Revisiting the Great War nu 1 ............ who spoke in favour?

That image of people cheering the news that we were at war in August 1914 and turning out on the streets pretty much sums up what we think was the mood of the country facing its first major continental war in a century.

Men flocked to the Colours, many wanting to do their bit before it was all over and Rupert Brook wrote

"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.*

And yet it can only have been one aspect of how collectively the country greeted the news.

After all Sir Edward Grey’s famous comment that "The lamps are going out all over Europe” was made by the man closely associated with the decisions which led to our ultimatum with Germany.**

And on that day the Manchester Guardian had been full of letters deploring Britain’s possible involvement while the editor C.P Scott had commented that

“If we rush into war ...it will be both a crime and ruinous madness in which we risk everything of which we are proud and gain nothing.”***

Such feelings were mirrored by resolutions passed by churches and church bodies calling for neutrality, and large meetings held across Greater Manchester including one at the Milton Hall on Deansgate the day after war was declared reaffirming a belief that we should have remained neutral.

Uppermost were the fears for those who would be called to fight, the loss of treasure involved in paying for the conflict and the unease at lining up with countries like Russia and Serbia.

And amongst sections of the Labour Movement there was the a real concern that “wars are of no concern to Labour.  

The only purpose as far as we are concerned, would be to divert attention from social needs, and the only people who would benefit would be the armament firms. 

We never know what financial forces are behind movements which precipitate nations in to wars of this kind.”****

A sentiment which was matched by resolutions from trade unions like that from the Electrical Trades Union,

“strongly protesting against the present war in Europe as a ‘wanton and wilful waste of human life which will be the cause of unparallelled misery and hardship to the workers of all countries.’”*****

That opposition never really went away and as the war deepened it maintained a constant, but the majority of the country swung behind Britain’s involvement.

By September the Labour candidate in the Bolton by-election was unopposed by the other two parties because he “was a whole hearted supporter of the war policy.”******

And a little over a month later the Labour MP for Manchester East,  John Edward Sutton speaking to a meeting in his constituency commented that  “when our ultimatum was sent [the Labour Party was] practically unanimous in deciding to support the war through.  

Our policy as a party was to sink and fall with the Government, as the Opposition had done, and do their best to bring the war to a successful issue.” ******

Although it is interesting that he maintained that “German Socialists like the Socialists of this and other countries were against war... but were out numbered in the German Parliament by the militarist and aristocratic party” concluding that they now “had to do the best they could for their country just as we believed we must fight the war to the finish.”

His speech was met by frequent applause and that I guess brings us back to the image of the cheering crowds complimented by the recurring news of the numbers enlisting in Manchester Pals Battalions  and the report that of the 280 Manchester undergraduate on the Officer Training Corps over 200 had taken commissions in the two months since the war began.

Next, the treatment of enemy aliens, unemployment, distress and the growing role of women in the war effort.

Pictures; selection of picture postcards from the collection of David Harrop

*Peace Rupert Brooke, 1914

** "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time."

***To a group of Manchester businessmen and Liberals on August 3 1914

****Councillor W.T.Jackson, Secretary of the Manchester and Salford Labour Representation Committee, Labour Protest in Manchester, Manchester Guardian, August 3 1914

***** The Attitude of Labour, Manchester Evening News, August 3 1914

******Bolton By-election, Manchester Guardian, September 15 1914

******The Labour Party, Manchester Guardian, October 12 1914

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester .......... nu 14 Century Street

Century Street, 2016

This is Century Street which runs from Whitworth Street West to Tariff Street and here are bits of a story I wrote earlier.*

Back in 1911, the Railway Hotel occupied the open space beside the street which now offers up the new stairs up to the metro stop.

It was run by John Bardsley who was 66 years old, single and shared the 16 roomed hotel with three staff.

Now I rather think there may well be some stories here not least that of Mrs Helen Cattermole who was 29 years old had been married for five years and had one child who had died.

But for now I am more intrigued by the two properties just a little further along Whitworth Street, just where it meets Century Street.

Century Street, 1902

In1902 this was Crown Street and the taller of our two houses was listed as number 4 Crown Street.Whitworth Street West  and Crown Street during the canal work, 1902

And in that year they attracted a lot of interest from Mr Bradburn, who was perhaps more interested in the work being done to the canal but came back five years later to record the houses all over again.

The three images he tool perfectly capture both the houses and the Railway Hotel but and there is always a but, number 4 and its companion have so far not yielded up any further information.

Neither is listed in the street directories for 1903 or 1911 and without a name searching the census record is a long complicated process, but I will go looking if only to see how much I can find out about them and the people who lived there.

I have to say that the steps up to the metro are far more impressive than the old ones and go nicely with the new footbridge across Whitworth Street to the railway station.

The corner of Century Street, 2016

The old one was looking quite tired.

And because that canal gets a mention a few times, I thought that I would include the plaque.

Once the tunnel continued some distance further long the canal which for my money remains a pretty good little stretch of water running as it does through the heart of the city.

Location; Manchester

The Gaythorn Tunnel plaque

Pictures; Century Street, 2016 from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the corner of Whitworth Street West and Deansgate, May 1902, m05501, by A Bradburn, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*That metro stop at Deansgate-Castlefield and a hidden story of hotels, canals and vanished houses, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/that-metro-stop-at-deansgate.html

The Libraries of south Manchester, part 2, Didsbury and Withington

The Libraries of south Manchester, were “built in fulfilment of a promise made in 1904” that when the residents of Burnage, Chorlton, Didsbury and Withington voted for incorporation into the city of Manchester one of the benefits would be the provision of libraries.

Chorlton got theres in 1914 and Didsbury followed in 1915.  Like Chorlton’s library it was a brand new Library fit for a new century.

While it’s outside was in the words of its architect “'designed in the fifteenth century gothic style with tracery windows and emblems of Science, Knowledge, Literature, Music and Arts and Crafts in stone distributed over the building.”

Internally the electric light was designed to allow the public free access to the shelves, browsing and reading areas. The walls were tiled to dado height, the floor cork carpeted and the oak furniture, fittings and partitions for £600.

Withington followed in 1927 and like Chorlton and Levenshulme was paid for from the Carnegie Trust which funded 2,500 libraries across the world.

And like Chorlton the residents of Withington had had to rely on a converted house until their purpose built library was opened.

Pictures; Didsbury Library, m42651, & Withington, m42554, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

The Libraries of south Manchester part 3, Burnage, Fallowfield and Levenshulme

Now I have been featuring the stories of the libraries of south Manchester.  Local artist Peter Topping has produced a series of contemporary paintings of each one and I have added the histories.

Chorlton, and Didsbury got theirs in 1914 and 1915, Withington in 1927 but  Burnage had to wait till 1931  and only then as  “a travelling library station” in a converted bus.

This was discontinued because of the black out during the war and was replaced by a converted house in 1940.

It was situated in Bournlea Avenue and as if to demonstrate the appetite for reading in Burnage it issued 3,000 books a week.

And finally in 1947 a new library was opened in three converted Civil Defence huts.

Fallowfield fared a little better, its library was opened in 1932 “on a corner site at the junction of Platt Lane and Waverton Road which was pivotal point for the whole estate.”  Originally called Wilbraham Library it broke new ground for the library service having the first junior library which “will be a borrower’s library of about 2,000 volumes” and along with Chorlton was to experiment “with the use of wireless talks in its evening classes.”

Wilbraham was the 25th branch library to be opened in the city since the first two in 1857.

All of which underlined the demand that existed in south Manchester for a library service.

Speaking at the opening of Withington library just five years earlier the Lord Mayor had reflected on the importance the Corporation placed on providing such branch libraries when the central one was housed in his words in a “conglomeration of sheds on the Piccadilly site.”

And then there was Levenshulme which did not join the city until 1909 but opened its own library five years earlier in 1904.

The Levenshulme Urban District Council had successfully gained a grant from the Carnegie Foundation to build the library which cost £2,500 and according to the Manchester Guardian had “two special features worthy of mention. There is a room set apart for juveniles, in which, besides papers and periodicals, such games as chess, draughts and dominoes may be enjoyed.  Adjoining the main reading-room and reached through a vestibule door is along verandah where people may sit and read in fine weather.”

All of which makes it rather important to mark a century of public library provision here in south Manchester with this exhibition.

Pictures; Burnage Libraries m77549, Wilbraham Library, m51386, and Levenshulme, m51623, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

The Libraries of south Manchester, “built in fulfilment of a promise made in 1904.” ...part 1 Chorlton

The libraries of south Manchester come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and date from the decades after 1904

This was the year when Burnage, Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury voted to join the city.  In return for voting to become part of Manchester there was the promise of cheaper gas, electricity and water rates, and the provision of public libraries.

These were a little slow in coming.  In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.  It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”

The exhibition with its mix pf Peter Topping's wonderful paintings and my stories of the libraries has just finished at Chorlton but  will soon be traveling across the south of the city to Burnage, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Withington.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

*The Lord Mayor of Manchester 1927

"Built in fulfilment of a promise made in 1904" a celebration of the libraries of south Manchester

It’s another of our exhibitions and tells the story of the libraries of south Manchester.    http://www.gladtobe.in/south/

From the promise made to the people of south Manchester in return for voting to join the city in 1904, to the our three Carnegie Libraries, and along the way some wonderful little stories.  All of this with Peter’s paintings of each library as they look today. Or read the book at

The libraries of south Manchester come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and date from the decades after 1904

This was the year when Burnage, Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury voted to join the city.  In return for voting to become part of Manchester there was the promise of cheaper gas, electricity and water rates, and the provision of public libraries.

But the libraries  were a little slow in coming.  In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.

It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”

The exhibition will be in Chorlton Library till the end of the month and then we plan to roll it out across the south of the city with a final showing in Central Library on Deansgate.

Picture; art work and picture from the current exhibition in Chorlton Library from the collection of Peter Topping