Two plaques …… one lost building ..... and a forgotten road

So, when you are out with the camera on a sunny and dry  morning you make the most of it.

A blue plaque, 2023

And having done the “artistic shots” I was wandering around the old commercial part of the city looking for those narrow streets and alleys which could offer up a story.

What I found were two plaques waiting to be saved on a building undergoing redevelopment.

It is a big slab of a place which has seen better days and comprises of 79 Mosley Street, 16 Princess Street and 14 Back George Street, and featured in an earlier blog story.*

I had passed it countless times but only recently became interested in it after I spotted a ghost sign for one of the previous occupants.

I did promise myself I would follow up on that story but never did, until yesterday when I came across the two plaques on the Princess Street side.

Not a blue plaque, 2023

I say plaques, but only one of them can claim to be that, the other is a poor attempt at leaving your mark on a boarded up street level window.

The real plaques records that "near this site" was the premises of F.C.Calvert which in 1857 “produced phenol, carbolic acid, used as a disinfectant in soaps and powders and for making dyes”.

All of which is linked to Frederick Crace Calvert PhD FRS who in 1846 “was Professor of Chemistry at the Manchester Royal Institution which was opposite and now houses Manchester City Art Gallery.”

And by one of those twists of history it turns out that Frederick Crace Calvert was living in Exmouth Terrace at 170 Oxford Road which is now under the present Manchester Museum.

Now despite not finding him on the 1851 census I know he was living on Oxford Street by 1849 and he was paying an annual rent of £170, while renting a workshop on Bond Street from the same year.**

Mr.  Calvert goes to France

That workshop was variously described as a “laboratory” as well as a “workshop” and appears to have been in a shared building.

And what makes him that tad more intriguing is that while he was born in London in 1819 he spent a big chunk of his life from the age of 16 in France where he remained till 1846, which “till the end of his life he spoke English with a French accent”.***

At which point rather than “lift” someone else’s research I shall just add the extract from that biography.

Location; Princess Street, Manchester

Pictures; two plaques, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mr.Calvert comes to Manchester

*The three stories behind no. 79 Mosley Street, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-three-stories-behind-no-79-mosley.html

**This section of Oxford Street is now Oxford Road

***National Biography Vol 3, 1901

When science meets history ….....Alice Roberts on bones, ….. today at 9 am on the wireless

So here is one I shall be listening to. ……Alice Roberts on bones, from the radio series, The Life Scientific.

Neanderthal skull, France, 50,000 years ago

“It’s amazing what we can learn from a pile of old bones. 

Having worked as a paediatric surgeon for several years (often doing the ward round on roller blades), Alice Roberts spent a decade teaching anatomy to medical students and studying human remains. 

A niche interest in the collar bone and how it has changed since we evolved from the common ancestor we share with other apes 6 million years ago, led her to some of the biggest questions in science. 

Who are we? And where do we come from? She is the presenter of several landmark TV series on human evolution and archaeology, such as The Incredible Human Journey and Digging for Britain. 

And in 2019 she became President of the British Science Association. In conversation with Jim Al Khalili, Alice shares her passion for the bones of our ancient ancestors and of the freshly dead, and describes her own incredible journey from a basement full of medieval bones to an eminent science communicator and public figure.

Producer: Anna Buckley"

Location; Radio 4

Picture; Picture; Homo neanderthalensis. Skull discovered in 1908 at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, France,October 2005, Author Luna04, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

* Alice Roberts on bones, The Life Scientific, Radio 4, at 9 am today, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000lghd