The food of Naples, on a hot day in Alghero

We had been driven off the beach. 

Even by the usual standards of Sardinia it was hot.  And we didn’t go back till gone 4.  But that just gave us more time to enjoy a long casual meal cooked by Rosa.  Now I have written before about Rosa’s cooking before http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.it/search/label/Rosa%27s%20cooking and this afternoon she had put together another fine meal.

It started with a simple dish of pasta and potatoes in a tomato sauce, and was followed by some sweet peppers cooked with tomatoes, some basil and olive oil and we finished with a fruit salad which was a mix of apricots, plums, grapes and water melon.  It was really just what needed eating up.  To these she had added a little wine and sugar.

And like so much of what she cooks it was simple and filling.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Chorlton’s corner shops nu 7, ................. well almost

Wilbraham Road, 1903

Now I am taking a bit of a liberty with the idea of the corner shop so that I can include these memories from someone who commented on an earlier story about those shops running from Manchester Road along Wilbraham Road.

“I vaguely remember this row from when I was a child; a newsagent, a haberdashers and a bookshop in a row. Think the only one left now is the bookshop.

We used to go to see to two lovely old ladies for material and buttons, but when one died the other closed the shop. 

They had the beautiful old fashioned glass and mahogany cabinets, with pull out drawers and fancy cut work. They used to let me play with the tape measures. 

We'd go to the newsagent on the way past and buy a quarter of loose sweets, usually cola cubes or aniseed balls out of the large glass jars. 

It smelt funny and was always full of smoke. 

Think mum said he smoked a pipe.”

That sweet shop in 1903

And in turn this reminds me of the Chorlton historian Cliff Hayes who wrote remembered the stories of an old lady who lived opposite who would
“tell me of her childhood and shopping in Chorlton.  

Her mother would take her to be fitted for boots or clothes, they would look for laces and linen and then take tea in a cafe, either on Barlow Moor Road or in one in this row of shops.

Come 4 o’clock and they would cross to the horse drawn cab rank outside the Lloyd and there as if by magic they were joined by all their purchases for the journey home to the large house on Edge Lane.  I wish I’d taken more notice of Mrs Bewley.”*

Now Mr Hayes’s memories stretch back 37 years but armed with Mrs Bewley’s name I should be able to go back and find out a little more of her life, and in return I shall ask my friend for the date when she visited those shops, something I forgot to do and which is always the first step in writing about the past.

So more on both in the near future.

Picture, Wilbraham Road 1903 from the Lloyd Collection 

*CHORLTON-CUM-HARDY, Cliff Hayes, 1999

Of tall narrow streets full of washing and hidden stories

We didn’t cut much stir yesterday when Simone and I had another adventure in the old town.

It had meant to be more photographs and a bit of catching up time.  We see each other perhaps twice a year.  Simone and Rosa leave in Varese and us in Manchester, so we only see each other when Tina and I go home to see her parents.

And like all good adventures it started off well.  We walked along the promenade which connects the new resort with the old town, encountered a few beach traders who had set up early to catch the afternoon trade and arrived at the fort and harbour just as the mid rush in the restaurants had come to an end.

A few dinners hung on despite the fact that around them the tables were being laid for the evening and you could see the staff willing these dawdlers to move on.  Many of the tourist shops had closed till the evening and only a handful of people were in the main piazza.

All of which suited us well, because we were in search of those tall narrow streets which promised something interesting.  Nothing quite prepares you for theses hidden places just off the main piazza.  I guess few tourists venture this way unless they are lost or have paid their money and are being driven around the old town in the pony and trap.  Its driver looked bored as he negotiated these dark places and I wonder whether it was him or the pony which knew when to stop to allow the tourists to take one more picture of one more little church which was perfectly timed to fit with the commentary from the guide book.

And we found lots.  Like the little old woman sitting on a rickety chair beside an equally unstable table preparing vegetables, or the tiny shop which sold absolutely everything except those expensive coral bracelets and porcelain figures of Saint Elmo.

Once you are in these streets you could be at almost any time in the last few hundred years of Alghero’s history.  Well that is providing you chose to ignore the beaten up and very old looking cars some of which would not have looked out of place in a 1950s parade of vintage popular Italian cars.  And then all of a sudden with little warning the streets give out on the sea.  Here facing out are the walls of the old town with the remnants of the old fortifications.

The guide book says the old town was much knocked about by the allied bombing in 1943 but today there is little evideece  of it, instead there are freshly painted houses and some very interesting people but that is for another day.

Pictures;from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Stories of the Great War from Southern Cemetery

I have been planning to visit the family grave of Mr and Mrs Parkes  for about a week ever since I came across the story of James Arthur Parkes who was according to one newspaper the oldest Manchester man to die during the Great War.*

Mr Parkes was a captain in the Durham Light Infantry and died at the age of 64.

His military career stretched back to at least 1878 when he served with 26th Regiment and seems to have continued throughout the last part of the 19th century.

But he died here in Chorlton in March 1917 which challenged the assumption I had made about him dying on active service somewhere on a battlefield.

That said his headstone revealed that two of his sons did die serving abroad.

Sergeant David Parkes of the 21st Battalion of the Manchester Regiment was killed on January 12 1917, and his brother Alfred of the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester’s died in a prisoner of war camp on May 27 1918.

Neither is buried in the family plot. David is in the war cemetery at Arras and Alfred in Cologne.

But both appear on the headstone and befitting the family’s loss the memorial includes a carved sword and military cap.

Sadly part of the headstone has now been covered and the names of some of the family buried here have been obscured.

In total along with Mr and Mrs Parkes, there are three of their children and a son in law interred in the plot.

Mrs Gowrie Parkes died in 1939, her son Alan in 1929, Louisa in 1958, Mary in 1962 and John Arthur Leak in 1963.

Now that raises the possibility that there are some living relatives and I am minded to see if I can make contact.

And like all such stories there will be much more.

Only yesterday I came across a reference to some of the Manchester’s who had also died in a POW camp and were buried in Weidenau which is 56 miles east of Cologne.**

In 1923 their bodies were exhumed and reburied in the South Cemetery, Cologne.

Now it may be that young David Parkes was one of them but that like so much of the story has yet to uncovered.

Picture; the headstone of Mr & Mrs Parkes and family in Southern Cemetery, 2014 courtesy of David Harrop.

Additional research by David Harrop who maintains a permanent exhibition to those who took part in the Great War in the Remembrance Hall close to the main gates of Southern Cemetery.

* James Arthur Parkes, from Chorlton, the oldest Manchester soldier to die in the Great War, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/james-arthur-parkes-from-chorlton.html

**Manchester Pals, Michael Stedman, 2004

Recreating a a view of Hough End Hall in 1945

Now given that Hough End Hall is 418 years old and due a birthday soon sadly there are not that many pictures of the place.

It does feature in a range of postcards from the 19th century along with some privately made photographs and a few water colours but that is it.

More recently local artist Peter Topping has set about rectifying this by producing some paintings of what it might have looked like.

And before any one reaches for the lap top to express indignation that an artist in the 21st century should try to recreate a scene of the place from sixty odd years ago I would point out that Peter has used original photographs and called on the few colour prints we have to give a sense of the Hall.

Recreations are fraught with dangers and can lead to misinterpretations but are useful and  a way of beginning to understand a building and its context.

Now this scene I know well, not only because I have seen the original black and white photograph but because my old friend Oliver Bailey has described the scene to me.

His family held the tenancy of the hall and surrounding land from the outbreak of the last world war and later purchased them from the Egerton Estate.

The family kept horses and “along the side of the plot that borders Mauldeth Road there was a field and in front of that a line of what had been loose boxes where my father kept pigs and the ones nearest Nell Lane were used for horses for a while – as kids we kept ours there, Silver, Nils and Betty when they weren’t out in the fields.”*

All of which brings the hall a little closer which is fine by me.

Painting; Hough End Hall circa 1945, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook:  Paintings from Pictures

*Oliver Bailey, 2014

Chorlton’s corner shops nu 6

From Mauldeth Road West, 2014

“I'm loving your features on corner shops! I'm wondering if you have anything, or could do one about Mr Walsh's shop that used to be next to the Southern Fryery near the old Southern pub, did you know it?  

I grew up on the Weller Ave estate so I remember all those shops I have really fond memories of him and the shop.” 

Well when Brian sent me this request I was off on the search.

From Nell Lane, 1940 woth our corner shop just out of view to the right

Now I have to confess of knowing almost nothing about the shop.

It will have been built in the 1920s when the Corporation was laying out the estate and was pretty much knocked about when two high explosive bombs fell during the last war.

The first landed in the centre of the junction of Mauldeth Road West and Nell Lane and the second just behind the shops in the small alley that runs off Nell Lane between those shops and the first of the semi detached properties.

And as you would expect the Southern did not escape some damage to the front of the pub.

All of that said I have yet to turn up a picture from the earlier period so I guess it is over to all those who remember the shop, went there or passed it on the bus to send in some memories.

Picture, the corner of Mauldeth Road and Nell Lane today courtesy of Brian Lee Whitworth and bomb damage at Nell Lane, 1940, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, m09736, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Chorlton’s corner shops nu 5

Now I went looking for a picture of Kingspot today, that shop of incredible cheap bargains, plastic flowers, even cheaper kids toys and of course the picture of San Francisco Bay Bridge in the setting sun.

My kids were never out of there and the comment "off to Kingy” seemed part of their vocabulary for a decade.

Beech Road, 1985

Now the purists will of course mutter that it was not a corner shop but I don’t care it was as much a part of the shopping experience as the trip to Hanbury’s or Woolworths.

And yet despite its popularity and place in many people’s memories I have yet to come across a picture of the shop and that just points to that simple observation that we often neglect our surroundings until it is too late.

So here is one corner shop that was photographed and more than once.

My first picture comes from the camera of Tom McGrath who ventured out in 1985 to record bits of Chorlton and followed these up with a second batch 27 years later.*

In the way these things work I only have a vague memory of the place although I will have bought sweets there, after all it was the last shop before the bus station and a journey somewhere and likewise for those returning home it will have been the first they encountered before the trudge down towards the green or off into the ville.

Beech Road, 1958

The second is from 1958 and is all that I remember a corner shop to be including the packed window displays and the adverts for the cinema round the corner.

And transcending the decades there is that cigarette machine which I suspect has pretty much vanished from our streets.

So all that is left is to make the appeal for pictures and memories of Kingy.

And a promise that there will be more corner shops on the blog over the summer.**

Pictures; number 1 Beech Road 1985, from the collection of Tom McGrath and by R.E. Stanley, November 1958, m17659 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass 

*Tom McGrath, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Tom%20McGrath

**Corner shops, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Corner%20shops