cart decorated with garlands, branches of oaks, ribbons and flags, drawn by 20 or 30 young men harnessed in pairs and covered in garlands and ribbons.

They were accompanied by men carrying banners, as well as pipers, drummers and bell ringers.

According to Mrs Williamson who wrote about Fallowfield in the early 19th century,

“Ashfield was the limit of Fallowfield, and so the limit of the Rush-bearers’ march; the cart was drawn into the grounds at the further gate, and placed in front of the house; the heroes unharnessed themselves and were regaled with beer distributed by the young ladies and gentlemen.  

Then came the Dance; it was not exactly a Morris Dance, because there were no castanets, in later days not even bells, but all the grotesqueness of dress and antic suggestive of Moorish origin.

After an hour’s hard work, another and more plentiful regaling took place, this time on pies, cakes and every good thing the hospitality of a kind-hearted hostess could suggest; and after three good English cheers for their entertainers, the procession reformed and left the grounds in the order in which it had entered.

As gentlemen’s houses increased in number, the visits of the Rush Cart increased; as time passed, gifts changed from food to money, the money to be spent at the Sherwood of White Lion; but in the early part of the century the party came directly from Ashfield and Mabfield to the village, danced there until even the girls were tired, and then dismissed.”

So a little bit of Fallowfield a long time ago.

Picture; Grundy’s Farm, Ladybarn Lane, 1890, m22340, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass maps from Sketches of Fallowfield

* Williamson Mrs W.C., Sketches of Fallowfield and the surrounding Manors, 1888

The Green End ........ “drove past here today half expecting it to be gone and I was right”

 Now Andy Robertson is economical with his words leaving his superb set of pictures to tell a story.

April 10 2016

So here are another of his before and after photographs.

I never went in the Green Lane but there will be many around Burnage Lane and Mauldeth Road who did.

In time we may get some of their stories.

Location; Manchester

April 14, 2017

Pictures; from the collection of Andy Robertson, 2016 8 2017

The Red Cross Badge ........... a lost Burnage hospital and the lives of Ms Madge Millwood and Mrs Humphreys

This is less a story and more an example of just where detective work can go.

Red Cross Badge, date unknown

It started with a Red Cross badge which my friend David Harrop acquired recently.

David has an extensive collection and without that collection the book on Manchester Remembering 1914-18 couldn’t have been produced.*

A similar badge for Dover House which was on Oxford Road appears in the book but here is the one he purchased which belonged to a Red Cross volunteer at  Brook House in Levenshulme.

Now there is no inscription on the back so I doubt we will ever know who it  belonged to, but I now have a list of 43 women who served in the hospital, along with references to others from the Manchester Guardian who were awarded honours for their work.

They range from Miss Madge Millward engaged in the November of 1916 to Lillian Allen of Stockport Road, and Miss Winifred Ashcroft who volunteered at the very beginning of the Great War.

Some were married but most were single and they carried out a range of jobs from nursing to cleaning and working in the kitchens.

And during the new year I want to explore in detail as many of the 43 as I can. 

In this I will be helped by the Red Cross database which covers those who served in the hospitals.**

Many of the hospitals vanished at the end of the war. Most reverted to their pre-1914 use, while a few continued as hospitals and some became private schools.

Today people express surprise that there was once a Red Cross hospital in their midst.

Brook House, 1900

The site of Brook House on Burnage Lane has been redeveloped and the old house long gone.

And as you do I went looking for it.  There is a fine picture in the ManchesterCollection along with references in the press and street directories.

Location, Burnage, Manchester

Pictures; Red Cross badge, Brook House Levenshulme, date unknown from the collection of David Harrop, and Brook House, 1900, m16669, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council.

*Manchester, Remembering 1914-18, Andrew Simpson the History Press, to be published in February with a book launch at Central Ref on February 18.

**War-time volunteers and personnel records, the Red Cross, h

Down on Burnage Lane with an uncertain future for one of the big old houses

“If you go down to the woods today, You're sure of a big surprise” .......... which of course is just as it should be, but in the case of Andy Robertson  it was Burnage Lane,  and less a bunch of Teddy Bears and more a house waiting a future.

At present I don’t know what the future will be and have yet to go digging into its past.

Until recently it was called Santaidd Manor and Andy seems to think it was once called Shawbrook.

In 1911 it was occupied by the Cohen family.  Mr Max Edward Cohen had been born in Germany and described himself as a shipping merchant.

And Shawrook was a 16 roomed mansion as befitted a wealthy merchant.

Equally impressive was Burnage House which during the first decade of the 20th century was home to Mr William Charlton who was certainly wealthy enough to live a very comfortable life and on his death in 1918 left£10,464 and according to one researcher had been a JP, Free Mason, Church Warden and a member of the British Numismatic Society who by 1911 aged 73 described himself as of “private means.”

Now there will be someone out there who knows the story of Santaidd Manor and may well save me looking back through the rate books to establish when it was built and what happened to it.

By 2003 it was an “Education centre for overseas students,” was still occupied in September 2012 but was closed and empty by the August of last year.

All of which leaves me to say watch this space because I have every confidence more of its story will emerge along with a series of pictures from Andy chronicling the progress of the site.

And yes sometime today I will go looking on the Council's online planning application site for news of its future.

Pictures; Santaidd Manor, 2015 from the Burnage collection courtesy of Andy Robertson

Memories of leaving Manchester as an evacuee in September 1939 ..... in conversation with Bevan Taylor

“There was no chance to say goodbye to my parents, the buses arrived and we were off to London Road Station and three months in the country as evacuees.”

Poster, 1940

This almost throwaway comment by Bevan Taylor will have been replicated thousands of times across Britain during the early September of 1939.

Since Guernica in the Spanish Civil War there was that powerful idea that the “bomber would always get through” and so even before the outbreak of war preparations had been made for the mass removal of children and expectant mothers out of the danger areas.

The evacuations began in early September, experienced a lull during the Phoney War when some children returned home and picked up again after the Fall of France and the beginning of the Blitz.

But there were enormous regional variations with cities like Manchester and Liverpool evacuating large numbers of children while other urban areas sent fewer to neighbouring towns and villages.

Bev and his friends from Burnage High School were sent to two villages outside Leek in Staffordshire.

It had begun  in the spring of 1939 when his parents attended a meeting at the school “which they assumed was about Air Raid Precautions, and while there signed a form which it became clear gave permission for me to be evacuated.

Children evacuees on a bus, 1940

There were approximately 450 other lads whose parents had done the same, and we were all told to arrive at school with a packed bag.

Now I turned up with one of those fibre suitcases while my friends had rucksacks, and I did envy them those rucksacks.

We didn’t know what to expect but perhaps not just to be put in the school playing field under the supervision of some prefects.  

There was nothing to do except play cards.

At the end of the school day we were sent home, only to return the following day for more of the same.

North Manchester Grammar School Boys, 1940

In all we had four days on the playing field and I can say I’d had my fill of playing cards by the end of it.

And then on that fifth day, Friday September 11th some double-decker buses drew up outside the school

We were told we weren’t going home and with that we trooped aboard the buses and went off to the station and from there by train to Leek and on again by bus to the village of Longsdon.

There wasn’t much to the village.  I remember the church,the corner shop,  a telephone kiosk and a hall belonging to the Women’s Institute. 

I had teamed up with my friend and we reckoned that we would accept the first person who offered to take us because we didn’t fancy being there all day.

As it was we didn’t have to wait long because about half an hour after we arrived a severe looking man with dark eyes, wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella walked up to us and said ‘Would you like to come with me?  

He gave my mate his briefcase and umbrella and me the bowler hat and then with us on either side of him we walked off out of the hall and up the road to a house opposite to Salt’s farm."

Next; three months with the Peacock family

In conversation with Bevan Taylor May 8 2015

Picture; Don’t do it Mother, Ministry of Health, 1940, and was scanned and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence, Evacuation of School Children on a Bus, 1940 m09910  and North Manchester Grammar School Boys off to Bakewell, 1940, m09927  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Standing on Mauldeth Road looking for the Talbot Pub

“I always knew the Talbot Hotel on Mauldeth Road was about to go but never made it!  So the next best thing is the nearly empty space.”

Now as an introduction to an adventure and a series of pictures of one of our lost pubs Andy’s opening comment pretty much nails it on the head.

Although I do a have to break the news gently that it closed in 2010 which may be a salutatory warning to Andy to visit all the pubs on his in danger list.

But that is unfair. In the last year he has charted some of the most interesting and forgotten bits of the city and continues to get pictures of places just before they vanish forever.

Well with the exception of the Talbot which may be a pub I have been in but I can’t remember.

So I have also drawn on the knowledge of that excellent blog Pubs of Manchester to fill in the gap in what I know.*

"This grand-looking boozer in Ladybarn was once ran by Frank Swift, the legendary Manchester City goalkeeper who died in the Munich Air Disaster in 1958 along with eight United players, plus 14 others.  

In the 1950s when Swift had it before he became a journalist, the pub was known as the Talbot and there are archive photos from 1959 and 1970 as a Threlfalls house, plus one from Alan Winfield in 1993 as a Whitbread pub.

In recent years the Talbot had a spell as 'Peninsular' which was a student pub with a seaside theme.  Its final hurrah was as The Ladybarn when it reinvented itself as a food-led pub, receiving some favourable reviews as recently as 2006.  However, the pub didn't last long, being knocked down in early 2010."

Now there is more, but for that you will have to go off and read the pub blog.

Pictures; that hole in the ground, 2014, from the collection of Andy Robertson, and the Talbot in in 1959, by H W Beaumont, M50629, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Pubs of Manchester, Past and Present, http://pubs-of-manchester.blogspot.co.uk/#uds-search-results

The Libraries of south Manchester part 3, Burnage, Fallowfield and Levenshulme

Now I have been featuring the stories of the libraries of south Manchester.  Local artist Peter Topping has produced a series of contemporary paintings of each one and I have added the histories.

Chorlton, and Didsbury got theirs in 1914 and 1915, Withington in 1927 but  Burnage had to wait till 1931  and only then as  “a travelling library station” in a converted bus.

This was discontinued because of the black out during the war and was replaced by a converted house in 1940.

It was situated in Bournlea Avenue and as if to demonstrate the appetite for reading in Burnage it issued 3,000 books a week.

And finally in 1947 a new library was opened in three converted Civil Defence huts.

Fallowfield fared a little better, its library was opened in 1932 “on a corner site at the junction of Platt Lane and Waverton Road which was pivotal point for the whole estate.”  Originally called Wilbraham Library it broke new ground for the library service having the first junior library which “will be a borrower’s library of about 2,000 volumes” and along with Chorlton was to experiment “with the use of wireless talks in its evening classes.”

Wilbraham was the 25th branch library to be opened in the city since the first two in 1857.

All of which underlined the demand that existed in south Manchester for a library service.

Speaking at the opening of Withington library just five years earlier the Lord Mayor had reflected on the importance the Corporation placed on providing such branch libraries when the central one was housed in his words in a “conglomeration of sheds on the Piccadilly site.”

And then there was Levenshulme which did not join the city until 1909 but opened its own library five years earlier in 1904.

The Levenshulme Urban District Council had successfully gained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to build the library which cost £2,500 and according to the Manchester Guardian had “two special features worthy of mention. There is a room set apart for juveniles, in which, besides papers and periodicals, such games as chess, draughts and dominoes may be enjoyed.  Adjoining the main reading-room and reached through a vestibule door is along verandah where people may sit and read in fine weather.”

All of which makes it rather important to mark a century of public library provision here in south Manchester with this exhibition.

Pictures; Burnage Libraries m77549, Wilbraham Library, m51386, and Levenshulme, m51623, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Fallowfield from field to housing estate in 40 years.

It is hard to grasp just how rural all of south Manchester once was.

Leaving the city and clearing Hulme or Cornbrook a traveller in 1840 would soon have been in fields and by and large it would have changed little from the early years of the 19th century.

And yet within 40 years the land was being parcelled up and handed over to developers who quickly began building houses, and cutting new roads which had been made possible by the provision of improved sanitation, piped water and gas, and given a further push with the establishment of new railway and later tram routes into the heart of the city making it possible to work in Manchester but live in Chorlton, Withington, Didsbury or Fallowfield.

First came the grand villas, then the large semi detached houses with pretentious sounding names, and finally the tall rows of terraced houses catering for the professional and clerical  people.  Lastly the six shillling a week*  two up two downs built for skilled workers and semi skilled.

Just what this meant can be seen in a series of maps that were published in Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs.W.C. Williamson in 1888.  The looks back on Fallowfield’s rural past which for many was by the 1880s a different place.

Pictures; from Sketches of Fallowfield
* Manchester Evening News September 20th 1901