A heap of lights … a place called the Edge ….. and memories of Sunday worship

The Edge Theatre on Manchester Road is one of Chorlton’s real jewels, which has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside  productions made by [their] own wonderful in-house creatives”* since it opened in 2011.

Heaps of lights, 2025

And if you are between productions there is the Dressing Room, which is a café/bar, and meeting place which also boasts a walled garden for those days when the sun is cracking the paving stones.

Looking in at the Edge, 2023

On those occasions when I am Billy No Mates, I like sitting in the Dressing Room trying to imagine what it was like when it once accommodated 100 young Sunday School scholars, along with more young people spread out in the rooms off the main corridor.

The Wesleyan Sunday School opened in 1885, having started 80 years earlier on Beech Road in what had been the first Methodist chapel.

The present café might also have been one of the rooms used by the Red Cross who occupied the entire building during the Great War after the Wesleyans had offered it up as a voluntary hospital for serviceman recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It was staffed by a mix of volunteer nurses, cleaners, cooks and those engaged in administrative activities.  

Looking at the profile of the volunteers, they were drawn from the local communities, and mostly served for the duration of the conflict.

Over the years I have come across some fascinating items, from a silver cup presented to the Wesleyan in 1917 by a group of soldiers and a letter of thank you to a group of children who embroidered a special pillow.

At the Dressing Room, The Edge, 2025

And of course there is much more …. which is for another time.

Location; Manchester Road

Pictures; the Dressing Room at the Edge, 2025, and the gardens, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

When you have the chance to explore 200 years of Chorlton’s history ……

 Today … and stretching out over the next few months I will be wandering across two centuries of Chorlton’s past.

Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone, 1885

It comes in the form of a private archive and focuses on the Wesleyan Sunday School on Manchester Road.

Today it is home to the Edge Theatre, which opened “in 2011, ….. [and] has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives”.*

The company is justifiably proud “of our beautiful venue” which dates back to 1885 and was a Sunday School for most of its existence, although during the Great War it was used by the Red Cross as an Auxiliary Hospital caring for servicemen recovering from wounds and illnesses.

I was aware of some of its long history, but the archive offers up a detailed record of how the Sunday school worked, original plans along with lists of furniture and fittings which were purchased in 1885 and heaps of memories and other memorabilia.

The Chapel and school, undated

All of which makes the archive an invaluable record of a portion of our community and takes us back beyond 1885 to the original Wesleyan School founded sixty years earlier.

For most of that earlier period the scholars met in the chapel on Beech Road and briefly in a purpose-built school on the site of the present Beech Inn. That school had been built with money raised by the congregation but for reasons which are now unclear they had not secured a claim to it, and it was lost to them.

I don’t think the archive will shed any light on that disaster but looking through the documents there is much about the new Sunday School.

It is early days, and at present the task is just scanning the many and varied records and setting up a database which will allow others to access the material.

And progress is slow, there are four full ring binders, and each item has to be copied and entered on to the data base.

At the Edge, 2024

But it’s fun and will provide heaps of detail to what is now that "beautiful venue".

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; invitation to a “Public Tea Meeting in connection to laying the Foundation Stone", 1885, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Wesleyan Chapel +New Schools And Minister Residence, John West +Architect + Surveyor Manchester, undated, and The Edge 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Edge Theatre, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

A Sunday School …. Red Cross Nurses …. and the Edge

Last night proved to be an entertaining evening down at the Edge as we watched “Tickle your fancy host a night of exciting turns with something for everyone”.

The Edge and a heap of flowers, 2023

These included Doolally the comedy singing act who compèred the night with their usual mix of comedy, and topical songs, and in between there was a folk group, a poet and a musician along with a comic and actor.

And in the interval, I reflected on the Edge Theatre, its story and the bigger history of the building it occupies.

The Edge on Manchester Road, 2023

The Edge opened in 2011 and remains “Manchester’s Theatre for Participation. Our beautiful venue has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives.

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of fantastic actors and musicians; many are professional, some have learning disabilities, some have experience of homelessness, some are from our local community and all of them are brilliant!

As theatre makers we delight in creating shows which reflect the world that we live in, even if we’ve set them on the moon. They’re honest, relevant and always full of hope.

As a Manchester Cultural Partner we play a vital role in the cultural offer of the city. As leaders in participation we provide a range of exciting opportunities for people to be creative. At The Edge you can Act, Sing, Dance, play the Ukulele, Write, Paint, Draw or just be. Our café is known as one of the most friendly and welcoming in Chorlton!*

For at least eight of those years it is the final destination for the Library sponsored history walks which are part of Chorlton Book Festival.

And at the end of the walk through Chorlton’s past, Jenine, Dom and their team have offered up a much-needed light meal in the Dressing Room Café.

All of which leads me on to the building which was opened in the 1880s and was the Sunday School for the Methodist Church which was built a decade earlier.

"Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917”, 2013

During the Great War the Sunday School was handed over to the Red Cross as a centre for servicemen recovering from wounds, ailments and infections, and was one of three so far identified in Chorlton. The others were the McLaren Baptist Church Sunday School on Edge Lane and a private residence on Wilbraham Road.**

As yet I don’t have any pictures of the nurses, or their patients, but we do have a silver cup, which carries the inscription “Presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917”, along with a letter sent by a soldier to the children of St Clement’s Sunday School thanking them for the gift of a pillow.

Chorlton Operatic Society, 1920

And in the interval of the show last night I wandered through the corridors and pondered on that period in the story of the building, which with the end of the Great War was soon forgotten.

Less likely to be lost from memory  is the theatre which was built by the Methodists in the upper hall of the Sunday School.  From memory I think it dates from the 1950s or possibly two decades earlier and was still there when the Edge opened.  But by then it was in a poor state and no longer really fit for purpose.

That said it might have hosted performances by our own Chorlton Operatic Society which was active from 1907 through to the mid 1930s, and offers up that sense of historic continuity which links the Sunday School, a heap of Red Cross Nurses …. and the Edge.

Location; The Edge, Chorlton

Pictures; the Edge, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, picture of the silver cup, 2013, courtesy of Philip Lloyd and the programe of the Chorlton Operatic Society April 1920, donated anonymously.

*The Edge, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

** Red Cross Hospital, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***Chorlton Operatic Society, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=Chorlton+Operatic+Society

Sunshine at the Edge, 2023

At the Edge on Manchester Road

Now I never tire of that short walk up from Manchester Road to the Edge Theatre.

It’s a short trip but the combination of those bushes and trees make it a welcome retreat from what is increasingly a pretty busy road.

And I have no doubt that was the intention of the Methodists who opened their Sunday school in what is now the Edge in 1885.

It wasn’t their first Sunday school that had been built after a great fund raising effort at the beginning of the 19th century and was lost through dark deeds by the landowner and a developer soon afterwards.

Its successor was and still is a grand building which has been at the heart of the community since its construction and there will be many with fond memories of their time spent there on Sundays along with those who enjoyed the many plays performed in the big hall.

But few I suspect know of its role as a Red Cross hospital during the Great War.

It was a story which had passed out of living memory and there are only a few references that have survived the century.

These include a letter from a group of soldiers thanking the children of St Clements for the present of a specially embroidered pillow and a silver cup inscribed with a dedication of thanks and dated Christmas 1917.

All of which I was reminded of last year when the Edge performed a play based around three local people caught up in the Great War which has led to a community project to extend our knowledge of some of those who lived through that conflict.

So I think it is fitting that Peter decided to paint the old school as part of his "Moment in Time" collection which records the changes in Chorlton.

"It was" he told The Edge "remiss of me having lived in Chorlton for 45 years that I had never been in the building and I decided to offer the painting to display."

Painting; the Edge  © 2015 Peter Topping

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Remembering those from Chorlton who participated in the Great War

Yesterday at the Edge on Manchester Road something rather special happened when a group of us met to begin a project to remember some of the men and women from Chorlton who participated in the Great War a century ago.

The project arose from last November’s production by the Edge Theatre Company of Opening 1914, which focused all three local people who were caught up by the events of that war.*

They were three of the “little people about to live their lives out in a great century” and it occurred to the theatre company that to look up the stories of some of the men and women who took part would be a fitting memorial.

Now none of the group are professional historians, but all of them were passionate about the project.

There were two young people who wanted to know more about a war which shaped the lives of their great grandparents, along with a few who saw it as a natural progression from researching their own family history.

And for some it will be the opportunity to explore a range of creative writing based on the lives of their chosen participant.

All of which makes the project such an exciting one for not only will each of us discover something unique, we will have had the experience of working and learning together and in the process discover a little more of the place we live.

The end result maybe an exhibition which mixes the stories with creative writing and paintings to a special one off evening of readings and performances at the Edge.**

All of which adds to the excitement.

Picture, Mr and Mrs Davison and their son, circa 1915-6 courtesy of David Harrop.  George Davison lived in Chorlton on Edge Lane before his marriage to Nellie.

*The Edge Theatre Company, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Edge%20Theatre%20Company

**The Edge Theare Company, www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776

Opening 1914, the story of our own library by the Edge Theatre Company .......... with four days left to see it

Now there is still time to get to see Opening 1914 by the Edge Theare and Arts Centre.

It is “a part-real, part imagined story of the folk who lived in Chorlton 100 years ago, celebrating the birthday of a long awaited library against the backdrop of a world at war.”*

So using the opening of our library as one of the focal points it explores the lives of three Chorlton people during the first months of the Great War.

It draws on material from the Archives and Local History Library in the Ref as well as contemporary newspapers and musical hall songs and at its centre is Miss Clara Atkinson who lived on Groby Road and worked as a librarian.

And that is all I am going to say about the story because with four days left till it finishes on November 29th I am not going to spoil the plot.

Suffice to say that when go you will not be disappointed by the acting, the script or the songs, all of which made it a memorable evening.

All tickets from: www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776.

The production is supported by the Arts Council and Manchester City Council and is part of the Chorlton Book Festival


*from the Performance notes

Opening 1914 a new production by the Edge Theatre Company from November 19 till 29

You can never have too much history and so I am looking forward to "OPENING 1914" which starts on Wednesday November 19 and runs to Saturday November 29.

Janine Waters who co wrote the production writes

“Opening 1914 is the new show from the creative team at The Edge (Spinach, Dreaming Under a Different Moon). 

A dip back in time, to the Chorlton of a hundred years ago when there was an ice rink on Oswald Road, too many picture houses and a brand new public library just about to open. 

Clara, Fred, Lucy and Eddie are just some of the characters who take us on a countdown to the opening of a beloved library and to the start of a war that would change the world forever.”

 Now what I also like is that you have the chance to see the production at either the library or the Edge Theatre.

So those like me who want to sit in the very spot where the story unfolds the Library performances are on Wednesday the 19th  through to Saturday 22nd and then at the Edge Theatre from Tuesday November 25 till Saturday the 29.

But that does make for a dilemma because the Edge is based in the old Methodist Sunday School which during the Great War was a Red Cross Hospital and the romantic in me wonders about more ghosts looking down on us.

And given that it will be a popular event I will have to decide soon.

Tickets according to Janine will cost “£5 for a special centenary price & site specific performances at Chorlton Library £8/£10 performances at Edge Theatre. All tickets from: www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776."

The production is supported by the Arts Council and Manchester City Council and is part of the Chorlton Book Festival