The picture of Annie Magee on Hawthorn Lane and that young Chorlton bandsman

Now if there is a simple lesson about old photographs it’s that you should never take them at face value.

So here is a picture from Peter McLoughlin's collection of family pictures which shows his mother Annie in 1925.

I was drawn to it the first time I saw it and it began the first of series of stories that feature those family albums.

But what I missed or more accurately ignored was the young man standing beside her.

I don’t know who he was or why he posed with young Annie and just assumed he was a young serviceman, but looking again at that uniform it seems far more elaborate and I think it is that of a bandsman and if pushed I think it might well be from our own Brass Band.

And that makes it rather special because there are very few pictures of our brass band which was at the centre of life in Chorlton from the mid 1820s till 1945.

Of course the Stalybridge Band is older and can claim to have marched in to St Peter’s Fields on the day of Peterloo but ours had an almost continuous run until it agreed to wind up after the last world war.

It performed in many of the great and not so great events here in the township and went on to win prizes in brass band competitions.

There are a few accounts of its founding in the 1820s and some more of when it reformed in 1850.

I know the names of some of the men who made up the early bands, along with the prizes they collected during the late 19th century and continue to come across newspaper reports of their activities.

The band neatly reflects the history of the township, starting as a small band whose members made some of their instruments including the drum which once made proved to big to get out of the cottage.

The early band was almost exclusively drawn from Methodists and most made their living from the land.

By the 1890s few of the members still worked the land, most worked in Manchester and most were either newcomers to the township or were first generation.

But so far I guess there are just half a dozen images of the band, some as they marched through Chorlton and one of them at Barlow Hall in 1893 but sadly that’s the lot.

All of which makes this picture of our young bandsmen so interesting and perhaps in time I will discover more about him.



Picture; Annie Magee and that unknown young man, 1925 from the collection of Peter McLoughlin and the Brass Band circa 1920 courtesy of Allan Brown

The story of one family in Chorlton ........... part 4 working at Brook Farm in the summer of 1927

It is easy to forget that just two generations ago we still had a number of independent dairies here in Chorlton and stories of being sent for milk at the farmer’s door is only now passing out of living memory.

Mr McLoughlin outside Brook Farm, 1927

The Bailey’s down at Park Brow Farm, Mr and Mrs Riley on Beech Road in the 1960s and Mrs Lomax at Hough End Hall two decades earlier were part of a local industry which stretched back into our rural past.

By the 20th century the dairies had lost most of their land but go back fifty or so years and most of them were part of bigger operations centered on cereals and market gardens.

And that brings me to Brook Farm which in the 1870s had been the home of the Holland family who farmed 54 acres and employed three men.

It stood on the north side of what is now Brookburn Road opposite the school and dates  from at least the late 18th century.

Brook Farm circa 1900

Back in 1847 the radical journalist Alexander Somerville stopped at Brook Farm and reported his conversation with Lydia Brown the tenant farmer who complained about the ash trees which grew around the fields  “which are not only objectionable as all other kinds are in and around cultivated fields but positively poisonous to other vegetation, and ran through the ground causing much waste of land, waste of fertility, and doing no good whatever.  Squire Lloyd is the landlord.  

Mrs Brown a widow, is the tenant.  She keeps the farm in excellent order so far as the landlord’s restrictions will allow.  But neither herself nor her workmen must ‘crop or lop top’ a single branch from the deleterious ash trees."

It was my old friend Lawrence who came across the orginal newspaper story and set me off researching the farm and more recently I have Peter McLoughlin to thank for offering up a wonderful collection of photographs of his father who worked at the dairy during the 1920s.

The Farm and dairy in 1927

Most of the pictures show Mr McLoughlin at work delivering milk and that makes them unique, because so far there are very few pictures of people at work here in the township and those we have tend to be by professional photographers who included workmen more by accident than design.

Now I can say that because they do not tend to be the subject of the photograph, rarely are caught up close and are never referred to.
But Peter’s pictures are different and they also record those working places which were unlikely to sell as postcards.

So I return to this one which includes part of the farm and dairy in 1927 and in the fullness of time will return with another showing the stables opposite the farm which is now part of Brookburn School.

Pictures; Mr Jim McLoughlin outside Brook Dairy in 1927, courtesy of Peter  McLoughlin  and the farm house circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection

The story of one family in Chorlton ........... part 3 down on Hawthorn Lane in 1925

Yesterday I stood on exactly the same spot where young Nellie Spencer posed for this picture in the summer of 1925 and as you do I looked for the changes brought about by the last ninety years.

And that corner had not faired so well.

To be fair it was bin day which always makes the road look untidy and back in 1925 these houses were no more than twenty years old.

That said it’s not so different today.  There are more trees in the distance and the back wall to the right of Nellie has undergone some change but remarkably the telegraph post is still there although it seems to have shifted a little in the space of nearly a century.

And to confound all those who whinge on about how our streets are far more untidy today I have to say that generally there is a lot less litter than on the streets in 2015 which is an unscientific observation based purely  on comparing pictures of Chorlton in the first decades of the last century with now.

And that is the value of pictures like this which challenge some of our preconceptions of the past.

But to really get to understand the photograph you have to be able to talk to someone who was there.

Now that is next to impossible given the date but it can be possible to do the next best thing and have the image explained by a member of the family who knew Nellie and who remembers being told about the picture.

And here I have been lucky because Nellie was the aunt of Peter McLoughlin who has begun sharing his collection of family photographs.

In the course of the conversation he pointed to the young lad staring across at Nellie and the photographer.

He was a “Nipper” working for Brooks Dairy down on Brookburn Road.  The term was unfamiliar but of course it perfectly describes our young man who will have been his mid teens possibly engaged on his first job.

And of course as was the time he is delivering the milk in small tin jars and wears those leather leggings.

And by one of those odd turns of coincidence her future brother in law also worked for Brooks Dairy.

All of which is part of the value of the collection for not only do we have the images but the names, dates and stories behind each one.

So I know that this family shot was taken in 1925 in back of 67 Hawthorn Lane and staring back at are Mr and Mrs Spencer, Annie who was fifteen and Agnes and Nellie.

On one level there may appear nothing remarkable about it but I know something about each of the five people, and how their lives were lived out in Chorlton.

On the death of her first husband Peter’s grandmother married Mr Spencer who was a regimental sergeant major and in 1913 they moved to India where Adele was born.Annie married Jim McLoughlin in 1945 and the family moved to Stockport where Peter was born.

All of which makes this such a unique Chorlton collection.

Pictures; from the collection of Peter McLoughlin

Net curtains, venetian blinds and that horseman on Brookburn Road .......... Chorlton in the 1920s and 30s

More than anything it’s the detail that draws you in to this photograph of Annie  and Nelly  outside 67 Hawthorn Road in the spring of 1930.

It starts with those net curtains which had been a badge of respectable living from the early years of the last century and would only be swept away by the new look of the 1950s.

I remember them well but more than the curtains it’s those blinds, made of slated wood which made a distinctive clunk when you raised or lowered them.

They filled the windows along with the nets and of course those heavy plush curtains which between them were required features of any surbuban home no matter however modest.

And each in their way made perfect sense.

In an age before central heating the heavier the curtains the better to keep the place warm in winter, while the blinds were essential for houses modifying the full strength of the sun in summer.

Today we might find the nets a tad over fancy but this was still a more private time when displaying the contents of your front room was regarded as more than a bit ostentatious.

The only concession to the seasons was that in some homes at least the heavy curtains came down in summer for lighter ones around the time the sweep would be called in to do the chimneys.

It is a way of life which has pretty much gone, along with the iron railings that topped the small front walls and could be as elaborate as these at number 67 and with that care for detail the gate’s design mirrored perfectly the railings.

And back when Annie and Nelly posed for the camera their home was less than thirty years old and had been part of that housing explosion which had turned Chorlton from a rural community to a suburb of Manchester.

But this was still a period of transition when the sight of a man on a horse was unlikely to turn a head.

We still had farmers who used horses to cart their produce from the fields while plenty of tradesmen transported their good across the township by horse drawn vans.

All of which is a lead in to Jim Mcloughlin sitting astride a horse by Brookburn Road.

Behind him is Brook Dairy which long before it  specialized in milk had been a farm dating back into the 18th century.
I am not sure when the farmhouse was demolished but it should be easy enough to find out by trawling the directories although I doubt that any one will remember its passing.

It will I suspect date from the when the dairy was taken over by Express Dairies which have now also gone leaving the site to be redeveloped into a row of modern houses,

That said there will be plenty who remember the yard, and on reflection I wish I had asked for that big sign which reminded drivers to be mindful of the neighbours.

After all the residents of the houses next door would still have been asleep when the crates of milk were being loaded onto the floats.

And that is now as much a part of our past as horses on Brookburn Road and net curtains up by Hawthorn Road.

Pictures; from the collection of Peter McLoughlin.

The story of one family in Chorlton ........... Jim and Annie McLoughlin

This is young Annie Magee aged fifteen in 1923 outside her home on what is now Ivy Green Road.

Miss Annie Magee in 1923

It comes from a wonderful collection of photographs belonging to Peter McLoughlin whose parents lived and worked in Chorlton during the first half of the last century.

Miss Magee was Peter’s mother.  She was born in 1910, and married his father in 1946.

Mr McLoughlin had lived at Brook Farm Dairy from 1920 and included in the collection are “pictures my Father with the horses outside the dairy which became Dobsons and latterly Express before its demolition.

Dad lived away for three years during the war and when he came back to the dairy got married to Mum in 1946. He then took over the Stockport Dairy and I was born in Stockport in 1950.”

So there you have it the start of a new series featuring a collection of pictures which Peter has agreed to share and what’s more has the stories behind each one.

Now that doesn’t always happen.  Most of the ones I come across are just pictures without that personal aspect.

They tend to be either commercial photographs which were posed and were sold on to picture postcard companies or are long forgotten snaps found at the back of a cupboard  without a date or even a name to identify the place or the individual.

But Peter’s are different and point to just how important it is to preserve both the images and the stories which come with them.

Jim McLoughlin in 1927

All of which is the start of a new series which with Peter’s permission will feature more of the collection and dig deep into the history of Chorlton and his family.

After all the diary has long gone replaced by a set of smart town houses, and as memories fade it will not be that long before even the existence of Brook Dairy/Dobson’s/Express Diaries are lost forever.

Equally there will few left who now know that long before it was a dairy it was a farm stretching back into the early part of the 19th century and most likely established during the century before.

But those are stories for another time.

Pictures; Annie Magee in1923, Jim McLoughlin in 1927 at 106 Chorltonville, courtesy of Peter McLoughlin