Bits of the City I forgot

 This is a view of Chetham’s I had almost forgotten.

The School, 2025

It faces on to Walker’s Croft, and once just a couple of decades ago this spot offered up views across a plot of sunken land to Victoria Station.

In 1951

The story of Chetham’s is well known but this spot is less so.

In 1851

At the end of the 19th century the land was covered by hotel, corn mill and gymnasium, and by 1951 it appears on the OS map as a “ruin”.

And a century before was a densely packed mix of properties.

I miss that open space that dropped down from the road side and depending on the time of year was thick with trees and bushes.

But also other things which are best left unmentioned.

Location; Walker’s Croft

Picture; Chetham’s 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the area between Walker's Croft and Victoria Railway Station, 1951 from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1951, and in 1851 from Adshead’s map of Manchester, Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 1 the Manchester Ice Palace

Now I will leave the story of Cheetham, Strangeways and Redbank to  those who are far more qualified to write about its history.*

Instead I shall feature some of Andy Robertson’s pictures from his collection taken of the area during August 2015.

It is thirty years since I was a regular visitor to the Strangeways area, and much has changed. 

In particular that area in the bend of the river which had once been a  notorious slum and which I knew as open ground has now been built on again.

But a few of the buildings which date to when the area was a thriving centre of Jewish life have survived.

And so here is the Ice Palace on Derby Street which Andy commented “was opened in 1910 and once reputed to be the finest ice skating rink in the world.”

Picture; The Manchester Ice Palace, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The  Making of Manchester Jewry, 1740-1875, Bill Williams, 1976

Of horses, an RAF Band and a night at the Cheetham Assembly Rooms in November 1944

Now I wonder just how packed the Cheetham Assembly Rooms were, when the “Full RAF Rhythm Band” played on the Saturday of November 25 1944.

1944

Or for that matter whether the audience knew that part of their 10 shilling ticket entry was going to the Little Horses Charity Fund.

And that set me thinking about the charity and its need for money, particularly when the world was engulfed in a war that would ultimately see the death and displacement of millions, when members of the armed forces were at that moment fighting on mainland Europe and in the Far East and when the surrounding streets bore the scars of nights of German bombing.

I had never come across the Little Horses Charity but a search showed that there were quite a few charities devoted to the welfare of horses as well as other animals, one of which had opened a hospital for animals injured in air raids during the war.

At which point there will be a few who offer up detailed accounts of those welfare organizations particularly
those given over to horses which had a wretched time during the 19th and early 20th centuries when so much of our transport relied on horse drawn vehicles.

1959

I suspect there will also be a few with stories of the Assembly Rooms which opened in 1857 and lasted almost a century before it closed because if declining numbers, and according to one site was bought in 1960 with the intention of turning into a tyre warehouse.*

Now that was an ignominious ending for such a grand place, but its final chapter was perhaps even sadder, for after that century which saw concerts, soirees and late night suppers, it was demolished, with the site becoming first a petrol station and now a car wash business.

1965

All, a long way from the night when “Miss Stitt came as the White Cat and Miss Goldie as the owl in the ivy bush, ....... and Mr Bradshaw as a time-traveller, dressed as ‘a gentleman of the early twentieth century’” during the event arranged by "twenty bachelors of Manchester for 450 ladies and gentlemen on January 19th 1870".*

Leaving me just to thank David Harrop who provided the advert, and comment on the two pictures of the Rooms just before the end.

"Removed to Waterloo Road" 1965

Look very closely and on the second can be made out the notice announcing that “Fitzsimons Tyres Removed to Waterloo Road” and on the first the old telephone kiosk from which members of the band may well have phoned loved ones in the interval.

I doubt that there will be anyone who can offer up a memory of that November night, but I bet there will be quite a few who have other stories of the Assembly Rooms in equally magic nights.

Well I hope so.

Location; Cheetham Hill Road

Pictures; poster advertising the dance, 1944from the collection of David Harrop and the Assembly Rooms in 1959, R. Mirza, m16437, and 1965, W. Kay, m16303, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Stories yet to be told …….the war monument

Yesterday I came across three metal plaques, which contain the names of 324 servicemen of the Great War.

The location of the plaques is as yet unknown to me, and at present I have only the date they were photographed which was 1962.

A search of just three of the names has revealed two brothers from Harpurhey and another from Cheetham, which I guess might place the plaques from the north of the city.

The task will be to search a representative group to begin with to get a better idea of where they came from.

But as you do I choose two of the men at random.  

The first was Plato Postlethwaite, who was born in 1898 served with Prince of Wales's Volunteers (South Lancashire) Regiment and was killed in action on January 1st, 1918.  

According to the records he served as Alan Ward, had been born in Manchester, and in 1911 was living with his parents and four siblings in four roomed house in Harpurhey.

The second soldier was Abel Pennington who in 1911 was living with his widowed mother and two brothers in Cheetham.  He was from the Manchester Regiment and died a year earlier on June 6th, 1917.

In time I will go looking for more of those on the three plaques and try to track down where they might now be held.

Pictures; war memorial, 1962, 1962-3672.2, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 4 St Luke's churchyard and Mr Boddy

We all have a favourite graveyard picture.

It will either be one we have taken or fallen across and sometimes there will also be a story behind it.

This I think will be one of Andy Robertson’s favourites.

He took it on a recent expedition to Cheetham Hill Road.

We are in St Luke’s..

The church was opened in 1839 and closed in 1981 and amongst the gravestones was this one which caught Andy’s interest He was he says drawn to it because “lone gravestone seemed to be staring back at me. In 1881 Mr Boddy was a baker across the way in Rochdale Road.

He died, 1892, in Barkers Lane, Washway Road, Sale having left nearly £4000. In 1891, three of his children were bakers in Cheetham.”

Andy also found a nice picture of the church dating from 1866 but that as they say is for another time.

Pictures; St Lukes’ Cheetham Hill Road, 2015, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 3 Crumpsal Public Library

In time I will dig into the history of the public library on Cheetah Hill Road. 

Andy who took this picture told me that "it was operational into the early '70s when it was replaced by the facility in The Abraham Moss Centre, it looks rather sad.”

Pictures;  Crumpsal Public Library, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

Rediscovering Cheetham .............. nu 2 the old Temperence Hall and the Greenhill Cinema

Now there was a time when the old temperance snooker hall in Chorlton was the extent of my knowledge of both these buildings and of the movement that lay behind their construction.

But they turn up all over Greater Manchester and beyond.  Some retained their sporting links until quite recently while others were converted a long time ago in shops, restaurants and industrial units.

They were built by The Temperance Billiard Hall Co Ltd which had been founded in 1906 and was based in Pendleton.

And with an eye to a good site and perhaps a captive audience some at least of the more enterprising early cinema owners chose to site their picture houses beside temperance halls. 

Ours in Chorlton was next to the lavish Picture House built in 1920 while across in Cheetham  the Circuit Cinemas Ltd opened their Premier Picture Hall in 1925 which changed its name to The Greenhill when the company opened a new luxury cinema opposite.*

Pictures; the old temperance hall and cinema, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*The Golden Years of Manchester Picture Houses, Derek J. Southall, 2012