Down at Parrs Wood Court with some bombs, a few stories and an electric lift

Now as landmarks go Parrs Wood Court is a pretty bold statement of design and until recently dominated the junction of Wilmslow Road and Kingsway.

Back in 1939 when it was built it offered all that you could want, with central heating, electric lifts and apartments spread over five floors.

Here, as the Manchester Guardian's advert said was a block of “modern apartments with one or two entertaining rooms [and] one to four bedrooms if required, [which was] conveniently situated on the Wilmslow Road end of the Kingsway with  bus and tram routes and adjoining East Didsbury Station.”*

The flats went on the market in the May of 1940 and I can see the attraction.

Those buses, trams and trains could whisk the residents of Parrs Wood Court in to the heart of the city while the newly built Kingsway offered the car owner a more direct route than the old congested and busy Wilmlsow Road.

Added to which the block looked out on to the 50 acre Parrs Wood Estate which offered more than a hint of a rural landscape.

And I suspect a location which for some might have seemed a safer place to live as German bombs began to fall from the skies.

But perhaps not that safe, given that during the December of 1940 four fire bombs landed just a little to the north and a high explosive bomb fell almost directly opposite in the grounds of Parrs Wood House.

Still the Court survived and Peter’s painting captures the grandeur of its design which has been lost in many of the photographs of the building.

This one taken from a picture postcard sent in 1951 does little to convey the full presence of the block but its value is the detail it offers up of the surrounding area.

There in the distance is the old bus depot which has long since gone while outside the flats is one of with those iconic concrete bus shelters some of which were still around in the 1970s.

Now it is a full seventy-five years since those flats went on sale and it would be an interesting project to track down some of the first and then subsequent residents who made Parrs Wood Court their home.

Painting; Parrs Wood Court, East Didsbury, © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

Picture; Parrs Wood Court circa 1950, from the collection of Paul O’Sullivan, Manchester Guardian advert,courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Flats at Parrs Wood Court, Parrs Wood.  East Didsbury, Manchester, Manchester Guardian, May 11 1940

“If you go into the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise”........... looking for that air raid shelter in Parrs Wood

Now I know there will be someone who will remember the air raid shelter on the Gateway Estate which was built “12 feet below Kingsway.  Accommodating 120 people the shelter cost £800 to build and had a concert room, whist and bridge parlour, and lounge.”*

According to the Manchester Evening News “the shelter club was the idea of Mr William Ponsford who was a builder [and] in the dugout which is fitted with steel doors there is a piano and a radio-gramophone.  

One room has accommodation for dancing.  Gas-proof ventilation is installed [and] the shelter has two dug-out entrances and back exit and many of the tenants are already using the shelter as a social club.”

On one level it strikes you as a jokey little piece which even today has a charm overlaid with hints of Dad’s Army, but of course that is to take away the very real danger of bombing raids.

For me it is there in the description of those steel doors and the gas proof ventilation, this was after all a time when we could not be sure that gas would not be used as a weapon.

It was so potent a concern that it had led to the issue of millions of gas masks and warnings about going out without one.

And given that fire bombs and one high explosive device did fall on Parrs Wood Mr Ponsford was right to make the effort more so given the devastation that fell from the skies the following December.

All of which leaves me to ponder on what happened to that shelter.  Sally who found the piece tells me that the Gateway Estate was behind the pub, so I await the memories and stories of the Parrs Wood shelter to bubble to the surface.

Pictures; from the Manchester Evening News, January 1940, courtesy of Sally Dervan


*THEY CAN DANCE IN A RAID, Manchester Evening News, January 1940

Warburton Street ....... steps into the war

This I think will be the last of the stories on Warburton Street.

Preparing for war, 1939

When I started the project,  I had no idea of the age of the five cottages on the southern side of the street or who occupied them.

The houses were there by 1845, and may even be older, and in the middle decades of the 19th century they were home to labourers, farmworkers, and domestic servants.

By the beginning of the next century there were still some labourers, but fitting the times there was also was also a railwayman, reflecting the arrival of the railway in 1880, a factory worker who may have worked in Manchester or just down the road in Heaton Mersey, along with a shop assistant and a launderess.

All of which brings us to 1939 just days after Britain went to war with Germany.

In the September of that year the Government carried out a mini census, the information from which was used to generate Identity Cards for the entire nation.

It remains one of the few detailed pictures of the age, occupation, and marital status of the country, since the 1911 census, and fills a gap in what we know about the population in the early 20th century, and remained so until the publication of the 1921 census.

That said there are sections which have been redacted, but in the case of numbers 2 through to 10, all the residents are there.

And the first obvious observation is that these two up two down houses were now home to very small families, which was in direct contrast to the 1850s and 60s, when some of the properties were occupied by five and six people.

Warburton Street, 2020

Added to their residents no longer made a living from the land, or as domestic servants.

Instead there was an Inland Revenue Clerk, two in the newspaper trade, and a raincoat machinist.

Most striking of all was Mr. Christopher Worthington who was a “Cutter of Waterproof and Anti Gas Clothing”.

At best I guess this new line in manufacture will date from just after the Munich Crisis the year before, when France and Britain finally decided that Nazi Germany was potentially a threat to the peace of Europe.

Just what happened to all the residents during the war and where they moved to afterwards, is closed to us.

There are no more detailed published surveys of households after 1939, and at best there will be the electoral registers and street directories, but these will offer up only names.

So, this seems an appropriate point to close the story of the street, other than to say the last directory records that in 1969, at no. 2 was "Jimo Cycle Services (workshop), at 4/6, Morton E. J. antiquarian booksllr at 8, Thornhill A. turf commission agt, and at 10, Gay Antiques (storeroom)".

Leaving it to Morten’s the book shop, and the other businesses to contribute a bit more to the story.

We shall see.

Location; Didsbury

Additional reserch, Andy Robertson

Pictures; the reality of war, “Distribution of  Gas Masks Baby Inside Gas Mask”, August 22nd 1939, m09922, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass, and Warburton Street, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One of the last photographs from the Wesleyan College in Didsbury ......... 1940

The year of 1940

Now this is one of those little bits of history which could so easily have been lost forever.

We are looking at a photograph of the students who attended the old Wesleyan College in Didsbury between 1939-40.

For almost a century it had been preparing men for the Methodist ministry and 1940 was a landmark in its history.

Students

During the last world war the college had become a hospital and in 1946 it was sold to Manchester Education Committee which means that this picture has real historical significance.

Added to this we know the names of all those who stare back at us including those who were leaving that year and the teaching staff.

In time it should be possible to track most of the men and in so doing build a profile of that year’s student body and of course go a little way to discovering what happened to  each of them.

Some no doubt went on to serve in the war while others took up posts in the church

Now such photographs are not rare but ones with such a local connection do not always surface.

And for this one I have David Harrop to thank.  David is a keen collector of memorabilia associated with both world wars and the history of the postal service.

The College, 1920

Many of these items have appeared in his permanent exhibitions at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery, and we have discussed just what the chances are that some of these men will be buried in Southern.

It is a question as yet I have no answer to but I think it will well worth researching.

At present I have come across little material on the final period of the Methodist College which makes the photograph both unique and important.

And points to the importance of such material which by chance has survived three quarters of a century and was spotted by David on eBay.

So as they say watch this spot.

Picture; Students and staff Didsbury College, 1939-40 and the main building of the college 1920

Passing the Palatine .............. cinemas and trams I wish I had known

Now, look closely and the edge of the old Palatine cinema is just visible behind the tram.

There is no date on the picture, but we can narrow it to a date after 1920 when the picture house opened, and the late 1940s when the Corporation did away with our trams.

And for those inetrested in the cinema I have already written about it.*

Location; West Didsbury

Picture; Palatine Road from the collection of Allan Brown, date unknown

*The Palatine Picture House and Cafe, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=The+Palatine

Wartime stories from Didsbury ……… following up on yesterday

Now there is a fine line when researching other’s people’s lives between telling the story and being mindful of picking over the personal history of an individual and revealing stuff that is sensitive and private.

And so it has been today, when I followed up on a story from yesterday, which was about a block of flats on the corner of Palatine Road and Queens Court Road.

The buildings looked to have been built in the 1930s, and in a trawl of the Manchester Guardian found a series of articles, which named the flats.  The earliest was 1939, which fitted with what I wanted to believe, and so I gave short shrift to the other references, which included the case of a woman found innocent of stealing a £1 in 1945, and the trial of an “Aircraft Examiner, under two charges of the Official Secrets Act which was heard in camera”.  *

“He was also charged with aiding and abetting a German Refugee from Nazi oppression to commit an offence under the Aliens Order.”

I promised myself that I would return if only to see what happened to him, and having done just that I was confronted with that dilemma of describing what happened, and in the process naming names.

It was 1940, he was living at Queens Court and he accused of making drawings of sensitive items in his care, and keeping them in a locked briefcase, along with possessing a key to a room he had no official permission to access.

All of which in wartime was very serious, and despite pleading that he was merely wanting keep a record of his work, he was found guilty and sentenced to six year had labour.

And as so often happens his actions had been discovered by chance when the police searched  his home in relation to another matter, involving a young German woman, who had been granted the status of “refugee from Nazi oppression".

She was twenty, and was working as a domestic servant in one of the flats in Queens Court, and was employed by the  “aircraft examiner” and his wife.

He had fallen in love with her, left his wife and the couple moved into a house in Old Trafford, but on his advice she had failed to disclose to the Police the change of address.

Now I know both their names, but have chosen not to reveal them.  That said I haven’t been able to find out anything more.

Were they reunited after the war and his release?  Did they go their separate ways, and carve out new lives?  As far the historical records are silent.

So it’s just one of those stories of little people caught up in big events, who just happened to live at Queens Court.

Location; Didsbury

Pictures; Walking Palatine Road, 2020, from the collection of Barbarella Bonvento

*Manchester Guardian, March-September 1940

On the occasion of the golden wedding anniversary of Mr and Mrs Wareing of Buxton Avenue ......... a greetings telegram from 1942

Now I am back with the telegram.

For 189 years they were the quickest way of sending a message and the arrival of the Telegram Boy might herald all sorts of news.

Nana received one in 1942 informing her that my uncle was missing, another a little later with the news that he was a Prisoner of War, and the most dreaded of all telegrams which broke the news of his death on the other side of the world.

So for me the telegram is always associated with grim news, but of course there were plenty of happy ones and my friend Ann sent me two.

Both were sent in the August of 1942 congratulating Mr and Mrs Wareing of Buxton Avenue on their Golden Wedding anniversary.

Of the two this is my favourite from Barbara and Margaret Preen with the delightful image to accompany the message.

They were married in 1892 and had lived in Buxton Avenue since 1911.  Mr Wareing described himself as a road surveyor and at present that is all I know, but I guess Ann will have them and in the fullness of time more will be revealed.

For now it is a nice reminder that telegrams were for all occasions and all seasons.

Picture; greeting telegram, 1942, from the collection of Ann Love