Summer days in south Manchester No 3 the Chorlton Peace Festival 1984

It is an event I have visited before, but it is well worth another outing.*

It was at the height of the second Cold War when there was a growing feeling that the world was a less safe place.

Relationships between the two super powers had entered a more hostile phase. This was only in part due to the election of hard line politicians in the west and the elevation of equally conservative leaders in the Soviet Union but also to events across the world where the USA and USSR were engaged in a new round of support for proxy governments.

What made it all the more dangerous was that a new generation of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems had come on stream just as the Cold War deepened and hardened.

The US cruise missile which was being deployed in Britain and West Germany took just 15 minutes to reach its targets in the USSR while American Pershing missiles and the Russian equivalent took just 4 minutes from launch to detonation over the cities of Europe.

So there we were in the Rec on a hot day listening to music, engaged in some politics but above all just relaxing with friends and family.

And having posted the story someone left a comment who helped organise the event and reminded me that there had been a badge designed for the event, which I have, and decided to update the piece with a picture.

It was a designed by Jim De Santos.

Location; The Rec

Picture; from the collection of Tony Walker, and Andrew Simpson

*Dangerous times and peaceful protests, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/03/dangerous-times-and-peaceful-protests.html

School’s out for summer …. the day after

The summer term ended with strong sunshine and a party in the Rec.

Heaps of kids, parents and picnic stuff spread out across the grass and all was fun, play and noise.

Saturday came with rain, and the reminders from the day before.

One discarded Brookburn sweatshirt and rubbish bins appropriately filled to the brim and three abandoned tyres.

Location; The Rec, 

Pictures; School’s out for summer, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The sweetness of doing nothing …….

There is an Italian saying ….. “La dolcezza del non fare niente” which simply translates into the “The sweetness of doing nothing” …….

In the Rec, at Beech Road and on the Green, yesterday.

Location, around Beech Road

Pictures; The sweetness of doing nothing, 2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 

Will those responsible ……… return the drinking fountain to the Rec on Beech Road

It is one of those silly stories which started with a couple of pictures of the Rec in the early morning.

Early morning on the Rec, 2021

And progressed through to a newspaper report from September 1897 of an ordinary meeting of the Withington Urban District Council at which Mr. Burgess “intimated that a gentleman in Manchester, whose name he would not at present mention, had offered to give a drinking fountain to be placed in Chorlton-cum-Hardy”.*

I had been looking for information about the early years of the Recreation Ground on Beech Road.**

It had been opened in the May of 1896, and was gift form Lord Egerton of a strip of land which had for centuries been known as Row Acre.***

And here I went very  wrong, because so engrossed was I in the research that the fountain and the Rec came together and for a brief while I went searching for just where the drinking fountain might have been located on what is now called Beech Road Park.

Waiting for something to happen, 2021

All of which will allow Mr. Pedantic of Provis Road to mumble that the story is a nonsense, and artificially connects pictures of the Rec on a Tuesday morning with the real drinking fountain which was on Chorlton Green.

And he would be right, leaving me to reflect on that earlier bit of public open space which is surrounded by two pubs, the old parish burial ground, the village school along with two former farm houses.

Today most of us think of Chorlton green as an open space of grass ringed by trees but this was not how it has always been.

Before the turn of the 19th century it may have been much bigger and indeed for most of that century was not even open to the people of the village, having been enclosed by Samuel Wilton and not returned to public use until the 1890s.

And then for a great stretch of time remained without grass but did have a pretty neat water fountain.

The Green, circa 1900

The picture dates from 1906 when the Horse and Jockey was still just a set of beer rooms on either side of the main door, Miss Wilton’s outhouse still jutted out from the building and the space between the main entrance and the sweet shop was still a private residence.

I have always liked the lamp which stands on the green, with its hint of Narnia.

And back in the May of 1986 I can remember walking past it in the early evening and coming across a string quartet playing around its base.  Today people would just take it in their stride mutter something about it being typically Chorlton, but back then it struck me as the promise of things to come.

Which later that night with the defeat of the Conservative candidate and the election of the first Labour Councillor it  indeed seem to herald something new.

But being a historian I have to own up to the fact that the following year the Conservatives were back but they were on borrowed time, and 1987 marked the final year that a Conservative would be elected from Chorlton to the Town Hall.

The year before may have been the first string quartet on the green but it has not been the last.

The drinking fountain, circa 190o

I have to say I prefer the grass but lament the loss of the fountain.  

First it lost its cups and then vanished sometime in the 1920s or 30s.  To my mind that was a loss.  Public fountains are wonderful places to meet people, spend time chatting and just having a drink on a hot day.

Once it would have been the village pump which offered all three and which on hot summer days had the added bonus of a place the kids could play.

Now there is a lot more history to explore in the photograph of the fountain but I rather think I will leave that for another time.

To which Michael Wood has added, "My recollection is that the fountain on the rec was located centrally outside the shelter, as on the attached snip from the georeferenced maps website showing OS 25” 1892-1914 series.  

It was the same design as was used in Chorlton Park near the tennis courts, a perfunctory iron structure with domed hoods over the outlets, operated by a button on top -  nothing like the elaborate ornamental feature on the Green.  Can’t find an image at the moment, but I could draw one!  

The Rec, 1914

They must have been a common municipal feature in their time, but by the mid-sixties they were semi-functioning or defunct. "

And I hope he does, as it is I never knew about the bandstand.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; the Rec very early on a Tuesday morning from the collection of Andrew Simpson and the drinking fountain on the green, circa 1900, from the Lloyd Collection

*District Councils, Manchester Guardian, September 10th, 1897

**Public Recreation Grounds at Withington, Manchester Guardian, May 18th, 1896

***Breaking News ……….. the Rec on Beech Road is officially opened, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2020/04/breaking-news-rec-on-beech-road-is.html

The missing three …. tales from the Rec

Odd what people discard on the Rec, and even odder when no one comes to retrieve them.

Early on one day last week I came across the discarded three mirrored by a fourth on a bench nearby. 

And a full  six days later they are still there …. testimony to the many different ways people use the Rec as well as the mystery of why no one came to claim them.

Location; The Rec

Pictures; the missing three and another, 2025 from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Tales from Beech Road …. one lost tree … three forgotten coats

 Yesterday I came across the three forgotten coats on the Rec.

Three coats, 2025

A full day later they are still there, but maybe by the afternoon they will be collected.

Alas no such chance for the tree on Beech Road close to the Lead Station.

I don’t remember when I last saw it but chopped down it is now.

It might have been diseased, or perhaps just upset someone.

Location; Beech Road

One tree 2020 now gone

Pictures, three coats in the Rec, 2025, and the vanished tree on Beech Road, 2020 before it vanished, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Rec in 1933

Long before it was Beech Road Park it was the “Rec” and depending on which name you use marks you out as a newcomer or a local.

 Now we have always called it the Rec and so do all my children which I guess says something about us.

Of all the pictures of the Rec in the collection this is my favourite and I have to own up it’s because it features our house.

The date on the postcard is 1933 and the path running along the inside parallel to Beech Road has long gone.
Otherwise apart from the size of the trees it is a scene not so different from today.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

In the Rec on Beech Road in the spring of 1910

I am back in the Rec and the year is 1910, and judging by the trees I guess it is late spring.

The recreation ground is a little over ten years old and there will be people in the picture who will remember when as Row Acre it was still farmed in long strips by tenant farmers.

The Bailey/Renshaw family whose farm was just behind the photographer on the other side of Beech Road had been farming their strip on Row Acres since the 1760s, while the Higginbotham’s who had the strip beside Cross Road had been in Chorlton from the 1840s.

The accompanying caption refers to the absence of the big see saws which were to the right of the picture just behind the man with the sack but I rather think they were still there but just out of sight.

Then as now it was a busy place with plenty of people taking advantage of a sunny day. In the distance a woman sits on a bench and chats with the mother pushing the pram.  Away in the distance and partly obscured by the trees are other prams.

But we are drawn to the two children who I guess are on their way to school.

The young girl carried a book and seems a little over dressed for the sunny weather, but then spring can be deceptive and what starts as a cold day can turn on a sixpence.

Now there will be those who are better than me at determining the time of day from the shadows cast by our two school children and will be able to suggest whether they are on their way to school or returning at midday.

Either way it is business as usual for the chap with the sack standing behind the bush and like the two young people his attention has been caught by the photographer.

In 1910 the presence of a camera could still draw the curious, and the vain.  Give another decade and the photographer will pretty much be ignored.

But on this spring day in 1910 some of those passing through the Rec can still be fascinated by the photographer and his camera.

And it is worth remembering that back then there were few open spaces for people to sit, for while to the south of our scene there were plenty of fields these were working fields.

The green had only recently reverted to a public place having been the private garden of the Wilton family for most of the last century, and Chorlton Park would not be laid for another decade and a half.

From time to time there were proposals for small parks using bits of open land like the one in the 1890s to utilize a strip of land by Corkland Road, and another for playing fields near Oswald Road School but they never materialized.

So for most of our children it would have been the fields and perhaps the Cliffs which ran alongside the brook just beyond Barlow Moor Road.

It had been a strip of woodland which combined the magic of running water, trees and was sufficiently hidden from view to make it a wonderful place to play.

But by the beginning of the 20th century there were few trees and by 1910 some of it atleast had vanished under Chorltonville.

Which takes me back to the Rec and all those people enjoying the sun on a spring day.

Picture; from the Lloyd Collection

When the Rec had a bowling green ………..

Now, I don’t remember the bowling green on the Rec, by Beech Road, but lots of people over the years have talked about it.

I have always thought it was on the south side of the Rec, close to Wilton Road, but not so.

It occupied a space in the north west corner, and this I know because I am looking at the OS map for Beech Road, dated 1956.

I know the bowling green was not in the original plan for the Recreational Ground and had disappeared by the 1970s.

Just when it was deemed no longer a recreational asset will be down to people’s memories and a trawl of subsequent maps.

And back then there was that other bowling green beside Cross Road, it became the car park for the Irish Club.

All of which leaves me to wait for comments of those who remember the bowling green on the Rec and when it disappeared.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; detail from the OS map for south Chorlton, 1956, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

A day and a bit on the Rec ……

Now everyone does a snow picture.

So here are three taken on the Rec today at half past seven in the morning, yesterday in the late afternoon and the day before when it snowed proper.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Snow days and not so snow days, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2025

Relics of Chorlton’s past … catch'em before they fade from living memory

Now, if you were born in the first half of the last century then discarded tyres will have been a familiar plaything.

One tyre and a frozen lake, 2025

They were usually to be found on bomb sites of which there were still plenty where we lived in the 1950s.

The lost shelter, 1979

Once found the tyre or tyres would be rolled, pushed or thrown, and if there were a nearby slope, then the bets were on as to how far it could travel in a straight line before bouncing off on a divergent path.

Of course, tyres remain a go to thing for kids, and those left on the Rec are put to good use.

Relics come in many different forms and the word Rec itself is now a relic, used by those who remember the two-acre ground on Beech Road before it got its upgrade to “Park”.

I can’t remember when that transition happened, and I wonder how long the original name will survive in living memory.

But the Rec or Recreational Ground is how it started out in 1896, was recorded as such in official records during a big chunk of the twentieth century, and so it is the name still used by many in Chorlton.

101 uses for the Rec, 1979

And indeed, to call it the Beech Road Park is to receive heaps of comments from those who remember it as the Rec as well as a few history lessons.

Because it was opened in 1896 along with the restored village green and was less a park and more a recreation ground with benches, flower beds and a selection of play furniture.  These were later joined by a bowling green.

To which in 1940 was added a large condrete slad with mooring hook for a barage balloon.  

The ballon left the Rec at the end of the last war but the concrete slab was still there in the north eastern corner well into the 1980s.

But if the name Rec still lives on that of Old and New Chorlton have now vanished from common usage.

Once before the housing boom of the 1880s there was no distinction, but with rapid development around the junction of Wilbraham and Barlow Moor Roads the old hamlet of Martledge was lost, people began referring to the New Town/village and the old one.  The New had the shops, some banks, and the new houses, as well as the railway station.

Old Chorlton was the village green and Beech Road which was the traditional centre of the rural community.  The distinction was still in use in the 1970s and lingered on in the conversations of a few well into the 2000s.

The Rec, Beech Road and our house, circa 1930s

At which point I could visit the stories of Kemp’s Corner and the Four Banks, but I have done that before so I won’t.

Leaving perhaps just the locations of Scotch Hill, Lane End and Brundrette’s Corner.

They too have vanished from common usage, but each had a historic origin and each can also be found on the blog or that wonderful book, The Story of Chorlton -cum- Hardy.*

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; The Rec, 1979-2025, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, aerial photograph of Beech Road , circa 1930s-1940s,courtesy of  Britain from Above, EPW 017620, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Story of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-story-of-chorlton-cum-hardy.html

**A new book for Chorlton, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20for%20Chorlton

Growing gloom over Chorlton

 In the days after Boxing Day the weather turned gloomy.

The weather forecast told me that we were experiencing a period of mist which occurs when warm moist air suddenly cools.

It is similar to fog but is thinner and more transparent which marks it different from fog which is denser and more opaque.

And that pretty much describes what happened.

During the day visibility became less, and while you could still see across the Rec, it became more like gazing out of a dirty window.

A situation which became more pronounced during the late afternoon as the light faded.

Of course, for those of us born in the first half of the last century this mist was nothing to write home about.Growing up in London in the 1950s we experienced that real loss of visibility when pretty much every year the city was cloaked in deep dense fog.

First the outline of buildings across the road grew feint, which progressed till lampposts and passing traffic became obscured.

And with that blanket of grey came the loss of noise as every sound became muffled and you were lost in the swirling grey stuff.

I say fog but back then often it was smog that far more dangerous mix of pollutants caused by thousands of factory and household chimneys dispensing smoke from countless coal fires into the atmosphere.

One year a science teacher at school exposed filtered papers to the elements at regular intervals and recorded the growing amount of dark looking particles which had a settled on the paper.

All very good and as a 13-year-old it proved a slight welcome interruption to the lesson, until it dawned on us that as school closed early we would be making our way through the streets breathing in this gunge as we headed home or tried to do so.

On one occasion dad had got lost just yards from home, stuck on a roundabout trying to find the right turning to come off.

I was too young to remember the Great London smog of 1952 which enveloped the city two months after my second birthday, but it will have been an awful experience for mother who regularly suffered from bronchitis.

Of course London was not alone in getting these fog and smog visitations, and I guess people from other towns and cities reading this will also have their memories of closed downs streets where things, and people slowly disappeared.

Happily, our mist cleared in just a few days and the other end of the Rec was again clear to see.

Location; The Rec, Beech Road

Pictures; Growing gloom, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Gaze upon the Rec ...... and spot the changes .....

The blog doesn't usually do then and now pictures ...... well not unless there are  accompanying stories which elaborate on the changes, explores why they happened and concludes with heaps of references.

Looking across the Rec, 2023

But today  I rather think I will leave it at the pictures, taken a year or so apart in The Rec from almost the same spot.

This morning had I thought about doing a then and now I would have paced out my position, but I didn't.

Lost to sight, the Irish Club and car park, 2024

On a cold autumnal morning with plenty of pale sunshine I had just wanted to record an empty Rec, but that big block of apartments dominated the scene.

Of course from spring through the summer it is hidden but as the leaves fall there it is growing by the day.

And for those who will ask, the Irish Centre is still there although it is not open, and for those who want more, the club started out as a Masonic Lodge, and site of the apartments was a bowling green.

Location; the Rec

Pictures; looking across the Rec in 2023, and 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Early Saturday on the Rec ........

Location; Beech Road

Picture; Early Saturday on the Rec, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

It just has to be the school holidays …….

Location; The Rec, Beech Road

Picture; It just has to be the school holidays, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Making litter interesting …… the happy story

Now the idea that discarding rubbish in public places is something new ignores the past.

Making litter fun, 2022

The Keep Britain Tidy Campaign was started in 1955, and pictures of Chorlton including the Rec marred by causally dropped litter are there in the historic record from the 1900s.

So good I took it again, 2022

And I bet there was some one in the Roman city of Pompeii on the eve of its destruction in 79 AD who was motivated to dash off a stern letter to the town council on the growing pile of smelly stuff left by customers of the many street takeaway businesses.

Indeed, if I searched long enough, I could find ordinances from the Egyptian authorities who were constantly clearing up after tourists in the Valley of the Kings.

So, with that in mind here is a bit of happy street furniture seen in the Rec yesterday.

Location; the Rec on Beech Road

 Picture; Making litter fun, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

After the Party ….wot Bev & Sharon forgot to take home

So, it amazes me what people will lose in the Rec on Beech Road.

In the last few weeks there has been a used Metro tram ticket only bettered by a monthly pass for the  London Underground but best of all a boarding pass for a flight from Buenos Aires to Manchester.  

But today’s award must go to Bev and Sharon who after a fun night in the bars and pubs of Old Chorlton left their unfinished drinks on the railings, close to an empty bottle of wine.

Eric was appalled at this wanton disregard for not taking your rubbish home, but reflected on their sense of balance which allowed them to place the glasses neatly on the railings after umpteen gins, red alcoholic stuff, and heaps of Babycham and ginger.

But not we agreed the most responsible way to use the Rec.

Location, Beech Road

Pictures; After the Party, Beech Road, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

What Elsie from London left on Beech Road …….

So, it’s amazing just what you encounter at 8 in the morning doing the litter patrol across the Rec on Beech Road.

All the way from the tram stop, 2024

Now I must be honest and confess the art of discovery is down to Declan and other Friends of the Park and not me.

But by way of encouragement, I will often cross the road and chat with him for a few minutes.

Today it started with that modest green box which appeared last week, and which has already begun to mellow with the application of some trellis.

By spring it will no doubt sport some “interesting climbing things” which in turn will start to grow leaves and flowers and so blend with the trees.

The conversation then drifted on to his discoveries.  These are the idly discarded items from people who think that the Rec is an appropriate place to leave the accumulated detritus of their personal possessions, or just maybe hope that what they drop will invoke a discussion about the origins of their litter.

Mellowing green box, 2024

But I wondered why anyone would walk all the way from the tram stop on Wilbraham Road to post their used ticket on a bench in the Rec.  Or even more bizarre why Elsie should think her London Transport ticket had any relevance to how we live here on Beech Road.

That said pride of place in this cornucopia of discarded treasures goes to a boarding pass for a flight from Buenos Aires to Manchester.

There will be some who question why these thrown away bits of someone’s life are worth a mention on the blog, but that is to miss the point.

Rubbish can be history, whether it be a hoard of Roman coins, a lost ring, or carefully preserved old newspaper from the 1930s.

All of them I have written about including bottles, a hand drill dating to the first half of the 19th century  and  items from a Masons regalia.

Ugly is as ugly does, circa 1980

So why not a London Transport ticket?

And to close where we began there will come a time when someone looks for the history of the green box, and compares it to that ugly and now vanished shelter which adorned the Rec until quite recently.

Alas the concrete base that helped tether the barrage balloon disappeared in the 1980s.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; Metrolink ticket, green box, 2024, and shelter circa 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Mellow Green ……. on the Rec

In just a day the new addition to the Rec has mellowed.

From one green box it has already grown some trellis and no doubt with spring will add some climbing plants full of leaves which will blend with the overhead branches of nearby trees.

And inside the Friends of Beech Road Park will store all the stuff they need to maintain this much-loved open space.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; Mellow Green, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Green Boxes on the Rec ………

It arrived today.

I knew it must have been on the way because yesterday a team were there in the Rec providing a platform to receive it.

And its purpose is to assist in the upkeep of this small but much loved Recreation Ground, which I have looked out on for 48 years and our kids have played on for a heap of time.

It will be home to all the tools and things the Friends of Beech Road Park need to maintain the open space.

All of which marks it as something to include in a history blog about Chorlton, given that the Rec has been a place to play, relax and meet up since the 1890s

Location; Becch Road

Picture; what’s hiding in the green box? 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson