Historians of Chorlton ............. Nora Templar

Nora Templar was a well known historian.

 She wrote a series of articles about the township which were published in the St Clements parish magazine during the 1960s.

She had been born in 1910 and spent most of her life at Dog House Farm in what is now Whalley Range. Dog House was over 300 years old when Nora moved there in 1910 and was only demolished in 1960. Her father Herbert was a talented artist and some of his paintings are in the City’s collection.

It was from Dog House that Mary Moore set out in 1838 to sell farm produce at the Manchester markets only to be murdered on her way home. Nora remembered the “large barn and coach house which was sheltered from the north and east winds” and the “cobbled yard, pump and trough close to the kitchen and the well” all of which would have been familiar to Mary Moore.

As well as writing about the history of the township she witnessed some of the key events during the 20th century, including the Royal Agricultural Show held at Hough End fields in 1916, the Royal Lancashire Shows of 1924 and 1937, and the first aircraft to land at Hough End.

Pictures; Harvest Festival October 1981, Nora Templar from the Lloyd collection and an extract from Chorlton-cum-Hardy At Work and Play, St Clements Parish Magazine, November 1961

Historians of Chorlton .......... N.Fife

One of the things I like about local history is the way it draws people in. 

People who have no historical training, possibly finished school well before their 15th birthday would fight shy of claiming that they are historians, nevertheless are driven by curiosity and a sense of belonging to research, record and write about their community in the past.

In doing so they add to our knowledge and in the opinion of my old friend Ian Meadowcroft make a vital contribution to the work of all historians.


So it is with Mr N. Fife, who in the late 1970s wrote about the history of Chorlton. It was hand written and to my knowledge has never been published.

Like other historians of the township he draws on the work of Thomas Ellwood who wrote 25 articles for the South Manchester Gazette in the mid 1880s but also brings his own deep knowledge of the place. Tucked away on one page is a description of the old water pump which served the Renshaw and Bailey families who lived in a farmhouse on Beech Road. It was still there in the 1970s but has long since gone. 

There is also an account of the archaeological digs carried out in the parish church by Angus Bateman and his team in the late 70s and early 80s. It remains one of the only descriptions of those excavations, and until the discovery of Angus’s own reports provided the only detailed picture of what was uncovered.

Picture; page from the manuscript “A Time to look back and think” by N.Fife from the collection of Tony Walker

Historians of Chorlton ................. Cliff Hayes

I wish I met Cliff Hayes, unlike all of the historians I have posted he was around Chorlton during all the time I have lived here. 

True I once met John Lloyd and there are many who remember John, including my old friends Marjorie, Holmes, Philip Lloyd, and Allan Brown while Joe Callaghan who I worked with and told a wonderful story about him.

But Cliff just keeps popping up. I have his book, Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1999, one of my sons bought a DVD of his on the history of Manchester and Brian the Book often talked about him.

Rereading his book I am struck by his deep knowledge of the township and his modesty, particularly his concluding words where he acknowledges his debt to both John Lloyd and Thomas Ellwood.

His book has many pictures which are not in other published collections and this alone makes his Chorlton-Cum-Hardy so interesting. Its other great strength is that Cliff includes more recent photographs. So we have scenes of the shopping precinct, the Royal Oaks at the point of demolition along with the Princess Club which I remember variously as Valentines and Ra Ra’s and its replacement MacDonald’s. There is even one of the Mersey Hotel that great barn of a place soon after it was renamed the Mersey Lights.

None of these places existed in the dim and distant past and many will remember them. I know I have spent evenings in the Royal Oak, afternoons in the Mersey Hotel and nights I would rather forget in Valentine’s. Val reminded me recently of her memories of “Chorlton Palais and later Valentines, I loved Chorlton Palais but it was two buses and difficult to get to.”

Gone also are the Southern and the Feathers and of course all the cinemas.

Picture; the parish church yard and over the meadows, 1979  from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Marjorie Holmes, 1921-2014, a dear friend and historian of Chorlton

Marjorie with her mother, circa 1929 on the lockups by Chorlton Green

Over the years Marjorie had become a close friend, and because she lived just around the corner we saw each other regularly.

She delighted in hearing the news of my four lads and in return I would listen attentively to her stories of growing up in Chorlton.

For Marjorie really was a Chorlton girl, born here in 1921 and an apart from war service this is where she lived.

A letter from Marjorie

And so she was a fund of stories, pictures and memorabilia which I have plundered over the years.

But there was never anything precious about Marjorie and so as I dug deeper in the history of our township she was always wanting to know more, adding my research to her memories and always there to encourage me “to push on, find out more and don’t forget to tell me.”

More memories

From her I have that vivid memory of a young girl entranced at watching the blacksmith on Beech Road performing his “magic of heating and hammering,” which more than once made her late for school.

Or her memories of the old parish church with its blue ceiling and white star, illuminated in the early morning sunshine.

Jasmine Cottage, painted by Marjorie

Hers were I think some of the last living memories of a building closed in 1940 and demolished in 1949 and which had served our community since it was opened in 1800.

And of course I could go on, but it would be wrong just to present my friend as a living piece of history for she was much more, including an accomplished artist a brilliant conversationalist and someone who was not averse to a risque joke.

In later years she would often refer to me as her toy boy and I will value that as much as I valued her friendship and what I learnt from her about the place we both loved.

So on an upbeat note and with the permission of Bernard here is part of a conversation* she recorded for Chorlton Good Neighbours.**






Pictures; from the collection of Marjorie Holmes

*In conversation with Marjorie Holmes, http://chorltongoodneighbours.org/2011/04/26/marjorie-holmes/

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

Historians of Chorlton ............ Thomas Ellwood

There have been many who have written about the history of Chorlton.

Almost all of them draw on twenty-five articles written in the winter and spring of 1885-86 by Thomas Ellwood.

These were published in weekly instalments in the South Manchester Gazette and reappear as articles in the Wesleyan and Parish magazines throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Ellwood in turn drew on an earlier work on the histories of the churches and chapels of south and east Manchester written thirty years earlier as well as contemporary documents.

 But the real strength of his account is that much of it is based on the oral testimonies of some of the oldest inhabitants of the township, people who had had been born at the very beginning of Ellwood’s century and who confidently recorded the customs and people of an even earlier time.

Picture;  from The Manchester City News, Saturday March 4th 1922

Historians of Chorlton ...... John Lloyd

Written in 1990

Anyone interested in the history of Chorlton owes John Lloyd a lot. 

He wrote the first ever general history book on the township in 1972, and went on to publish a collection of photographs drawn from his and other people’s collections.*

Now he was not the first historian to do so. 

Thomas Ellwood wrote 25 articles between 1885-6 about the history of township and both John Lloyd and Ellwood relied on the earlier work of the Reverend John Booker who wrote a series of histories of the chapels around Manchester in the late 1850s.

 His History of the Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton, Chetham Society, 1859 is a very detailed account not only of the parish church but also of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

But neither Booker’s account nor Ellwood’s articles are easily accessible and the great value of John Lloyd’s 1972 book was that it incorporated these earlier histories with a final chapter describing Chorlton during the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Cow Lane, date unknown

Sadly the 1972 edition is out of print but his picture book has been recently reissued.

In the concluding chapter he reflected on the pleasure and challenges in writing his book and looked back to the comments of Ellwood who in the May of 1886 had written “his task had been laborious but pleasurable” adding “the present author can echo the same sentiment ........ in another half century another chronicler will be able to take today’s story into the ever unfolding record of events”

*The Township of Chorlton cum Hardy, John M. Lloyd, E.J. Morten, 1972, and Looking Back at Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Willow Publishing, 1985

Picture; article written in 1990 and published in the Reporter and Cow Lane date unknown, from the collection of Rita Bishop

Tony Walker

This week I was thinking of my old friend Tony Walker.

He had long been recording the history of Chorlton and had a wonderful collection of photographs books and vivid memories of the place he had grown up in.

Tony could turn his hand to almost anything. A keen photographer, and model aeroplane maker, he had taken to computers and merged his love of Chorlton’s history and photography creating a wonderful web site containing a fine collection of stories and information about the area. I still return to his collection of photographs, including a series of aerial pictures which combined his love of model making, photography and history.

What I like about this picture is the way it shows Higginbotham's farm house and what would have been the barn and farm yard, and parish church yard in the process of being landscaped.

To which Paul Maylor has added, "The photo shows an aerial view which also includes the buildings of Chorlton Evangelical Church, including the church lounge, which was built around 1982, so I would put the date as no earlier than 1982".

Picture; looking down on the parish church yard, circa 1980, from the collection of Tony Walker, circa 1980s

Chorlton from Alexandra Road 1920 by Nora Templar

Looking towards Chorlton from Alexandra Road, 1920 

It is hard to think that just within living memory there will be people who remember the cows beeing brought back to the farms on the green, and of farmers cutting the harvest crops.

Nora Templar captured this scene looking across the fields from Alexandra Road towards Chorlton in 1920.

Nora was a well local historian who had lived at Dog House Farm from 1910 until the late 1950s. Like her father she was also an artist and some of his work will feature later in the year.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Rare pictures of the Horse and Jockey and a mysterious historian of Chorlton

This is one of three photographs that I doubt very few people have seen.

It is the Horse and Jockey in 1933 and appears in a Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy published privately in that year.

There are plenty of pictures of the pub from the very early years of the 20th century and lots from the 1950s onwards but so far I have only come across a couple which date to the 30s and 40s.

So this is an interesting one and shows the original before it expanded into the cottages on the left of the front door.

To our right beyond the fence had been the home of the Wilton family who lived there for most of the 19th century.  It was Samuel Wilton who around 1818 enclosed the green for his own personal garden with tall hedges and an allotment.  The space only returned to public use with the death of his daughter.

The remaining two photographs are of the parish church and Hough End Hall and all three were taken by F. Blyth who also printed the book at the College of Technology in Manchester while on his second year course.

But the text is by a J.D. Blythe and is as far as I know the first new account of Chorlton’s history since the twenty-six articles written by Thomas Ellwood during 1885-86.

Mr Blyth drew heavily on those articles and in places follows the earlier history word for word.  Not that this is to rubbish the book, particularly as I doubt it was meant as a serious rival to Ellwood’s work.  It may have just been a vehicle for F Blyth to complete a course at the college demonstrating his skill at photography and printing.

Now there is very little on either man.  J.D. Blythe was here on Claude Road between 1922 and 1929 and  is listed in the telephone directory but without trawling the street directories for the period we have no knowing when he went to live in Chorltonville and when he left.

There is a record of a J.D Blyth leaving for South Africa in 1919 with the stated purpose of settling in the Natal, but he returns just four months later in February 1920, and so far that is about it.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Picture; the Horse & Jockey in 1933, F Blyth from A Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, by J.D.Blyth, 1933

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

The old church on the green in 1933

This is one of my favourite pictures of the old parish church.

It was taken by F. Blyth and appeared in A Short History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy written by J. D. Blyth in 1933.

Now at present I don’t know whether J.D. Blyth was the father or brother of the photographer, and both remain shadowy figures.

The text is drawn from the work of the late 19th century historian Thomas Ellwood and pretty much repeats the earlier work word by word.

Not that there is anything wrong in that.

Mr Ellwood’s work had been published as a series of newspaper articles between 1885 and 86 and while some of them reappeared in church magazines during the early 20th century I rather think that that by 1933 they were less well known.

That said it is the three photographs that draw you into the short history, and this is partly because we do not have many floating around from the 1930s.

This one of the church was taken from the south and it shows off some of the detail which is often missing from other pictures.  The side aisles were added in 1837 around the time that two Arnot stoves were installed for heating and the flue and chimney of one of them is just visible behind the spire.

The church had just another seven years of working life because it was closed in 1940 and demolished in 1949.

The grave stones remained in place until the area was landscaped in the early 1980s and many of the headstones taken away.

Picture; the parish church from the south, 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933

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

Every place should have its own history book ...............

Now Chorlton has had quite a few history books along with historians, starting with the Rev Booker in the 1850s, our own Thomas Ellwood, thirty years later  and eleven others.*

The old church, circa 1880

Of course modesty forbids that I should mention my own book,

The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, or the five I written with Peter Topping covering Hough End Hall, Chorlton pubs and bars, The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Didsbury,   Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Churches, Chapels, Temples, A Synagogue and a Mosque and the new one nothing to do in chorlton which was published earlier in the month

Each historian has brought something different to the story of where we live, ranging from personal stories to unseen photographs, and the best have drawn on a vast local knowledge gathered from living here or talking to people whose links with the area go back decades.

Chorlton from Alexandra Road, 1920

In writing his 26 articles in the winter and spring of 1885-86, Thomas Elwood drew on conversations with residents who had been born at the beginning of the 19th century, and who in turn could draw on the memories of family members, taking the story of Chorlton back to before King George lost the American colonies.

My own favourite historians include Miss Templar who lived almost her whole life at Dog House Farm, and wrote vividly of the history of our local churches, along with some fine descriptions of the aerodrome at Hough End Hall, and Tony Walker who combined his love of the past with photography and a flair for technology to produce a series of aerial photographs of the village green in the 1980s.

History of Chorlton, N. Fife, circ 1970

Some of our authors have sadly stayed in the shadows, like Mr Blythe who as a student produced a little history of Chorlton in the 1930s, illustrated with a number of photographs of the Horse and Jockey and the old parish church.

I found his booklet by sheer chance, and in the same way was introduced to a handwritten manuscript by N. Fife, who while recovering from an illness wrote his own history of the township.

It was never published and consisted of a mix of general history, with some personal anecdotes, including a description of the old water pump in the courtyard of the farm on Beech Road, facing the Rec.

What marks out most of these historians is their desire to bring something original to the story.

So my own book The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy*** described the area during the first half of the nineteenth century, and was not a general history, but a study of when we were a small rural community on the edge of Manchester, as the city was being transformed from a quaint Georgeian town, into “the shock city of the Industrial Revolution”.

That same wish to break new ground has informed my collaboration with Manchester artist Peter Topping, which has ranged from books on Hough End Hall, the Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, the story of our bars and pubs and the latest which is devoted to the places of worship across the township and into Didsbury.

But history shouldn’t just be delivered through books, and so we have run a diverse set of historic walks, and talks, mounted displays in shops and pubs, along with an ambitious 80 meter installation on the corner of Albany and Brantingham roads.

The History Wall, 2012

It told story of Chorlton’s past  in 16 panels, from the 15th century, to the present and was designed as a history walk allowing people to start at one end in the village green in 1512, moving through the area, as it turned from a collection of three hamlets to a suburb of Manchester.

And yes, I shall close with our new book, which is part history and part celebration of what makes Chorlton diverse and interesting.

Chorlton-cum-Hardy Churches, Chapels, Temples A Synagogue and a Mosque, draws on a collection of official records, newspaper reports, old photographs and maps, but is underpinned with contributions from those who have attended the different places of worship and remember those that are now just history.****

You can obtain your copy  from us at http://www.pubbooks.co.uk/ or Chorlton Bookshop, 506 Wilbraham Road, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 9AW 0161 881 6374

Location; Chorlton & Didsbury





Pictures;, courtesy of McCarthy & Stone,and from N. Templar, N. Fife and Tony Walker 

*Rev Booker, Thomas Elwood, Nora Templar, J.D. Blythe, N Fife, John Lloyd, S Dickens,Cliff Hayes, and Tony Walker, Peter Topping & Andrew Simpson

**Chorlton Historians, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Historians

***The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, 2012, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

****A new book on the places of worship in Chorlton-cum Hardy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20places%20of%20worship%20in%20Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Walking the meadows in 1959

From seven years ago  and still good.

There are many ways of telling stories of the past. One that has intrigued me was Mrs Broady’s Journal.

She was a botanist and recorded what she saw on the meadows in the late 1950s.

Now I am not really into botany but my pal David Bishop has carefully reproduced the entries which can be viewed on on his blog at and they make fascinating reading.

 Mrs Broady was walking this stretch of land when it was possibly at its lowest point.

For centuries it had been used as pasture and meadow land by our farmers, and today it is an area rich in plants and wild life. But at the close of the 19th century some of the land had been taken over for a sewage works and later in the 20th century parts were tipped on and others dug up to construct the nearby motorway.
Picture; the meadows near the site of Hardy lane Farm, 2011,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson


*http://friendsofchorltonmeadows.blogspot.com/search/label/History

Chorlton’s history on display at the bookshop on Wilbraham Road

Now Chorlton has more than its fair share of historians which stretch back to the Rev John Booker writing in the 1850s to John Lloyd in the 1970s and Cliff Hayes at the turn of the century.*

My own favourite is Thomas Ellwood who wrote 26 articles in the winter of 1885 through to the summer of 1886.

They appeared in the South Manchester Gazette and have been plundered by everybody since.

Some of what he wrote was drawn from the Reverend Booker’s research but in the winter of 1885 he also spoke to several old residents whose direct memories went back to the early decades of the 19th century and who in turn drew on the memories of their parents and grandparents taking Mr Ellwood back into the late 1700s

Added to his work have been the private accounts never meant for a public readership or if they saw the light of day were limited to parish magazines.

Of these Mr N Fife and Miss Nora Templar deserve special recognition.  Mr Fife left a hand written account which includes lost descriptions of the farms on Beech Road and the green, while Miss Templar who lived almost her whole life at Dog House Farm also produced some fascinating accounts of our past.

And I couldn’t leave out my dear friend Marjory Holmes who was born in what she called Old Chorlton and who never quite accepted that other bit up by the “Four Banks” which she often dismissed as that place which was all “fancy cakes and silk knickers,” and when she wanted to be very disparaging was written off as “fancy cakes and no knickers.”

Modesty of course prevents me from mentioning my own book but if you are reading this then you may well already be familiar with it.**

So I shall just draw your attention to the new window display in Chorlton Bookshop which includes a selection of history books about the township including Hough End Hall and an exciting set of picture postcards painted by Peter Topping.

And in an age of online book buying it is easy to forget that a bookshop is a pretty neat place.

Not only can you look at the books before you buy them, but Vicky and the team will offer up their own informed suggestions of what to look for and  if  Chorlton Bookshop hasn't got what you want they will get it for the following day.

Now what could be better than that?

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Pictures; Chorlton Book Shop, 2016 courtesy of Peter Topping

*Chorlton Historians, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20Historians

**The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 
https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Hough End Hall, that place not quite in Chorlton

This is the last of the three photographs from A Short History of Chorlton, written in 1933 by J.D.Blyth.

The picture was taken by F Blyth in the same year who also printed the book while on his second year course at the Technical College.

“Hough End Hall which was just outside the township in Withington had been home to the Mosley’s while Barlow Hall on the southern edge of Chorlton had been owned by the Barlow family.  Both in their different ways fit into the conventional image of old landed families.  

The Mosley’s had moved into commerce in the late sixteenth century, sided with the Royalist cause in the Civil War and suffered  from spendthrift  gambling members in the eighteenth, finally selling the Hall on to the Egerton’s around 1751. 

Hough End Hall been built at the end of the sixteenth century.   By 1847 it was a farmhouse and was the home of Henry Jackson who farmed 220 acres beyond the eastern boundary of the township. 

This made it one of the largest farms in the area, and Jackson employed 13 labourers, nine of whom lived in the hall.  It was still an impressive sight, leading one observer to write that its
‘ivy-covered walls, its clustered chimneys and its gabled roof, present a picturesque and pleasing appearance.*

Nor did the ivy or its more functional purpose as a farm obscure its classic Elizabethan design.  It was built of brick with three stories. The centre piece was flanked by a bay or arm at each end and a little advance bay in the centre which gave it the characteristic E shape.      

The large communal areas were sometimes later partitioned off into smaller rooms and the census of 1911 describes Hough End Hall with eleven rooms.”

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

* Brooker, Rev John, A History of the Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton, Chetham Society, Manchester, 1857,

Picture; of Hough End Hall 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933

A Chorlton Historian for Today

Historians and historical research are alive and doing very well here in Chorlton. Over the last few months I have mentioned some of those who wrote about the history of our township. But of course there is plenty of work still being done recording Chorlton’s past.

Ida Bradshaw describes herself as the unofficial archivist of St Clements Parish Church, which is a title that does not do justice to either her knowledge or her research. Ida is currently cataloguing the old parish magazines from the late 19th century which are a rich source of information. What were once just casual comments about a contemporary event or individual are with her meticulous research proving an invaluable clue to our history.

The Worlidge family who were loyal members of the church played a significant part in the running of one of the voluntary Red Cross Hospitals during the Great War. Until Ida began cross checking through the magazines the only reference to them was in a history of the work of the North West Red Cross Society. But now many more details of the family and the contribution they made is coming to light.

In the same way Ida has begun to track the records of local businesses by the adverts they placed in the parish magazines. This is particularly important in trying to understand the development of Chorlton as it changed from rural community to a busy suburb of Manchester. The numbers and variety of traders and shop keepers helps chart the spread of “new Chorlton” and throws a light on who was moving into the community including their class, their income and their interests.

So a chance advert for a private education college led Ida to explore the whole range of educational establishments which reflected the growing concern of lower middle class families that their children should have an education a cut above the elementary provision.

This of course does not do justice to Ida’s work. I doubt whether any of us would have known much about the local artist Tom Mostyn or the great burial scandal which resulted in the intervention of a Home Secretary if it were not for her efforts.

But perhaps one of her most pleasing pieces of work has been following the trail of Hawthorn Farm and finding that the descendants of the Sutton family who lived there not only still live in Chorlton but Ida has known them for years.

Such is the continuity of local history, and if this were not enough, Ida proudly told me that her grandmother had “boxed the ears of Jimmy Millar when he was a child.” Now Jimmy Millar was born in Salford in 1915 and later changed his name to Ewan McColl, but that as they say is another story, some of which can be viewed at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-folk-songs-should-be-sung-ewan.html


Picture; advert from the Parish Bazaar Magazine 1928 kindly suppied by Ida Bradshaw

Family history and the bigger picture

The thing about family history is where it leads. You start by wanting to trace a family member, and soon you begin to uncover how their lives related to what was going on around them in both time and place. All of which means that often the family historian is not just collecting a list of past ancestors but researching the house they lived in, their living conditions and their place in society.
Suddenly the decision of a great uncle to go to sea was not because of a sense of adventure but an escape from grinding poverty, unemployment and limited life chances. In the case of my grandfather it reflected a set of social policies which determined those in care would be better off by being removed from their home town. This same policy sent his brother to Canada with 170 other children to start a new life working on farms across the north east seaboard.
In the case of my friend Karen her research led her to the Renshaw family who had farmed on Chorlton Row from the 1760s and lived on the site opposite what is now the Rec on Beech Road. When the last of the Renshaw’s died the farm passed to his niece. The will not only details this simple bequest but goes on to list the distribution of his portfolio of properties to his relatives.
At a stroke it is possible to unlock not only the close links between a number of local families here in the township but get an insight into the entrepreneurial culture which led a farmer to build a set of brick cottages at Martledge on the site of the present Royal Oak. Nor was he alone in doing this. We have other speculative builders one of whom was the wheelwright and another a tailor. It was a surprise to uncover this pattern of property development in a small rural area but made sense given that exactly the same was happening in all our major towns and cities at the same time. I am grateful to Karen for both sharing the will and allowing me to use it in my book on Chorlton in the early 19th century.
Picture; Renshaws Building circa 1895 are to the right of the old Royal Oak beside and infront of the bank. Renshaw built the cottages sometime before 1832, and they were demolished in the 1920s to make way for the present Royal Oak. Picture from the collection of Marjorie Holmes