Skating on the meadows in 1914

Well here we are skating on the meadows in 1914.

It was judging by the pictures and folk memory a popular activity and one that I have known about since I first washed up in Chorlton nearly 40 years ago.

But with all the arrogance of someone who had never seen it I always only half accepted that it was such a common activity.

It wasn’t that I doubted what people told me of what they remembered but more that the fields we now know as the meadows were part of a carefully managed stretch of land which did not benefit from being covered by ice.

These were the water meadows and were farmed to produce early grass which could be fed to cattle.

This involved carefully flooding and draining the land at regular intervals and always being mindful that if the water froze it would do the young grass no favours.

So farmers like Mr Higginbotham whose family had been here on the green from the early 1840s would never have been caught out by a sudden frost.

But the stories persisted that old Higginbotham at the turn of the last century did flood one of his fields to create a skating area.

Now until recently all I had to go on was one photograph and a handful of accounts all of which may have been drawn from that picture or from just one source.

But more photographs have turned up and I am inclined to fall on the side that this was a more common event than I had thought.

Mr Higginbotham may have just been caught out by events having miscalculated the weather or perhaps the field in question was no longer used as a water meadow for bringing on early grass.

Certainly within a few decades the meadows would no longer be used for this traditional way of farming, and now there is little evidence left of the drainage ditches which ran across the area.

All of which is a nice lesson in not becoming too arrogant about what you think you know, and instead as a good historian pay a lot more heed to popular folk memories.

Looking closely at the pictures it is just possible to make out a blur of a building in the background which might just be the old parish church, which in turn will fasten the image on that bit of land just beyond and to west of the modern car park

That said I do draw a line at the notion that the township is crisscrossed by hidden tunnels linking the old parish church to a pub and another running from one of our halls to another.

But that is for another time.

I shall just finish by wondering if Mr Higginbotham charged for the use of his frozen field.  I have on evidence he did but I doubt that he would have passed up such an opportunity.

Pictures; from Manchester Courier, 1914 courtesy of Sally Dervan

Floodlit ice skating on Chorlton Meadows ....... now that doesn’t happen any more

I am back on the meadows thinking of warm summer's walks.

All of which is a far cry from those winters we used to have when freezing temperatures brought the promise of ice skating on the meadows.

It is a story I have regularly revisited and will do so again with this newspaper cutting from the Manchester Guardian of December 22 1938.*

The headline ran "Winter Sports in the North" and then did nothing to fulfil the promise with the follow up headline “Little Skating Yet in Manchester Area”, which is one of those stories which raise you up only to dash you down again.

“The frost has not been severe enough to provide safe skating on any but the shallowest water, and there is only a bare inch or two of snow for sledging.”

That said here in Chorlton “Manchester’s biggest sheet of bearing ice is the one at Chorlton Meadows, in Brookburn Road, Chorlton.

Nearly twenty degrees of frost in the early hours of yesterday produced a good surface there, as the water is shallow and still and quite a number of people were on it in the morning.

School children who had broken up for the holidays joined in the fun during the afternoon, and when darkness came the ice was floodlit.”*

Now I first came across the skating stories on the meadows in the 1970s and only half believed them despite photographs and the testimony of old friends.  More recently as I researched the science of meadow farming

I became even more sceptical, as all the farming authorities argued that letting meadow land freeze over was bad practice.

But the stories of went on down there wouldn’t go away and so it seems the folk tales and the pictures were not one offs but pretty much how it was when we had long cold winters.

And of course this newspaper cutting brings us into a period which is still within living memory and just possibly there will be people who skated into the floodlit evening.

If so I would love to hear from them.

And perhaps on subsequent days because in the same edition the Guardian warned that there was an increased demand for coal more than was usual in the run up to Chritsmas with the chance that some would face delays in getting their supply.

Which was pretty much my fear in the run up to this year's holidays, but that is another story.

Instead I will finish with this from David Bishop, "Mrs Margaret Brown of Stretford (a lady now in her 90s) told me that she remembered skating on the Meadows.She said that the farmer had a little booth and you had to pay him a penny to skate on his meadow".

Pictures; the meadows on a bleak December day in 2001, from the collection of David Bishop, and skating on Chorlton Meadows from the Manchester Courier, 1914 courtesy of Sally Dervan, 


*Winter Sports in the North, Manchester Guardian, December 22 1938

When you could skate on Oswald Road .................The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ice Skating Company

Now I have a problem with this picture.

It was painted by the local artist J.Montgomery.

I say local because almost his entire collection of paintings feature Chorlton or Whalley Range. But that is all we know about him.  Despite attempts to find out more he remains an elusive character.*

And this pretty much extends to his pictures as well.  Most seem to have been painted from postcards and photographs dating to around the first half of the 19th century and many of these are no longer available.

Which brings me to this painting which is dated 1964 but is of The Chorlton Skating Ring in 1906.

And there is the first problem.  The Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ice Skating Company only came into existence sometime between 1910 and 1911.  It does not appear on either the OS map for 1907 or in Harry Kemp’s Chorlton Almanack for 1910 but is listed in the street directory for the following year.

The population of Chorlton had grown rapidly and with it a demand for more and varied leisure opportunities.  That same 1911 Almanack listed 47 different political, cultural and sporting associations and clubs across the old township.

Our skating ring was situated on Oswald Road.

The site takes in the two semidetached houses on Longford and another six running down Oswald.

These houses are of a similar design and  were built sometime after 1945 by the same builder/developer.

Now I can be fairly precise because our skating company had but a short life.  It was wound up in the summer of 1916 which may put the development a little later and by 1933 the site was again open land.

It is not easy to get the scale of the building from Montgomery’s picture but we do seem to be dealing with a big site.  And something of the size  is possible to judge by walking along Oswald Road today.  It was bounded on the south by Hartley Road extended along Longford to its junction with Oswald Road and down Oswald to a point opposite where Oswald Lane starts.

If Montgomery’s painting is anything to go by it was quite impressive with a large painted gable end, stretching back some distance and would have been ideal as a theatre or cinema.  And here is our second mystery, because the title refers to “Chorlton Skating Ring later The Picturedrome.”

This would suggest it became a picture house but the earliest recorded cinema is the Pavilion on the corner of Wilbraham and Buckingham Roads which was opened as a variety hall around 1904 and was showing films by 1910 if not a little before.

Of course there was nothing stopping the Chorlton-cum-Hardy Ice Skating Company showing films, after all many of our early picture houses remained theatres.  The Pavilion or as it became known,  the Chorlton Theatre and Winter Gardens were booking variety acts in the summer of 1910 while also showing movies.

I can at present only hazard a guess for its short life.  The Great War may have pushed it over the brink, but there may have been other reasons.  Many especially in the village might have preferred to venture for free onto the meadows when they iced over and there may equally have been stiff competition as a cinema not only from the Pavilion but after 1914 from the purpose built Palais de Luxe on Barlow Moor Road close to the tram terminus.

I might be able to find out a little more by trawling the street directories for the years after 1911, and there may somewhere be the lost photograph that Montgomery used, but I think I will leave it there, well for the time being anyway.

But on a positive note, Paul Corris has helped me take the story of the site after the Ice Rink.  In response to the story he posted, "Hi Andrew, I live on Longford in a house the same style as those on the site of the ice rink and mine was built in 1935".

Leaving me just to thank Paul and reflect once again how the story of Chorlton continues to advance with the help of everyone.

* J Montgomery an earlier post http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/who-was-j-montgomery.html

Pictures; Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m80132 and detail from the 1907 OS map

The lost photograph ..... the mystery of Chorlton’s Ice Rink ... and the walk through our past on Sunday

Now here is a story which has been a long time in the making.

It concerns our own Chorlton Ice Rink which stood on the corner of Longford and Oswald roads.

On Jan 17 1907, “H” wrote to Albert, that “This is a photo of Chorlton’s Skating Rink.  I had a dust on it on New Year’s Day and it is OK”.

I first came discovered, it when I came across a painting by J Montgomery who painted the place in 1946 from a photograph dated 1906

He referred to it as “Chorlton Skating Rink (later the “Picturedrome”).

But until this week the original photograph was lost, but I rather think this may be the one Mr Montgomery used.

The building belonged to the Chorlton Skating Rink which was wound up as a company in 1916, but its time as a cinema was limited to just Montgomery’s reference to the Picturedrome.

In 1914 it is listed as the Longford Picturedrome seating 600 and its proprietor was a James Morland.

Sadly that is all we have and the listing did manage to substitute Street for road in the address.

There was a Mr Moreland living in Old Trafford just a few years earlier but that is it.

It may be the competition with its close rivals proved too much.
The Chorlton Theatre and Winter Garden had opened in the early years of the 20th century as a variety hall and doubled up as a cinema, while in 1915 a purpose built picture house had opened on Barlow Moor Road.

The combined competition may just have proved too much or it might have been the  war that finished it off.

Either way you can find out lots more on Sunday when we walk our past and call in at the site of the Chorlton’s Ice Rink.

The walk which is part of Chorlton Book Festival, will start from the the Library on Sunday November 18 at 2 pm and take about an hour, after which we will relax in The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road.

Beverley from the library service informs me that “tickets are £7.50 including soup and a roll at the Dressing Room café, The Edge Theatre, Manchester Road, M21 9JG after the walk. 

Booking is essential for this popular event. 

Please visit Chorlton Library or call 0161 227 3700.

Walking Chorlton's Past, Sunday 18 November 2 - 4pm"

Location; Chorlton

Picture: The Chorlton Ice Rink, 1907 from the collection of Chris Griffiths and cover from The Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory 1914

*Chorlton Book Festival, November 16-24, https://www.chorltonbookfestival.co.uk/

Skating on the meadows ........ the story that just won't go away

Skating on the meadows in 1914

Now the skating story on the meadows just won’t go away.

I was once rather dismissive of the popularly held belief that during the winter parts of the meadow were opened up as places for people to skate.

According to Henry Stephens who wrote a popular manual on farming in the 1840s a good farmer never let his water meadows freeze over as this could damage the young grass that was grown on these flooded fields.*

So the skill was to flood, drain and flood again at regular intervals always ensuring that you were not caught out by a fall in the temperature.

Now I was prepared to accept that occasionally a farmer might be caught out but going with Mr Stephens I doubted that this was something of a general rule.

The one picture I had I put down to bad timing followed by an opportunistic moment.

Where you could skate in the January of 1909

But no, by the turn of the last century it was a common thing for these fields to be turned over to skating.

Sally has turned up a series of newspaper clippings including pictures and reports that all show that our farmers were taking advantage of their frozen water logged fields and I am sure was quick to charge.

So along with farmer Higginbotham whose family had farmed by the green since the 1840s there were Mr Wood and Cookson who “had been associated for years in the joint enterprise of flooding the Chorlton meadows.”*

Back out on the icy meadows, January 1909

And according the Manchester Courier in the January of 1909, “among the places where skating was permitted yesterday and where of course providing the frost holds out there will be skating today at Bailey’s Meadows Chorlton, Chorlton Meadows, Broughton Park and Lindow Common Wilmslow.  

The ice on Trafford Park lake was not regarded as sufficiently thick to permit of skating yesterday, but provided the present weather conditions continue there should be some today. At Bell Vue also it may be possible to skate today.”***

So there you have it skating the natural way was going on across the city and especially here in Chorlton, and makes you wonder why they ever bothered to open that skating Ring on Oswald Road.

But that is for later in the month.

*The Book of Farming, Henry Stephens, 1844

**The Herald, April 1902

***Manchester Courier, January 1909



Picture; Skating on Chorlton Meadows from the Manchester Courier, 1914 and newspaper material, courtesy of Sally Dervan

A picture a day, skating on the meadows circa 1900

A picture a day 

During this week of July I have decided to feature a picture a day, drawn from the collections that span a century and more of Chorlton

 Picture; from the Lloyd Collection

Skating on the meadows

I was saving this picture for another winter, but perhaps as April moves into May and we begin to get a few more warmer days it will remind us of the winter, which I do like.

The caption says “skating on the meadows circa 1920s, the old Sewage Farm can be seen in the background.”  The picture belonged to D. Rendell who provided a number of pictures for the Lloyd collection.
Now in some books it is referred to as Higginbotham’s field and the family had been rented land here on this spot from the mid 1840s.

What we now call the meadows was a vast stretch of land from the edge of the village on either side of the brook up to the Mersey, and some was farmed as real meadow land which involved regularly flooding it and managing the water flow to ensure that the grass grew up earlier than the surrounding pasture land.  And this may be the origin of the well known belief that old farmer Higginbotham deliberatly flooded the field for skating.  Now this is unlikely as the expert advice was that to prevent damage to the grass the water should be drained off before the frost.  Now this warning  comes from my old friend Henry Stephens whose book on farming was written in the 1840s and which helped me  unlock so much about how we farmed the township in the mid 19th century.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection