When no trains ran from Chorlton railway station

Now I featured the story before of when flooding stopped the trains at Chorlton Railway Station.

But Andy Robertson just passed over this picture from his collection in 1954 and so here is a little of that story with this picture.

After “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

*When flooding stopped the trains, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/when-flooding-stopped-trains.html

**Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

Picture; Chorlton Railways Station 1954 from the collection of Andy Robertson

When flooding stopped the trains

It might seem a last exhausted stab at stories about Chorlton and flooding but this one is interesting and set me off on one of those little historical adventures.

The picture is undated and could be anytime in the 20th century.

There are newspaper reports of flooding on the line in 1926 and 1954 and I rather think it might be the latter, given the style of the clothes of people on the platform, but I might be wrong.

But after “a day of heavy rains in the North West, the red (flooding imminent) signal was given” in the early hours of January 21st 1954* and from Salford along to Didsbury “the river was rolling into the densely populated area of Meadow Road” in Salford and shortly after 2 a.m. the Mersey was said to be pouring over its banks into large parts of the Didsbury and Northenden areas.”

And here we had “one of the most serious cases of flooding in the Manchester area,” as "Chorlton Brook overflowed in the late afternoon over the railway lines.  

The flood waters were thirty inches deep below the platforms and made the station impassable ....... an official at the station said  late last night that the water had started to rise shortly after the rush hour, until it became so deep that there was a danger of it reaching the fire boxes on the trains.”

So there you have, not I suspect the last flood story but enough for now.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection, extract from the Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

*Manchester Guardian January 21st 1954

The benign and fairly gentle River Mersey

The Mersey up by the meadows and down past Jackson’s Boat can seem a benign and fairly gentle stretch of water.

And this picture taken some time in the early 20th century captures just such a moment.

It was taken on the edge of the township by Red Bank Farm which was lonely outposts hard by the river, well away from the rest of community.

Another peaceful scene, May 2009

It is a peaceful scene on a warm sunny day and you can see why our commercial photographer went to the trouble to take the scene.

As it turns out he took more than one and there are a whole series shot on the same day along this part of the water.

He must have had it easier then to get the water’s edge.

Most of the river at this point is today viewed from towering banks built and added to over the centuries as the main defence against a powerful threat to the lives and livelihoods of all those who lived beside it.

And a less peaceful scene, February, 1991

Generations of farmers have laboured to construct this natural wall to repel the flood waters of the Mersey and three are plenty of moments when our benign and fairly gentle stretch of water burst even these defences, in what were sometimes flash floods and often such an immense tide of water that it created a huge lake several miles wide across the meadows.

Here below in the February of 1991 the Mersey was just lapping the top of the uppermost bank.


Location; along the Mersey

Pictures; from the Lloyd collection, circa 1900, and the collections of David Bishop, 1991 and Andrew Simpson, 2009

Of floods and weirs and floating hay ricks

"It was," wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”

It was for this reason that the weir was built.  Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

After a heavy flood in August 1799 broke the banks where Chorlton Brook joined the Mersey, there were fears that the Bridgewater Aqueduct across the flood plain could be damaged by flooding it was decided to build an overflow channel improving the course of Kicketty Brook and build the stone weir.

Not that it always worked.  Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heighted river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning.

Later floods proved to be even more destructive, destroying a bridge across Chorlton Brook and making for six major floods between  December 1880 and October  1881. The last time the weir took an overflow of flood water was 1915.

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it is possible to sense the importance of the weir.

Stretching out from the wall is a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants.

But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir.

Pictures; Higginbotham’s field in flood, J Montgomery 1963, painted from a photograph dated 1946, m800092, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, picture of weir in 1915 from the collection of Tony Walker

Today I walked the old road ........ part two

The road twists and turns following the old field divisions and natural obstacles before running up beside the river bank.

Junction of the Gore [Chorlton] Brook, 1963

This was our first warning of the power of the Mersey. For here there is no gentle river bank sloping down to the water’s edge.

 Instead the road hugs a towering bank built and added to over the centuries as the main defence against a powerful threat to the lives and livelihoods of all those who lived beside it. Generations of farmers have laboured to construct this natural wall to repel the flood waters of the Mersey.

The village and the isolated farms were all built beyond the flood plain. Even so this was not always sufficient protection. The Mersey has on countless occasions risen and breached these towering banks sometimes even sweeping away the defences themselves.

It was for this reason that the weir was built. Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

Not that it always worked. Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heightened river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain.

 In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive. It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”


Painting; Junction of Gore Brook and River Mersey, 1963, M80140, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Montogomery is incorrect, at the point where it joins the Mersey it has become Chorlton Brook

Of floods and tourist attractions on the edge of Chorlton

Today I am on the Mersey at the edge of the township.  It is 1910 and judging by the trees we are somewhere in the summer or early autumn.

To the left is the barn of Red Bank Farm and in the distance the tower of Christ Church. It is a photograph I have used before because it perfectly captures the peaceful and benign side of the river l and yet those raised banks are the give way to what the Mersey can become.

Almost without warning it can be transformed into a heavy fast flowing roll of water that can almost over top the high banks along most of its course through Chorlton.  It has always been so and in the past it has broken over those high banks and left a wide lake.

Just what that could all mean for our farmers is there to read in the visit made to Chorlton in the June of 1847 by Alexander Somerville.

He was looking for evidence of potato blight which had destroyed the crops in Ireland and  was in Derbyshire.

And having taken in the township crossed the Mersey at Jackson’s Boat and headed on to Northenden which led him in turn to the Boat House and here

“in the absence of the potato marks, I examined the records upon a wooden post in the Kitchen of the Boat House of the highest Mersey floods since 1709.  In that year the water was a about a yard deep in the kitchen.  It was four feet six inches deep on the 21st of December 1837; it was three feet and some inches on the 31st of August, 1833.  1845 and 1828 were both years of record in the Boat House kitchen.”  

It remains a remarkable account not least because the voices of those he spoke to have been recorded in his newspaper account.

Now I have always made much of the attractions of Chorlton to the Sunday trade out from Manchester for a day in the countryside, and here Somerville did the same for Northenden and Didsbury,

“there were many sweet attractions in the meadows and the shady paths, and on the flowering sward, and by the Mersey’s waterfall, for those to hear that Manchester has many people who seek for and enjoy such delightful places of recreation.  

And I must confess that like many strangers visiting Manchester on business, or passing through it, I have been ignorant that, while it is the centre place of matchless enterprise and industry, it is surrounded with scenery of great beauty- not surpassed even by the beautiful fields, meadows, gardens, and the public pathways through them, lying around London.”

So just perhaps when he passed the banks of the river captured by our photograph he might have reflected on the two sides of our river.

Location; the Mersey

Picture; the Mersey,circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

Walking by the Mersey in 1958 ………

Now, on this I will need help.

I am looking at two pictures of the Mersey sent to me by Dave Kennedy, yesterday evening, who added, “Hi Andrew, with the current situation on the Mersey.  I came across a couple of photos in my dad’s archive, in the background is the old sluice building at Jackson’s Boat. The cut is a lot narrower,  dates from around 1958”.

I have known Dave for years and I remain impressed with his photographs  and those of his Dad’s, many of which are of Chorlton and Stretford.*

The two pictures are a wonderful collection of period detail, from the clothes worn by Dave and his sister, to the scenes of the river and the surrounding land.

Like Dave I wore a balaclava and was made to keep my shoes equally shinny. But of course, it is the river that draws you in, along with the high earth banks, which do seem to have risen in height since 1958.

The banks stretch back into the centuries and were added to by successive generations of farmers because the river has always been unpredictable and prone to flash floods, many of which arrived with little warning.

Our own local historian, Thomas Ellwood writing in the 1880s and drawing on the memories of locals stretching back through the 19th century and beyond described the devastation caused by the rising waters, including the destruction of the first stone weir in the 1840.

These and subsequent stories and pictures have appeared on the blog over the years,  and Dave’s two photographs are a welcome addition.**

I think the first is looking north with the stone aqueduct and Chorltonville in the distance. Today the scene has been altered with the planting of large numbers of trees and bushes, but the aqueduct is still there, although back in 1958 the pumping station has yet to be built.

So, while the 1958 OS shows that aqueduct, the modern building is missing.

And that brings me to the second picture which Dave places “at the old sluice building at Jackson’s Boat”.

Try as I can, I can’t visualize the scene today.  I think we are looking north again, and the chimney stack belongs to the laundry on Crossland Road, with Chorlton falling away into the background, but I am wondering whether we are further west where the river takes a bend.

Back in 1958 the maps shows a sluice gate and a building on the Chorlton side, directly in front of the filter beds.

For those less interested in the semantics of the flood prevention architecture, there are those fascinating scenes of what the meadows on either side of the river liked like 63 years ago …. along with what the well dressed kids wore.

Location; the Mersey, 1958

Picture; the Mersey, 1958, from the collection of Dave Kennedy

*The Photographs of Jack Kennendy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Photographs%20of%20Jack%20Kennedy

**The River Mersey, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=river+mersey

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

Now I have a problem with this picture.

It was painted by the local artist J.Montgomery.

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

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

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

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

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

Our skating ring was situated on Oswald Road.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The power of the Mersey

I posted this very tranquil scene of the Mersey at Red Bank Farm a few days ago and you would be forgiven for thinking that the river was a quiet and benign bit of water.
http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/unfamiliar-picture-red-bank-circa-1910.html

But anyone who has walked the banks of the river after a few days of heavy rain will no differently.

Our village and the isolated farms near the Mersey were all built beyond the flood plain. Even so this was not always sufficient protection. The Mersey has on countless occasions risen and breached these towering banks sometimes even sweeping away the defences themselves.

It was for this reason that the weir was built. Just beyond the point where the Brook joins the Mersey and at a bend in the river the weir was built to divert flood water from the Mersey down channels harmlessly out to Stretford and the Kicketty Brook.

Not that it always worked. Soon after it had been built flood water swept it away and during the nineteenth century neither the weir nor the heighted river banks prevented the Mersey bursting out across the plain. In July 1828 the Mersey flood water transported hay ricks from the farm behind Barlow Hall down to Stretford only later to bring them back, while later floods proved to be even more destructive.

It was, wrote Thomas Ellwood the local historian
“no uncommon thing to see the great level of green fields completely covered with water presenting the appearance of a large lake , several miles in circuit.”

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it was possible to sense the importance of the weir. Stretching out from the wall was a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants. But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir.

A friend has talked about his own scary moment earlier in the year when after what seemed to be weeks of rain the river rose and topped the protective banks, leaving him scrabbling for safety.

And indeed these historic floods were quite sudden. One such event left a farmer just enough time to release his horses from the cart and stamped them to higher ground, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning.

Pictures; The Mersey at Red Bank & the wier 1915 from the Lloyd collection, Higginbotham’s flooded field 1946 from a painting by J Montgomery 1963, m80092, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Today I walked the old road .......... Part Three

We had been following the old road and been talking about the massive earthworks which protected us from the Mersey. In a further effort to curb the river and control the ever present danger of flooding they built a weir in the bend of the Mersey just beyond where Chorlton Brook flows into the river.

On a cold bleak and rain swept morning it was possible to sense the importance of the weir. Stretching out from the wall was a deep and placid pool of water home to ducks and broken by bunches of water plants. 

But with just a little imagination how different it might have been on a stormy night when the river swollen with rain water burst over the weir. And almost on queue my companion talked about his own scary moment earlier in the year when after what seemed to be weeks of rain the river rose and topped the protective banks, leaving him scrabbling for safety. And indeed these historic floods were quite sudden. One such event left a farmer just enough time to release his horses from the cart and stamped them to higher ground, while on another occasion one man was forced to take refuge in a birch tree till the following morning. As destructive as these floods were they did deposit silt from the river onto the land which the farmers prized. In normal times it was the practice to “open the sluices or floodgates in order to get the advantage of such sewage upon the land as the river affords, thus saving the trouble and expense of carting ‘management’ there.” Later as our walk took us along the banks of the Mersey we walked through flood silt which had been left by the river earlier in the year when it had nearly topped the bank.

Painting;Higginbotham's field in flood 1946, painted in 1963, J Montgomery m80092 Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Informationand Archives, Manchester City Council.