Back with the Block on Hardy Lane in the winter of 1912

Just occasionally I like to revisit a past story, more especially when there is a new photograph in the collection.

And so here is another image of the farm cottages on Hardy Lane which survived into the 1950s.

The date is 1912 and from the look of the trees it must be late winter, and we are looking up the lane towards Barlow Moor Road.

They were nicknamed the Block and appear in different photographs and post cards. They consisted of  eight and sometimes nine dwellings.

Annie Gresty was born in 1871 and grew up at number 2.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century they stood as a lonely outpost of the community on the edge of the flood plain which led down to the Mersey.

Looking out of an upstairs window Annie would have seen a landscape dominated by meadow land, gardens and orchards. She may have played in Barlow Wood to the south east of the cottages and surely would have walked across the fields to the river.

Beyond her home there was only Hardy Farm before the river with Barlow Hall and Barlow Hall Farm some distance away.

The cricket ground and golf course which had been laid out behind the cottages were a recent development.

Before 1900 the Gresty’s and their neighbours would have had an unobstructed view from their cottages across to Barlow Woods.

But there is no getting away from the truth that here the residents of the Block were out of the way.  Apart from the farms they were very much on their own, and the walk up to Barlow Moor Road would then involve a hike to Beech Road and the village or further north to Martledge.

And in the summer this stretch of the lane took on a magical feel as the tall hedges and trees hid you off from the fields on either side.

And there will be some who mutter more romantic tosh, because by 1912 there was a cemetery on Barlow Moor Lane and with in a few years a regular tram service.

Still I like the remote and lonely idea.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Living in a two up two down house any time from the 1890s

Behind the houses, 1979

The two up two down terraced house remains a feature of most of our towns and cities.  

Most were built in the mid 19th century onwards, some were adapted from older two roomed back to backs and some were altered to add another room, or the addition of an extension.

But across the country, particularly in the north and the midlands they were and still are a major part of the housing stock.

And many of us will have close connections to them. My mother and grandparents lived in one in Derby, and the first house I bought was a two up two down mid terrace in Ashton -Under- Lyne.

Now this is no romantic descent into some warm cosy nostalgic commentary on two up two downs.  They are fine for those starting out together when there is just the two of you with an option on a baby but cannot have been fun for a large family.

After all where do you put everybody?  Not that this was ever a new problem.  Overcrowding both in the towns and cities as well as the countryside has always been the lot of many working families.

12 Hope Street, Derby, circa 1930s

Back in rural areas in the 19th century parents fell on a range of strategies.

Where possible some of the children stayed with relatives or deals were struck with neighbours who involved families with boys and girls sharing out the children and setting up single sex bedrooms in each other’s houses.

And if none of that was possible it was down to the blanket across the room dividing the area in two.*

All of which brings me back to the house in Ashton -Under -Lyne.  It was the usual model.  You walked in off the street into the front room and directly facing you was the door to the back room.  In our case the stairs ran from the very back of the second room up to a small landing and the two upstairs rooms, one of which had been divided to take a bath room.

Almost all the original features had gone and so it was impossible to know what the downstairs fireplaces had been like, the design of the range or even the doors, for all of them including the front door had that 1950s makeover which involved a sheet of hardboard which was nailed on.

Outside at the rear we had a yard with the lavatory and beside it the gate to the alley.

12 Hope Street, Derby, 1926

Back in 1911, our house with its four rooms had been home to James and Catherine Porter, their four children and James’s sister.

And here really is what must have been a problem, for the Porter’s had a ten year old daughter, two sons aged 3 and 2 and a baby and then there was Elizabeth Porter the 39 year old sister.

Now I cannot be sure but I suspect the problem had only recently become more complicated, because Elizabeth had been living with her father who had died the year before and we can only guess how they all fitted in.

And there we pretty much have to leave the family.  Elizabeth was working as a cotton winder in a local mill and so may have found alternative accommodation or maybe they all adapted and made the best they could.

The house is still there and while many of these two up two downs have been cleared away, plenty more are still doing the business.

Ours dated from sometime at the end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th century and like so many it was built within sight of the local mill and what had been a colliery.

Just across from the house along Whiteacre Road, there were three coal pits and two reservoirs all gone now although when we were there the site was still just a landscaped hill.

Picture; Behind the houses, 1979, back yard of 12 Hope Street, circa 1930 and 1926, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Reports of the Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women & Children in Agriculture in England, HMSO, 1843

Noises in the night and other experiences

I didn’t sleep well and in the way of things I ended up listening to the noise of the night.  Here in Chorlton it amounted to a tipsy but happy couple professing their love for each other and what I took to be a fox.  Later there was the dawn chorus and later still the alarms of the family going off.

Pretty ordinary really, but it got me thinking of the street noises  I grew up with and in particular those in the tiny two up to down home of my grandparents in Hope Street Derby and this was where I went every summer holiday.

On  still and quiet nights it was not only possible to hear the clunk of shunting engines from the nearby railway line but know when the people next door were rowing or the even more intimate moments of the couple at number 10.

Now the knocker up had long since vanished into history but you knew when people were stirring because there was the sound of iron pokers pushing around the embers from last night’s fire, and  the sound of a kettle with its whistle.

I rather think these houses were well beyond their sell by date, having been put in the 18th century and like so much working class housing of the period they suffered from poor materials and landlord neglect.  And with internal walls which were in most cases just one brick thick there was little in the way of privacy in Hope Street or the surrounding ones.

And also for that other pretty basic activity of going to the lavatory, which of course was in the yard.  It is a bit of a music hall joke, the visit in the dead of night or on a morning. Which of course is why the chamber pot still existed in most working class homes into the 20th century.

I still remember the one I used at Nana’s when I was a small child.  It was made of porcelain and on a bitter winter evening was cold to the touch, but still I guess preferable to the journey down the stairs into the yard in the dead of night.This one was made of metal, I can't date it but it was one of the treasures that came out of the Miller Street dig, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/planned-archaeological-dig-in-hulme-and.html

It would of course be easy to slip into some rosy nostalgic revelry of this past world.  The sort of romantic tosh which falls back on those “they were poor but they were honest”, street doors could always be left open and “everyone helped each other,” all of which were true but doesn’t detract from the fact that everyone knew your business and some at least of those secrets we all wish were kept private.  Of course this had been the lot of most human beings from the Stone Age onwards, but I have to say if it’s a choice between the drunken lovers and a fox on one side and the countless cacophony of the Derby streets I know which I would go for.

Picture from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Revisiting Hardy Lane Cottages a story from December

Annie Gresty was born in 1871 and grew up in Hardy Cottages which were a collection of eight and sometimes nine cottages on Hardy Lane.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century they stood as a lonely outpost of the community on the edge of the flood plain which led down to the Mersey. Looking out of an upstairs window Annie would have seen a landscape dominated by meadow land, gardens and orchards. She may have played in Barlow Wood to the south east of the cottages and surely would have walked across the fields to the river. Beyond her home there was only Hardy Farm before the river with Barlow Hall and Barlow Hall Farm some distance away.

The cricket ground and golf course which had been laid out behind the cottages were a recent development. Before 1900 the Gresty’s and their neighbours would have had an unobstructed view from their cottages across to Barlow Woods.

She shared number 2 Hardy cottage with six other family members.

Earlier homes for farm workers were often no better than hovels and may have been far worse than the new back to back houses which were being thrown up in the fast growing industrial towns. These older rural properties were made of wattle and daub, lacked a damp course, or proper foundations and drainage. There were certainly plenty of wattle and daub houses here in Chorlton, of which some were very dilapidated. In the 1830s there may have been as many as 50, but by the 1880s only a handful still existed.
Hardy Cottages or the Block as they became known were a mix of different nationalities, some more crowded than others and most linked to the land.

Picture; Hardy Cottages on Hardy Lane, date unknown from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The way we lived, courts and cellar dwellings

I have often written about the conditions thousands of people endured in Ancoats, Ardwick and Little Ireland in the early years of the 19th century, a mix of awful overcrowding, poor quality homes and the ever present threat of disease, unemployment and pauperism. My own family lived in just such conditions in the 1860s. Their home was in a court similar to those you could have found in every major town and city from the early 19th century.

They were dark grim places where speculative builders had thrown up a few poorly built houses on tiny plots of land. Often hidden behind other houses they were only accessed by narrow passages.

Whiteman’s Yard in Derby dated from the 1830s and had been built by Joseph Whiteman who was a baker and flour dealer of Bag Lane which later became Eagle Street. By the time that John and Maria moved there in the early 1870s the houses and court were less than desirable.

They lived at number 5 which just missed looking out on the privies. The house consisted of two rooms, one up and one down and backed directly onto the houses on Carrington Place. The front door opened from the yard into the downstairs room and apart from the range which was used for cooking and heating the only furniture consisted of a table and some chairs.

The outer walls were only one brick thick and those dividing properties were just half a brick. A fact that meant that there was very little privacy as almost any noise could be heard through the wall. The bricks were often of the poorest quality and tended to soak up rain water which made the houses damp as well as cold.

The downstairs floor consisted of stone slabs resting on bare earth which added to the dampness of the houses. And then there would have been the smells. Some of these no doubt came from the privies in the yard but others came from the drains, which were fed into the house from the waste water pipe.

There are plenty of contemporary descriptions of these places, and in the last few years archaeologists have been uncovering the remains of some of them in both Manchester and Salford. Just last year two of us ended up on the site of a row of back to back cellar dwellings hard by the CIS building.
I have to confess that at the end of the trip we both came away with a handmade brick from the site dating back to the 1780s. I hasten to add we had permission.
Pictures; of cellar dwellings, October 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson