Ours was a place dominated by working animals

Ours was a place  dominated by working animals.

For centuries the main draught animal had been the oxen and in some parts of the country their use continued well on till the end of the 19th century and the start of the twentieth.

But by the 1840s the horse had taken over in most areas.

The horse was a familiar sight here in the township.  As well as working the fields, they would have pulled the carts and wagons of the farmers and carriers as well as the coaches of the well to do.

Horses provided work for the blacksmith, and the farrier and indirectly for the wheelwright.  Then there were the men who worked with the horses.  Of these the ploughman and the carter earned more than most other farm workers.  The carter after all was assured a regular wage because horses needed to be looked after all the year round, unlike the farm labourer who could expect seasonal periods of unemployment.

But most farm workers came into some contact with horses at some point and on the smaller farms and market gardens, the job of caring and working with horses fell to the farmer or his son.

The Bailey family on the Row who farmed seven acres had just one horse which would have doubled for both ploughing and pulling the spring cart.  

This would have been the pattern here with so many of our market gardens operating with less than 10 acres of land.

On our bigger farms there were men who were employed specifically to deal with the horses.  James Higginbotham, farmer on the green employed a carter and at Dog House Farm just outside the township eight of the men who lived on this 380 acre farm were carters.

Here horses were worked in pairs and there might be two or three teams each with a carter and mate.  The most intensive period for a working horse were sowing wheat, or turnips, carting mangels and harvest time.

Many carters formed close bonds with their horses, a bond which was deepened by the long hours they spent together.  

A carter might start as early as five in the morning as the horses were prepared for work and last after the day had finished in the fields.

The horses had to be cleaned of the thick mud they had picked up and then fed, watered and groomed.

For this a carter might be paid just over £1 a week, although James Higginbotham was less generous.  During the mid 1840s he was paying his carters between 4s 6d [22p] and 6s [30p] a week.  But these wages reflected the fact that the men lived in and so received their food and lodging as part of their wages.

This supplement could make a difference of between 5s [25p] and 7s [35p] a week.   Even given this their wages seem much lower.

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

Pictures; from the collections of Allan Brown, Carolyn Willitts  and the Lloyd collection

On being a dinosaur and remembering the horse drawn wagon

I am fast becoming a living dinosaur, and I suppose I have to ask how could it be any different?

I was after all born in the first half of the last century, reached the age of four before the  last vestiges of wartime rationing came to an end, and grew up with the wireless as the only source of home entertainment.

Along the way I remember the street grinder, who went from house to house sharpening the family knives, the regular call of the rag and bone man and of course the horse drawn milk float.

By the 1950s these milk carts had rubber tyres but were still a link with that time when almost all carts, wagons and public as well as private transport was pulled by a horse.

We tend to forget just how much was shifted by horse and cart.

In Manchester as in every town and city each railway company had their own stables and in all there were 157 carriers listed in the 1911 street directory and all used horses, as did the local trades people and the bus companies.

Look at any old picture of Chorlton from before the last world war and there are bound to be some horse drawn vehicles.

And so it is time for another of those occasional series which will potter on through the summer looking at how horses pulled the way.

This one  according to the caption was the, “Prince of Wales Horse bus at the green, probably about 1898 before the Corporation took over the Carriage and Tramway Company, but may be slightly later.  Photograph origin unknown.”

Location; Chorlton

Picture; from the Lloyd collection circa 1900

Horses at Nell Lane

Here is another one of those occasional posts looking at how horses pulled the way across the township.

It's a picture I have posted before but I think is well worth looking at again.

It is of the pond by the Brook close to the entrance of Chorlton High School.

Now I can’t be certain but I would think the horses belonged to the farm at Hough End Hall which was just to our left beyond the bridge.

The year must be sometime around 1903 and reminds us that horses were still an integral way of work in the township.

Location; St Werburgh's Road

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, date unknown

Horses on Beech Road on a summers day sometime around 1900

It is a picture that regularly crops up in the collections and dates from around 1900.

Now this I know because the Travellers Rest on the left of the picture was still selling beer as it had been since the 1830s but its days were numbered and it would be gone by 1909.

We are on Beech Road and the man in the apron is Mr Neale the butcher, but the identity of the lad on the horse has been lost.

It would be fascinating to know who he was and what he was doing. I guess he might be the son of one of our farmers which is a good enough way to include the picture in the occasional series on the contribution of horses to the life of the township.

 There were still enough farms around the village to remind the casual visitor that were still a rural community, and as if he needed any further reminder, just a little further back up Beech Road he could have seen Mr Clarke the blacksmith going about his business of heating and hammering.

Location; Beech Road

 Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, circa 1900

The bread man

Here is another one of those occasional posts looking at how horses pulled the way across the township.

Now I don’t have a date or an exact location but reckon it could be sometime around the end of 1909 and perhaps in new Chorlton.

In that year the firm of George Ernest Tinker was still based on Bradshaw Street in Hulme which was between Chester Road and City Road, but by 1911 had moved.

So if this is about 1909 then I think the delivery boy in the picture will be Harold Tinker who was 15 and employed by his father as a “Delivering Bread by Van.”

By contrast George described himself and his eldest son as master bakers in the 1911 census and the family were living in a 7 roomed house called Burnham on Burnage Lane.

Now I can’t find a business address for them in that year but they were clearly still trading.

Harold would not have been alone on our roads back then, look at any picture of the period and there will be a delivery cart somewhere.

Not only would there have been the specialist tradesmen coming in from outside the township but there would have been local shopkeepers, the coal vans and the itinerant traders.

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, date unknown

On a wet grey day in the summer of 1840

It is one of those wet grey July days, which is miserable enough but somehow is made worse by the humid blanket of heat that hits you when you open the back door.

So a double whammy then, rain, heat and not a lot to do but watch the slugs munch the flowers.  But then I am inside looking out from our dining room window.  How different for those people who laboured in our township just 170 years ago.

It is as many of you know a preoccupation of mine given that I have spent the last few years researching the lives of the people who lived here in Chorlton in the first half of the 19^th century.

And so today given the weather I thought I would reflect on the work of those men who plied their way across the Greater Manchester, transporting everything that you might possibly want.

“These were the itinerant traders who might wander into the village selling anything from cloth to leather.  They would call at each house on the Row.   At the first hint of interest they would drop the heavy load and begin pulling out a variety of whatever they thought would sell to the customer.  The same well worn route was also tramped by the tinker who repaired pans and sharpened knives and scissors on a foot driven grindstone.

But a more regular and consistent visitor was the carrier.  He had evolved in the age before the railway, and could be relied onto carry almost anything anywhere.  Usually he worked the route from the villages and hamlets into the town and back.  He acted as a shopping agent taking orders from people and buying the goods in the nearby town.  He too dealt in the everyday household things but also the luxury ones like tea or coffee and even books and newspapers and he also took country goods into the town for sale, as well passengers.

A carter and his horse worked almost all the year round and each season brought its own problems for man and horse.  The cold winter months with the ever possible threat of snow and hard frosts might make any journey a trial but equally the long hot summer brought horse flies which hung around the horse and irritated all in close contact. 

But I suppose for me it would be those wet days when the rain came down as thin drizzle turning at times to just a wet mist.  The hedgerows and leaves would be full of the stuff and in places the spiders’ webs looked like so many tiny pearls strung out on fine necklaces as the water droplets clung to the strands.  All of which is fine but the drizzle gets everywhere socking into clothes which hang heavy and coat the horses with the same thin layer of moisture which becomes no less pleasant as the rain gives way to that sticky heat.  And in the narrow lanes it was next to impossible not to brush up against those hedgerows and coat your clothes with more of that accumulated water.”*

And at the end of the journey, back home, there would be no escaping the powerful smell of damp clothes which permeated the house and added a little more to the misery of wet summer days.

But enough of this, the weather will improve, the sun will shine, the slugs will be contained and I will be out again looking for the remnants of old Chorlton in the sunshine.

*extract from the book Chorlton-cum-Hardy, A Community Transformed due out in later in the year details available at http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Pictures; “A wet July morning” and "The old road leaving the village for Stretford, a route used by itinerant traders, carries and villagers” from the collection of Andrew Simpson