Treasures from Southern Cemetery ……………..

Now there is a lot to say about Southern Cemetery and over the years I have done my fair share.*

Memorial to Satinik Kouyoumjian, 2013

It was opened in 1879, is still a municipally run cemetery which is the largest in Britain and the second largest in Europe.

Battered but still doing the biz, 2026

And like all those other Victorian public cemeteries, it is more than just a burial place.  

It is a place rich in history from the monuments of the great and good to the humbler gravestones, each with a story of which the inscriptions are clues to much more about the lives of those interred here.

Added to the reminders of those past lives there is an abundance of nature, from mature and not so mature trees to the abundance of wildlife.

For the Corporation who bought the 100-acre site in 1872 the grand plan was thwarted by drainage issues which put a hold on proceedings and involved the construction of a sewer to the river Mersey which was two miles away. **

It was indeed a very necessary project give than “water stood throughout the ground at about three below the surface and permeated the substratum of sand down to the clay about 15 feet deep”. *** 

Nor was this all because the in constructing the chapels workmen had to dig down to the clay levels and then build concrete piers and brick arches for the foundations to rest on.

Waiting for a paint job, 2026

All of which makes me ponder on the sagacity of the landowners who sold off the 100 acres, especially as a cursory glance of maps from the 1840s and 1850s show a fair a fair number of ponds and culverted water courses.

It's all in the detail, 2026

Outside the Jewish Cemetery, Southern Cemetery 2026

But enough of such doom and disappointment.

The civil engineering scheme was completed, the chapels built and the citizens of Manchester signed up for their little bit of eternal rest.

And now one hundred and forty-seven years later there is much to see, and on Monday after attending a funeral I took a walk and recorded some fine examples the railings that abut the wall of the cemetery running along Barlow Moor Road from the Crematorium all the way to Princess Parkway.

Like many I rarely even noticed them, but they are well worth looking at and remarkably despite layers of peeling paint they are in good condition.

Which is all I want to say.

Location; Southern Cemetery

Pictures; Memorial to Satinik Kouyoumjian, 2013, and those bits of iron, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Southern Cemetery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Southern%20Cemetery & The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, and Peter Topping, 2017

**The New Manchester Cemetery, The Manchester Guardian, May 23rd 1879

***ibid, The New Manchester Cemetery

Pictures from Porto ………… and a bit of street furniture from around the corner

Or as we often say in our house … “a wall of sardines, date stamped, and a bit of street furniture brought to you by Fucoli-Somepal”.

A wall of sardines, 2025

Now I have no idea sitting here in Chorlton as to why these tins of sardines each bear a different date, other than you can search for the year you were born and take home the contents ready to eat on the anniversary of your birth.

And that was the assumption of my pal who sent over the image on his trip through the Portuguese town of Porto.

SANEAMENTO, 2025

That said there will be someone who has taken a similar picture and has the knowledge of just why a company would date stamp their tins of sardines.

Happily, I am more at home with the metal street cover which bears the words SANEAMENTO which is Portuguese for sanitation, and underneath it Fucoli which is the company that makes such essential street items.

Their web site announces that “At Fucoli-Somepal, we pride ourselves on providing durable and long-lasting ductile iron products for wastewater applications. Our expertly engineered solutions are designed to perform exceptionally well, even in the most challenging conditions”.  Added to which their products are “100% made in Europe”.*

This Porto “ductile iron product” is a grand addition to my collection of street furniture which extends way beyond street covers to include stink poles, vending machines, and ghost signs, as well as redundant telephone kiosks, Lucy Boxes, and streetlamp posts.

The list is endless, and pretty much covers anything which at some point in time has occupied a street corner, plastered on a wall, stood on a pavement or the middle of a road or just outside a shop.**

A Lucy Box, 2021

Once they did the business but progress has reduced them to rusting, neglected and forgotten bits of our history.

Like those Lucy Boxes which according to my I Spy Lucy Boxes, site, a "Lucy box" is a name applied to boxes, about 3 feet high, about 2 feet wide and about 18 inches deep, which are to be found on pavements throughout the city.   

Such boxes were originally used in connection with the tram network and then with the trolley bus network; and as part of the general electricity supply network; and for telephone purposes”.***

To these I could add horse troughs and finger posts.  

For those who like me who were born in the first half of the last century, the horse trough were a common sight still fulfilling their purpose of offering drinking water to thirsty horses which pulled the milk floats and assorted carts and wagons. While finger posts with their destination indicators pointing in different directions remain far more attractive than those giant metal signs in day glow colours. 

And looking at this vending machine from the middle decades of the 20th century it is hard to remember that there was a time when you could get cigarettes, chocolate, chewing gum and even milk and orange juice from a machine which required to to do no more than put your money in a slot and pull the right lever.

No complicated battery of buttons to assist in making a choice between a bewildering selection and which requires a card rather than a few coins.

But then as now there was always that danger that the machine refused to give you anything ..... reminding me of that old sad lament ...."here I stand, paid a penny and only ......".

All of which is a long way from Porto in Portugal and so given that we have shifted in time and space, I shall close with this wonderful sign from the age of the old Manchester trams.

It is undated but I think will come from the 1930s or 40s.

Tram sign, undated

And I wonder if it will have a longer life than the sign to the lavatories in a department store in Manchester I collected yesterday.

2025

Well we shall see.

Location; on any street, shop wall at anytime in the last two centuries.

Pictures; wall dated stamped sardines, and a bit of street furniture brought to you by Fucoli-Somepal, 2025, A Hardy & Padmore of Worcester Lucy Box, 2021, from the collection of Andy Robertso the forgotten machine in Deal, 2016, courtesy of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, Manchester Corporation Tramways, date unknown, from the collection of Allan Brown

* Fucoli-Somepal, https://www.fucoli-somepal.pt/EN/produtos/produtos/agua-residuais-saneamento#

**Street furniture, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Street%20furniture 

*** I Spy Lucy Boxes , http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/lucy/lucyboxes.htm

One hundred uses for a trolley pole …… nu 1. ……. the poster

The poster advertised a meeting at the Friends Meeting House on January 25th, and judging by the attempts to destroy it, somebody didn’t want to know  “Could Hitler Have Been Stopped?”

And of course this is the lead up to Holocaust Memorial Day which is why I suppose the small political group decided the question needed to be asked this month.

I have no idea how well attended the meeting was, but I missed it by a day.

Location; St Peter’s Square, Manchester

Picture; One hundred uses for a trolley pole …… nu 1. ……. the poster, from collection of Andrew Simpson