A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects ... number 16 ……. plotting the quiet revolution in a pub near you

The story of Didsbury in just twenty objects, chosen at random and delivered in a paragraph or more.

It began when a group of revolutionaries, harmoniously "took tea together” at the Church Inn on November 12th, 1853, after which they set about challenging the social order.

Now I said they were revolutionaries set on challenging the social order, but that may have been a wee bit of an exaggeration.

They were in fact members of the British Freehold Land Society and amongst their members were the radical Abel Heywood, and the equally radical Richard Cobden and John Bright who were MPs.

The aim of the society was the simple one of acquiring estates which could then be divided up into smaller plots to be bought by people of modest means, enabling them to own sufficient property to qualify for a Parliamentary vote at a time when ownership of property secured you a vote.

And that brings us back to the harmonious tea meeting in the Church Inn which is now the Didsbury Hotel, because having taken “tea together” they apportioned the newly bought Kingston estate amongst “the various members who had accepted the 133 allotments” and discussed the “recently purchased second estate consisting of 27 acres situated at Crumpsall Green, within five minutes’ walk of Cheetham Hill omnibus office”.*

The Kingston Estate was situated on what is now either side of Kingston Road, and each plot amounted to one share, which cost £40, and these could be purchased by subscriptions of 4/- per month.

At the meeting those present expressed “the greatest satisfaction at the appearance of new street, extending through the whole estate.”

The Rate Books for the year, record that the rateable value of the estate was £45 and the estate had belonged to our old friend John Arnold, who ran the Prince Albert beer shop and worked the iron in his smithy.

This may not seem in the same league as storming the Bastille, or participating in the attack on the Winter Palace, but it was a serious attempt to address the failure of Parliament to pass a second Reform Bill which would widen the electorate and offer some working-class men the vote.

Of course, it was not about giving the vote to women, or to those with no means even to purchase an allotment, but it was nevertheless a challenge to the existing order.

All of which just leaves me to reflect, that as you sit in the Didsbury Hotel, or look out of that small window across to the parish church, this was where a little bit of our history was made.

Location; Didsbury

Picture; Kingston Road, date unknown

*British Freehold Land Society, Manchester Guardian, November 12th, 1853

A history of Didsbury in just 20 objects number 2 ........... the polling book …. 1836

Now most people will know that there was a time when few people could vote in elections, but I am always taken aback by just how few that was.

Didsbury in 1853

Here in Didsbury, the total population who were over the age of 21 in 1841, was 1,789, but those entitled to cast their vote in Parliamentary elections amounted to just 52, and of course all the 52 were men.

Added to which 30% of those electors, didn’t even live in Didsbury.

Now this I know because of the Poll Books, which are a list of voters entitled to vote by virtue of a property qualification.

They are a wonderful resource, providing the name of each elector, where they lived, the nature of their qualification and the location of that property.

And for good measure, the entry also provides the name of who lived in each property, many of whom were tenants, which extends our knowledge of who was resident in Didsbury in the year the register was compiled.

% of electors living in Didsbury in 1836

And that is very important, because apart from the census returns, there are few documents which offer up the names of people who were not either wealthy or in trade.

The first census to record individual names, was the 1841 census and while there are parish records for births deaths and marriages, these can be fragmentary, and early directories, tend only to list the “people of plenty”.

So, with names of even the humblest, it is possible to visit the rate books and search for both owners and tenants, and that will yield how much they paid in rates, as well as the estimated rental value of the property.  These rate books were compiled every year and so it is possible to track the movements of an individual tenant or property owner around Didsbury.

And that is particularly useful given that the time between each census was ten years, and many street and trade directories are not inclusive.

There is of course the tithe record, which lists who owned the land, who rented it, its value and it's use.  It also came with a map, which makes it easy to plot where people lived, but these were one off exercises.

The Didsbury Hotel, once the Church Inn, circa 1860-70

So, our Poll Books are a fascinating insight in to Didsbury, more so because in an election year they also record how people voted.

This was after all, a time before the secret ballot and how you voted was seen by everyone who attended on the day of the election and was recorded for everyone to read..

Alas our Poll Book dates from 1836, a year when there were no Parliamentary elections, so I cannot find the voting preference of Samuel Bethell who interests me because he was for a time the owner of the Church Inn which sometime after 1855 was renamed the Didsbury Hotel.

He also owned the smaller beer shop known as the Prince Albert, which stood roughly on the corner of Millgate and Wilmslow Road.  The Church Inn had a rateable value of £74 which was matched by its near competitor the Old Cock, but was far ahead of the Prince Albert which paid just £14.

That shouldn’t be a surprise given that in the 1850s, the Prince Albert appears to have been run by John Arnold who was also a blacksmith and the beer shop may well have been a secondary venture.  So far, he has proved elusive and is not on either the 1841 or ’51 census, and while there is a John Arnold on the Poll Book for 1836, I do not think this is he.

Detail of the Didsbury Hotel, 1860-1870

But there are 73 names on the Poll Book which pretty much opens 72 more investigations which in turn may tell us a lot more about Didsbury back in 1836.

And along the way I might also uncover more about Mr. Bethell, who according to one Didsbury historian “acquired squatter’s rights over the space [in front of the Church Inn] by enclosing it with boundary stones sometime between 1821 and 1855 and treating it as his own”. **

In so doing he will have deprived the villagers of an open space, leaving me to reflect that such a dastardly act may also have led him to watering down the beer.

But that may just be one scurrilous accusation too far.

We shall see.

Location Didsbury

Pictures; Didsbury showing the Church Inn and Old Cock, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/ and the Didsbury Hotel, formerly the Church Inn, 1860-70 from the Lloyd Collection

*Poll Book, 1836, Didsbury, Southern Division of the County of Lancaster, page 62-63

** A History of Didsbury, Ivor R. Millon, 1969, page 25

A Didsbury weaver, a housemaid and lots more …………………

This was to be the story of Mary Dean of Didsbury and her time as a housemaid in the very big house of Sir Ralph Pendlebury, who lived at Heaton Bank in Heaton Mersey.

Mersey Bank House, Heaton Mersey, 1854

Sir Ralph described himself as the employer of 75 hands, and his house was recognized as a grand one, with a large “spacious entrance hall, with stone staircase, and dome light, a dinning room, breakfast room and study, five bedrooms, water closet and bathroom fitted up with a bath and hot and cold water”.


Added to which there was a wash house and laundry, sundry outhouses “with an excellent coach house and good stabling for five horses harness room and hayloft …… and a large conservatory heated by hot water”  and finally a large south facing garden, well stocked with fruit trees, [and] commands a delightful and picturesque view of a great part of the county of Chester”.*

All of which meant that Mary Dean who along with a cook was the only domestic servant, must have had her work cut out.

Sadly, we will never know what she thought of the job, as the only reference to her time there comes from the 1851 census, which had been taken in the April of that year.

Just when she started and indeed when she left is unclear, but I know she was back in Didsbury by 1860 for the birth of her daughter, Elizabeth Jane.

The sale of Mersey Bank House, 1843

Back then “service in a big house” remained one of the prime means for a young woman to earn a living, and it was usual for employers to recruit from outside the district, which ensured that the secrets of the family were less likely to become common gossip.

I doubt we will ever get to know how she got the job, but there was an informal arrangement by which clergy would write to neighouring parish churches, alerting them of vacancies in the big houses.

Barlow Moor, Didsbury, 1854, with the cottages stretching north

And for Mary, Heaton Mersey was close enough to her family in Didsbury to mean that the occasional visits home were easy enough.

I suspect she would have walked, although there were always itinerant traders and even carriers plying the route from Manchester through Didsbury and the Heatons to Stockport who might have offered her a lift and perhaps even for free.

I would like to know more of her time as a housemaid, but as sometimes happens, there is no more.

Not that this is the end of the story of Mary, who I know was born in 1826, and spent her early life in Barlow Moor.

And at this point the story takes a surprising turn, because at her baptism in the parish church, her father gave his occupation as a weaver, a job he had been pursuing since at least 1821 when he married Mary Thompson.

Barlow Moor, pre 1880

Even using the rate Books and census returns it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where in Barlow Moor he lived, but I rather think it will have been one of the cottages which stretched north along Wilmslow Road from the junction with Barlow Moor Road.

I do know that he was paying three shillings a week, and his may be one the cottages which appear in a series of photographs, taken before 1880.

His name was Henry, and he is one of only a handful of Didsbury weavers that appear in the official records.

And his was a declining industry.

Handloom weaving was conducted in a wide arc both north and south of Manchester and in the areas bordering on northern Cheshire, Derbyshire, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.

By the mid-18th century cotton had replaced wool as the main textile material and across the county areas specialized in such things as cambrics, muslins and ginghams. Just over 5 miles to the east near Gatley they had been growing flax and weaving linen from at least the mid-17th century.

Possible cottages lived in by the Dean family, pre 1880

But exactly what and how it was produced in the township is unclear. It may be that Henry and his family delivered each of the processes from carding and spinning to weaving but it is more likely with the mechanization of spinning and its concentration in the factories of Manchester that he may have been involved just in weaving.

At one stage our weavers may also have been involved in dyeing, because there are large numbers of crocuses that grow locally. In the past they were used for dyeing clothes alongside their culinary and medical uses.

In Stretford in 1826 there were 302 looms providing employment for 780 workers supporting 151 families,**  and as late as the 1840s there were still seven, while in Withington there were nineteen cotton weavers, mostly concentrated in Lady Barn and Fallowfield where they specialized in “weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams.”  ***

Nationally weavers had been the largest single group of industrial workers, and at any one time during 1820s, 30s and 40s, and they came third in the list of occupations after agricultural labourers and domestic servants.

Possible cottages lived in by the Dean family, pre 1880

The estimate of the Select Committee of 1834-5 reckoned that 800,000 to 840,000 were wholly dependent on one of the branches of weaving.****

But the onward march of mechanization and factory production in al three processes of making textile, meant that Henry and his fellow weavers were on borrowed time.

And so while we find him listing his occupation as a weaver during the 1820s through to 1841, in the following decade he described himself as a “Porter” and by 1861 as a “labourer”, while the numbers of weavers across Burnage and Didsbury fell between 1841 to 1851.

All of which points to the very personal tragedy of the collapse of weaving locally, and leaving me with just the observation that his granddaughter worked briefly in a Manchester cotton factory before returning to Didsbury and becoming a tailoress, which I suppose is the closest we get to her grandfather’s trade.

Location; Didsbury, Heaton Mersey

Pictures; Heaton Mersey and Barlow Moor, 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*Sale by Auction, The Manchester Guardian, December 16th, 1843

** Leach, Sir Bosdin, Old Stretford, Privately Printed, 1910, page 23

***Williamson, C, Sketches of Fallowfield, John Heywood, Manchester, 1888 page 34

**** Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class, Pelican Books edition 1968 page344

Didsbury Walks ..... part 1 Parrs Wood

A short series exploring a collection of walks  across Didsbury from east to west, starting at  Parrs Wood.

Parrs Wood House and estate, 1853

Now even the most avid supporter of Parrs Wood might well concede that the junction of Wilmslow Road and Kingsway is a bewildering mix of cluttered signs, busy traffic and a rather ugly box which is the entertainment centre.

But it was not always so. Until almost the beginning of the last century the area was still open land, dominated by an elegant 18^th century house set in a large estate.

This was Parrs Wood House and according to one source the estate changed little from the 1790s through to 1960.

Go back to say the 1820s, and this spot might have seemed very attractive to a casual visitor to Didsbury who took a fancy to stroll along Wilmslow Road from the direction of the parish church with the intention of crossing the river at the Cheadle Bridge.

As now, the road would have taken a sharp turn to the south as it passed Parrs Wood House, but even given the height of the estate wall, she would have had a view of the building and had she then ventured into the grounds, there was more than a few interesting features.

Parrs Wood House, 1970

These included the stables, the kitchen garden, the fruit wall, glass houses and the homes of some of the staff.  And for those fascinated with 18^th century gardens, there was a ha-ha, which consisted of a ditch and wall which acted as a barrier preventing livestock from entering the garden from the estate but gave anyone looking out from the garden the illusion of an unbroken, continuous rolling lawn.

Sadly, it disappeared in 1970, when the ditch was filled with the spoil from nearby building work which resulted in the loss of a colony of lizards who had made their home in the south facing wall.

Location; Parrs Wood

Picture; Parrs Wood, 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/   Parrs Wood House, 1970, m21314, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The Prince Albert …….. one of the lost Didsbury pubs

The discovery of the Prince Albert was and remains a big surprise.  

Prince Albert, 2020

It stood on the northern side of Wilmslow Road, facing that modern block of flats located between Millgate and Kingston Road, and seems to have had a short life.

Like many beer shops it may have been a response to a period of unemployment or hardship or was run as a sideline to another business.

In the late 1840s and into the next decade, the Prince Albert was managed by a John Arnold who was a blacksmith and worked the smithy alongside the beer shop.

In the great pecking order of alcoholic establishments, the Prince Albert was pretty low down.  Its ratable value in the 1850s, was just £14 compared to the Didsbury Hotel and Old Cock which were both rated at £73.

It will have in all probability been just a room, and the beer may have been dispensed from the kitchen through a hatch.

For those who remember the Collier’s Arms by Hartshead Pike on the Ashton and Oldham border, just such a practice was how the landlady offered up her beer.*

Didsbury, 1853

Given its size and location I suspect it will have been frequented by agricultural labourers and passing itinerant traders, for who the Didsbury and Old Cock were too grand.

And, for perhaps a decade it was for those in the know, the first drinking place along the main road from Parrs Wood into the village.

Location; Wilmslow Road

Picture; Prince Albert…. That other Albert, in Albert Square, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  Didsbury , 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Colliers Arms, https://ashton-under-lyne.blogspot.com/2008/01/colliers-arms.html

Travels through the village ………… part 4

The idea is very simple, select almost the same spot along Wilmslow Road through the village, and throw in a series of images down the centuries.

So here from 1854 is a map of the stretch of Wilmslow Road.

For those who want me to be more precise, Barlow Moor Road is at the top to the left.

Location; Didsbury Village

Pictures; the Village, the 1854, from the OS map of Lancashire, 1854, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The location of the village green was down by the Didsbury Hotel and Old Cock.