Park Row in Heaton Mersey gives up a few of its secrets

Now until a few days ago I was totally unaware of Park Row in Heaton Mersey or for that matter that there was once a bleach works close by.

But this tiny picturesque group of houses has drawn me in.

According to Pevsner they are “attractive early-mid Victorian terraces” and that I think is a good starting point, although in time I might also become interested in neighbouring Vale Close which “is probably 17th century.”*

It took me a bit of time to locate them on the census record and I have yet to find them in a street directory but after about half an hour of wandering across Lancashire I found them for 1911 and that revealed the entire records back to 1841.

Any one of those census records will be a wonderful insight into who lived in Park Row and how many of the residents owed their livelihood to that bleach works which was just minutes away from the houses.

And they will also tell us much about the people themselves, including where they came from, how many children they had and the degree to which people moved out of Park Row.

All of which will shed light on social mobility, overcrowding and much more.

But for now it is the 1901 census which offers up a picture of what was going on at Park Row.

In all there were 99 people living in the 17 houses of which 41 were working in the April of 1901 when the census was taken.

As you would expect over 50% worked with textiles, either as weavers, spinner’s dyers or at that bleach works.

That said only four of the forty-one would have made their way to the Upper Bleach works and it may even be that some or all of them worked at the neighbouring one.

And then there is the location of the cotton mill which employed another thirteen of our residents including nine weavers, three spinners and Mr Jackson of nu 17 Park Row who was a "weaver overseer."

Those works might also have employed  seven from the Row who described themselves variously as electricians, engineers, messengers and a carter.

In time I might even be able to discover where our three gardeners, domestic servant and housekeeper were employed.

All of which suggests that Park Row has much more to reveal.

Pictures, Park Row, 2015 and from a picture postcard date unknown, from the collection of David Harrop

*Lancashire: Manchester and the South East; Clare Hartwell, Matthew Hyde, Nikolause Pevsner, 2004

Miss May Winifred Wareham .............. part 2 Red Cross Nurse

I think I am a little closer to knowing a lot more about Miss May Winifred Wareham.

She had been born in 1888 in Oldham, spent her adult life in Heaton Mersey and first came to my attention through a collection of picture postcards she received from friends and family during the early decades of the 20th century.*

They are a fascinating insight into the travelling habits of middle class Edwardians and range from comic postcards to stunning landscapes of the Black Forest and Monte Carlo.

They now belong to David Harrop who in an effort to find out more about Miss Wareham took the collection to a meeting of the local church she attended and in the course of the conversation one woman remembered that May had worked as a Red Cross nurse during the Great War in Heaton Mersey.

This was one of the temporary hospitals set up during the conflict often in public buildings or private homes.**

They lasted for the duration of the war and then closed and within a generation had been largely forgotten by the communities that supported them.

The beds, blankets and all the other things needed to maintain the hospitals were auctioned off and the buildings returned to their former use, but there are reminders of their existence from a picture postcards taken at the time to a contemporary account of the hospitals in Greater Manchester.***

And now the Red Cross has begun to put online the records of those who served in the hospitals.****

It is a gigantic task given that 90,000 volunteered. The personnel records for surnames starting with A through to R are currently available and volunteers are updating the site with more names every few weeks.

So we shall have a little longer to wait for Miss Wareham but we are close.

So in the meantime I fall back on those picture postcards, which were made in their thousands and offer up a vivid record of the wards, the patients and nurses and the buildings.

But this is the first one I have seen which went behind the scenes and showed the kitchens which  makes it unique.

Here is the doing bit, from the big range, the pots and pans to the food being prepared and unlike others I have seen some at least of those standing in the kitchen will not be nurses but the equally important volunteers who undertook the cooking, the cleaning and the washing of sheets and clothes.

Nor is that all for it also reveals the name of the photographer who was T Everett-Innes of Stockport, and a search of the directories revealed that “Innes-Thomas Everett [of] 108 Wellington Road Heaton Chapel" was listed in Kelly’s 1902 Cheshire Directory as a Photographer.

It is an intriguing thought that Miss Wareham may well have bought some of his postcards to send to her friends and family in return for those scenes of Wales, the Black Forest and Monte Carlo.

I guess we will never know but with a bit of patience and careful research we may discover more about Thomas Everett Innes and more importantly the hospital where Miss Wareham worked because there is an entry on the 1916 Red Cross book on the Heaton Mersey establishment.

Well we shall see.

Picture; the kitchens, the Red Cross Hospital, Heaton Mersey circ 1914, T Everett-Innes, from the collection of David Harrop

Additional material courtesy of the archivist of the Red Cross Society http://www.redcross.org.uk/

*The Wareham Family, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Wareham%20family

**Red Cross Hospitals, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***East Lancashire Branch - An illustrated account of the work of the Branch during the first year of the war, 1916

****First World War volunteers, The Red Cross, http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War


Additional material courtesy of the archivist of the Red Cross Society http://www.redcross.org.uk/