Back on the streets of Ashton-Under-Lyne in the 19th century

Victorian Ashton, 1974

I have fond memories of Ashton-Under-Lyne.

It was where I lived for three years in a small terraced house off Penny Meadow and it suited me just fine.

It was after all about as far away from south Manchester as you could go and the life of a student which had been my lot for four years.

But above all for someone interested in 19th century history it had the lot.  Here were the mills, a canal and a fine market hall and the old PSA building.*

Now I know that if I had washed up in Oldham, Rochdale or any one of a number of the mills towns in the region I would have found something of the same, but Ashton was where we lived and it was Ashton’s industrial and social past that we explored in the mid 1970s.

It was a place which really came into its own during the 19th century.  So while it had been a market town since 1284 it remained a small place until the Industrial Revolution.

Its population in 1775 was about five thousand and according to one account the town was contained in “four narrow dark streets formed by mean looking dwellings.”**

But during the last quarter of the 18th century and the first four decades of the 19th it rapidly expanded as the textile industries were developed.

So the population increased and in just fifteen years from 1827 “the place has been rapidly augmented; .... the banks of the canal and the Tame are now lined by numerous streets; the area betwixt Old Street and Charlestown is nearly built upon, and a portion of it forms  a spacious Market-place, on the north side of which is erected an elegant Town Hall; the fields formerly bordering on the north of the Old Cross have been transformed into street avenues; the east side of the Rectory has received a large accession of habitations, the west side of Oldham Road is become a portion of the town; and the vicinities of Henry-square and St Peter’s Church abound with edifices.”***

Ashton, 1841-54

It is a story which has been told in part but for me one of the most excellent and enduring accounts is that of Victorian Ashton which as the Preface says, is not so much a history of Ashton in the 19th century but “a collection of essays dealing with aspects of life at the time, and a record of what remains of the period today.”****

I bought it back in 1974 when it was first published and regularly go back to it. It includes articles on 19th century housing, the Churches and Chapels, leisure and Industrial Archaeology along with descriptions of Chartist activity and individuals like Hugh Mason.

Ashton in 1834

In the almost forty years since the publication of Victorian Ashton, the town has changed a lot and some of the places featured in the book will have gone.

Rereading the section on the Industrial Archaeology of Ashton-under-Lyne by Owen Ashmore is to be reminded of just how much of the economic and industrial landscape has altered in the last four decades.

Likewise the account of the town’s 19th century housing by Sylvia A. Harrop is a wonderful record of what was and still is.

Ashton in 1821

So I am rather pleased that I still have my forty year old copy of Victorian Ashton, and equally pleased that it is still available from Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre.*****

What is all the more remarkable is that while I paid 75p for it in 1974, it still retails for just a £1, which I reckon has got to be a major incentive to get a copy.

Pictures; Victorian Ashton, courtesy of Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre, population increase taken from Nineteenth Century Housing in Ashton, Sylvia Harrop, Victorian Ashton, and detail of the town centre from the OS map for Lancashire, 1841-54, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ extracts of Ashton in the 1830s from Butterworth Edwin, A Historical Account of the towns of Ashton-Under-Lyne, Stalybridge and Duckinfield,


*Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Brotherhood, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/tram-and-pleasant-sunday-afternoon.html
**Butterworth Edwin, A Historical Account of the towns of Ashton-Under-Lyne, Stalybridge and Duckinfield, 1842, page 52
***ibid Butterworth, page 54
**** Victorian Ashton, Ed by Sylvia A. Harrop and E.A. Rose, Tameside Libraries and Arts Committee 1974
*****Tameside Local Studies and Archives Centre, Central Library, Old Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, OL6 7SG, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/archives

Looking up the old Corpoartion Baths on Henry Square in Ashton-Under-Lyne

It is one of those simple things that so often you don’t see what is just in front of your eyes, and this pretty much is all I can say about the old Corporation baths in Henry Square.

I must have passed them countless times but never gave them a second glance, and to be honest to my abiding shame knew nothing of their history or their closure in 1975 and it has taken this painting by Peter Topping and a fair bit of coverage in local social media sites to alert me to their story.

According to that excellent site Ashton-Under-Lyne.com, “they were opened in 1870 at a cost of £16,000. 

It was one of the first and largest municipal swimming baths.

The building, designed by Henry Paul and George Robinson, is constructed almost entirely of brick, with some stone decoration. It was built in a Byzantine style and has a 120 feet high tower which housed the flues from the steam boilers and heaters.

Sixty per cent of the building was occupied by the main Swimming Bath. 

The pool was 100 feet long and 40 feet wide and was originally used mainly by male bathers, with a three hour period on Thursdays for ladies.

In the eastern section of the building was a smaller pool, 27 feet long and 15 feet wide, for the use of female bathers. 

During the winter months, when the main bath was closed, the smaller pool was used by men and women at different times. 

There were also private bathrooms and Turkish baths. Part of the building was used as a police station and a station for one fire engine.

When the baths were built, the pools did not have a water filtration system, but were refilled weekly, making use of the water supply from the newly-opened Swineshaw Reservoir. 

The water was replaced on Tuesdays. The charge for swimming was six pence on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, but only two pence from Friday to Monday, when the water was somewhat dirtier! 

A water filtration plant was eventually installed in 1915.”*

And that is all I am going to quote,  because in line with my often rehearsed line on these things if someone else has done the research and written up the story to them goes all the credit  and so if you want more you must visit Ashton-Under-Lyne.com

Painting; Corporation Baths, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

*Ashton-Under-Lyne.com,
http://www.ashton-under-lyne.com/history/baths.htm

Down at the Portland Basin in Ashton-Under-Lyne admiring the Cavendish Mill

Now I collect old textile mills which I am the first to admit is not as easy as stamp collecting.

Cavendish Mill, © 2014 Peter Topping

More so because with every year that passes more of these monuments to our industrial heritage vanish although today there is a growing trend to convertt them in to residential properties which at least preserves them.

My own special haunt is Ancoats but as I lived in Ashton I had to add the Cavendish Mill to the collection.

By one of those rare coincidences we were down at the Portland Basin in the summer and not much later Peter Topping made the same journey and in the process painted this image of the old mill posting on a number of sites, with the accompanying comment that "the Cavendish Spinning Company Limited was registered in 1884 with the sole purpose of building the Cavendish Cotton Mill. 

Taking on a fireproof design it was the first mill in Ashton to have concrete floors and a flat roof. 

On the canal side it is 6 floors high, and 5 floors on the other sides. Its main feature is the octagonal staircase that... But wait a minute... What am I doing writing this!!! As local historian Andrew Simpson says he tells the stories and Peter paints the pictures. So I am going to have to stop there and leave you to look at the painting and soon after Christmas Andrew has promised to tell the story.”

All of which was a challenge I couldn’t refuse.

The mill continued spinning cotton until 1934 but remained in industrial use until 1976 and has now been converted offering a mix of residential commercial and community use.

All of which was information fairly easily available but as ever I wandered off looking for a something more.

And there it was in a directory for cotton mills in Ashton-Under-Lyne for 1891 which told me that had I been in the Royal Exchange in Manchester between 1 and 1.30 each week day I could have met with the agents of the company with a view to buying some cotton.

I may even go looking for the exact spot where I could have done the business because the entry listed them at “No., 10 Pillar” and no doubt I could also have listened as the agents proudly told me that they had "72,000 spindles, 328/408 twist and 168/468 weft.”

Now that is the sort of fascinating detail to add to my collector’s picture.

Painting; Cavendish Mill, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Living in a two up two down house any time from the 1890s

Behind the houses, 1979

The two up two down terraced house remains a feature of most of our towns and cities.  

Most were built in the mid 19th century onwards, some were adapted from older two roomed back to backs and some were altered to add another room, or the addition of an extension.

But across the country, particularly in the north and the midlands they were and still are a major part of the housing stock.

And many of us will have close connections to them. My mother and grandparents lived in one in Derby, and the first house I bought was a two up two down mid terrace in Ashton -Under- Lyne.

Now this is no romantic descent into some warm cosy nostalgic commentary on two up two downs.  They are fine for those starting out together when there is just the two of you with an option on a baby but cannot have been fun for a large family.

After all where do you put everybody?  Not that this was ever a new problem.  Overcrowding both in the towns and cities as well as the countryside has always been the lot of many working families.

12 Hope Street, Derby, circa 1930s

Back in rural areas in the 19th century parents fell on a range of strategies.

Where possible some of the children stayed with relatives or deals were struck with neighbours who involved families with boys and girls sharing out the children and setting up single sex bedrooms in each other’s houses.

And if none of that was possible it was down to the blanket across the room dividing the area in two.*

All of which brings me back to the house in Ashton -Under -Lyne.  It was the usual model.  You walked in off the street into the front room and directly facing you was the door to the back room.  In our case the stairs ran from the very back of the second room up to a small landing and the two upstairs rooms, one of which had been divided to take a bath room.

Almost all the original features had gone and so it was impossible to know what the downstairs fireplaces had been like, the design of the range or even the doors, for all of them including the front door had that 1950s makeover which involved a sheet of hardboard which was nailed on.

Outside at the rear we had a yard with the lavatory and beside it the gate to the alley.

12 Hope Street, Derby, 1926

Back in 1911, our house with its four rooms had been home to James and Catherine Porter, their four children and James’s sister.

And here really is what must have been a problem, for the Porter’s had a ten year old daughter, two sons aged 3 and 2 and a baby and then there was Elizabeth Porter the 39 year old sister.

Now I cannot be sure but I suspect the problem had only recently become more complicated, because Elizabeth had been living with her father who had died the year before and we can only guess how they all fitted in.

And there we pretty much have to leave the family.  Elizabeth was working as a cotton winder in a local mill and so may have found alternative accommodation or maybe they all adapted and made the best they could.

The house is still there and while many of these two up two downs have been cleared away, plenty more are still doing the business.

Ours dated from sometime at the end of the 19th or the very beginning of the 20th century and like so many it was built within sight of the local mill and what had been a colliery.

Just across from the house along Whiteacre Road, there were three coal pits and two reservoirs all gone now although when we were there the site was still just a landscaped hill.

Picture; Behind the houses, 1979, back yard of 12 Hope Street, circa 1930 and 1926, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Reports of the Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women & Children in Agriculture in England, HMSO, 1843