A history of Chorlton in just 20 objects number 12 ....... an engraved silver cup 1917

Continuing the  story of Chorlton in just a paragraph. They are in no particular order, and have been selected purely at random.

Presented to the Wesleyan Church by the Wounded Soldiers of the Wesleyan School Hospital Xmas 1917.  I doubt whether many people know that during the Great War we had two voluntary hospitals here in Chorlton.   One was in the Methodist Sunday school building on Manchester Road and the other in the Sunday School of the MacLaren Memorial Baptist Church on the corner of Wilbraham and Sibson Road.  Sadly little has survived in the form of records.  We have a few newspaper references, letters from some of the medical staff and patients, and a contemporary account in a Red Cross book of the work undertaken to care for the recovering soldiers. So this silver engraved cup is an important object recording not only the gratitude of the soldiers but the voluntary efforts of the people of Chorlton.






Picture; courtesy of Philip Lloyd

Never be surprised at what you find on Wilbraham Road ............. nurses and Red a Cross Hospital

Now this is just the start of that story of a Red Cross hospital on Wilbraham Road and at this stage I have no idea where it will lead.

Until recently I knew that during the Great War the Red Cross ran two hospitals in Chorlton, one in the Sunday school of the Baptist Church on Edge Lane and the other in the Sunday School on Manchester Road.

The first opened in 1914 and the second must date from sometime in 1916 or 1917.

But given the demand for hospital beds I have always wondered if there were not more.

Just down the road in Whalley Range and south into Didsbury a number of private homes were given over to the Red Cross so it seemed logical that Chorlton must have had its own share of smaller Red Cross establishments.

That said none have turned up in the records of which the best is a book by the Red Cross on their work in east Lancashire which offers up a wealth of detail about the hospitals they ran.

But the book was published in 1916 and concentrates on those hospitals which had been set up between 1914-15 and so while the hospital on Edge Lane is included the one on Manchester Road is absent.

So I was intrigued when Pawel Lech Michalczyk told me that “the house next to the Chorlton Conservative Club is listed as a hospital in 1917.  It was Wycombe, and described as an auxiliary military hospital in the 1917 Slater's street directory.”

Now that set me off looking and back in 1911 Wycombe was home to Mr and Mrs Barnes, their four children and Miss Mary Jane Williams who was 27 and employed as a domestic servant.

Mr Williams described himself a “Merchant” and is listed in the 1911 directory as the “Managing Directory of James Barnes Ltd.”

Now Wycombe is a big house which was described as having 12 rooms making it large enough to have been run as a small auxiliary hospital.

And that is where the story stops, but I rather think it will only be a pause.

Picture;  picture postcard possibly Willow Bank Red Cross Hospital, circa 1914 courtesy of David Harrop,

Discovering those who cared for the sick and wounded in Chorlton during the Great War

I have moved just a little closer to some of the men and women who served during the Great War.

And it comes from a database by the Red Cross which has put  on line its records from the Great War.

Even before the war started the Red Cross had made preparations for coping with the large numbers of wounded who would be returning from the battlefields.

So when the conflict did begin voluntary hospitals were established across the country.
Some were in school halls, and others in private houses and relied on the voluntary support of the local community.

Here in Chorlton we had two, one on Edge Lane in the Sunday School of the McLaren Baptist Church and the other in the Methodist Sunday School on Manchester Road and across south Manchester there were more.

Until recently I knew little of the men and women who served in the hospitals.

I had one list for the first year of the war of those who worked at the Baptist Church a few names from newspaper correspondence and the odd record of some of the administrators.

But the Red Cross records will bring them out of the shadows, for along with their names and addresses there are brief details of what they did.

Some are more detailed than others so those for Eltham in south east London describe particular duties. So I know that Miss Ada Fanny Boultbee, assisted the “sick & wounded, did  convoy duty. Well Hall Station any time day and night at 1. 1/2 hours notice. tea. Coffee, milk, ready.”

And provided a wealth of detail
“August 5th 1914. Struck Divisional Camp at Chichester. 7. 1914. Organizing Hos: cores: Soldiers & Sailors Institute Woolwich. 30th. 1914- Accepted responsibility of sick & wounded Convoy Duty Well Hall. Col: Stephenson with request for same from Col. Simpson. Herbert Hos:- Sept. 7th. 1914 First Convoy. 3/4 hour notice. All ready. 16 -1914 Mobilized by Col. Stephenson at "Cathay" Eltham. S.E. B.R.X.S. Brassard No.7. A.M.S. July - 1917 Demolized. Col: Simpson' of opinion that that Sick & Wounded Convoy Duty at Well Hall Station was no longer rec. under altered conditions of transport. Ada St.John. Boultbee. Hon. Comdt L /26.”

Sadly those for Chorlton are less detailed but there is still a suprising amount of information.
Some worked at the Baptist Church and another at Manchester Road while the rest were spread out across Whalley Range and Didsbury with one at the  2nd Western General Hospital in town.

So far the Red Cross has only published surnames from A to B but that has still revealed twelve Chorlton people and tow of those I have tracked on the census for 1911.

In time it will be possible to find out much more about their backgrounds and what happened to them after the war which in turn will throw light on the degree to which Chorlton did its bit.

But I do know that Frank Burrows of 71 Reynard Road was engaged in   March 1917.

He was 25 years old  was paid 35 shillings a week and was an orderley at Didsbury  College Hospital.

Before the war he had worked as an insurance clerk.

And Miss Mabel Coatman also 25 of the Lyndale on Barlow Moor Road worked at Lancaster House Hospital in Whalley Range as a support assistant.

So it is all there to be found.


Pictures; doctors and nurses and men from the Red Cross Hospital of Wood Lawn in Didsbury circa 195, courtesy of Rob Mellor, and the Edge Lane Red Cross Hospital circa 1924,  from the Lloyd collection

*British Red Cross,  http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War

The Red Cross hospitals of Chorlton during the Great War

G.B.Simpson and friends, circa 1918

The Great War has now passed from living memory. 

A conflict which claimed ten million dead, blighted the lives of millions more, and which is commemorated in towns and villages across the country has now really become a piece of history.

 Here in Chorlton there are a number of war memorials including one in the grounds of the Methodist Church on Manchester Road another in the parish church and a few more including that in Southern Cemetery. 

There are familiar local names and in some cases more than one member of the same family.

Few however now know of the contribution that was made by people in the township to those young men who were wounded and were cared for in Chorlton and Whalley Range.

 Soon after the war began the Sunday school halls at the McLaren Baptist Church on Edge Lane and the Methodist Church on Manchester Road were turned over to convalescent hospitals.

The story of the first year of the military hospital in the Sunday school of the MacLaren Memorial Baptist Church on the corner of Wilbraham and Sibson Road was written up by the East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross as part of “An Illustrated Account of the Work of the Branch During the First Year of the War.”*

The McLaren Memorial Church circa 1920

It represented a massive commitment on the part of the 16,000 Chorlton people.

The number of voluntary nurses and orderlies ran to 89 and another 70 worked at some point in the kitchen. 

There were also regular fund raising activities, loans of equipment and twice weekly ward concerts.

 More than anything it shows the level to which the war effort was supported and funded by voluntary actions.

 Like many churches of the period it had a large Sunday school and it was this which was converted into the hospital in November 1914.

 “a ward of 31 beds, kitchens, mess room, bath room, dispensary, pack stores, linen rooms, matrons’ room and office” all of which were on the ground floor.

The building was large enough to accommodate

The Sunday School to the left, converted into a hospital

The original plan had been for 25 beds but in May 1915 an extra six beds were added.

What is astounding is that the cost of equipping the hospital which came to £140 was met by public subscription after an appeal for funds from the local Red Cross, and that this was “in addition to the liberal amount of hospital appurtenances so freely furnished on loan by the public.”

Nor did the generosity stop there. For while the War Office allowance for each man per day was 2 shillings [10p], the average cost for the upkeep per bed was 25 shillings [£1.25p]which again was met by the public through “subscriptions, donations and the proceeds of entertainments.”

Uknown soldier

During that first year of the war 159 volunteers worked at the hospital and all but four came from the township.

There are many familiar names, some whose families had been in the township for generations.

Ann Higginbotham aged 22 was the daughter of Alfred and Emily whose family had farmed by the green since the 1840’s.

There were also newer names like H. F. Dawson and A. H. Dawson or the Kemps. Miss Kemp worked in the kitchen while Harry her father was on the committee. He had two chemists’ shops and would be remembered for over half a century by Kemp’s Corner.

*Chorlton-cum-Hardy Red Cross Hospital, East Lancashire Branch of the British Red Cross Society Sherratt & Hughes, 1916

Pictures; The McLaren Memorial Baptist Church, Edge Lane, from the Lloyd Collection, G.B.Simpson, and friends circa 1918 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Revealing more on the story of Private Jordan .............. from Cheltenham to Cairo

This is one of those sad postscripts, but one that holds the promise of discovering more about a soldier of the Great War.

Cairo War Memorial Cemetery

Yesterday I wrote about Private H F Jordan who spent time recovering from his wounds in the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.*

During his time there he left a message in the autograph book which had been started by Ms Rachel Wattis.

But apart from a record of the medals he was awarded and an entry in the UK Army Register of Soldier’s Effects I could find nothing more about him.

Today I heard from David Harrop who owns the autograph book.  He had also gone looking for Private Jordan and found his grave in Cairo where he was buried in February 1919.

“This cemetery is within the Old Cairo cemetery area, which is situated approximately 5 kilometres south east of the centre of Cairo. 

The cemetery area is on the south side of the road Salah Salem, which runs west/east from the River Nile towards the green park area approximately 2 kilometres beyond and eventually towards the Citadel.”**

And Private Jordan rests close to the Records Office.

The message from Private Jordan, December 1916

We still have no idea how he died but we now have his full name and his date of birth and armed with these it should be possible to find out a little bit more about Frederick Thomas Harry Jordan who died aged 26 in Egypt four months after the end of the Great War.

And in doing so take the story of that message in the autograph book just a little further forward.

Picture; Cairo War Memorial Cemetery, courtesy of the Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY and Private Jordan's message from Blighty, the autograph book of St John's Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham from the collection of David Harrop

Image from the autograph book, © David Harrop


*Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 2 looking for Private H F Jordan, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/blighty-unique-record-from-great-war.html

**CAIRO WAR MEMORIAL CEMETERY, Commonwealth War Graves Commissions, http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/11000/CAIRO%20WAR%20MEMORIAL%20CEMETERY

Continuing the search for Miss Robertson of Cheltenham ........ born in India, who tended the wounded in the Great War

Now I know I will find out more about Miss Kathleen Roberts, but I fear it won’t be yet.

And that is a shame because I have now seen the medals she was awarded by the Red Cross for her work during the Great War.

The little I do know is intriguing enough.  She was born in Coonar in Maddras which was one of the hill stations favoured by the British during the hot season in India, her maternal grandmother came from Tasmania and was the widow of an Indian army officer who brought her children up in Cheltenham.

So I wasn’t surprised that this was where I found Miss Robertson in the April of 1911 and it made sense that she should be working in a Red Cross hospital in the town.

But that pretty much is it.

There were promising leads.  I found a Kathleen Robertson on the shipping lists for India both going out and coming back in 1934 but on closer inspection this was not her.

I found three of her aunts and an uncle and am still looking for more on her grandmother, Agnes Baker but  the trail stops at 1872.

In that year  Mrs Baker was in India.  This I know because three of her children were born there between 1872 and 1877, while her final child was born in Cheltenham in 1879.

What of course is revealing is the light it shines on those families who served the Empire.  Mrs Baker had been born in Tasmania but lived part of her married life in India briefly coming back in 1873 when she gave birth to her fourth child.

Some of the records for both her and her granddaughter will be in India and so may prove more difficult to access and I have yet to find any references to Miss Robertson’s parents but in time they will tumble out of the shadows.

The real search however is for young Miss Robertson, after all now that I have seen her medals I must go on.

Pictures; the Red Cross medals of Miss Kathleen Robertson, courtesy of David Harrop 

*Red Cross Nurses, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Nurses

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 4 setting the story straight

Ms Wattis explains

Now I am no where nearer finding out anything more about Ms Rachael Wattis who in the August of 1916 opened an autograph book for the patients of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.

It is a unique record of some of the men who spent time in the hospital, comprising 29 entries ranging from poems, and pictures to short passages expressing gratitude for the care the men received

The hospital which wasn't St John's

It comes from the collection of David Harrop who maintains a permanent exhibition of memorabilia from the Great War at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery.

So far I have been able to find out something about three of the men who made a contribution in the book and in time it should be possible to find out something about the remaining twenty-seven along with the two Red Cross personnel who are also mentioned.

But today this is a correction because in the first of the stories I included a picture of what I thought was the Red Cross Hospital

St John's Red Cross Hospital

It was an easy enough mistake to make given that it showed a group of Red Cross nurses and soldiers and was with the autograph book.

It is a Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham and just maybe Ms Wattis is amongst the staff but it is not St John’s

And this I know because of help from the   Cheltenham Local & Family History Library who kindly supplied me with an image of the hospital along with some more taken from a copy of a local newspaper.*

At which point I do have to express my thanks to local history and studies centres which are often the first point of call when attempting to tell a story, especially when that story takes off all over the country.

Inside St John's

So I owe a special debt of gratitude to the archivist at East Dunbartonshire who helped me solve the mystery of how a photograph of a cinema in Chorlton taken in 1920 could end up in Scotland, a special thanks to the Derby library who brought some of my family out of the shadows and to Greenwich and Manchester who I use a lot and never tell me to go away.

And so to Cheltenham where amongst their records was that picture of the Red Cross hospital from the Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic of July 31 1915.

And there is no way that the picture I originally thought was St John’s can be so because it had been a school which quite clearly my picture is not.

All of which is confirmed by the remaining images from the Cheltenham Chron which show what were either very large classrooms or the school hall, none of which would have fitted inside the grand house on my postcard.

And the added bonus is that the newspaper provided more staff names which can be followed up and perhaps reveal a link to Ms Wattis.

Average duration of patients in St John's, 1915-1919

Nor is that all for there is also the final report on St John’s from the Red Cross covering the four years from when it opened in June 1915 through till its close in January 1919.**

It had been equipped to take 160 patients which were “increased to 180, [and] was exceptionally well adapted for a hospital having no stairs; its proximity to both railway stations ..... and on several occasions individual cases on ambulance trains, too desperately ill to proceed to the North, were detrained in Cheltenham and brought to St John.”**

In time it will be useful to compare this report with the one we have for one of our Red Cross hospitals here in Chorlton, and of course it will send me off into Cheltenham to explore some of those who kept St John going.

Above all the report offers a context for those 29 entries.  I know that 2995 men passed through the hospital and that only 15 died and it may be that some at least of the 29 had stays matching the averages for 1916 and 1917.

It is only a start but we are a little closer to those men and women who spent their time in St John’s

Additional research from Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109250/Cheltenham-Local-and-Family-History-Centre

Entry from Blighty, © David Harrop

Picture; Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic July 31 1915, courtesy of Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk

* Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, http://www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/archives/article/109250/Cheltenham-Local-and-Family-History-Centre

**St John’s V.A. Hospital Glos, 108 final Report from the Red Cross in Gloucestershire 1914-1919 quoted from, St. John's VA hospital Cheltenham http://www.angelfire.com/az/garethknight/redcross/stjohns.html

Miss Kathleen Robertson, a Red Cross hospital in Cheltenham and a hill station in India

I am off looking for the story of Ms Kathleen Robertson.

The Nilgiri Hills

She was a nurse with the Red Cross in Cheltenham during the Great War and her medals have just been acquired by David Harrop who has a collection of memorabilia from both world wars.

David was keen to add theses to the collection because they compliment an autograph book from the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham which was started in 1916 and ran through to the end of the war.

The book contains poems, pictures and comments from men recovering from wounds.  Some of the men were wounded at Gallipoli and others in the opening weeks of the Battle of the Somme.

Now I think I have found her in Cheltenham in 1911, and already the story has taken a fascinating turn.  She was born in 1897 at Coonoor in Madras which  is the second highest hill station in the Nilgiri mountains. It was a popular summer and weekend getaway for the British during the colonial days.

And I suspect that her mother will have chosen to settle there for Kathleen’s birth.
Now that is a bit of a supposition but in 1911 she was living with her grandmother at 29 Park Place Cheltenham.

All of which would suggest that her parents were still in India.

So there is much still to do from tracking her mother and father, discovering  more about Miss Robertson’s time the Red Cross and what happened to her after the Great War.

This will I hope involve the help of the local studies centre in Cheltenham who may be able to locate the staff list of the hospital.  As yet the Red Cross have yet to digitize all their staff records and I am hoping the centre will be able to find her.


And along the way I might find out more about her grandmother who was born in Tasmania.

In the meantime I await David’s pictures of Miss Robertson’s medals.

Picture; Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu  http://www.flickr.com/photos/enchant_me/144986171/sizes/o/ , his file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en, no changes were made to this image

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 2 looking for Private H F Jordan

This was the message that Private H F Jordan left in the autograph book of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham.*

He was recovering from wounds in December 1916 and as a mark of his gratitude he wrote a short thank you to the nurse who had cared for him.

He was one of 29 men recovering from wounds sustained in Gallipoli and on the Somme who left a mix of messages from poems, drawings, paintings and short comments.

In the fullness of time it should be possible to find out something about each of these 29 and the nurses who are also mentioned in the book.

So far a search for Private H F Jordan has revealed that he received the British War Medal and the Victory Medal and that he died in March 1920.

I know he served in the Essex Regiment and that there is an entry for him in the UK Army Register of Soldier’s Effects and that is all.

But there will be more.

Already I know  a little more about the hospital and in time with the help of Cheltenham Local Studies Centre we should have a series of photographs which will give a greater context to the time he spent in Cheltenham.

Picture; the entry of Private H F Jordan, December 1916 from Blighty, the autograph book of St. John's Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham from the collection of David Harrop

*Blighty, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Blighty

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 1 with a bit more from Canada

I am looking at a picture of the staff and patients of the St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham on July 1915.

And somewhere on the photograph maybe Rachel Wattis who in the following year later bought a sketch pad from J.J.Banks & Son which became an autograph book used by the men convalescing from their wounds.

They contributed poems, comments and sketches and reading them on this warm sunny day in June is to be taken back in an instant to that hospital and to the men recovering from wounds received the year before at Gallipoli and many more from the Battle of the Somme which was still in full swing.

In the fullness of time I will go looking for Rachel Wattis.  As yet the Red Cross have not completed their mammoth task of putting all their personnel from the Great War on line and so far a search for Ms Wattis has revealed only a possible candidate leaving in Birmingham in 1911.

Likewise I will also look for the identities of the men who left a contribution partly to satisfy my own curiosity but also because I think it is important.

After all by sheer luck the autograph book has survived a century and it is important that the men and women who made the book should be recorded and something of their lives before and after 1916 brought out of the shadows.

So this is just the first of a series of posts which tries to explore the stories of these people caught up in one of the great events of the last century.

And from those pages I have selected two entries, neither of which I have researched yet.

I could have chosen others including that of Private A E Dunn of the Border Regiment whose poem on Gallipoli was written in November 1916 and recorded the exploits of the 11th Division “who landed at Sulva Bay

They were part of Kitcheners Army
Some left children and wives
To fight for England’s freedom
And they fought for their very lives”

But for today it is the sketches of J Wilson who like one of my uncles was in the Argyle and Sutherland Regiment and a Sergeant from the 47th Canadian Infantry wounded at Vimy Ridge on January 3rd 1917.

He too has a personal connection because my great uncle was also serving with the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

And there I think is one of those simple and obvious observations that most of us will have a relative who served either in the armed forces, the Red Cross or another of the voluntary organisations during that conflict.

It is luck that this book has survived but also a tribute to David Harrop who acquired it and has kindly lent it to me so that some of the stories of those who filled its pages can be researched and told.

And soon after this was posted I recieved a message from a fellow Canadian researcher who had gone looking for the young soldier from the 47th Canadian Infantry.

Barb Torres discovered that he had enlisted in 1915, was 30 years old, from Vancouver and because the records of men from Canada who fought in the Great War are intact it will be possible to uncover his full military record.*

Now apart from the excitement of taking the story one step further it points yet again to that degree of co-operation between researchers and historians which advances our common knowledge.

I rather think Ms Wattis would be pleased and endorses her comments on the opening page of the autograph book, "When the leaves of this Book are yellow with age and the fingers  are still that have wrote on this page, those sweet to remember the dear ones of old whose friendship you prize more than silver or gold." 

Picture; St John’s Red Cross Hospital in Cheltenham Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic July 31 1915, courtesy of Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk and pages from Blighty, the autograph book of the men recovering in the hospital, from the collection of David Harrop and the Attestation Paper, courtesy of Library and Archives Canada,

With additional research from Barb Torres

*Library and Archives Canada,
http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/first-world-war-1914-1918-cef/Pages/image.aspx?Image=286018a&URLjpg=http%3A%2F%2Fdata2.archives.ca%2Fcef%2Fgpc002%2F286018a.gif&Ecopy=286018a

And a thank you to Cheltenham Local & Family History Library, cheltlocalstudies@gloucestershire.gov.uk

Mr Walter Mather, hospital orderly and his fascinating vesta case

This is a vesta case which was used for carrying matches.

They date from the 1830s and became particularly popular at the end of the 19th century and the early 20th, which fits perfectly with this one, which belonged to Mr Walter Mather.

The inscription records that he was awarded the case “in recognition of services at Woodlawn Hospital, 1914-19”.

Woodlawn was a Red Cross Hospital for men from the armed services recovering from wounds and illnesses.

It is a place I have written about quite extensively. *

It had been a private residence before the Great War and was handed over by its owner to the Red Cross for the duration of the conflict.

It was still there in Didsbury until relatively recently and there are those who have told me they knew the building when it was a private school.

That part of its history has yet to be revealed, and along with it, I hope we will discover more about Mr Mather.

According to the Red Cross records he joined the organisation in August 1916 and was living at 7 Clifton Avenue Fallowfield.

I have yet to find him in a census but the street directories for the early 1900s list numbers 5 to 11 Clifton Avenue as the Fallowfield Nurseries with a Walter Mather the proprietor and a Miss Elizabeth Cookson at number 5.

So the clues are there, and in time we should know more about him, his service at Woodlawn and perhaps about Miss Cookson.

We shall see.

In the meantime I remain fascinated by vesta cases, which were designed as a safety measure given that vesta matches when left together had a worrying and dangerous tendency to rub together and self ignite.

Pictures; the vesta case from the collection of David Harrop and the photograph of  Woodlawn courtesy of Rob Mellor

*Woodlawn,  https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Woodlawn

The Red Cross Medal and the lost Dover House on Oxford Road ................ stories behind the book part 1

An occasional series on the stories behind the new book on Manchester and the Great War.*

The Medal, 2016

Now the great thing about any research is that you never quite know where it will take you so when my old friend David Harrop told me that he had just acquired this Red Cross medal for 1916 awarded to a Manchester support worker it was clear that there was a story.

I don't yet know who the medal was given to but already it has opened up a fascinating story.

The inscription on the medal refers to the Manchester War Hospital Supply Workroom at Dover House which was established in the June of 1916 to meet “the demand for hospital requisites of all kinds.”**

There were three workshops which were to produce “surgical requisites and hospital garments.  To each department a separate and beautifully fitted room has been allotted at Dover House.  

There is for instance a room which is devoted to the manufacture of slippers for men who are convalescent and able to be out of bed.  These are made with strong water proof soles in order that the bolder spirits who find their wards too small for them to wander outside without any untoward results-at any rate from the damp!

In another room the workers are justly proud of a new arm sling, known as the ‘Davies sling’ which they have originated; while in yet another bandages, dressings and surgical swabs are being made.”**

The work was undertaken by a group of volunteers  assisted by “girls from the Manchester High School [who] attend each afternoon and do yeoman work service in the way of running errands and generally waiting on workers.”**

The activities of the workshops was vital in plugging the short fall in hospital materials which were being produced by “working parties connected with individual hospitals and by various funds.” 

Dover House, 1956

But despite this by December of the same year there were fears that the workshops would close for lack of funds. ***

All of which seems rather bizarre given that we were now two years into a titanic struggle where the State had undertaken sweeping powers in the direction and control of labour, introduced military conscription and committed the national treasury in pursuit of victory.

And yet much of the medical care for recovery of wounded and sick servicemen was in the hands of the voluntary sector from Red Cross Hospitals to funds and charities designed to assist the families of men at the Front and provide the fighting men with comforts in the field.

Now I went looking for Dover House which was at 315 Oxford Road on the corner with Dover Street, but it has gone.

Just exactly when it was demolished I have yet to find out.  It was there in 1956 and may still have been standing when I made those regular trips up and down the Oxford Road corridor in the early 1970s.

Nor can I be sure when it was built.  It does not show up on the 1849 OS map of Manchester but is there as the Albert Club by 1863 which was a club for German businessmen.

One of its members was Frederick Engels and in time I should be able to track the club’s history.
I know it was till there in 1886 but by 1895 was listed as Owen’s College Refectory and the Geneva Club in 1911.

As such it was just the sort of grand old pile which the Red Cross were given at the start of the Great War.

So lots more still to find out and when the medal arrived at David’s house we might strike lucky and find a name inscribed on the reverse which will take e off on a whole new journey.

We shall see.

Location; Oxford Road, Manchester

Pictures; Red Cross Medal from the collection of David Harrop, Dover House, 1956, F.Hotchin, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m03869, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Manchester and the Great War, Andrew Simpson, was published in February 2017, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20Manchester%20and%20the%20Great%20War

**Hospital Supplies New Workrooms at Dover House, Manchester Guardian, June 7 1916

***Manchester War Hospital Supply Workrooms, Manchester Guardian December 15 1916

With the Red Cross hospital in 1914 at Woodlawn in Didsbury

Wood Lawn

I am back with the story of the Voluntary Red Cross Hospitals during the Great War.

In 1917 the Wesleyan College on Wilmslow Road was turned over to a Red Cross Hospital along with part of the Hartley Primitive Methodist College on Alexandra Road South, and plans were in place to use both the Lancashire Independent College at Whalley Range  and the Baptist College in Rusholme.

Along with these were smaller institutions in what had been private residences. In Whalley Ranges these included Lancaster House, Sunnyside on Upper Chorlton Road, and 1 & 3, Burford Road.

Now most of these came in to operation during the last stages of the war when the casualtiy rates continued to climb.

But some were started up almost at the beginning of the war.  One of these  was Woodlawn
which was a large 15 roomed house on Mersey Road in Didsbury.

At the outbreak of the Great War its owner Mrs Laura Churchill had offered it to the Red Cross as a hospital.

Staff in 1915

According to the Manchester Guardian for November 1914 “twenty wounded soldiers were transferred from Whitworth Military Hospital [to this] large and pleasantly situated house which has been admirably equipped by the East Lancashire branch of the British Red Cross.” *

By 1916 there were six wards and the same newspaper reported that “Christmas at Woodlawn was well celebrated.”**

Sadly the history of these hospitals has all but been forgotten along with the records and staffing details.

At best what we have is fragmentary so while the names of those who served at the Baptist hospital in Chorlton have survived along with some information on the men who recovered there is nothing from the Methodist Hospital on Manchester Road save an engraved silver cup from some of the men and a letter of thank you to St Clements Church.

As for those in Whalley Range to date all I have is an address.

But with Woodlawn we have been a little luckier.  The Manchester Guardian reported fully on the opening of the hospital and its Christmas party in 1917 which included presents for the patients, and a series of entertainments spread over two days.

Mrs Churchill

The names of some of the staff have been preserved along with an advert from May 1919, placed by Mrs Churchil asking for anyone who had a claim “against the hospital for articles lent goods supplied & kindly furnished” to contact her.**

It is a salutary lesson in how these things worked that with the end of the war and the closure of the hospitals nothing could be left.  So not only were people able to recover items they had sent but everything from the beds, the blankets and even the typewriters were auctioned off.

All of which would have left Mrs Churchill much to do.  As for what she did afterwards has yet to be discovered.  She was awarded the OBE and courtesy of her family I have come across a press clipping with her photograph.

Pictures; Woodlawn from the collection press cutting of Mrs Laura Churchill courtesy of her family

* Manchester Guardian November 28th 1914
**Manchester Guardian December 30th 1916
**Manchester Guardian May 12th 1919

Miss May Winifred Wareham .............. part 2 Red Cross Nurse

I think I am a little closer to knowing a lot more about Miss May Winifred Wareham.

She had been born in 1888 in Oldham, spent her adult life in Heaton Mersey and first came to my attention through a collection of picture postcards she received from friends and family during the early decades of the 20th century.*

They are a fascinating insight into the travelling habits of middle class Edwardians and range from comic postcards to stunning landscapes of the Black Forest and Monte Carlo.

They now belong to David Harrop who in an effort to find out more about Miss Wareham took the collection to a meeting of the local church she attended and in the course of the conversation one woman remembered that May had worked as a Red Cross nurse during the Great War in Heaton Mersey.

This was one of the temporary hospitals set up during the conflict often in public buildings or private homes.**

They lasted for the duration of the war and then closed and within a generation had been largely forgotten by the communities that supported them.

The beds, blankets and all the other things needed to maintain the hospitals were auctioned off and the buildings returned to their former use, but there are reminders of their existence from a picture postcards taken at the time to a contemporary account of the hospitals in Greater Manchester.***

And now the Red Cross has begun to put online the records of those who served in the hospitals.****

It is a gigantic task given that 90,000 volunteered. The personnel records for surnames starting with A through to R are currently available and volunteers are updating the site with more names every few weeks.

So we shall have a little longer to wait for Miss Wareham but we are close.

So in the meantime I fall back on those picture postcards, which were made in their thousands and offer up a vivid record of the wards, the patients and nurses and the buildings.

But this is the first one I have seen which went behind the scenes and showed the kitchens which  makes it unique.

Here is the doing bit, from the big range, the pots and pans to the food being prepared and unlike others I have seen some at least of those standing in the kitchen will not be nurses but the equally important volunteers who undertook the cooking, the cleaning and the washing of sheets and clothes.

Nor is that all for it also reveals the name of the photographer who was T Everett-Innes of Stockport, and a search of the directories revealed that “Innes-Thomas Everett [of] 108 Wellington Road Heaton Chapel" was listed in Kelly’s 1902 Cheshire Directory as a Photographer.

It is an intriguing thought that Miss Wareham may well have bought some of his postcards to send to her friends and family in return for those scenes of Wales, the Black Forest and Monte Carlo.

I guess we will never know but with a bit of patience and careful research we may discover more about Thomas Everett Innes and more importantly the hospital where Miss Wareham worked because there is an entry on the 1916 Red Cross book on the Heaton Mersey establishment.

Well we shall see.

Picture; the kitchens, the Red Cross Hospital, Heaton Mersey circ 1914, T Everett-Innes, from the collection of David Harrop

Additional material courtesy of the archivist of the Red Cross Society http://www.redcross.org.uk/

*The Wareham Family, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Wareham%20family

**Red Cross Hospitals, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***East Lancashire Branch - An illustrated account of the work of the Branch during the first year of the war, 1916

****First World War volunteers, The Red Cross, http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War


Additional material courtesy of the archivist of the Red Cross Society http://www.redcross.org.uk/

Working in a Red Cross Hospital in the Great War .................. Woodlawn in Didsbury

Woodlawn circa 1915

I am back again at Woodlawn which was a Red Cross hospital in Didsbury during the Great War.*

I first came across it by accident when researching a book and in the course of peeling back its history I came to learn a lot more about the role of the Red Cross during that war.**

Much of that story was unknown to me including the sheer number of hospitals run and staffed by the Red Cross here in south Manchester.

Most were set up in the early months of the war in large private homes, Sunday schools and other public buildings.

Staff and patients, circa 1915

They were generously supported by the local communities who raised funds and staffed the hospitals.

And when the war ended the buildings were turned to other uses, the equipment auctioned off and within two generations their presence was all but forgotten.

But the East Lancashire branch of the Red Cross left a record of the hospitals which includes a short general description, the names of the staff and their contributions as well as some statistics covering the first year and a bit of the war.***

Woodlawn had been a large residential property belonging  J.Broome, Esq., and was lent by his executors to the British Red Cross Society for use as an Auxiliary Hospital.

Woodlawn, 1894

According to the book it was
“situated in one of the healthiest residential suburbs of Manchester and surrounded by extensive grounds, Woodlawn is admirably suited for hospital purposes.”

It opened on November 25, 1914 with “very generous support, both financially and in kind.

For the equipment all the furniture, beds, bedding etc., were lent or given, and the expenditure necessitated an outlay of only £50.”

During its first nine months of operation it cared for 118 men who had been admitted for a number of reasons ranging from bullet and shrapnel wounds to the effects of being gassed and contracting frostbite and rheumatism.

And it is the degree of detail about the men, including their nationality their length of stay and where they received their primary wounds and illnesses which makes the story of Woodlawn so fascinating.

All too often you can get lost in the big picture which concentrates on the movements of armies, the advances and retreats and the sheer scale of the fatalities, but here is the very human detail.

Of the 118, the majority were British with a handful of Canadians and Australians and Belgians.  Most were wounded or fell ill in France and Belguim with a few from Gallipoli.

The average admittance per month was 13 and the average stay was 42 days with 80% being transferred to sick furlough and 17% remaining longer in the hospital.

Some of them left their names and units on a souvenir piece of linen and with a bit of research it may be possible to find out more about these young men.

More promising might be the stories of the 67 Red Cross Volunteers, along with the permanent medical staff and the committee many of who will have been locals.

Nurses & soldiers, cura 1915

As ever the starting point will be the census returns, and street directories and the excellent data base currently being compiled by the Red Cross of those who volunteered for service with the society.****

They after all were how Woodlawn was maintained and without them the recovery of those 118 men might well have been harder.

So it is fitting that I shall conclude with one more extract from the entry on Woodlawn,
 “Numerous entertainments have been held, and the large grounds attached provide facilities for all kinds of outdoor recreations.  

The large gardens and orchards have been a source of interest and profit, and to the patients so inclined a means of indulging in a favourite occupation.”

Pictures; of Woodlawn courtesy of Rob Mellor, and detail of Wood Lawn and gardens from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-94 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

Additional material courtesy of the archivist of the Red Cross Society http://www.redcross.org.uk/

*Woodlawn, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Woodlawn

**Red Cross Hospitals, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Red%20Cross%20Hospitals

***East Lancashire Branch - An illustrated account of the work of the Branch during the first year of the war, 1916

****First World War volunteers, The Red Cross, http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Who-we-are/History-and-origin/First-World-War

Woodlawn in Didsbury in the summer of 1914 and again in the winter of 1950

Woodlawn was one of those very big houses that Didsbury used to excel at.

It stood on what was Fielden Park and is now Mersey Road which runs from Palatine Road up to Barlow Moor Road.

It had fifteen rooms, was set in extensive grounds which ran down towards the Mersey and was flanked by the even more impressive houses of Brockhurst to the north and Mersey Bank to the south, both of which commanded even bigger gardens and both of which had their own fountains.

Now I can’t be sure exactly when it was built but it was there by 1891 when it was the home of James and Rosamund Halliday.

He was an accountant and partner in a number of firms including Deloitte and Halliday with offices at Queen Elms on High Street and on Oxford Street and later described himself as a banker.

Born in Scotland he was here in Manchester by 1861.  We can track him from Chorlton on Medlock to Broome House in Didsbury where the family were living in 1881.  And like so many of the other residents of Broome House they went on to bigger and better homes which in the case of the Halliday’s was Woodlawn.

There is no doubting that this was an impressive property.

You reached it by a tree lined drive with paths off across the gardens down towards the river and past a series of large greenhouses.

The house was built on a raised bank which meant the entrance up to the front door was by way of a set of stone steps.

Looking at the pictures of the place you have to admit that it was a solid and magnificent place which befitted a banker.

He died in 1913 and this will have been when Mrs Laura Churchill bought the property and a year later offered it to the Red Cross as a hospital at the start of the Great War.

But that is a story for another time.*

The house was demolished I think in the 1990s and may have been a convent school which pretty much means there is more to find out about the place and that also will be for later.

And soon after I posted the story Marion added a postscript which took the story of the building forward into the middle decades of the last century.

"Woodlawn was part of the new Hollies convent and school when they moved from Oak Drive in Fallowfield. I was there from 1949 to 1958, my sister and daughter followed. 

I loved every moment, the buildings fed my love of grand houses even though they took a bit of a battering from us girls. 

Wonderful memories include the maid from Oak house hotel bringing a tray with drinks and biscuits across at playtime for the owners daughter to enjoy at the prep school gate. Have a look at the book Against the Odds where there are some pictures of Woodlawn. A vanished world.

All of which opens a whole new area of research, not to mention stories pictures and memories.

Wood Lawn features in our book on the history of Didsbury, Didsbury Through Time

Pictures; of Woodlawn courtesy of Rob Mellor, and detail of Wood Lawn and gardens from the OS map of South Lancashire, 1888-94 courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

*With the Red Cross hospital in 1914 at Wood Lawn in Didsbury posted on the blog on October 11th

The Lost Red Cross Hospitals of Whalley Range

Patients and Red Cross VADs in a hospital in France

There were at least five of them ranging from private homes given over to the needs of war to theological colleges with room to spare.

Some across the border in Chorlton and Didsbury have been documented, but in the case of Whalley Range there is just a list in a Red Cross file and the occasional newspaper report.*

The Lancashire Independent College along with the Hartley Primitive Methodist College on Alexandra Road offered their dormitories as hospital wards.

But then there were the private homes which have been less easy to locate and a military HQ.

Burford Road in 1894

Of these there was Sunnyside on Range Road, numbers 1 & 3 Burford Road and Lancaster House.

Sunnyside still exits and is a tall semi detached house on the north side of Range Road.

In 1911 its occupant a Mr Henry Cartledge described it as having nine rooms with a longish garden which backed on to the properties fronting Yardburgh Street.

And that pretty much is all there is.  A newspaper report referred to it as the Britannia Hospital but places it on Withington Road which joins Range Road.

It was a small hospital accommodating just thirty-three beds and in 1917 the Red Cross decided to close it and transfer its patients to the Wesleyan College in Didsbury site which was to increase its capacity to 250 beds.

The houses on Burford Road are equally still shrouded in mystery.  In 1911 number three was home to Mr and Mrs Gamble and their three daughters and a servant.

It too had nine rooms and was one of two semi detached properties on the corner of Burford and Withington Road. Two years earlier, number one known as Burford House was the residence of Edward R Buck, manufacturer and number three, the Falklands   was occupied by A Mrs Hester.

Lancaster House, Whalley Road, 1961

But 1911 number one was vacant and in the way of these things perhaps number three was also empty by the outbreak of the war.

Already the Corporation had had plans to buy the 14 roomed properties known as the Alders just a little further along Burford Road and is it as preparatory school for Whalley Range High School for Girls.

Lancaster House on Whalley Road was already a military establishment being the HQ of C Squadron of the Imperial Yeomanry, continuing to serve the army well into the mid 20th century.

Now the existence of all these Red Cross Voluntary Hospitals across south Manchester has pretty much been forgotten which is a shame really, given the good they did and the work on the people of Whalley range, Chorlton, and Didsbury who staffed them  and raised money for them.

*The McLaren Memorial Baptist Church Edge Lane, Chorlton, The Wesleyan Church, Manchester Road, Chorlton, , The Wesleyan College, Wilmslow Road, Didsbury, Woodlawn, Mersey Road, Didsbury.

Pictures; Patients & Red Cross VADs in a hospital at Gournay, France, 1916, courtesy of the Red Cross, detail from the OS map of South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives, Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Lancaster House, Whalley Road, 1961, by A.E.Brown, m40912, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council