“Wally of the Whalley” Says Goodbye ......... stories of the Whalley Hotel

“Wally of the Whalley” Says Goodbye

It is one of those headlines that you just can’t miss.

“Wally of the Whalley” Says Goodbye appeared in the Manchester City News for November 16th 1951 and featured Mr and Mrs Summer who had run the Whalley Hotel for four years.

Mr Wally Summer and his wife Ethel were leaving Manchester for Anglesey, where they were to take over the Anglesey Arms.

“It's going to be a wrench leaving” he told the City News, “we’ve made hundreds of friends since we came to Brooks’ Bar.  I’ve been amazed at the number of people who have come up to wish us luck.”*

The Anglesey Arms is still there just at the edge of the Menai Bridge.

Now in the fullness of time I would like to find out more about Mr and Mrs Summer.

Painting; The Whalley Hotel,  © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures
*Manchester City News November 16, 1951

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

When history repeats itself ……. and art imitates art

 "Never work with children or animals" is that famous one liner attributed to W.C.Fields and to this can be added never take a famous artist and assume he never came to where you live.

At the Lowry home to his paintings, 2006

Which brings me to L.S Lowry which my Wikipedia tells me that “Laurence Stephen Lowry was an English artist. His drawings and paintings mainly depict Pendlebury, Lancashire (where he lived and worked for more than 40 years) as well as Salford and its vicinity [often depicting] scenes of life in the industrial districts of North West England in the mid-20th century.

He developed a distinctive style of painting and is best known for his urban landscapes peopled with human figures, often referred to as "matchstick men". He also painted mysterious unpopulated landscapes, brooding portraits and the unpublished "marionette" works, which were only found after his death. He was fascinated by the sea, and painted pure seascapes, depicting only sea and sky, from the early 1940s”. *

At which point I have to say he don’t do anything for me, heretical as that is and I await abuse from Mrs. Treliss of Broughton his industrial landscapes and people don’t do it.

And all this despite heaps of discussions with my chum Peter Topping who over the years has patiently set time aside to explain Lowry and show me examples of his non matchstick work.

Lowry's friends at the Lych Gate in Chorlton

Peter who is also an artist long ago took Lowry to his heart and has celebrated the painter by producing pictures of Chorlton in the style of the man.

These over the years have found their way onto the blog under the banner of “When Lowry came to Chorlton”, and now it seems he may have done.

Last night Peter emailed over his discovery that "I uncovered an Instagram post that someone posted with a B&W drawing with Lowry’s signature and date 1960.

 And someone on ebay selling a print of it.

 On further research I found that he had indeed come to Chorlton and sketched The Lych Gate and called it Chorltonville.

 

In the Library, 2026

Somehow the title had got miss read, or miss printed and catalogued as Charltonville see attached copy below

 There is a known Lowry drawing titled something like 'At Charltonville / The Old Cemetery', dated 1960, and it has appeared in auction listings.

One such listing describes it as 'L S LOWRY AT CHARLTONVILLE THE OLD CEMETRY 1960 PENCIL DRAWING' .

Perhaps Lowry visited our Library

This confirms that Lowry produced a drawing connected with Charltonville (note the spelling) and a cemetery scene around that time.

 L S LOWRY AT CHARLTONVILLE THE OLD CEMETRY 1960 PENCIL DRAWING” does indeed appear online — but only as the title of an eBay listing, not as an authenticated catalogue entry or museum‑verified work. The listing shows a hardback print being sold, not an original drawing, and the spelling ('Charltonville', 'Cemetry') is the seller’s own wording, not Lowry’s, https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/187509554804?msockid=3df35e1922496e41178348a6230a6f34”

So with that in mind Chorlton Library have asked Peter to put on a Pop Up exhibition of some of his pieces in the series “When Lowry came to Chorlton” .

Alas all of Mr. Lowry's paintings including his 'At Charltonville / The Old Cemetery' remain copyright and for all the right reasons I ain't putting them up on here.

So its just down to Chorlton Library to walk where  history repeats itself ……. and art imitates art.

Picture; At the Lowry home to his paintings, 2006, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Painting; If Mr Lowry came to Chorlton, © 2017 Peter Topping, and new paintings from the Lowry series, by Peter, 2026 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

*L.S.Lowry, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._S._Lowry

Snaps of Chorlton No 2 Beech Road, 1935 King George V’s Jubilee

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

Beech Road, 1935

Today we are on Beech Road during the Jubilee of King George V.  I cannot be exact but it will have been between May 6th and May 12th.

It was taken by Marjorie’s sister sometime in the afternoon.

Despite its’ lack of clarity there is enough here to give us a flavour of Beech Road in the 1930s.

To our immediate left is the wall in front of Row House and the adjoining building which by 1929 was the Grange Laundry.  And beyond on the corner of Acres Road was William Allen the iron monger’s who has dropped his canopy to shield the shop from the bright spring sunshine and like all the shop keepers of the period has some at least of his wares on display outside.

It is a fine May day and the bright sunshine has brought out the people, even so there is enough of a breeze to lift the flag and bunting.

And I suppose the thing that most marks this off from today is the absence of cars.  There well away up Beech Road at the corner of Chequers Road is the only one.

What also makes the picture just that little bit more priceless is that the young girl in the foreground is Marjorie.

Picture; Beech Road, 1935, from the collection of Marjorie Holmes

Bert Woodcock ………….. Chorlton artist ………….part 1

Now I like the way that stories come back, and so it is with one I did on the local artist, Bert Woodcock which I wrote back in 2016.*

I knew Bert and Doris Woodcock but only to nod to and pass the odd comment.

They lived on Beaumont Road directly behind us.

I must confess to my shame I made little effort to get to know them, but these were the years when the children were growing up and with a busy day job lots rather passed me by.

And so, it was a chance conversation with Alan which made me think of them again and the revelation that Bert was an artist who exhibited locally.

I went looking for a reference to his work but drew a blank but given that he was also a commercial artist I suspected in time I would find at least one picture.

And this week Robert Fleming got in touch, with, “Hi Andrew. I recently came across your blog and noticed you had written one about my late 'uncle Bert'.

He was my mother’s uncle (my grandmothers’ brother) but he was always known to myself and sister as uncle Bert and we would visit regularly in Chorlton. 

I have numerous pieces of his artwork and knowledge of his life passed on by my Mother and grandmother.

Happy to chat if you want to do a follow up as well as share his artwork.... a lot of which is owned by me, but none of it local.

He led an interesting life and would be nice to see him memorialized as I have such fond memories of him.

His real name was J H Woodcock by the way but known as Bert. As you said in your blog, he was a commercial artist and painted for catalogues and such in the days when it was cheaper to pay illustrators than it was to take photos. 

He was a soldier, a diehard City fan, very deeply religious and a freemason. He led an interesting life and I would await his illustrated cards every birthday as a child”.

All of which means that I am sure there will be follow up stories from Robert on Bert.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; paintings by Bert Woodcock, date unknown, courtesy of Robert Fleming


*Looking for lost forgotten local Chorlton artists ................ Mr. Bert Woodcock and J Montgomery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=bert+woodcock

Uncovering one of our local photographers, A H Clarke .............where local history met family history

Now I have been fascinated by Harold Clarke who was one of our local commercial photographers.*

Barlow Moor Road, circa 1926

During the 1920s and 30s he recorded many scenes of Chorlton and they are a priceless snap shot of the area.

This one was taken by Harold Clarke of 83 Clarence Road Chorlton, and may have been part of a series issued by Lilywhite Ltd, of Brighouse, in Yorkshire.

There are 21 of his photographs in the Greater Manchester County Records collection dating from 1926 through to 1934 and some from 1926 carry a serial number close to the one in the picture.

All of which is an introduction to a story written by Tony Goulding, who has contributed to the blog before.

“Your posts using postcards produced by A H Clarke re-kindled in me an interest in my family history. A  H Clarke was my maternal grandfather. 

Miss Clarke's ration book, 1939

I had previously searched in vain for 83, Clarence Road where my mother was raised, as her ration book shows. 

I had not noticed the name change to Claridge Roadd. 

On a recent walk past the house I realised how close it was to the old brickworks and remembered how my mother had told me how she used to get into trouble for playing around them and the clay pits.

My grandfather was born in Reddith, Worcestershire in 1889, the son of William who owned tobacconist/photographers on the High St. 

His mother Bessie was a member of the Woodfield family prominent in the town both as needle factory owners and in local politics. 

Arthur Harold became a professional photographer. 

In the 1911 census he is recorded as working as a photographer’s assistant in Hitchin, Herts. He later moved back to Redditch, then after the break-up of his first marriage in the early 1920's lived for a little while in Toxteth, Liverpool, where my mother was born in 1927 before settling in  Chorlton in about 1930.

Book marks Central Ref, 1934

He was obviously quite enterprising at this time as can be seen by these bookmarks he produced of the newly opened Central Library.

Sometime in the early 1940's he both re-located the family home and ceased making his living solely from photography as a 1944 wedding certificate shows him as an Inland Revenue clerk residing at 5, Keppel Rd. 

It must remain a matter of conjecture whether this change was for personal reasons or was due to economic pressure on the photographic trade by the advance in camera ownership and the decline in postcard usage as a result of the increased availability of telephones. 

Of course any such difficulties would be exacerbated by war time shortages, rationing, and restrictions.

Finally it is ironic that I haven't got any photos of my grandfather, who died  in 1952; two years before I was born ------a man who must have taken 10's of 1,000's of them in his lifetime.”

And so there you have it a little bit more of the history of those who recorded our history.

© Tony Goulding May 2015

Pictures; from the collection of Harold Clark, Barlow Moor Road, circa 1926, from the Lloyd Collection, and the ration book and book mark courtesy of Tony Clarke.

*Harold Clarke, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/travelling-around-chorlton-in-1930s-in.html

Who knew Derrick A. Lea of Illustrations & Design?

I am looking at one of eight illustrations produced by Derrick A. Lea.  

My eight are all greetings cards, some of which have a Christmas message and others with a more general inscription.

Of the eight, five are of Chorlton, one of Longford Hall and another of the Old Parsonage in Didsbury.

Now this does not surprise me over much because Mr Lea gave his address as Rybebank Road, and earlier in the 1950s he had been living on Dalmorton Road which is in between Egerton Road South and Kings Road.

But that is about all I do know of the chap.  So far I have discovered he was born in Bucklow in Cheshire in 1920, got married in 1949 and produced these fine pictures of south Manchester.

My eight belong to Margaret who bought a job lot some years ago using them as cards for friends and relatives.

Luckily for me she retained these last eight.

And the one I have in front of me is one of the lost buildings which only went in the last decade of the last century.

This is Longford Hall “the residence of the late John Rylands, was bought by him in 1855 and acquired by the Stretford Council in 1911.  The park and playing fields were extended by the purchase of additional land from Manchester Corporation and is much used for sport and other social gatherings.”*

Like many people I let this building go by with little thought about what was lost when it was demolished.

So I shall come back to Mr Lea’s Longford Hall in due course, but in the meantime I am still at a loss to know more about the man.

It was drawn in 1957 and some of the others of the eight date from the years around that time. Others have no date but I guess will be contemporary.

What makes them fascinating is that they cover a period when Chorlton was continuing to change.

I can not however date when they were made into cards but some at least have a telephone number containing the old mix of letters and numbers.

Now the switch to all figure dialing began in 1966 and was completed four years later and Manchester was one of the first cities to make the change.

All of which places the cards no later than 1970 and possibly earlier.

Margaret had seen the cards advertised sometime in the mid 1970s by Mrs Lea and went round to the house on Ryebank and bought a selection.  I would like to know more but that at present is all there is

But at least we his pictures.

Picture; Longford Hall, by Derrick A. Lea

*text by Derrick A. Lea

Back with Derrick A. Lea in the Chorlton of 1955

It’s one of those odd things that we have few pictures of Chorlton in the 1950s. 

Now there are a few fine collections in the Local History archive* but nothing compared with the huge range and number from the beginning of both the 20th century and the last decades of the 19th.

So when examples come up it is as well to include them in the story of Chorlton.

And so here we have another from the pen of Derrick A. Lea who drew pictures of the area in the 50s.  As I have said before along with J Montgomery Mr Lea is a bit of a mystery.

I know a little about him including where he lived in Chorlton and that some of his pictures were turned into greetings cards and that is about it.

Now given that pictures as opposed to photographs of where we live do not turn us as regularly his collection are quite unique.

This one is of Wilbraham Road sometime in 1955 and it appears to be a warm day in perhaps March or early April because despite the absence of any leaves on the trees people are walking around without those heavy overcoats everyone seemed to wear during the period.

Of course there may be a bit of poetic license here but there is much that is just as it should.

And it is a scene that has changed.  The Conservative Club and Public Hall was still solid reminder of the fact that Chorlton elected Conservative politicians to the Town Hall  and would do so until 1986.

In much the same way the Lloyd's Hotel has not changed overmuch since it was built in 1870

But with the benefit of hindsight we know that Mr Lea’s picture captured a Chorlton that has now gone forever.  The Conservative Club and Public Hall closed earlier in the year after the Conservative Association had wound itself up and currently the plans are to convert the building into flats.

The Lloyd’s may appear superficially the same, but internally much has been altered.  The small rooms have been knocked through, and the staircase taken down.

I can’t say the changes are for the worse.  I remember it from the late 1970s and early 80s as a place waiting for something to happen.

All of which would have pleased its landlady back in the 1880s.  This was a Mrs Crabtree who by all accounts “improved the place considerably in various particulars” and it may have been her who encouraged the bowling green members to build their own club house which was open on Wednesdays during the season.

She was an enterprising woman with an eye for business and also laid out a lawn tennis court on the open land along side Whitelow Road.

By the time I had washed up in Chorlton the tennis courts had become a drab car park while going inside the pub was like stepping back into the 1950s.

Nor did much seem to improve during the course of the next decade, and sadly the place became somewhere you went to only for a quick during before eating on Wilbraham Road.

But the place has undergone a series of makeovers in the course of the last few years, and is really a fun place to drop into for a drink, a meal and soon the launch of our new book, nothing to do in chorlton, Martledge Lost and Found.

Which brings me back to Wilbraham Road in 1955.

Picture;  Wilbraham Road in 1955, Derrick A. Lea


*http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Barlow Moor Road, Mrs Helen Burt and the postcard makers of Chorlton

It all began with this picture postcard and ended with a chance discovery.

The picture is remarkable enough but not an uncommon one of Barlow Moor Road some time in the first years of the 20th century or maybe even earlier.

To our right is the church and on the left what were still private residences.

The appearance of a photographer is still a bit of novelty judging by the way the three workmen are staring back at him.

Two have paused from pulling the hand cart while the third stands behind his ladders. In the distance is a policeman and even further away a tradesman’s cart.

Like many of these early pictures it has been taken on a summer’s morning when the light was good and there were fewer people about.

All of which makes it a magic moment captured when Barlow Moor Road was still a quiet and elegant place to live.

And that really might have been all there was to say.

A photograph which captures one of those moments taking us back to 1904 when the card was sent or perhaps even earlier.

But of course that isn’t all there is.  On the reverse is an enigmatic message which leaves the romantic and the detective in me wandering down countless avenues of speculation.  Chris had “arrived here safely.  Mr and Mrs W [were] here [she] was having a good time and Joe was married on Fri to Mrs P.  Don’t say anything.”

Now how could you not ponder on that, and in the fullness of time weave all sorts of stories?  But the historian in me stops short of such unhistorical thinking after all as Mr Gradgrind of Hard Times reflecting on teaching children reminds me “Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service ...... This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.”

And yes there is one fact and it is that the card was published or perhaps taken by H Burt of Chorlton.  I checked the directories for a photographer by the name of Burt and even pondered on whether he might have been a newsagent or stationer.  After all the Lloyd family who ran the post office on Upper Chorlton Road sold their own postcards. But it led nowhere.

The only Burt was Harry Trevethhan Burt who opened his family business in Chorlton in 1895 and traded from the shop on Wilbraham Road until 2011.  His is fascinating story not least because he was a farmer’s son from Sussex who’s farther farmed 130 acres of land.  Harry trained at Kendal and Milne’s in Manchester before opening his own shop here in Chorlton.  There will be many who have fond memories of that shop.

But it is the fact that the Burt name appears on the postcard which interests me and looking through the collection I discovered a number which variously had “Published by Mrs H. Burt, Chorlton-cum-Hardy” or “H Burt Stationers.”

Helen Burt was the wife of Harry and described herself as a “Stationers shopkeeper” on the 1901 census.

So while Harry was building a family business which would last a century Helen was marketing postcards from just across the road from 1903 and most likely 1901.

All of which makes perfect sense but was something I had never clocked and in turn led me to look more closely at the small print on the back of the cards.

And here alongside the big companies were other names like the Lloyd family and Baylis, photographers of 49 Wilbraham Road and 26 Edge Lane as well as  W. A. Cooper of Chorlton-cum-Hardy and Harold Clarke of 83 Clarence Road.

Now a part from Harold Clarke who was working in the 1920s and 30s all the others come from that early pioneering period of photography. And there is really something exciting in discovering just how many people were engaged capturing the images and selling them on.

All of which leads me to conclude that a whole new avenue of research has opened up all thanks to Helen Burt and her postcard of Barlow Moor Road.  And that is not all because Helen I now discover was another of those traders who offered a private lending library and that opens up even more Chorlton history.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Picture; from the Lloyd collection and St Clements Bazaar Handbook for 1928

Chorlton’s mysterious eight ………. and an insight into our past

Now the history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy just keeps giving.

“Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H”

So I am back looking again at eight paintings which were loaned to me by Julie Gaskell.

Each is of a time before now and range across Chorlton, from the small hamlet of Hardy across to the southern end of the old village and back along what is now Beech Road and east toward Hough End Hall.

And they include wattle and daub cottages, the smithy, as well as the old Bowling Green pub, and Barlow Hall.

The artist is unnamed, but I think they are by J Montgomery who painted a huge number of Chorlton scenes from sometime in the 1940s through to the mid-1960s.  

He remains a bit of a mystery with no one owning up to have known him.  Manchester Libraries who hold a collection of his paintings have no biographical information on him.

“Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy”

But with the help of Andy Robertson, I am fairly confident he lived in Chorlton, and pretty much only painted scenes of the township.

The quality of his work is erratic, but together they offer up images of what Chorlton was like in the 19th century.

Some look to be imaginative reconstruction loosely based on photographs while most seem to be a faithful reproduction taken from picture postcards.

So the painting “Ale House in 1618 at Hough End Hall before Hough End Hall was built” drifts into pure speculation and is historically inaccurate given that our Hough End Hall was built in the 1590s.

In the same way “Bowling Green Inn and old Church C c H” is quite clearly based on at least one photograph from the late 19th century. 

As is “Cottage Beech Road C cum Hardy” which is Sutton’s Cottages which stood on the present site of the Launderette bar and restaurant.  The cottage dates from sometime in the 18th century and was demolished in the early 1890s.

"Barlow Hall, view from the meadows"

Others “Hough End Hall Old Hall or Manor House of Manchester” resemble photographs I have seen to suggest they are fairly accurate.

An even “Pitts Brow Edge Lane where new church and Stockton Range now stand” for which there will be no photographic evidence might be a mix of the artist’s imagination and descriptions which appeared in T Ellwood’s History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy which appeared over 26 weeks in the South Manchester Gazette between the winter of 1885 and the spring of the following year.

So there you have it ….. eight mystery paintings most of which look to be based on old photographs, some of which have themselves been lost, and take us back to that rural Chorlton of the mid 19th century.

"Behind the Smithy, Beech Road C c H"

In some cases, it is difficult to guarantee their accuracy, but using maps, and written records I think we can be confident that we are almost back to the Chorlton cum Hardy of the 1850s.

Leaving me just to say the eight look to be reproductions of originals, have been laminated and framed.

So thank you Julie who spotted them in a shop and had to buy all eight.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, eight paintings, by an unknown artist, courtesy of Julie Gaskell.

On Chorlton Green with Derrick A Lea in 1957

We are on the green sometime between 1955 and 1958 outside the Horse and Jockey.

Now I know this because the artist who drew the scene completed a series of pictures of Chorlton during this period.

He was Derrick A Lea and he is one of those local artist who has slipped out of our history.

He lived here during the 1950s through to the ‘70s, and that is about it.  So for now it is his pictures that will have to speak for him.

And today it is this one of the pub on the green.

It is a picture which I like partly because the style reminds me of so many that I grew up with in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Often they were the sort which appeared as adverts in magazines or in prints that were displayed in railway carriages on the trains of the Southern Region.

Most were of the countryside and most showed southern England in full summer.

So this one is somewhat different and what draws me in is not just the wintry scene but the way Mr Lea captures the brisk movement of the couple on the right.  It’s partly their stride as they follow the dog but also the way the woman’s coat spills out covering as it would an equally expansive dress underneath.

This was that period when in direct contrast to the fashions of the war everything was bigger and more showy, as if to say “we are done with rationing and making do.”

And the historian in me is fascinated by the picture of the pub itself which is almost the one we know today but not quite.

In the 1950s it had not extended into the building to right of the entrance below the sign.

This was still a private residence and so had not yet been given the wooden beam effect.  Nor had the top floor of what had once been Miss Wilton’s home been taken down.

But not all in the picture is completely accurate for what looks like a pond in front of the trees is  an invention of Mr Lea’s imagination.

There were village ponds but sadly not here.  There was one further to the south by the Bowling Green Hotel and another on Beech Road stretching from Acres Road up to Chequers Road but not outside the Horse and Jockey.

Not that I am over bothered by the deliberate error.

It remains a pretty neat picture of a moment in the mid 1950s which will be one most of us never knew, and I do like his depiction of the pub and the green on a wintery snowy night.

So it just remains to close by repeating  the image he drew.

Location; Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester








Picture; the Horse and Jockey, Chorlton Green, by Derrick A Lea taken from a greetings card in the possession of my old friend Margaret.

The Booth family .............. a new family for a New Chorlton

I have been trying to clear up a few little mysteries about the Booth family who lived here on Manchester Road during the time when the township went through its most dramatic transformation.

This was when we leapt from being a small rural community into a suburb of Manchester and those tall rows of terraced and semi detached properties in long roads went up catering for the middling people who worked in the city but still wanted to live on the edge of the countryside. The Booth family saw all of that and despite still being here in the early 1940s I lose them after The Great War.

I came across Aaron Booth some years ago when I added four of his photographs to the collection.  They were taken in the summer and winter of 1882 of Martledge which was that part of the township from the four banks down to the Library.

And that was pretty much it.  I knew he and his family lived at Sedge Lynn which was an impressive Victorian house on Manchester Road and that he was businessman.

Then as you do I became more curious.  They were one of those new families with money behind them and business interests in the city who had made their home here just as the housing boom of the 1880s was about to take off.

We can track the family across the city from 1861 and during the next twenty years they lived in a succession of comfortable addresses on the edges of the city finally moving to Sedge Lynn in the November of 1881.
Before that date the evidence trail is a little vague but I am fairly confident that Aaron married Emma in 1853 and their first child was born two years later followed by another ten children.

These were the years when the family firm prospered.  In 1861 his packing company employed four men and seven boys and over the next few decades his work force increased as did the number of premises.  So while in 1863 he was located on the corner of South Street* and Albert Square by the 1890s he was listed at “3 & 6 Hall street, 20 Oxford st, St Peter’s, 12 St Peter’s square and 1 & 47 Lower Mosley Street.”

And by 1911 at the whole corner of Oxford Street and Lower Mosley Street as well as Hall Street and Chepstow Street.  On his death in 1912 he left £1,827 in personal effects.

All of which suggests that they were a comfortably well of Victorian family.  Sedge Lane was a detached house which in 1881 stood in splendid isolation in what was pretty much open land.  To the rear were the Isles a mix of ponds, tiny streams and fields which stretched up to Longford Hall, and to the west and east they were bordered by farms. It had had eleven rooms as well as a bathroom and kitchen and commanded an annual rent of £28.

And I have no doubt that they participated in the life of the community.  Aaron was an amateur photographer and it is reasonable to suppose that the rest of the family filled their leisure time with all sorts.  The 1911 Kemp’s Almanac for Chorlton boasted a host of cultural organisations from operatic and drama societies to a range of sporting ones and the city with its theatres was less than 15 minutes away on the train.

The children either followed their father into the family business or took up that increasingly suitable occupation for young women of teaching.  All of the girls lived at home and so is tantalizing to speculate on whether they taught in the local school or one of the new academies or crammers which were opening up across Chorlton to cater for the young middle class.

In a grimmer way they were also typical of the period.  Emma was just 49 when she died, and two of the children died even younger at 21 and 22.  In all ten of the family are in Southern Cemetery.  They were buried there between 1881 and 1942 in two plots close to Nell Lane.

But two of the children are not there and so far have eluded me as has the identity of the Miss Booth who originally made available the four 1882 photographs.  And then there is the mystery of where they lived after the Great War.  Aaron died in 1912 but there is evidence that they were still there at Sedge Lynn a little later, but by 1919 or 1920 they had gone.  This much I can be confident of because by 1920 the new impressive Savoy cinema had opened on the site of Sedge Lynn.

In the way of things some of the mysteries will be solved.  Out there in a parish magazine or in the local press will be a reference to them and when I next get into Central Library there will be the electoral registers which may place all of the children in the years after 1928, so still a lot to go on then.  And on the next fine day I will take myself off to the cemetery.

Which just leaves one last loose end.  In May 1969 the company Shepley Booth & Associates Ltd was wound up in Birmingham.  I have no way of knowing the connection but I am sure there is one, as each of the male sons of Aaron and Emma were given Shepley as a second name, so one more mystery.

And here is an addition which has only just occurred to me and changes the date of when I thought this picture was taken. As late as 1894 what we now call Nicolas Road was a thin strip of land with trees, running back from where the old bit of Manchester Road joined Barlow Moor Road ad onto open land.  At this stage Oswald Road stopped just beyond Vincent Avenue.

By 1907 it is shown as a path and possibly an unmade road with houses roughly where the Health Centre is.

All of which changes the date of the picture which I had always assumed was 1882 which is the date on a similar print but there in the distance is what I think is Oswald Road School which was completed in 1908.  Just goes to show!

Pictures; Sedge Lynn the Lloyd collection, the work place of the Booth family on the corner of Oxford Street and Lower Mosley Street, circa 1900 from Goads Fire Insurance Maps, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and 47 Lower Mosley Street where the Booths were also listed in 1895, photograph by H W Beaumont 1964, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council m02925

*now Southmill Street

A painting of the meadows, a mystery ……….. and stories yet to be told

This is Hawthorn Lane, which is part of the Old Road, which snaked through Chorlton from Hardy Lane, skirting the parish church before heading off east across the Meadows to Stretford.

We can’t be sure when it was painted, or whether it was an attempt to recreate a much earlier scene.

But what I do know, is that it is the work of Thomas Crowhurst, who was living at no. 15 St Clements Road from 1872 till 1892.

He describes himself variously as a “Teacher of Drawing” and “Artist, teacher and landscape painter”, and he was born in Cornwall in 1835.

His wife Ellen was also a teacher and they employed a Governess who was also a “Teacher of French and German”.

I can track them from 1866 when he was living in Cheetham Hill, but lose them after 1891, although there are hints to where they lived subsequently.

The painting was acquired by a friend about 4 years ago, and is important because it is only one of two dating from the 19th century which I have come come across.

There in the distance is St Clements Church, and I suspect there will be plenty of people who spend a bit of time trying to locate exactly where Mr. Crowhurst stood when he painted the scene.

Walking the lane today, there is one possible bend which might be the one shown, but of course the view across to the church has changed beyond recognition.

In the 19th century this was still meadow land, farmed specifically for the purpose of growing “spring grass”, but during the last century the area was subject to Corporation waste tipping, followed by dramatic landscaping by the wardens of the Mersey Valley which created pretty much what we see today.

So that makes Thomas Crowhurst’s painting so important.

But never one to shy away from a bit of family prying I went looking for the man and his family and there is a story ……….. indeed quite a few.

Back in 1871 he was living with his wife Ellen in Walnut Street, in Cheetham Hill, and gave his occupation as a “Clerk in a Wholesale Drapery House” and Ellen appears not to be employed.
Walnut Street is still there and consists of modest terraced houses, which are a contrast to the property they moved to when they settled in Chorlton.

Just where they worked as teachers is yet to be discovered, but they had a full house in St Clements Road.  Along with the two of them, there was a son, two boarders, two servants and Ms Bertha Rath the Governess.

What is equally intriguing is that one of the two boarders, was their niece, and a decade later she is listed as “adopted daughter”.

She was Dora Helen Cornish and a search of the census records reveals someone of that name, of the right age, and birthplace living with her mother in the south.

All of which betokens more stories.

And in the meantime, perhaps a walk down Hawthorn Lane, armed with his paintings and the task of comparing the scene today with that of when Mr. Crowhurst put paint to canvas.

Location; Hawthorn Lane

Picture; Hawthorn Lane, Thomas Crowhurst, date unknown

It started with a picture and became a story.......... Charles Ireland

The Palais de Luxe, circa 1928

It started with a picture and became a story.

The picture was of the Palais de Luxe Cinema on Barlow Moor Road and is not one I had seen before.

In that usual way of things it was in the possession of the archives and public records centre of East Dunbartonshire Council and got there because the fine iron and glass canopy which fronted the cinema had been made by the Lion Foundry in Kirkintilloch.

The story unfolded as the archivist and I sought to resolve the copyright issue of the photograph.

Ms Janice Miller was keen for me to see the picture but quite rightly was concerned that this might contravene the 70 year rule on copyright usage.

The photograph was by C Ireland and may have been taken around 1928 and that was all there was to go on. He might have been a local photographer or one especially commissioned by the Lion Foundry who came down from Scotland or just possibly one of those travelling photographers who captured local scenes to be converted into post cards.

Now both of us were fully prepared for a disappointment. After all we had just a name which is not much to go on.

But a Charles Ireland ran a photographic shop at 25 Lower Mosley Street in town during the first decade of the last century and continued in business there to at least 1927. The same set of telephone directories also revealed that by 1921 he was living at 76 High Lane here in Chorlton.

It is one of those amazing things about detective work that once the first secrets of a person’s life come to light others bubble up in front of you.

He had died in 1930 aged 63, left £5,330 to his widow and was buried in Southern Cemetery. He had been born in Newton in Manchester in 1867 and by 1891 the family were living here on St Clements Road.

This seems to have been a step up. The family home on Oldham Road in Newton was at the heart of an industrial area. Just to the north was the large carriage and wagon works of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and to the south and east there were brick works cotton mills, bleach works as well a glass works.

25 Lower Mosley Street, 1964

Charles’s father Edward was in partnership as a pawnbroker although he also described himself as a photographer, and by 1891 this appears to have been his sole occupation.

There were as yet few photographers listed in the directories for Manchester in the 1880s and they are still described as artists.

By 1895 he had opened the shop on Lower Mosley Street which Charles still ran until the late 1920s.

The family continued to prosper and by 1911 they have moved to that large detached house on the corner of Edge Lane and Kingshill Road.

76 High Lane, date unknown

As ever the romantic in me fastened on the fact that in 1913 Charles married his photographic assistant. Edith May Hindley was 32 years old and like him had been born in Newton.

Sometime perhaps around 1918 they moved into 76 High Lane which had been the home of the artist Tom Mostyn the artist.

 It is still there having benefited from the addition of the large upstairs window and studio which I guess was the work of Tom Mostyn and which Charles in turn may have used.

I have yet to visit the grave in Southern Cemetery but it is on my list of things to do. Here he was buried along with his father and mother in law, his sister and finally in 1948 his wife

So far no other pictures accredited to Charles have turned up but they will. His working life stretched back over 40 years and the picture of 76 High Lane may even be his although sadly there is no date and the quality is pretty poor.

But I travel in hope that out there in a collection I will come across more of his pictures. Ms Janice Miller and the East Dunbartonshire archive can only be the first.

Location; Chorlton and Manchester

Pictures; the Palais de Luxe cinema, circa 1928 GD10-07-04-6-13-01 Courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives, 25 Lower Mosley Street by H W Beaumont 1964 m02915, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, & 76 High Lane, date unknown, from the Lloyd collection

A house with a story

Now we all have favourite buildings but this is not one of mine.

And yet there is a remarkable story here which takes us back to the early years of commercial photography and the Ireland Photographic Studios which began up in Newton Heath as a side line and became an important family business in the centre of Manchester.*

The Ireland family prospered as commercial photographers and eventually settled here in this house.

The business was taken over by Charles Ireland whose father began the studios and he briefly lived in the house which is now the Buddhist Centre on High Lane but was once the Art School of Tom Mostyn.

So there you have it.

*It started with a picture, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Charles%20Ireland

Picture; from the collection of Andy Robertson

Getting your picture taken

There is something about that formal posed photograph which my parent’s generation and those behind them went in for.

We all have them whether in old fashioned picture frames, or shabby and much used albums and in some cases just loose in a drawer with letters by relatives we know nothing about.

They stare back at you mostly looking very serious, no doubt calculating how much the session was costing or with that faint smile which they know they shouldn’t because this is a special occasion.

And I have become fascinated by what they tell us of the period they were taken.  The most obvious thing of course is their clothes and hairstyles but this is only the start.  In many you don’t see people smiling because to do so would reveal the lack of teeth which was the product of poor diet and an income which precluded the dentist.

Then there is the correct way they stand or sit, often in an arranged way, with the woman sitting down the man standing behind or to one side, and the children in front at the feet of their parents.  It is a style of posing that goes back into the paintings of an early age.

Then there is the cigarette.  It is always there in the movies of the 1930s and 40s and transferred to the formal photograph.  So on a series of pictures taken I guess in the late 1940s there is my mother with a cigarette in hand.

But at least neither she nor my grandparents went in for the studio props which in an earlier age would have been a required addition.  The elaborate table, with its arrangement of flowers the stuffed animals or the mock country scene are missing from my family pictures.

None of which I can say I miss.  But then none of ours come with those beautiful engraved back covers offering the names of the studio in gilt lettering.  Sadly the best we can do is a postcard of grandmother in Derby in the June of 1930 which was placed on a postcard by Spotlight Photos Ltd Derby.

But these engraved back covers are themselves a wonderful source of information.  It enabled me to track the success of a local family of photographers by the list of premises they advertised.  Not I grant you earth shattering stuff but nevertheless another little part of the bigger story.

Charles Ireland took one of the best pictures of a Chorlton cinema.* He had died in 1930 aged 63, left £5,330 to his widow and was buried in Southern Cemetery.   He had been born in Newton in Manchester in 1867 and by 1891 the family were living here on St Clements Road.

This seems to have been a step up.  The family home on Oldham Road in Newton was at the heart of an industrial area.  Just to the north was the large carriage and wagon works of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway and to the south and east there were brick works cotton mills, bleach works as well a glass works.

Charles’s father Edward was in partnership as a pawnbroker although he also described himself as a photographer, and by 1891 this appears to have been his sole occupation.  There were as yet few photographers listed in the directories for Manchester in the 1880s and they are still described as artists.  By 1895 he had opened the shop on Lower Mosley Street which Charles still ran until the late 1920s.

Sometime during the early 20th century he opened studios in Edinburgh and Hanley. All of which allowed him to purchase the large house on the corner of Kingshill Road and Edge Lane and for his son to buy the large property on High Lane which had once been the art school of Tom Mostyn.

It is a remarkable story for a man who began as the partner of a pawnbroker and says a lot about the money that could be made from formal photography, which is pretty much where we came in.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/forgotten-photograph-palais-de-luxe-in.html

Down in Shudehill in the 1960s when it was all "crumbly and interesting"

Now I always look forward to a new picture from my friend Ann.

She lives in France but grew up in Chorlton during the 1960s.

“My uncle used to have a business in the market, selling fruit and vegetables. 

When I was at college in the early 60's I went into his 'cabin' and drew all the boxes. It was a wholesale market so mostly in boxes.

This was one of our College 'sketching' days, and we often used to go to Shudehill, as it was all crumbly and interesting, from an artistic point of view.

My uncle, ,Ernest Jones had been a friend of my parents since they were young, and they were at each others' weddings. ”

And that is all I want to say.

Picture; market scene, circa 1960s, from Ann Love

Snaps of Chorlton No 1 a lost road and a demolished house from Ida

Most of the images we see of Chorlton in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries were the work of professional photographers. 

They arrived in the township, focused on the popular bits and sold them on to the postcard companies.  Sometimes on the off chance they prowled the new roads of New Chorlton and the Ville, taking pictures of individual houses and offering them at a knock down rate to the residents.

Then there were the serious amateurs like Aaron Booth* who in the early 1880s was taking photographs of Martledge. But there are also the snappers, who captured whatever took their fancy.  Often the images are a little blurred and in many cases have a significance lost in time.

And so with this in mind here is the new series.  Snaps of Chorlton, is an occasional rummage through pictures most of which were never meant to be shared beyond the family. Of course the advent of the camera phone has given this a new lease of life.

But for now I am concentrating on old fashioned images and I am starting with two from Ida.  The first was taken by her dad and while the date is unknown it must be before the development of the precinct, because this is Manchester Road from the corner of Wilbraham Road.  Back then it is still a tree lined road of big houses which gently curved round past the Savoy Picture House and around the library.  The car park has yet to break the sweep of the road.

It is a scene I featured recently from a 1938 postcard but is well worth another look.

The second is more recent.  We are on Beech Road, after the demolition of Row House and the factory which stood beside it.  And Ida’s picture perfectly reflects that other thing about snaps which is that they seldom are of popular or photogenic views which makes them equally important.

Row House dated from the early 19^th century and had quite a history.  Here lived the Blomely’s who gave their name to the fish pond that ran from Acres Road up to Chequers Road, and also lived William Batty, politician, jeweller and Methodist  For a while the house was used as our “Penny Reading Room”, while the adjoining building had been a laundry and factory.

So its passing which generated a stir at the time is important as it was one of the last examples of an early 19^th century property in the township.  And here I have a confession, for I have a brick from the house.  I asked for it and the demolition gang a little bemused handed it over.  It was handmade, perhaps with clay from our own clay pits off Oswald Road and I guess was put in place around about 1800.

And a little later Ida took her picture.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Pictures; from the collection of Ida Bradshaw

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/aaron-booth-and-his-pictures-of.html