The picture ……. and a lost story

Now, this picture postcard of a group of soldiers has been in the collection for some time, and as ever there are lessons here in how you record what you have been given.

In my defence it was one of a large number which my old friend David Harrop passed over to me while I was writing my book on Manchester and the Great War.*

And for reasons I can’t now remember it never made it into the book, which is a shame, because the more I look at it the more fascinating it appears.

There is no date, and the only clue is an imprint on the back for J. Ingham and Son’s, Brooks Bar.

My first thought was that the group of soldiers were somehow connected to J. Ingham and that I would find them in the Book of Honour of the Manchester City Battalions, which lists all the men who volunteered for the Manchester Pal’s Battalions in the first few months of the Great War.

And then of course it occurred to me that J. Ingham and Sons were more likely to be a photographers, which they indeed were, operating from no. 5 Withington Road, opposite the Whalley Hotel.

All of which takes me back to the picture. 

We will never now know the identities of the seven men or the young boy, or exactly where the photograph was taken.

I suspect we are in Heaton Park and the soldier with the cross will be the clue as to who sent the card.

But for now, that is it.  The card retains its story, but I travel in hope that we will find out more.

Location; unknown

Picture; group of soldiers, date unknown from the collection of David Harrop

*A new book on Manchester and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2019/12/suggestions-for-christmas-present-and.html

Blighty ............. a unique record from the Great War part 5 the mystery nurse

A Red Cross nurse, circa 1916-1919

I doubt I will ever find out the identity of this Red Cross Nurse.

She was drawn by a patient recovering in the St John’s Hospital in Cheltenham and the picture will date from 1916 through to 1919.

I can’t be exactly sure of the date, the artist or of course the nurse, but it remains a powerful link to the past.

It’s one of 29 pictures, poems and comments left in the autograph book which had been started by Ms Rachel Wattis in the August of 1916.

So this could be her or perhaps Miss Margaret Adelaide Brown who is also mentioned in one of the comments.

But beyond that I am stumped.  Neither woman has as yet shown up in the historical records.

Some of the collection on display at the Remembrance Lodge

There is one reference to Miss Brown in the Red Cross data base from which I know she was engaged on November 1 1916 and that is it.

Not much to go on and the chances are our young woman is neither of these.

But this will not be the end of the search.

I know that the Red Cross produced a report on St John’s which lists some of the personnel, and there may be something more in the archive at the Cheltenham Local & Family History Library* who have already been most helpful.

Of course it is easy to become discouraged but I think it is well worth the effort to keep looking, if only to give a greater context to the 29 men and two nurses who appear in that autograph book.

Now there must have been hundreds of these books but as far as I know there are few now available to look at.

This one comes from the collection of David Harrop and may well form part of his forthcoming exhibition at the Remembrance Lodge in Southern Cemetery which holds a fascinating array of memorabilia from both world wars.

Much of the material is the everyday stuff we pick up, keep for a while and then discard, like the porcelain souvenir tanks which will have graced a sideboard, the comic picture postcards sent from the Front or the more sombre official communications from the War Ministry.

Ms Rachel Wattis

Many allow you to track an individual through the Great War, and others like the autograph book offer tantalizing glimpses of the men and women as yet only half seen.

Still I have high hopes that some of the men in that Red Cross book will come out of the shadows and perhaps even my nurse.

We shall see.

Picture; unknown nurse from Blighty, the autograph book of St John’s Red Cross Hospital, Cheltenham, courtesy of David Harrop

Entry from Blighty, © David Harrop

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

Maria Theresa ........... today on the wireless

I parted company with Maria Theresa on a June day in 1968, and happily have not renwewd the acquaintance, till today.

But today I shall be listening to the In Our Time  programme on the Emperess, when "Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who inherited the Austrian throne in 1740 at the age of 23. 

Her neighbours circled like wolves and, within two months, Frederick the Great had seized one of her most prized lands, Silesia, exploiting her vulnerability. 

Yet over the next forty years through political reforms, alliances and marriages, she built Austria up into a formidable power, and she would do whatever it took to save the souls of her Catholic subjects, with a rigidity and intolerance that Joseph II, her son and heir, could not wait to challenge.

With, Catriona Seth, Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford, Martyn Rady, Professor of Central European History at University College London, and, Thomas Biskup, Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of Hull

Producer: Simon Tillotson"*

Picture; Empress Maria Theresia of Austria, oil on canvas, 1759, Martin van Meytens, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna  

*Maria Theresa, In Our Time, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nlyv

Lost photographs from the Great War ………..

Now when David sent over some photographs of soldiers recovering in a war time hospital In Rusholme I was not quite prepared for where I would end up.

There are twenty pictures in all and they appear to date from around 1916.

The quality is poor, which might suggest they were taken by a nurse or one of the patients using a simple camera.

But that doesn’t diminish the impact of these photographs, which show a group of soldiers and their nurses in carefree poses.

And the fact that they were not taken by a professional, makes them more powerful as a record of the impact of the war on those who took part.

The notes that accompany the images refer to Birchfield Military Hospital in Rusholme, but as yet I can not find out much about it, other than that the building was demolished in the 1950s as part of the development of the Hollings College affectionately known as the“Toast rack”.

But I know that just prior to the war it was owned by a Samuel Lawrence Mandleberg who was the managing director of an India Rubber Works which produced waterproof garments from a mill on Mill Street in Pendleton.

Mr. Mandleberg, was born in 1863 in Manchester from a family who settled here from the Polish part of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.

And while he owned the house which became the hospital he doesn’t appear to have lived there, residing instead in Salford.

In 1911, the house was occupied by four staff, which may have made it easier to offer up to the military when the war began.

Many people handed over large houses to both the military and the Red Cross, which became hospitals.

A trawl of the directories may provide date for that transfer, and for when it came in Mr. Mandleberg’s possession.

It was a large house with sixteen rooms, located at 235 Wilmslow Road, beside Old Hall Lane and and was set in its own ample grounds, with secluded walks beisde rows of trees, and open land behind the estate.

Added to all this, for those who liked gardening there were a series of green houses.

And for those who didn't, this stretch of Wilmslow Road, led by degree to Didsbury in the south and Chorlton in the west with ample opportunity to wander along the banks of the Mersey

Just what happened to the house at the end of the war is yet to be discovered, but it would appear Mr. Mandleberg, never lived there.  By the 1920s he was in London where he died in 1934, leaving £188,710.

All of which just leaves us with the wartime pictures.  I doubt we will ever find out the identities of any of those in the photographs although the names of four nursing staff are recorded in the scrap book, which I guess belonged to one of those nurses.

Location; Rusholme

Pictures; patients and staff of the Birchfield Military Hospital in Rusholme, circa 1916 from the collection of David Harrop, and Birchfield in 1894, from the OS for South Lancashire, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

Ponting to the past …….the Finger Post at High Legh

I collect street furniture, and one of my favourites are finger posts.

There are fewer now than in the past, and I suspect many more will eventually disappear to be replaced by giant day glow signs which have all the attractiveness of an overflowing drain.

Those that survive are often in a rural setting and instantly transport you back to a more gentle time, when heavy loads were still transported by horse and cart, and the speed of travel meant you had plenty of time to pause and stare at the finger post, pondering on which direction to take.

This one was collected by  Andy Robertson and is near High Legh in Cheshire, a place which  once boasted two ancient landed gentry families whose halls were both close by, and which until relatively recently was also partly owned by the Egerton’s of Tatton

The village  is six miles north west of Knutsford, seven miles east of Warrington and twelve miles south west of Manchester.*

It’s population in 2011 was 1,653, which was an increase of just 20 on a decade before.  It was mentioned in the Domesday Book but oddly does not appear in any of the  Topographical Descriptions of England, published between 1825 and 1840.

But perhaps I am just looking in the wrong place, which is apt for a story on finger posts.

Location; Cheshire

Picture; the finger post at High Legh, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*High Legh, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Legh

That much loved church in Eccles ..... with heaps of history

 Now for lots of people St Mary's Church, is a familiar and much loved place of worship, and for many more just a reminder of our past.

According to one source, "St Mary's Church, was in medieval times, the centre of a large ecclesiastical parish containing Pendleton, Pendlebury, Clifton, Swinton, Worsley and Barton-upon-Irwell. 

To the west the parish covered a portion of Chat Moss to the River Glaze and was bounded by the River Irwell to its north and east. 

The church is of ancient origin and was the only church in the parish for several hundred years. A church has occupied its site since Norman times and probably before then. 

The church contains few remains of its earliest incarnation but the tower base and west end of the north aisle are from the 13th century. The 14th century structure was enlarged in the 15th century and the chancel was reconstructed in the 16th century and rebuilt in 1862 by J P Holden".*

But I only discovered Salford and indeed Eccles in 1970, shortly after I moved to Manchester, and the church still has a hold on me.

Not least because over 180 years ago it was a place well known to some of our family who migrated from Pendleton to Canada in the late 1840s.

But that as they say is another story.

So I make no apologies for posting the pictures.

Location; Eccles

Picture;St Mary's Church, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson

*Church of St Mary the Virgin, Eccles, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St_Mary_the_Virgin,_Eccles

The Wedding Detectives ....... a new quirky history .... today on the wireless

Now, I like the sort of history that twists and turns and goes off in all sorts of directions, and often starts with stuff that has seems mundane.

So today for the next three weeks Radio Four offers up The Wedding Detectives.

"Wedding albums capture the happiest day of a couple’s life. But what happens when those pictures are lost, discarded or even thrown away?

Wedding album collector Charlotte Sibtain and journalist Cole Moreton uncover the stories behind the photographs and try to reunite them with the family.

This time, the Wedding Detectives find just two photographs from the 1959 high society wedding of Tim and Sonya Bryant but, following clues, uncover a trail that takes them to West Cornwall and an extraordinary story involving Einstein, Marconi, landed gentry in decline, the author of the Chamomile Lawn Mary Wesley, infidelity and a trial for murder.

A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4"*

And for those interested in my picture, it was the wedding of Miss Lomax and Mr Kitching, 1915, held at Hough End Hall.

Location; Chorlton and Cornwall

Pictures; the wedding of Miss Lomax and Mr Kitching, 1915 and Evelyn at the Hall circa 1930s from the family album of Evelyn nee Lomax Milburn donated by Mrs D Miller

*The Wedding Detectives, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nl79