Chorlton's brass band

There is something about old photographs and as much as I like the ones of the buildings, fields and roads of Chorlton it is those that contain people that I am drawn to.

This is our own brass band sometime in the 1920s and at least a few like William Mellor on the extreme right played in the 1893 band which I featured back in November of last year.*

Ours was one of the oldest brass bands in the country having been started in the 1820s.

 Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

 It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

What makes this one that little more interesting is that none of them are in uniform. Perhaps it was an impromptu photograph with at least one chap still in what I think is the uniform of a Manchester Corporation tram driver. But I wait to be corrected. Nor can it be the full band.

But I am going to leave the band for another time and focus instead on the three young faces behind the bandsman.

In those early years of photography stretching into the 1920s when it was all still a novelty the camera attracted the curious and the vain. They appear on the edges of a picture always staring directly into the lens but never really part of what is going on.

I would love to know more about three children especially the girl in the middle. Were they related to the bandsman? Had they followed the camera man or was it just chance that they were staring over the wall when the bandsman pose?

I doubt that we will ever know who they were, or for that matter where it was taken. My guess is in the schoolyard of the old National School which could place our three interlopers in Number 1 Passage which runs behind the old playground wall from what was once called Crescent Road and is now Crossland. But there are some things I suppose we will never know.

Picture; from the collection of Allan Brown, some of the band circa 1920s and William Rogers in 1893


*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/1893-brass-band-lives-revealed.html

The picture of Annie Magee on Hawthorn Lane and that young Chorlton bandsman

Now if there is a simple lesson about old photographs it’s that you should never take them at face value.

So here is a picture from Peter McLoughlin's collection of family pictures which shows his mother Annie in 1925.

I was drawn to it the first time I saw it and it began the first of series of stories that feature those family albums.

But what I missed or more accurately ignored was the young man standing beside her.

I don’t know who he was or why he posed with young Annie and just assumed he was a young serviceman, but looking again at that uniform it seems far more elaborate and I think it is that of a bandsman and if pushed I think it might well be from our own Brass Band.

And that makes it rather special because there are very few pictures of our brass band which was at the centre of life in Chorlton from the mid 1820s till 1945.

Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

There are a few accounts of its founding in the 1820s and some more of when it reformed in 1850.

I know the names of some of the men who made up the early bands, along with the prizes they collected during the late 19th century and continue to come across newspaper reports of their activities.

The band neatly reflects the history of the township, starting as a small band whose members made some of their instruments including the drum which once made proved to big to get out of the cottage.

The early band was almost exclusively drawn from Methodists and most made their living from the land.

By the 1890s few of the members still worked the land, most worked in Manchester and most were either newcomers to the township or were first generation.

But so far I guess there are just half a dozen images of the band, some as they marched through Chorlton and one of them at Barlow Hall in 1893 but sadly that’s the lot.

All of which makes this picture of our young bandsmen so interesting and perhaps in time I will discover more about him.



Picture; Annie Magee and that unknown young man, 1925 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin and the Brass Band circa 1920 courtesy of Allan Brown

The 1893 Brass Band ............ lives revealed.

There has been a brass band in Chorlton since the 1820s which must make it one of the earliest.

 During the first half of the 19th century Chorlton was still a rural community and many of those who played in the band earned their living from the land and had been born in the township.

But as Chorlton grew and attracted new people who made their living from other trades so the composition of the band changed.

 And it was the chance discovery of a photograph of the band dated 1893 which has revealed the story of this band. It has been possible to track almost all of the men from that picture. Most had not been born here and some still lived elsewhere.

They were clerks and warehouseman, with just a few still working on the farms and market gardens.

Like many bands ours was a close knit group with a few families supplying many of those who played, and again like other brass bands these men lived close together, concentrated off Crossland Road and Beech Road.

Picture; from  the collection of Alan Brown,1893

On Chorlton Green during the annual Whit Walks sometime in the 1970s

We are on Chorlton Green sometime in the 1970s  during one of the annual Whit Walks.

And of course this is entirely appropriate given that every year thousands of people turned out to parade through the city following a tradition which began in the 1820s.

There will be many who fondly remember the walks and in particular the new clothes that they wore for the occasion.  For some this meant a year of careful saving to ensure that the children looked their best.

Now this is not the first time I have featured both the Whit Walks and a series of pictures taken on the day.

These two courtesy of Faith, like the others in the collection were not taken by a professional and were meant only for the family.

But such personal snaps are a vivid and fascinating record of our recent history.

Look carefully and something of what the green used to be like is there in the pictures.

Directly behind  the procession is the old farmhouse which became a garage and has now become a housing development.

Then there is the telephone kiosk which once stood on the green, was moved to the corner of Crossland Road and one day just vanished.

And what in a way is all the more remarkable is that I was here in Chorlton but cannot remember a single Whit Walk or for that matter the telephone box in its old position.

Now that is an awful admission.

In my defence I think I did see one which may have marched down Beech Road but that is it.

Of course there will be many who do remember the walks and still a few who were there on the green as our own Brass Band led the procession.

The first band had been formed in the early 1820s reformed in 1850 and lasted till the end of the last world war.

All of which is a long way away from that day on the green.

Location, Chorlton Green, Manchester

Pictures; of the Whit Walk, sometime in the 1970s from the collection of Faith Carter.

*Manchester Whit Walks, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Manchester%20Whit%20Walks

What was lost is found ............... remembering Allan Brown

I wish I had known Allan Brown longer than I did.

Alan Brown at Brookburn School, 2011

We got to know each other just a handful of years ago but quickly discovered a common fascination for Chorlton’s history.

The difference was that while I read, researched and wrote about it Allan had lived it.

Many of our conversations started with a name or an event and in the course of the afternoon we would wander over everything from Chorlton’s Brass band, to his early years in the school on the green and his memories of his grandmother who laid out the dead.

But he was never one to think he knew it all and was forever asking me about my latest bit of research and more often than not that in turn led back to an Alan story.

So it was with the barrage balloon on the Rec which my old dog walking friend John Telford first told me about it over thirty years ago even pointing out where the concrete based was to be found.

Then one day this tiny bit of wartime history was taken away during a refurbishment of the recreation ground and bit by bit I came to doubt my own memory.

But Allan had the picture of the balloon along with many more some of which found their way into my book.*

And two of the pictures that have stayed with me were of our own brass band which had begun in the 1820s and only folded in 1945.

Chorlton Brass Band circa 1930

Of these my own favourite was of the band possibly in the 1920s, including his grandfather and the young girl looking over the wall.

The other was of the band in full regalia at Barlow Hall in 1893, and for the historian what makes this photograph so important is that it contains the names of each band members which allowed me to track all but two of them across Chorlton.

It was one of those bits of research that caught Allan’s imagination and sparked off a train of band stories.

My regret is that we didn’t pursue the research into his own family which got so far but was interrupted by other projects and then when I was ready to start he had died.

I hadn’t seen him for a while mainly because I had been ill and then when I tried ringing he was out doing things.

So the weeks stretched to months and then on a pretty miserable day I went down to find the house was for sale.

I left a note but heard no more and then by chance today in response to one of Allan’s pictures I posted the current owners got in touch to say that his collection was safe with them and more recently I have spoken to his cousin Philip.

In the fullness of time they have promised that I can look through the material which includes those pictures, and a shed full of documents all of which will help add to the story of Chorlton and remind me of my old friend.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Alan at Brookburn School, 2011 with his picture of that barrage balloon, courtesy of  Chorlton Good Neighbours,** and Chorlton Brass Band, circa 1930s from the collection of Allan Brown

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

**Chorlton Good Neighbours, http://chorltongoodneighbours.org/