The Prince Albert …….. one of the lost Didsbury pubs

The discovery of the Prince Albert was and remains a big surprise.  

Prince Albert, 2020

It stood on the northern side of Wilmslow Road, facing that modern block of flats located between Millgate and Kingston Road, and seems to have had a short life.

Like many beer shops it may have been a response to a period of unemployment or hardship or was run as a sideline to another business.

In the late 1840s and into the next decade, the Prince Albert was managed by a John Arnold who was a blacksmith and worked the smithy alongside the beer shop.

In the great pecking order of alcoholic establishments, the Prince Albert was pretty low down.  Its ratable value in the 1850s, was just £14 compared to the Didsbury Hotel and Old Cock which were both rated at £73.

It will have in all probability been just a room, and the beer may have been dispensed from the kitchen through a hatch.

For those who remember the Collier’s Arms by Hartshead Pike on the Ashton and Oldham border, just such a practice was how the landlady offered up her beer.*

Didsbury, 1853

Given its size and location I suspect it will have been frequented by agricultural labourers and passing itinerant traders, for who the Didsbury and Old Cock were too grand.

And, for perhaps a decade it was for those in the know, the first drinking place along the main road from Parrs Wood into the village.

Location; Wilmslow Road

Picture; Prince Albert…. That other Albert, in Albert Square, 2020, from the collection of Andrew Simpson,  Didsbury , 1853, from the OS for Lancashire, 1841-53, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*The Colliers Arms, https://ashton-under-lyne.blogspot.com/2008/01/colliers-arms.html

When we are all migrants ………

It's an obvious observation but one that needs revisiting, and it is this .... dig deep and most of us can count a migrant in our family history.  

Ontario

And it has to be revisited because all too many think that migrants and migration belong to someone else.

In our family that migration began so far back that the details of the story are lost.  

But it began in the east Highlands perhaps at the start of the 19th century and is not over yet.  

For perhaps a century and more  we were on the move travelling south across Scotland, stopping for a generation, in a town or village, but always south, finally crossing the border around  1900.  

To Canada and the USA, 1871

And then in different stories fanning out across England with father settling in London in 1932. 

His brothers made homes in Birmingham, Ipswich,Penzance, and Surrey while one chose far flung places in different parts of the old Empire.

Nor has it finished.

l left London for Manchester, one of our sons for Warsaw and  a nephew for Australia.  

A testimonial, 1925

At the heart of each move by all of us has been work and a belief that the move would improve our lives.  

So, we are all economic migrants.  

And to these I can add the Italian side of the family who left the grinding poverty of Naples for Cambridge in the 1960s before moving back to Italy near the northern city of Milan.

Now as far as l know we were not fleeing from political oppression, or the fear of imprisonment, and the choices were free ones. 

That said one of my great uncles was migrated to Canada by The Derby Union which administered the Poor Law in Derby.  

To what extent he had a choice is now lost, but many young people who were sent to Canada and other parts of the old British Empire and some may have had only a tenuous role in the decision.  

They were and are the British Home Children and about 10% of Canadians can claim to be descended from a BHC. 

In the course of our search for him l have made many close friends in Canada, and have an extensive Canadian family descended from his sister who followed him out looking for work.  

Rosa, Naples, 1960

Our story isn't unusual and like many we also share the knowledge that our great-grandmother Eliza spent time in the workhouse as well as having her last child born in its infirmary.  Added to which all her surviving children spent time in the care of the same workhouse.

So we may not like it, but most of us come from poor families who  were agricultural labourers, domestic servants, factory hands, or itinerant traders, soldiers and sailors.

Our ancestors arrival in these islands may date from the Windrush or the 1970s, or stretch back through the Normans, Vikings, Saxons and Romans, to those Neolithic boat people and perhaps even further back to the Paleolithic.

Which brings me back to that opening observation, that it is easy to think that history is not messy, and that we can all track our roots back to an indigenous ancestor, which is as silly as thinking that we all once lived in a castle, or can count Lloyd George as a family member.

Pictures; Ontario 2015, courtesy of Saul Simpson, poster from the report of Cow Cross Mission, 1871, testimonial for Laura Boot, 1925 and Rosa, in Naples the day before she left for Britain, 1960, from the Simpson family collection.

A little bit of Chorlton’s history on a wall ……….

Now when this poster went up on the wall of Etchells newsagent all of the images were very much of the present.

But the passage of the years has meant that some of them have slipped into the past.

And so the fun will be trying to work out just what bits of our history are here.

It would help if I could remember when it was made and when it was placed on the wall.

But I can’t, although there will be someone who does, and I can confidently say it was there by 2014.

Added to which I must confess I have just taken it for granted over the years, but not now.

Location; Beech Road

Picture; A little bit of Chorlton’s history on a wall, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 137 ….. No Mow in May

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 as a lazy gardener I have embraced No Mow in May.

Putting aside the sound ecological reasons there is that wonderful sense of liberation which comes with not having to get out the lawn mower, the rake and the broom, and begin that boring and back breaking chore of cutting the grass.

Added to which there is always the stern reproach from  Tina of where I have missed bits, left lumps of green stuff and not made the edges match the razor surface of the middle of the lawn.

So I fall back on that survey by Plantlife.org.uk who tell me that, “Research undertaken by citizen scientists across the UK who have taken part in Plantlife’s No Mow May survey - the largest-ever survey of the humble lawn - reveal not only the astonishing diversity of wild flowers growing on Britain’s lawns, but that incredibly simple changes in mowing can result in enough nectar for ten times more bees and other pollinators.

Over 200 species were found flowering on lawns including rarities such as meadow saxifrage, knotted clover and eyebright, The top three most abundant lawn flowers are daisy, white clover and selfheal. 

Over half a million flowers have been counted, including 191,200 daisies.  First ever National Nectar Score for our lawns: all lawn flowers in the survey combined produced a colossal 23kg of nectar sugar per day, enough to support 2.1 million - or around 60,000 hives - of honeybees. 

‘Mohican’ lawn cut suits all: Highest production of flowers and nectar were on lawns cut every four weeks, whilst longer, unmown grass had a wider range of flowers.

Plantlife found that 80% of lawns supported the equivalent of around 400 bees a day from the nectar sugar produced by flowers such as dandelion, white clover and selfheal. But 20% of lawns (dubbed “superlawns”) were found to be supporting 10 times as many – up to 4000 bees a day”.***

All of which seems good to me, save that I still have that slow nagging feeling that the tall wavy grass is nothing more than a badge of my laziness.

And it fits well with that deep rooted belief that dandelions are not good.

Those beautiful balls of seeds are nothing more than a pernicious and cunning plan to spread the dandelion across our garden and beyond, while the bright yellow flower calls out to everyone that this chap is not only negligent but slow to dust, hoover and date check the food in the larder.

But then I like the colour yellow and the leaves make a perfect salad, and blowing the seeds remains a fun thing to do with our grandchild.

So No Mow in May has two weeks to go, and that’s good for me.

That said I suspect that Joe and Mary Ann Scott would have given short shrift to my approach to looking after the environment, but then they buried their dead pets in the garden.

And I have to confess that on a bad day mindful of the Friends of Beech Road who pass the house on their way to the bars and cafes, I caved in and cut the front lawn ..... no one is perfect.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Our No Mow in May garden, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Story of a House, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20story%20of%20a%20house

**No Mow in May, https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/about-us/news/no-mow-may-how-to-get-ten-times-more-bees-on-your-lockdown-lawn

Inflation and the cost of living crisis...... The Long View today on the wireless

Now I am a great fan of the Long View which takes a topical issue and looks back into the past for parallels, which might or might not help explain the situation.

And as one of those much derided baby boomers I lived through the inflationary period of the 1970s and 80s when interest rates seemed to climb each month.

Added to which I had studied and went onto teach that period of inflation in the 1920s, particularly in relation to Weimar Germany, when prices increased almost by the hour.

"With the warning of potential double digit inflation on the way and the already very real cost of living crisis, Jonathan Freedland is joined by Economic Historians Albrecht Ritschl and Duncan Needham to compare today's situation with the context, causes and impact of UK inflation spikes in the 1920s and the 1970s.

Economies rarely fall prey to single drivers, but war, pandemic, international oil price and food costs have all been part of Britain's story in the past. 

Jonathan discovers how politicians dealt with inflation in the 1920s and 1970s, what the costs of their interventions were, and to what extent the insights of hindsight might help an approach to today's growing pressures.

Producer: Tom Alban"*

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Inflation and the cost of living crisis, Radio 4, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0017cln

To Rec or to Park? …….. the great debate …..

Now if you are of a certain age that 2 and bit acres of land along Beech Road will always be the Rec.

Beech Road park, 2022

Not that in the great sweep of wars, disasters and tax demands a debate over its name will count for a hill of beans.

But it has engendered a tiny discussion on social media.

Today as the signs proclaim it is Beech Road Park, but for many of us it will always be the Rec, which is short for Recreation Ground and was its official designation from when it was opened back in 1896.

It is all that is left of a long field called Row Acre which stretched from Cross Road, along Beech Road down as far as Acres Road.

And what makes that field just a tad more fascinating is that it was farmed by a number of tenant farmers and was divided into those long strips which were common in some part of England before the enclosures.

The Rec, 1910

Back in the 1840s those farmers included the Higginbotham family whose home was on the green and the Bailey’s who lived opposite the field and whose home was only demolished in the 1970s for Ivy Court.

In 1896 the newly opened Rec along with the restored village green were the only public places in the township. 

The green had been lost when Sam Wilton stole it in the early 19th century for his own private garden, enclosing it with a set of hedges.

Bot places proved very popular, with the green gaining a drinking fountain and the Rec  a collection of play apparatus, a bowling green a fine shelter and some very neat flower beds.

The Rec, 1933

Just when it became a park instead of a Rec I have yet to find out.

But that distinction of name remains a point of contention with some as did those who proudly declared they were from Old Chorlton, or the Old Village compared to those who lived in New Chorlton or the New Village.  

And on the turn of that place pretty much marked you out as a newcomer or someone with Chorlton history.

And that is it,  brought to you from the Great Chorlton-cum- Hardy controversies.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; the Rec circa 1910, from the Lloyd Collection, the Beech Road sign, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Recreation Ground, 1933, from the 1933/4 OS map for Manchester and Salford

*The Rec, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Rec

A little bit of Sardinia’s street furniture …. now that’s a zippy title

Now once again there will be people who mutter that I should get a life, but in these days of staying in, there is great merit in revisiting that series on lost street furniture.

And having trawled though a series of old photographs I came across these from Sardinia.

We were in Isola Rossa, and as you do I went looking for those old, fashioned drain covers, and was rewarded with not one but three all very close to where we were staying.

Like their British counterparts, each had a different design, and manufacturer.

And that pretty much is that.

Other than to say, in the fullness of time I shall track the company's down who made them and see where that leads.

Location; Sardinia

Pictures; drain covers I have taken a fancy to, 2014, from the collection of Andrew Simpson