A tram excursion on a wet summer's day

Sometimes a photograph just defeats you.  Of all the images in the collection this is one of only a handful that has no accompanying notes or date.  Nor are there any reference points which could fix its location, time or purpose.

And so we are forced back on the picture.  It is a wet day sometime in the summer and I think in the early years of the last century. There are a lot of children who have been brought by a convoy of “special” trams so we are dealing with a big event.

Now they are all girls and so it would be logical to think that it might be an event linked to the Girl Guides.

The obvious venues for what seems such a large group must be the big parks, but one where the tram terminates.  This I think rules out Whitworth Park and Platt Fields.  Chorlton wasn’t laid out till the 1920s which just leaves Philips Park and Heaton Park.  Of course it could be somewhere in Salford but there my knowledge runs out. But I doubt it these are Manchester trams.

A a search of the Manchester Guardian for the first twenty years of the 20th century threw up large numbers of references.

My pal Allan Brown is working on the trams as a clue and I suppose there might be someone out there who can take the search further.  But at present the trail has petered away.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Charabancs and an older corrected story

Yesterday I had to admit I couldn’t unlock the story of a photograph. http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/day-photographer-took-picture-of.html


Sometime on a warm summers day a crowd had gathered around a charabanc and were captured by a photographer. I thought it must have been a local scene but had no luck in discovering the location, the people or the date. So I am indebted to fellow blogger pluralized who identified the street in Blackpool, the butcher Mr Carver and a possible date. All in all a pretty neat piece of detective work. The full details are there in the comments on yesterdays posting.

The charabanc was a horse drawn vehicle used for sightseeing and works outings usually to the countryside or seaside. They were usually open topped and were common in Britain in the early 20th century.

 In time the horse gave way to a motorised version which often had a detachable body so that when the summer season was over the vehicle could be used as a flat bed lorry.

They were not very comfortable and by the 1920s were being replaced by the coach. These might still have a canvas top but were far more comfortable.

I suppose the direct heirs of the charabanc are the works jollies or beanos and the touring coach holidays.

I have only been on one works outing which lived up to its reputation as a boozy affair with regular stops at pubs on the way to Brighton, followed by a fish and chip dinner, more pubs and the drive home. It had been organised by the chaps at my father’s garage and used one of the company coaches.

Dad worked for almost his entire career for a coach company called Glentons. Before and after the last war they specialised in inexpensive coach holidays across Britain and during the 1950s began tours of mainland Europe.

 He was one of the two drivers who did the “Continental runs," leaving on a Saturday morning and returning on a Friday night. I wrote about these in http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/swiss-and-italian-lakes-coach-tour-for.html


I cannot date the picture of Dad and the Glenton’s coach but it must be late 1930s or the immediate post-war years. With its open top it is a direct descendent of the old charabancs.

I have a fond memory of this coach because years later when the new fleet of coaches were being introduced a model of the old one came out of the showroom window and became a toy for most of my childhood.

Pictures; a horse drawn charabanc from the Lloyd collection, and Alan Simpson and a Glenton’s coach from the collection of Andrew Simpson