On Union Street in Oldham in 1928

Now I wish I knew Union Street in Oldham better because I cannot fix exactly where we are.

The card was sent in 1928 but the image may be a little earlier and none of the usual clues are much help to work out where we are.

It is impossible to decipher the names of the shops, there are no side roads to offer up a location and even the tram running on the number 4 route could be coming from or heading towards Mumps.

The building on the right looks promising and looks to be a snooker hall which may jog someone’s memory

So that just leaves us with the scene itself which has a lot to offer.

It has those wide windows to admit the maximum light and the characteristic coloured glazed tiles which would have brightened up that drab workaday street.

To our right is a milk cart with its single churn and another almost opposite.

Neither horse seems over worried at the approaching tram or the parked cars.

Within a few decades there would very few horses left on Oldham streets and likewise the last tram took its final journey in 1946.

There had been a horse drawn tram service from 1880 but within twenty years this had been replaced by the familiar ones powered by electricity.

But by the 1920s the cost of maintaining the track and replacing old trams led to the use of motor buses on some routes, a policy which began in earnest in 1934.

So our stately tram on its circular route along Union Street in the January of 1928 had but a short time left to run.

And that seems a sensible point to finish, secure in the knowledge that someone will not only know where we are on Union Street but will furnish chapter and verse on the scene in front of us.

But for those who want more on Oldham’s trams there is Oldham Corporation Tramways





Picture; Union Street in Oldham, circa 1928, issued by Lilywhite Ltd, from the series Oldham and district, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/


*Oldham Corporation Tramway http://www.birches.plus.com/page148/page151/page231/page231.html

When in Bath, visit the Roman Baths, I did and so did Mr Flower in 1902

Now in the summer when we were walking around  Roman Bath had I known that this painting by Charles Flower existed I might have tried to make an exact copy.

But I didn’t so you will just have to put up with these slightly different views.

In some respects little has changed although today you can walk the entire complex assisted by a small mobile like device which gives you a running commentary in the language of your choice.

More over you can have the serious academic report or the populist version which introduces you to the people who might have once worked or visited the temple, and the bath house.

Not that I am being sniffy, I switched between the two regularly and enjoyed both.

That said neither the young person who sent the picture card carrying Mr Flower's image in 1902 or Beatrice who sent the same card a decade and a bit later bothered to comment on the grandeur that they saw before them.

Beatrice merely wanted to remind her friend of the “choir practice tomorrow” while the note on the back  of our earlier card just commented that this was "one for the collection."

But at least they sent the image, mine has been sitting on the hard drive since August and may never have seen the light of day again had I not stumbled on Mr Flowers painting which Tuck & Son turned into a picture postcard.

It says something of the popularity of the baths at Bath that the card continued in use for over a decade.

Pictures; the Roman Baths by Charles E. Flower from the set, Bath, 1902 issued by Tuck & Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/ remaining pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 39 December 31

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Now I have no idea how Joe and Mary Ann celebrated New Year.  

Their preparations for welcoming in the new and seeing out the old year will have accounted for over half of our house’s history, which leaves me with just 37 years to account for.

And that 37 years has been a varied bag of things.  Most recently it has been a matter of staying up long enough to see it in.

When the children were younger we would go for a meal, rent a few videos and toast the hour with champagne, bought by Mike.

These were also the years of the pre New Year’s do when the idea was to break the week between December 25^th and 31^st and fill the house with people. 

The events always seemed to work and on one occasion left me at the end of the night holding a baby while the parents got their other children together and left.  But after fifteen minutes they returned to collect the one they had left.

And now all the lads are grown up and are drawn to seeing in the end of the old year in different places which is as it should be.

And things have changed in different ways.  Once and it was not that long ago the beginning of a new year would be welcomed by the noise from the docks as the ships sounded their hooters and old Jimmy would knock the door just after the stroke of midnight.

There are also those who remember the bell in the lych-gate on the green which was rung to signal the passing of another year.

So looking back can be fraught with ghosts of things past which can be a melancholy affair and not worth pursuing.

So we shall see.

Picture; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

What has taken the place of my Eltham, number 2 a new development

As we move effortlessly to the end of the year I got thinking of the Eltham I knew and how the passage of time has pretty much changed much of my landscape.

So here over the next few days are some of the places that are not as I knew them.

Pictures; the Kings Arms, courtesy of Jean Gammons

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 38 December and beyond

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Joe and Mary Ann did not have children and it would be a full sixty years before there was a Christmas in the house which centred on young people.

The first was our eldest who was born just a month and bit before the Christmas of 1984 and in the succeeding years the event has been dominated by the children.

Now all four are grown up but we still pretty much celebrate the way we have done for nearly 30 years.

The tree has to be the biggest we can find and somewhere along the way we added a second more modest one.

Everyone has their own spot in the front room where each year their stocking is placed and Christmas dinner is worked around the boys playing football on the Rec.

Usually during the late morning we have people round and in the evening the house empties as one by one the lads go off and meet up with their friends.

And some years we have the family from Italy over which always transforms the traditional Christmas into something a bit different.  And of course now we also share the event with Polly and Anna.

I have no idea what Joe and Mary Anne did.  They may also have entertained or gone visiting themselves to relatives.

Looking back those old Christmases would have been cold.  This is not a warm house and in the absence of central heating I guess must have been uncomfortable outside the rooms Mary Ann decided to have heated.

But of course anyone born before the 1970s will have lived with that simple fact that once you left the front room and before you reached the kitchen the house was very much a cold zone.

You went to sleep in a cold bedroom warmed perhaps only with a hot water bottle and as often as not woke to ice on the inside of the windows.

If you were lucky like me you lived in a house which had one of those solid fuel stoves which heated the water and was kept going day and night through the winter.

It made the kitchen a cosy and reassuring place and pretty much ensured that was where you stayed.  Ours had been knocked through and so a full forty years before such things became popular we lived in the one big room just as they had done two centuries before.

This was where you ate your meals, listened to the radio, watched as the food was prepared and played on the big kitchen table.

Joe and Mary Ann’s kitchen was smaller but it did have the range and I guess was a warm enough place during the cold months from late November through to March and April.

And like many families before them there is some evidence that they lived in the rear of the house leaving the front room as for best and special occasions.

Now I can’t be sure of this but their television aerial was at the back of the house and the cable led down into the back room.

All of which meant that the front was surrendered to a peace and quiet which has never been the case since 1984.

Of course now that they are all grown up we seem to be experiencing more and more of that quietness which Joe and Mary Ann must have known.

So perhaps the house has almost come full circle, although not quite yet.  All four will be here for Christmas and a lot of the old magic will return.

And if we are lucky it might just snow.
Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

Christmas greetings from an RAF station in 1941

Now I have been posting historic Christmas cards for the last week or so and decided this one also needed to be included.

It come from the collection of my friend Jean, who writes, "this Christmas Card was sent to my mother by her brother in law, Sq Leader Walter Young, Christmas 1941:-

He was at RAF Pocklington, Yorkshire. Throughout WW2  Pocklington was a key station in Bomber Command's Heavy Bomber operations, which attacked vitally important targets such as Cologne, Berlin and (in 1943) Peenemunde, which halted the production of Germany's deadly V1's and V2's.

At the time when Walter sent this Christmas card, Pocklington was also the home of the Royal Canadian Air Force's famous No. 405 (Vancouver) Squadron - Walter's main task, it is said by the family, was to keep the young Canadian airmen from causing mischief and mayhem in the nearby village of Pocklington”

My mother and uncle were also in the RAF and mother was stationed in bomber county attached to one of the squadrons’ that mounted one of 1000 bomber raids on Cologne which just happened to be where both mum and uncle Roger were born.

Picture; courtesy of Jean Gammons

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton part 37 Christmas

The house in 1974

The continuing story of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

I don’t know how Joe and Mary Ann celebrated Christmas, but they were here from 1920 till Mary Anne died in 1974 so I guess they pretty much had it sorted.

Over the year’s traditions build up and these are as much part of the event as the tree, the dinner and the presents.

When John Mike and Lois lived here from 1974 till ’79 the pattern was determined by the fact that they went home for Christmas, Lois to Weston and Mike and John to Leeds.

So the big meal was held the day before, the gifts exchanged and a sort of second event happened a few days after they came back.

Christmas 1977

Lois cooked, Mike laid the table and John provided the music.  The meal was eaten in the dining room but back then there was no central heating.

John had ripped out the fire places and bricked up the space, which left us shivering in a big room until the antiquated electric fire and the flow of alcohol began to work.

Never underestimate the ability of 20 something’s to become as silly as children.  Paper hats and crackers were required, the conversation usually bordered on the inane and we had a brilliant time.

That said once my lads began to come along Christmas entered a new phase.  Your first Christmas with a new born is different and from 1984 as the family grew so did new traditions, ones which continue even now despite all four of the lads being grown up.

It begins with the issuing of wish lists, rumbles on with the decision on what to cook on the day and becomes intense when we debate when to get the tree.

Christmas 2011

Too early and it runs the risk of losing its needles and too late and all that is left are those sad two foot specimens which have a bit missing in the middle.

They have to be so big that you end up chopping a bit off the bottom, come from a forest somewhere and have a mismatch collection of decorations which are as much about past Christmases as they are about elegant design and appearance.

Only recently did I give up on the multi coloured tree lights and went with the wishes of our Josh that they should be all one colour.

And every year we still put the Christmas angel designed by Saul somewhere near the top.

For the last few years we have bought two, the giant one for the front room and a second smaller one for the dining room.

Now this I know is sheer indulgence but we are always well looked after by Adams in the precinct who has provided us with trees since 1984.

And the choosing of the tree is as much a part of the tradition as the rest of what we do.  I have and still am accompanied by as many of the family who are round on the day, we stand earnestly looking at the selection debating the merits of each and finally strike the deal with Tony.

Christmas 2011

The rest of it unfolds as you would expect.  Ben at 29 still gets a Beano annual and Luca some Kinder egss in his stocking.

And the stockings of all four must always been in the same spot each year.

And because I grew up in the 50s and that pretty much has frozen in time the Christmas I like, we bring out the Monopoly board, insist that everyone tries a selection of the festive nuts, and gather to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

That said there will be the addition of those nice things to eat that Tina grew up with at home in Italy, at least three phone calls to Varese during the day and a visit from Ron and Carol.

All that and the Christmas football match which the boys and their friends play for half an hour on the Rec sometime after the presents and before the big meal.

It is a tradition which they have played for as long as I can remember, and over the years the event has pulled in friends, and anyone who is around the house on the day.

Dan Dare from Eagle Annual nu Six, Christmas 1956

I doubt that it is the Christmas that Joe and Mary Ann would recognise but it is now one that in some form or other has settled on the house for nearly 40 years, which allows me to think it is as much part of the history of the place as any other.

Pictures; from the collections of Andrew Simpson and Lois Sparshot

*The story of a house, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house