Rediscovering our rural past, Thomas Ellwood and Mrs W C Williamson

We owe a great debt to the historians of the late 19th century who captured the memories of the people who lived in south Manchester when most of it was still countryside.

Thomas Ellwood and Mrs Williamson were working at a time when the rural communities of Chorlton, Burnage, Fallowfield and Rusholme were on the cusp of disappearing.

Within a generation they had all but gone and with it was went a rich storehouse of stories and popular culture.

Today what was left is fast fading from living memory, so with in another decade I doubt that there will be any left who remember the blacksmith on Beech Road or being sent to one of the local farms to collect fresh milk and butter.

This makes it exciting when there comes along an opportunity to give a wider audience the chance to read about that rural past.

Thomas Ellwood lived here in Chorlton and during the winter of 1885 into the spring of ’86 he collected and wrote accounts of Chorlton dating back into the 17th century.

These were published in the South Manchester Gazette and are available in Central Library, but they are on microfilm which makes them a tad more difficult to read.  Some of the articles reappeared in various church magazines but I have yet to find a complete set outside the Gazette.

In the case of Mrs Williamson her work appeared in a slender edition in 1888 and I have only been able to put my hands on one copy again from Central Library.

However Bruce Anderson whose local history site I have mentioned from time to time has digitized his own copy along with a number of other histories of Burnage, Fallowfield and Rusholme and they appear on Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive at  http://rusholmearchive.org/

‘Sketches of Fallowfield and the surrounding Manors, Past & Present’ By Mrs Williamson, “gives a very interesting account of how Fallowfield developed from fields between Rusholme & Withington in the 14th century, gradually becoming a desirable neighbourhood with church, chapel & schools in the third quarter of the 19th century. 

There are three maps, 1818, 1843 and 1885 that illustrate the changes during these years.”

She lived in Fallowfield with her husband, Professor William Crawford Williamson FRS. He was an eminent Victorian scientist who was appointed as the first Professor of Natural History (Geology, Zoology and Botany) at Manchester in 1851. 

Williamson was one of the great Victorian naturalists who knew and actively corresponded with Charles Darwin, Louis Agassiz, T.H. Huxley and other great scientists of the day. 

He also knew John Dalton and famously tended the great man during his final days, feeding him broth and other liquid sustenance. Williamson trained as a doctor and practised as an eye surgeon as well as pursuing his studies in the natural sciences.”

It is a wonderful book because it draws on the memories of those who experienced that rural life, and was a great help to me when writing my own account of Chorlton in the first half of the 19th century.*

And so for anyone wanting a vivid firsthand account of the handloom weavers of Burnage or the rush cart ceremony of Rusholme, Mrs Williamson and Bruce’s site have got to be worth a visit.

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

Pictures; Chorlton from the collection of Tony Walker, cover of Mrs Williamson's book from the collection of Bruce Anderson

Stories of steam .... the Fallowfied Railway Line ...... one to do today

Location; The Union Chapel, 2b Wellington Road, Fallowfield, M14 6EQ

Picture; LNER B17 Class No.1664 "Liverpool" storming through Wilbraham Road station with an east-bound express in 1946 or 47. Photograph by William Lees. This is at today's Athol Road entrance to the Fallowfield Loop.

Fallowfield’s (stopped) Clocks another story from Tony Goulding

My tour of the public clocks of South Manchester has arrived in Fallowfield, where the Church of the Holy innocents has not one but three. 

Unfortunately, they are not, at present, functioning and haven’t been for at least 7 years. Oddly though, while one face shows the time 1-29 the other two indicate 8-31.  Meaning that in this case “even a stopped clock is right 4 times a day”!

Although the church was opened to the public on Wednesday the 5th March, 1872, the tower of some 150 feet had not at that time been built and was added later. It was another 20 years before enough funds were raised to fit the clocks to the completed tower. The contract for providing these timepieces was placed in the spring of 1892 with Messrs. Joyce and Son of Whitchurch. The clock would strike the hours and consist of “three skeleton dials filled with white opal glass for illumination”

The Land on which the Church and later a school and rectory were built was provided by Lord Egerton who around the same time gifted the land on which the “New” St. Clement’s Church was built in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. 

Thus, was provided a substantial church for the growing communities at both ends of the new road, Wilbraham Road, which he had recently laid down between Edge Lane on the borders of Stretford and the main route out of the Manchester to Didsbury.

Holy Innocents Church Fallowfield

The design of the church was by Price and Linklater a short-lived partnership of Architects based at Imperial Chambers, 1, Market Place, Manchester. Both were Dubliners who specialised in designing church buildings. 

The partnership was dissolved in 1875 when the younger of the two men, Mortimer Henry Linklater left to train for the ministry in the Church of England at the Chichester Theological College, Chichester, Sussex. Construction of the day and Sunday school began in May, 1882 and the new building was formally opened on the 30th December, 1882. Both these buildings are now Grade 11 listed.

Holy Innocents: Sunday and Day School Building

The Architect of the schools building was Francis Haslem Oldham of John Dalton Street, Manchester who was also the architect responsible for The English Martyrs, Roman Catholic Church on Alexandra Road South, Whalley Range, Manchester.

The first rector of the new Church was Rev. John James Twist who was translated from the curacy of the neighbouring parish of St. James in Birch, Rusholme, Manchester. 

He was the first-born son of John Brown Twist, an attorney, and his wife Georgina Maria (née Bult) born in January, 1838 in Coventry, Warwickshire and baptised  in the Church of St. John the Baptist in that city on the 13th January.   

English Martyrs Church Alexandra Road South

John James was only 6-years-old, when his mother, aged just 32, died, on the 27th October, 1844. (1)  On the 5th April, 1861 he graduated a B.A. later enhanced to an M.A. degree from Magdalene College, Cambridge and was appointed to the curacy of St. James’s on Sunday 2nd February, 1862 on being ordained as a deacon. He was further ordained as a priest by the Bishop of Manchester, The Right Reverend James Prince Lee (2) at St. Thomas’s Church, Ardwick, Manchester on the 1st March, 1863

Rev. Twist married Katherine Dewes, the eldest daughter of Thomas Dewes, a solicitor, on the 21st April, 1863 at St. Michael’s Church, Coventry, Warwickshire. The couple were blessed with four children two sons and two daughters before, just prior to his appointment to Fallowfield, Katherine died on the 8th February 1871, at the tragically young age of just thirty-one, giving birth to a third son, John who also did not survive.         

Having served as the rector of the Holy Innocents for two decades, the strain of working in such a large urban parish resulted in a breakdown of his physical and mental health leading to his resignation in September, 1892. 

After spending some time recuperating in Italy, he accepted the appointment as the Vicar of the small rural parish of Castle Hedingham, Nr. Halstead, Essex. He was assisted in his new post by his youngest son George Cecil who became his curate. (3) His household included his two daughters, Frances Mary and Margaret Agnes, together with his sister-in-law, Sophia Dewes and three servants.  His two daughters also took an active rôle in church affairs. 

Sadly, Rev. Twist’s health did not show significant improvement and his depression deepened. He consulted his doctor and travelled to the spa at Matlock, Derbyshire where he remained for five months “taking the waters”, however on his return on a visit to Jex’s farm at Hopton near Lowestoft, Suffolk he hung himself in the farm’s barn on Monday, the 4th July, 1898. At the inquest the following day the jury returned a verdict of “Suicide while temporarily insane”.

Following the death of their father both daughters remained in the Castle Hedingham parish, assisting their brother, Rev. George Cecil, who had succeeded to the living. Frances Mary died on the 15th June, 1909; her 43rd birthday. Margaret Agnes continued assisting in Castle Hedingham parish, although following her brother’s marriage to Edith Mary Bromley on the 7th November, 1911 she now longer lived at the vicarage. She did however, briefly relocate to Chelmsford, Essex when her brother gained an appointment there. After only 2 years in Chelmsford, she returned to Castle Hedingham to take care of her elderly aunts, Sophia and Emily Maud. (4) Finally, she moved on to Dorking where her older brother, James Frederick served as a curate for 35 years. She died there on the 11th September, 1958. She left an estate of £23,979-2s.-7d. (today’s equivalent =£435,271) One of her executors was Kathleen Margaret Twist, an artist, who was Margaret Agnes’s adopted daughter. A year after receiving her legacy she emigrated to California where she died, aged 90, in Sierra Madre on Friday the 19th November, 2004.

Pictures: - Clock Tower and Old School Buildings (now a bar) from the collection of Tony Goulding. Holy Innocents Church courtesy of Andrea Martinez and The English Martyrs Roman Catholic Church, Alexandra Road South, Whalley Range, Manchester m69336 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information, and Archives, Manchester City Council. http://manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Notes: - 

1) Georgina Maria died probably from complications arising from the birth of John James’s youngest brother, George Francis. Two of George Francis’s grandsons are noteworthy. Francis Cecil Orr Twist died on the 30th July, 1916 while serving as a 2nd Lieutenant with the 18th battalion Manchester regiment at Guillemont, during the battle of the Somme. He was the school captain at Rugby School and had just won a classical scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford. He has no known grave and is remembered on the Thiepval Memorial. Derek Norman Twist was a screenwriter, editor and director of British films from the 1930s through to the 1950s.  As an editor he worked on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 version of “The 39 Steps” starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. He also served in the R.A.F. Film Production Unit with the rank of Wing Commander. He used this experience to good effect in co-writing and producing the popular war film of 1952 “Angels One Five” starring Jack Hawkins, Dulcie Gray, Michael Denison and John Gregson.

2) The Right Reverend James Prince Lee was the first Bishop of Manchester. He was appointed on the 23rd October, 1847; the diocese having been founded by an Act of Parliament on the 1st September, 1847.

3) Another of Rev. John James’s sons, James Frederick, was also an Anglican priest who at the time of his father’s death was the senior curate at Chislehurst, Kent. 

4) Both aunts lived very long lives. Sophia died on the 23rd November 1939 aged 98, while her sister, Emily Maude had only reached her 87th year when she died on the 10th April, 1940. Longevity ran in the family, as their mother had also lived to be 91 when she died in Castle Hedingham on the 4th February, 1907.

Acknowledgements:  Find My Past's Newspaper Archive and Architects of Greater Manchester  https://www.manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk

Fallowfield Station .... a new story from Tony Goulding

While drinking a coffee in Fallowfield recently, I could not help but notice this façade of the old railway station directly across the road from where I was sitting. 

I got to wondering what dramas might have unfolded there.

As the date carved into the brickwork indicates the station was opened in October, 1891. 

It was in its first two decades of existence that the station was at its busiest. 

Its importance began a slow decline after the arrival of the first tram-line to Wilbraham Road in the early years of the Edwardian era. 

The busy station soon became a tempting target for criminals, before it had been opened a decade, it had been burgled twice on the nights of Tuesday 2nd July, 1895 and that of Sunday/ Monday 24th/25th October, 1897. 

On both occasions, although some damage was caused as the burglars ransacked the offices, only a few small items were taken from forced open boxes and packages in the parcel office. (1)

The Fallowfield Stadium was only a short walk away and consequently passenger numbers were often swelled by major sporting events being held there. 

The largest of these was the 1893 F.A. Cup Final when Wolverhampton Wanderers beat Everton 1-0. The attendance that day was recorded as 45,000, more than double the grounds capacity, many of whom would have arrived by train from Liverpool and the Midlands.

F.A. Cup Final at Fallowfield - 25th March, 1893

As a large proportion of the spectators could not view the pitch this venue was never again used for an F.A. Cup Final. 

The lesson was not completely learned, however, as in 1899 it was decided that it would stage the second replay of the cup semi-final between Liverpool and Sheffield United. 

This proved to be disastrous, according to the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of the 28th May, 1899, with the game descending into a farce. A crowd of over 35,000 repeatedly encroached onto the playing area and after a number of prolonged stoppages the match was abandoned at half-time. (2)  

Several important Rugby Football matches of both codes (League and Union) were somewhat more successfully staged at the Fallowfield Stadium. The last England v Scotland rugby international to be held outside London or Edinburgh took place there on the 13th March, 1897. 

Two Rugby League Cup Finals were played on the ground in front of more manageable attendances of just over the ground’s capacity. In 1899 Oldham beat Hunslet 18 points to 9 and in 1900 Swinton defeated Salford 16-8. 

The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser the Tuesday after this later match carried an article chronicling the impact on the traffic through Fallowfield Station. It was reported that almost 3,000 additional passengers passed through the station and that during the scrambling to board trains after the match a number of carriage windows were broken. The reporter also made a point of commending Mr. C. R. Mapleston, the station-master, and his staff for a job well done.

Charles Robert Mapleston was to feature in that same paper a little over 8 years later in more tragic circumstances. On the 3rd June, 1908 he committed suicide by cutting his own throat. He was found by his 19-years-old daughter, Lillian Gertrude, in the scullery of his home at 2, Ladybarn Road, Fallowfield, Manchester. An inquest on the 5th June returned a verdict of “suicide while insane”.

Mr. Mapleston was born in Lincoln, Lincolnshire in the September quarter of 1851. His birth parentage is a little unclear but he was reared by Charles Mapleston, a railway gateman, who married a widow, Mary Otter (née Brown), after Charles Robert’s birth, on Christmas Day, 1851 at the parish church of St. Peter at Gowts, Lincoln.

Charles Robert Mapleston married Matilda Ann Holmes, the daughter of the area’s registrar, Henry Holmes, at St. Martin’s Church, Lincoln on the 31st May, 1881. Shortly after their marriage the couple moved to a small village in the south of the county, Ripplingale, where their two children were born. Henry Holmes was born in the March quarter of 1884; his sister, Lillian Gertrude arrived on the 7th September, 1888.

By the time of the 1891 census Charles Robert and his family had moved north. He is shown living at 15, Samuel Street, Coppenhall Monks, Nantwich, Cheshire and working as a railway clerk. A decade later the census records him in Fallowfield where he had taken up the post as station-master in 1898.

The Fallowfield stadium was the home of the Manchester Athletics Club and also featured cycling events. The stations proximity to it meant that it was a convenient location to serve as both the start and finish points for races in both sports. When the expansion of the electric tram network there was a steady decline in passenger traffic on Manchester’s suburban railways; Fallowfield, however, remained an important station. With the opening of Manchester City’s new ground at Maine Road in 1923 Fallowfield Station had a new lease of life. Being the nearest railway station to the ground, passenger numbers using it were boosted by the huge crowds attending important fixtures there. This was particularly true when the home team were playing a Yorkshire side, especially one of the two Sheffield clubs. (3) The link to Sheffield and South Yorkshire generally was first rate; Fallowfield being built by the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire railway. In the 1920s and 30s,  the L.N.E.R. ran special trains from Sheffield’s Victoria Station to Fallowfield for these fixtures. The half day return fare was 3/6d.

A number of accidents occurred in the vicinity of the station pre-World-War-One. On the 15th August, 1909, John James Kearney, a 47-year-old insurance clerk, of 102, Junction Street, Miles Platting, was struck by a car and suffered a head injury severe enough for him to be admitted to the Manchester Royal Infirmary (M.R.I.). Thomas Whittam Collingwood, of 17, Church Street, Hooley Hill, Audenshaw, Lancashire was following in his father’s footsteps, working in the dangerous occupation of railway platelayer when he was struck by a train close to Fallowfield Station on the 13th July,1913 .  He was taken to the M.R.I. where although his condition the next day was said to be critical, he fortunately made a full recovery and lived to be in his 82nd year when he died on the 4th June, 1975. Just over a year later on the 16th July, 1914 James Salkeld, a violinist with the Palace orchestra and a father of seven children, of 36, Coupland Street, Hulme, Manchester was knocked of his bicycle by a tram and taken to the M.R.I. , where he was treated for a crushed foot.                                           

Finally, I have noticed the entrance to this station shows a similarity to those at Trafford Bar and Knott Mill as this photograph of the station in 1905 (and the other two) reveals.

Pictures: - Fallowfield station December 2021, courtesy of Andrea Martinez. Crowd at 1893 F. A. Cup Final by unknown photographer, in public domain. Fallowfield Station (1905) m 63465 and Knott Mill/Deansgate Station by T.A. Fletcher (18/8/1970) m 62884 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Archives, and Information, Manchester City Council; http://manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass Old Trafford when it was a British Rail station, 1988. By Peter Whatley, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7291941

Notes: -

1) The newspaper reporting of the first of these break-ins is interesting. The Bolton Evening News reported that one of items the thieves departed with after rifling through the parcels was a dress, addressed to a lady in Rusholme. It was stated that its value was in the region of £8 which made it an outstandingly valuable garment; £1,075 at today’s prices. The Manchester Evening News, on the other hand, chose to feature the fact that they had left with a set of keys and just one of the station-master's two hats! 

2) The first incursion by the spectators came after just a quarter of an hour with Liverpool, who scored in the 6th minute, leading 1-0. After a five-minute delay, play was resumed only for the players to be forced to return to the dressing rooms 10-minutes later. It became evident that the tie would likely have to be abandoned. A second resumption was made after a delay of 50-minutes including a false start when the Liverpool team returned to the field but not Sheffield United’s. Eventually the match reached half-time when, with the score still 1-0, it was finally abandoned.

The game was re-arranged to be played at Derby County’s Baseball Ground. Sheffield United won this match 1-0 and went on to win the Cup by beating Derby County, 4-1 at Crystal Palace, London.

3)  The largest attendances were normally reserved for cup-ties.

 In April, 1928, Maine Road was chosen to host the second replay of the F. A. Cup Semi-Final between Huddersfield Town and Sheffield United. Despite the match being played on a Monday afternoon the attendance was recorded as 69,360. Six years later, in the afternoon of Wednesday 21st February, 1934 only a slightly smaller crowd of 68,614 witnessed Manchester City defeat the other Sheffield club, Sheffield Wednesday, 2-0 in a replayed F.A. Cup 5th round tie on their way to winning the trophy that year.

Acknowledgements: The British Newspaper Archive, census and other records on Find My Past. Additional facts and confirmations from Wikipedia and the ”City Til I Die” website of Manchester City Supporters. Lastly, with thanks to the late Linda Rigby I made good use of “Looking Back at Rusholme and Fallowfield” 1984 by Peter Helm and Gay Sussex.

Of rush carts and "the sodden mass of intemperance," Fallowfield in 1830

I have been re-reading Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs C. Williamson which she published in 1888.

It began as a series of lectures about the Fallowfield that was almost beyond living memory.

It is a wonderful description of the immediate rural past and like all good local history books is not afraid to stray into the neighbouring townships.

Above; Old Hall Lane , 1926

It is one of a number of accounts which tried to capture what life had been like fifty years earlier.  In the same way our own Thomas Ellwood had set about at almost the same time to record the Chorlton of the early 19th century, while his near neighbour J.T. Slugg had done much the same for Manchester.**

What all had in common was that they drew on the recollections of people who had grown up in the first half of the century and in turn could pull on the collective memories of friends and families stretching back into the late 18th century.

So for Thomas Ellwood “the greater portion of the information I have obtained [was] from that interesting individual ‘the oldest inhabitant’ and many  pleasant evenings have been spent in gathering facts from this source.”  While for Annie Williamson it was her husband and his “own picturesque reminiscences [who] knew whom to ask for all else and how to ask them.” As well as “Mr Burrows, the oldest living man in the village, whose clear recitals of what has been were invaluable.”

Her account like so many of the period starts with the “great and good” and there are chapters on Barlow Hall and the Barlow’s, Hough End, Platt Hall and Birch Hall. But there is also much here about the life of the farmers, labourers, and weavers, and much that might dispel that over nostalgic view of rural life.
In an age before piped water, it was the lot of many to collect their water from a well, pump or pond, so the women of Lady Barn visited the nearby hay field which “had a pool at its lowest end, where the village folk came with buckets of water to clean their houses, this being as yet the only supply of any but rain and spring water.”

And there are the local traditions like the rush cart which carried rushes which would be spread on the floor of the church and was at the core of the Wakes festivities.  “Rush bearing originally took place when the rushes were ripe, and in this part of England was accompanied by such processions, dances and decoration.”

The rushes would be “built on a farmer’s flat cart, decorated with garlands, branches of oak, ribbons, flags, tinsel, everything that ingenuity and bad taste could devise, and often completed by a Robin Good and Maid Marian, who, more grotesque than all else seated on the top of the rushes.  This rush cart, which had been built on a piece of spare ground near Burton Road, Withington was drawn by twenty or thirty young men, also festooned and garlanded and harnessed in pairs.  These youths were the heroes of the day, and as they passed were quick enough to catch the eyes of the prettiest girls.”

And there was a carnival atmosphere as befitted one of the high points of the year, and so, “the cart was accompanied by men also carrying banners, sometimes of enormous size, by pipers and drummers and bell ringers.  The noise was deafening as the motley crowd slowly entered the village.  Pipers played the well-known Rush Dance, clogs, which then everyone wore, beat time; children’s penny whistles accompanied; and the shouts of all the people drowned or tried to do so the medley of sound.”

It is a vivid description whose strength comes from the fact that it was a firsthand account, but amidst all the detail I sense a slight hint of disapproval, as if there was too much shouting and “medley of sound” and too many “young heroes” catching the eyes of the prettiest girls”

All of which is given a way a little later when Mrs Williams records the arrival in turn  of “a Wesleyan Chapel and Sunday School, a Church Sunday and Day School, and a Working Men’s Club, combined to lighten the sodden mass of intemperance this place had become , and, the leaven once introduced must spread.”

Ah well in the midst of factual reporting creeps moral opinion.

Later; the weavers of Burnage, and the punishments awaiting apple stealers.

Pictures; Old Hall Lane Fallowfield, November 1924, City Engineers, m77453, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, and map of Fallowfield in 1818 from Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present

* Williamson Mrs C., Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present 1888
**Ellwood, History of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, 1885-86, South Manchester Gazette, Slugg, J.T., Reminiscences of Manchester, 1881

You can find out more about Rusholme and Fallowfield’s history at http://www.rfcf.org.uk/archives/directory/rusholme-and-fallowfield-civic-society

Suppose they built a railway and people forgot about it

Now it’s the station everyone gets wrong.

And I suppose I know why for today all that remains is a bit of the platform on the Fallowfield Loop Walk

But it was here that Muddy Waters, Cousin Joe Pleasant, Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed on May 7 1964.

This was the Blues and Gospel train at Chorltonville which of course was really Wilbraham Road station which had once been Alexandra Park.

The station had opened as Alexandra Park on Sepetmber1 1891 and its name  was changed to Wilbraham Road eight months later to avoid confusion with a London station with a similiar name.

“The station was situated on the MSLR’ Fallowfield Loop line, a 7 mile double track route that linked the Midland Railway’s Manchester South District Line from a point just to the south of Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the MSL main line between Manchester and Sheffield at Fairfield. The reason for the line was to give the MLSR access to Manchester Central Station.”*

During the Great War it was where aircraft parts were unloaded to be reassembled at Alexandra Park Aerodrome.**

And that marks the station off as both a place in our history and of course the station many get wrong.

Ask most people about Granada’s Blues show on that rainy May evening and they will tell you it was at Chorlton Railway Station which would have been difficult given that trains still ran from Central through Chorlton and on to Stockport and Derbyshire.

Not so Wilbraham Road which closed for passenger traffic in 1958 and there I suspect is why history has forgotten the place.

Memories of boarding trains there will be fast fading and I doubt that there will be anyone today who can remember the aerodrome which closed in 1924.

But as Andy Robertson’s pictures show there is still something left.

Like him we have walked the Fallowfield Loop and gazed down at the old station master’s house and stood beside the platform.

I just wish I had been at the concert.

Pictures; Wilbraham Road Station, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Disused Railway Stations, http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wilbraham_road/index.shtml

The Fallowfield handloom weavers

There is much of the history of south Manchester which has sunk without trace.

In the way these things work we have rather been eclipsed by the story of Manchester just a few miles to the north.

And yet there was much going on in these small rural communities.

A little of this can be gleamed from the accounts written at the end of the 19th century which tried to recreate what life had been like in the early 1800s.*

And of all the lost stories I think it is hand loom weaving that has completely become ignored.

Now don’t get me wrong there are excellent accounts of the trade and in particular its decline but all are centred on Manchester and the townships to the north and east with no reference to what went on here in Chorlton, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Burnage.

There is not one handloom weaver recorded in the 1841 census for Chorlton, but dig a little further back and we have a name and names for those across south Manchester.  Not that this should surprise us.  If it was going on north and east of Manchester it should be here, and it is.

All of which I have written** about along with the speculation that just as there were people from Urmston at Peterloo there must have been some from other parts of south Manchester.  It is just that they have yet to surface. All of which brings me to my Fallowfield and Burnage weavers.

I first came across them in Mrs Williamson’s book, Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present published in 1888.

“Returning to the village  we find opposite Back Lane the footpath leading through fields to Chorlton, which had been Lover’s Walk of so many centuries.  On this footpath which is the present Sherwood Street, two of the oldest existing Fallowfield houses were built by Mr Langford, of Withington, for Mr Burrows, father of the man to whom we are indebted for the greater part of these reminiscences.

These cottages were specially arranged for handloom weaving; not only the Burrows family, but all the inhabitants of Fallowfield, except a few coachman or gardeners, and some agricultural labourers, gained their livelihood by weaving checked handkerchiefs and ginghams, an occupation which gave to the village its pleasant click-click, an association with old weaving villages, never lost to those who have once known it.

The woman carried the produce of their looms on foot to Manchester on market day, disposed of it, and with the money bought at Smithy Door or in the Apple Market, food and clothes for the family use during the following week; these necessaries they carried home also on foot.”

In most cases weaving was the main economic activity but in some households it seems to have been a secondary one undertaken by the wife or adult children, and there is much evidence that many weavers combined working at the loom with other occupations of which farming was the most common but not the only one.

And this may explain why there were only 19 listed in the Fallowfield area in 1841.  This census had been undertaken in June when there would have been work again in the fields and some who might have described themselves as weavers in the slack months of the agricultural year were now minded to call themselves agricultural labourers.

And there were some families in both Lady Barn and near the Sherwood Inn where both husband and wife and even children worked a loom.

But it was an ageing workforce and of the 19 weavers twelve were 40 years or older.

And like everywhere in south Manchester the numbers were falling away and so by 1851 there were only three weavers left in Fallowfield of whom only one was still active and he was fifty.

All of which meant that by the time Mrs Williamson was writing it was a trade of the past.

Pictures; detail of Fallowfield from the OS for Lancashire 1841-54, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ Hymns Cottages © Barri Sparshot
* Williamson, Mrs W.C. Sketches of Fallowfield and Surrounding Manors, Past and Present, 1888.
** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Handloom%20weaving

“thrashed many a time by Bower’s servants” childhood memories in Fallowfield

It is easy to forget that south Manchester was not always just a sprawling set of suburbs on the edge of the city centre.

Once upon a time and really not that long ago it was a distinct group of townships, each with its own rural traditions set apart from its big neighbour but with close links none the less.

Our farmers and market gardeners went into the Manchester markets with their agricultural produce and we in turn received the Sunday trade out for a day in the countryside, along with the carriers and itinerant tradesmen.  Then there were the increasing number of wealthy Manchester families moving out to the fields and meadows away from the grime, smoke and noise of the city.

What always surprises me is that these rural communities lasted into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  There are still people here who remember our blacksmith on Beech Road and can tell stories of being sent for milk from the local farms.

So I have decided to spend a little time in Fallowfield in the 1840s getting an idea of how they did things.  Like our own Thomas Ellwood, Fallowfield had  Mrs Williamson who in the 1880s collected the memories of older inhabitants of what the place was like in the early part of that century.*

Here were stories of handloom weavers and of the apple plantation at Lady Barn where children collected crab apples, and one woman confessed to being “thrashed many a time by Bower’s servants” for stealing the fruit.

And if you had washed up in Fallowfied in early August you would have been right in the middle of the wakes.

This was once popular all over England and was linked to the local saint to whom the parish church was dedicated. In Chorlton’s case this was the third Sunday in July when we celebrated St Clements’s Day, but here in Fallowfied it was August 5th in memory of St James.

It was the custom whereby villagers brought fresh rushes to spread on the church floor after the old ones had been swept out gave the day its other name of rush bearing.

The rushes were brought on a rush cart which was a farmer’s flat cart decorated with garlands, branches of oaks, ribbons and flags, drawn by 20 or 30 young men harnessed in pairs and covered in garlands and ribbons.

They were accompanied by men carrying banners, as well as pipers, drummers and bell ringers.

According to Mrs Williamson who wrote about Fallowfield in the early 19th century,

“Ashfield was the limit of Fallowfield, and so the limit of the Rush-bearers’ march; the cart was drawn into the grounds at the further gate, and placed in front of the house; the heroes unharnessed themselves and were regaled with beer distributed by the young ladies and gentlemen.  

Then came the Dance; it was not exactly a Morris Dance, because there were no castanets, in later days not even bells, but all the grotesqueness of dress and antic suggestive of Moorish origin.

After an hour’s hard work, another and more plentiful regaling took place, this time on pies, cakes and every good thing the hospitality of a kind-hearted hostess could suggest; and after three good English cheers for their entertainers, the procession reformed and left the grounds in the order in which it had entered.

As gentlemen’s houses increased in number, the visits of the Rush Cart increased; as time passed, gifts changed from food to money, the money to be spent at the Sherwood of White Lion; but in the early part of the century the party came directly from Ashfield and Mabfield to the village, danced there until even the girls were tired, and then dismissed.”

So a little bit of Fallowfield a long time ago.

Picture; Grundy’s Farm, Ladybarn Lane, 1890, m22340, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass maps from Sketches of Fallowfield

* Williamson Mrs W.C., Sketches of Fallowfield and the surrounding Manors, 1888

Suppose they built a railway and people forgot about it

Now it’s the station everyone gets wrong.

And I suppose I know why for today all that remains is a bit of the platform on the Fallowfield Loop Walk

But it was here that Muddy Waters, Cousin Joe Pleasant, Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee performed on May 7 1964.

This was the Blues and Gospel train at Chorltonville which of course was really Wilbraham Road station which had once been Alexandra Park.

The station had opened as Alexandra Park on Sepetmber1 1891 and its name  was changed to Wilbraham Road eight months later to avoid confusion with a London station with a similiar name.

“The station was situated on the MSLR’ Fallowfield Loop line, a 7 mile double track route that linked the Midland Railway’s Manchester South District Line from a point just to the south of Chorlton-cum-Hardy to the MSL main line between Manchester and Sheffield at Fairfield. The reason for the line was to give the MLSR access to Manchester Central Station.”*

During the Great War it was where aircraft parts were unloaded to be reassembled at Alexandra Park Aerodrome.**

And that marks the station off as both a place in our history and of course the station many get wrong.

Ask most people about Granada’s Blues show on that rainy May evening and they will tell you it was at Chorlton Railway Station which would have been difficult given that trains still ran from Central through Chorlton and on to Stockport and Derbyshire.

Not so Wilbraham Road which closed for passenger traffic in 1958 and there I suspect is why history has forgotten the place.

Memories of boarding trains there will be fast fading and I doubt that there will be anyone today who can remember the aerodrome which closed in 1924.

But as Andy Robertson’s pictures show there is still something left.

Like him we have walked the Fallowfield Loop and gazed down at the old station master’s house and stood beside the platform.

I just wish I had been at the concert.

Still there is always that wonderful site about our disused railway stations* which has the full story of the place along with posts on the aerodrome** and the Fallowfield Loop.***

Pictures; Wilbraham Road Station, 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson


*Disused Railway Stations, http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/w/wilbraham_road/index.shtml

**Alexandra Park Aerodrome,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Alexandra%20Park%20Aerodrome

***The Fallowfield Loop,http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Fallowfield%20Loop

So farewell the Sherwood in Fallowfield some will mourn your passing and even when you were the Orange Grove

Now back in the 1970s Private Eye regularly ran short poems which I think were by E J Thrib and were a comment on the events of the day.

They began “So farewell  ............” and ran on with some impossible rhymes and often scurrilous descriptions of the passing of a politician or personality.

So with that in mind to accompany Andy Robertson’s pictures I invite poems on the passing of the Sherwood which dates back to at least the 1840s and possibly even earlier.

Andy knew it well but I rather think never visited it after its name change.

Andy writes, “Drove past today and the Sherwood/Orange Grove in Fallowfield is no more”

Helpfully he offered up an image from the Local Image Collection for those who don’t remember it or equally those who want to remember it in happier times.

I have decided to go with one of his from December 2015, and the current hole in the ground.

Location; Fallowfield

Pictures; the Sherwood in 2015 and now from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/ResultsList.php?session=pass&QueryName=BasicQuery&QueryPage=/index.php?session=pass&Restriction=&StartAt=1&Anywhere=SummaryData|AdmWebMetadata&QueryTerms=m50564&QueryOption=Anywhere

The doctor’s bill and the story of a family in Fallowfield in 1867

Now I am always fascinated by how a chance discovery leads to a story.

This is the envelope sent to Mr Matthew Dean in 1867.
Contained inside is a doctor’s bill for the sum of £6 10 shillings and falling back on that old chestnut, I can’t read the doctors handwriting.

But I am sure Ron who lent me the bill can put me straight on what the charge was for.

That said I may well just stay with the envelope, after all even given that almost a century and half separate me from Mr Dean I rather think he is due his privacy.

And that of course raises that big question of just how much should you reveal about a long dead person’s life, and at what point a bit of legitimate research becomes voyeurism?

This I know from my own family history when one Saturday morning a death certificate I had ordered up for one of the brother of my great grandmother fell through the letter box revealing a very dark secret which stopped me in my tracks.

Now happily I don’t think there is such a tragedy here, but £6 10 shillings does seem a lot of money, particularly for Mr Dean who variously described himself as a warehouse manager, and cotton salesman.  But given the bill was for 'professional services' we may be dealing with more than one visit.

He lived on Wilmlsow Road, was married to Julia and they had seven children all who were born In Fallowfield.

I can’t find a date for their marriage but their eldest was born in 1853 and so I am guessing it will be sometime around that date.

Of course the term manager is a loose one and Mr Dean may well have been at the top end of that occupation.  Certainly by 1881 the family were well enough off to have added a cook as well as a housemaid to their staff.

I may even be lucky and find their home which in 1881 was listed as Portland Villas somewhere along Wilmslow Road which may help determine their wealth.

Sadly it is more likely that it has gone which at present leaves us with just this envelope and bill and the odd fact that on different census returns he is listed with different birth years.

Not unusual I know but a fact.

Location Fallowfield

Picture; envelope, 1867 from the collection of Ron Stubley

So goodbye finally to the Orange Grove on Wilmslow Road

Now back in the middle of 2014 Andy Robertson revisited the Sherwood in Fallowfield which had been one of his old haunts back in the 1970s and returned after “someone alerted me that this may be pulled down. 

As far as I know the Sherwood was rebuilt 1976 and the original dated back into the 19th century.

My wife's Dad and his parents lived on Sherwood Street and may have supped a few pints in the original Sherwood.

My wife's mother's parents also had a corner shop nearby which is probably how my wife's parents met."

But the passage of time has not been kind to the Sherwood which at some more became the Orange Grove and later closed.

That said its demolition took a little bit longer but as Andy’s recent pictures show the onward march of the developers has now started on the course which will see the Orange Grove torn down in favour of 35 apartments with commercial units.*

The new development will have an L shaped footprint with four retail units and the upper floors would comprise 35 flats in a mix of ten x one bedroom, 21 x two bedroom and four x three bedroom.

Looking at the proposed buildings it is fair to say they will blend with much of the other new build and that is all I shall see.

Pictures; the Orange Grove May 2014 and December 2015 from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Former Orange Grove Public House 304 Wilmslow Road Fallowfield Manchester M14 6NL, 106846/FO/2014/S1,  Manchester City Council Planning Applications

When Wilbraham Road was still a private place with its own gates to keep people out

We are on Wilmslow Road looking towards Wilbraham Road and the Holy Innocents Church In Fallowfield.

Wilbraham Road was still a private road with a gate at this end and another near to St Werburghs Road.

Today it is one of the major routes from Edge Lane through Chorlton and east to Fallowfield.

The church is still there and open to worship although the Sunday School hall has long since been given over to other uses.

Picture; from the Lloyd Collection

The Rusholme and Victoria Archive

Today I am singing the praises of the Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive, http://rusholmearchive.org/

It is one of those sites that I suspect has something for everyone.

I first got to explore the Rusholme as a student later was a frequent visitor to Plaza on Upper Brook Street and later still to the old CP Bookshop on Hathersage Road, and since then spent some happy times with my old friend Joe and Bron who lived in Victoria Park and more recently as a parent of children at Xaverian College.

My interest was sparked again when I came across Mrs W.C Williamson who wrote Sketches of Fallowfield and the Surrounding Manors Past and Present in 1888. Like our own Thomas Ellwood Mrs Williams recorded the memories of people who lived in the area when it was still a rural community.

And for anyone interested in the area there is plenty on Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive, ranging from old photographs, letters, personal accounts and all the usual ephemera which recreate past lives.

Photograph, map of the area, 1818 from Williams, W.C Sketches of Fallowfield and the Surrounding Manors Past and Present 1888

So why do they change the name of pubs? The Sherwood in Fallowfield

Now I am old enough to whinge when places get new names especially pubs

And part of that is simply that the change becomes a challenge to me to remember what it was called before some whiz kid in an office somewhere decided that it was time to reinvent the place and call it something totally new and out of keeping with the surroundings.

It happened to me recently in Fallowfield when I passed the Sherwood Inn with its new name of the Orange Grove, and for a while I pondered on how this could be.

I regularly went passed it in the 1970s when it was the Sherwood Inn which makes perfect sense given that it stands on Sherwood Street.

Moreover there has been a pub with that name on that corner from at least 1854 and if I did the research no doubt I would find it stretched back even earlier.

Now this I know because I am looking at the OS map for that year and it is not only marked very boldly but what is now Sherwood Street was but a lane with the odd house along it running beside the Fallowfield Brook.

Now with the rant out of the way to the picture, which is another from Andy Robertson.

Yesterday he photographed one of those shops selling e cigarettes and mused that this was the business of the moment having  replaced a charity shop.

And today like a warning of things to come his picture of the Orange Grove was an accompanied by the comment that “someone alerted me that this may be pulled down. 

As far as I know the Sherwood was rebuilt 1976.

My wife's Dad and his parents lived on Sherwood Street and may have supped a few pints in the original Sherwood. My wife's mother's parents also had a corner shop nearby which is probably how my wife's parents met."

So I rather think we should all be thankful that Andy is out there capturing places before they vanish with perhaps also the thought that I hope he doesn’t take a picture of our house.

Picture; from the collection of Andy Robertson

More from the Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive, all you ever wanted to know but never knew who to ask

One of the things that I really enjoy is reading other sites on local history.

It’s that mix of things, ranging from new ideas on how to communicate stories of the past, the opportunity to follow links and fresh lines of enquiry and just the sheer pleasure in learning more about places.

So it’s time I think to mention Bruce Anderson’s site, Rusholme and Victoria Park Archive http://rusholmearchive.org/ again

It is one that I have referred to already* but is well worth coming back to.  I first came across it while following up some research on Mrs W.C Williamson who wrote Sketches of Fallowfield and the Surrounding Manors Past and Present in 1888. Like our own Thomas Ellwood Mrs Williams recorded the memories of people who lived in the area when it was still a rural community.

And so there are parallels with our own township’s agricultural past and its transformation into a suburb of Manchester.

It’s written with that same love of the locality and a keen sense of research which makes all such sites a good read.

Moreover I rather think you cannot fully understand how Chorlton changed if you do not read about the neighbouring areas, after all what happened to us was also happening to Fallowfield, Burnage, Withington and Didsbury.

First it was the wealthy seeking homes well away from the city centre, then the development of housing estates for the “middling people” and “the 6 shilling a week” families who took advantage of the new train and tram networks to travel into the heart of Manchester but live on the edge of the countryside. And so within the space of three decades what had been rural communities became dormitory  suburbs, and the landscape, people and customs which Mrs C.W. Williamson and Thomas Ellwood described had long gone.

*http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/the-rusholme-and-victoria-archive.html

Pictures; from the collection of Bruce Anderson

The Libraries of south Manchester part 3, Burnage, Fallowfield and Levenshulme

Now I have been featuring the stories of the libraries of south Manchester.  Local artist Peter Topping has produced a series of contemporary paintings of each one and I have added the histories.

Chorlton, and Didsbury got theirs in 1914 and 1915, Withington in 1927 but  Burnage had to wait till 1931  and only then as  “a travelling library station” in a converted bus.

This was discontinued because of the black out during the war and was replaced by a converted house in 1940.

It was situated in Bournlea Avenue and as if to demonstrate the appetite for reading in Burnage it issued 3,000 books a week.

And finally in 1947 a new library was opened in three converted Civil Defence huts.

Fallowfield fared a little better, its library was opened in 1932 “on a corner site at the junction of Platt Lane and Waverton Road which was pivotal point for the whole estate.”  Originally called Wilbraham Library it broke new ground for the library service having the first junior library which “will be a borrower’s library of about 2,000 volumes” and along with Chorlton was to experiment “with the use of wireless talks in its evening classes.”

Wilbraham was the 25th branch library to be opened in the city since the first two in 1857.

All of which underlined the demand that existed in south Manchester for a library service.

Speaking at the opening of Withington library just five years earlier the Lord Mayor had reflected on the importance the Corporation placed on providing such branch libraries when the central one was housed in his words in a “conglomeration of sheds on the Piccadilly site.”

And then there was Levenshulme which did not join the city until 1909 but opened its own library five years earlier in 1904.

The Levenshulme Urban District Council had successfully gained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to build the library which cost £2,500 and according to the Manchester Guardian had “two special features worthy of mention. There is a room set apart for juveniles, in which, besides papers and periodicals, such games as chess, draughts and dominoes may be enjoyed.  Adjoining the main reading-room and reached through a vestibule door is along verandah where people may sit and read in fine weather.”

All of which makes it rather important to mark a century of public library provision here in south Manchester with this exhibition.

Pictures; Burnage Libraries m77549, Wilbraham Library, m51386, and Levenshulme, m51623, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Fallowfield from field to housing estate in 40 years.

It is hard to grasp just how rural all of south Manchester once was.

Leaving the city and clearing Hulme or Cornbrook a traveller in 1840 would soon have been in fields and by and large it would have changed little from the early years of the 19th century.

And yet within 40 years the land was being parcelled up and handed over to developers who quickly began building houses, and cutting new roads which had been made possible by the provision of improved sanitation, piped water and gas, and given a further push with the establishment of new railway and later tram routes into the heart of the city making it possible to work in Manchester but live in Chorlton, Withington, Didsbury or Fallowfield.

First came the grand villas, then the large semi detached houses with pretentious sounding names, and finally the tall rows of terraced houses catering for the professional and clerical  people.  Lastly the six shillling a week*  two up two downs built for skilled workers and semi skilled.

Just what this meant can be seen in a series of maps that were published in Sketches of Fallowfield by Mrs.W.C. Williamson in 1888.  The looks back on Fallowfield’s rural past which for many was by the 1880s a different place.

Pictures; from Sketches of Fallowfield
* Manchester Evening News September 20th 1901