One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 143 …….. poster corner

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. *

Poster Corner, 2023

Now I wonder what Joe and Mary Ann would have made of poster corner which is the set of railings directly opposite their house.

The railings make up the south east corner of the Rec and have become the go to site for heaps of different posters.

That said I don’t remember the spot being used much before the turn of this century, and even then the posters tended to be appeals for missing pets, and the announcement of the return of the travelling circus.

Which means Joe and Mary Ann would not have had an opinion.

But then nor do I, particularly as the organization which has made this corner its own is Chorlton Arts Festival, and what a good thing that is.

At which point I could go into detail on this annual Chorlton Arts event, but then I regularly write about it so I shall just leave the link sitting here.**

Poster Corner, 2021

And it would be a tad hypercritical of me to voice much opposition given that for a brief few years I gave permission for a local builder to fasten his sign on one of our walls.

It directed the interested to their workshop which was directly behind us and had once been the office and yard of Joe Scott who was also a builder and was responsible for many of the properties off Beech Road. 

His successor were known as Fairbarts and over the course of the 1980s did a lot of work for us, including restoring a fire place picture rails and an old cast iron bath and lavatory with its wooden cistern which we had sourced from a shop in north Manchester.

Their sign was quite modest and lasted only until they moved on, and was nothing like those that can still be seen on gable ends advertising all sorts of products, two of which adorn buildings on Beech Road.

A different poster, 1986

And here I have to confess that for a few years the side of our hose advertised a huge Labour Party poster which I suspect Mr. Mrs. Scott would not have approved of.

Leaving me just to look through my collection of images of poster corner and reflect on a form of advertising and promotion which stretches back into history, and includes political appeals for votes found on the walls of Pompeii and more recent ghost signs which have long outlasted the products and the businesses they advertised.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; poster corner, 2023 & 2021 and the wall of Joe and Mary’s house 1986, from  the collection of Andrew Simpson, and Chorlton Wholefoods, 2015, from the collection of Peter Topping

Beech Road, 2015

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

**Chorlton Arts Festival, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Chorlton%20Arts%20Festival

“We will always have Paris” ..... part 2

Now there is something bitter sweet about recreating a photo that you took nearly 40 years ago.

And I am guessing some will mummer why would you want to?

After all apart from me and my companion I doubt that anyone would be interested in how a little bit of Paris has changed over four decades.

The surprise is not a lot.

I am looking out from an upstairs window of the Grand Hotel down on to the Place de l’Opéra with the Opera House off to my left.

It took a bit of time to position myself at the right angle but with the help of street google I did it.

The building opposite me is still there and the shop Lancel still holds a prominent place in the block.

I have to confess that until now I never knew that they sold “bags, small-leather goods, accessories, travel bags and luggage for Women and Men” operated at the luxury end of the market and had been going since 1876.

Back then they specialised in selling pipes and other accessories for smokers developing a whole range of products for women smokers including cigarette cases and purses moving into leather, and  launching their first handbag collection in 1902.

Now given that we are in one of the fashionable bits of Paris that shouldn’t have surprised me.

The rest of the shops from 1981 have not survived.

The little tabac business had become a Currency Exchange shop and the other two have also morphed into something new.

Sill as they say I will always have Paris and of course those lampposts.

Location; Paris

Picture; Place de l’Opéra, 1981, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

How we have changed ......... seen through the camera of Andy Robertson

Andy Robertson has been photographing Greater Manchester for nearly 40 years.

A striking view, 2018

Now on one level there is nothing unusual about that, but what marks Andy’s work off as different is that he will return to the same site recording the changes over a stretch of years.

In many cases it starts with his spotting a derelict building and with that tenacity I admire he will return photographing its demolition, the moment the builders go in to break the ground on a new development and the slow rise of that new property.

Nor is that all because he will also research the site and where possible come up with images from when that derelict building was bright, busy and happy.

Shudehill, 2017

The “Andy Local Image Collection” now consists of over 9,600 photographs and they are a wonderful history of how the Twin Cities and the surrounding areas of Greater Manchester have been transformed.

Added to which many are fine pictures in their own right, so much so that some have been used by Peter Topping who has painted them and many have appeared in the books that Peter and I have written about Manchester.

Nor are all of them of buildings.

Hulme, 1992

One of my favourites is of a shop window in Shudehill, taken last year, which perfectly captures those tiny enterprises which cluing on in the corners of the twin cities which are fast undergoing gentrification.

I first met Andy on a history walk I did back in 2012, and since then he has become a regular contributor to the blog, clocking up an impressive 388 stories with plenty more waiting to go live.

We are all familiar with the images of Manchester and Salford, taken by Victorian and Edwardian photographers and that vast collection created during the middle years of the last century.

They are plundered by everyone from professional historians, to commercial companies and of course all those fascinated by our past, which I admit includes me.

All of us use them to capture what it was like to live in the twin cities and the contrasts to the present.

Chester Road, 2017

I know that Andy’s pictures will be up there, used for decades to come and will be the bench mark to judge what we have done with where we live.

And amongst those images there are some magnificent buildings, along with a fair amount of dross.

Neither of us wallow in nostalgia and there is no doubting that places like the Quays and Media City are exciting places to visit.

That said I am not so sure abouts ome of the other new bits.

Media City, 2017

These for me include chunks of of Spinnyfield,  Redbank, and the Northern Quarter  along with  those tall new towers which march across the landscape and can be seen from miles outside the twin cities bounadries.

So that is it, , leaving me only to thank Andy and his daughter and son who like him are fired to photograph what they see.

Location; the Twin Cities and beyond, 1990- 2018 from the collection of Andy Robertson

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton ....... part 142 …….. a rent book

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. *

This is the rent book to one of the properties on Neale Road owned by Joe Scott.

In the early 20th century he built much of the small houses behind Beech Road and more off Oswald Road, which he rented out, and there are still people who remember him fondly and thought him a good landlord.

By the 1930s he had branched out from the two up two down terraces to larger semidetached properties along Beaumont and Belwood.

But well into the 1960s many of the properties in his “empire” were still for rent like this one on Neale Road.

It consisted of four rooms with an extension and small yard to the rear, and in 1968 the rent was 28 shillings and 11d a week.

Contained in that rent was the cost of the rates “borne by the landlord” which amounted to 14 shillings and 4d.

Now, according to one source the average manual weekly wage in 1968 was £22, and those interested can follow up price comparisons on a variety of web sites matching the income, with a basket of goods matching the two with the cost of the rent on Neale Road.*

And for those very interested, a search on property sites for Neale Road offered a modern rental demand of £1000 per calendar month.

So, you take your figures and do your sums.

Equally interesting is the details of the tenants “rights” as laid down by the 1957 and 1965 Rent Acts and reproduced in the Rent Book.

Of course, anyone who has rented a property during a great chunk of the 20th century will be familiar with the details in the rent book including their responsibilities as well as those of the landlord, and feel secure in the record of what they have paid and rent day.

In the case of Neale Road that was Monday and the AB listed as collecting payment was Alf Bradbury who worked for Joe and lived himself on Sandy Lane.

Today, anyone renting will most probably conduct most of their business with a landlord online and when I mentioned rent books to our Joshua he smiled and mumbled “Dad old stuff”.

What fascinates me about the book is that it is a direct link to Joe who lived in our house for over half a century.

Moreover it might add to the research on his death which I think was in the early part of 1968, and seems to be verified by the record of payments in the rent book which stop on Monday August 19th 1968, despite the tenant remaining in the property into the 1970s, when they bought it.

It might just be that the last payment represents the point when the property was transferred to a new landlord or when a new rent book was issued in the name of Mary Ann Scott.

We shall see. 

Location;, Manchester

Pictures; Rent Book for a house on Neale Road, 1968, courtesy of Ian Henderson

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

**Retrowow, https://www.retrowow.co.uk/social_history/60s/earnings_1960s.php

Last known at ……….

You will have to be of a certain age to remember those public service announcements about a missing person.

They were broadcast after the news on the wireless when I was growing up in the 1950s.

There weren’t many of them, but there were enough for the appeals to have stuck with me for well over 60 years.

Today they are more likely to turn up on social media, and occasionally if it is deemed newsworthy enough, they will hit the television news channels.

But back then it was the wireless and perhaps a faded and badly written postcard pinned up in a local newsagent’s window.

All of which is a random reflection on how far we have come in just a few decades.

Back then there were also those short film clips on the television showing how RAF aircraft with nuclear payloads could be airborne in under 4 minutes, which was not calculated to make a child of seven feel any more secure and would not today pass for good telly.

Go back to the very beginning of the last century and it was possible for my great grandfather to fall off the radar, abandon a partner and four children and marry and raise another four children without ever being found out.

Such were the lack of identity trails …… no street CTV, no monitoring of Facebook presence or withdrawals from a cashpoint and no Amazon message inviting you to follow up on your last purchase with a similar product.

Before the introduction of National Insurance there will have been very few ways to track an identity and with the lack of joined up government men like my great grandfather and one of my uncles could just disappear and create a new life.

Which brings me back to those missing person’s messages, and how by the late 1960s I seem to think they were a thing of the past.

But at the time they were a perfect use of what was still for many the only way of receiving the news and entertainment. 

Pictures; unknown women, dates unknown from the collection of Ron Stubley

On coming home ............. arriving at Well Hall station

Now I have no idea when this picture was taken but it brings back powerful memories of the old Well Hall Station.

From 1964 through to 1966 I stood on that platform along with shed load of commuters bound for central London although in my case it was only as far as New Cross and my last two years at Samuel Pepys.

After that I transferred to Crown Woods and Well Hall Station became less used.

But I continue to have a fondness for the old station which I have never quite shared with the new one.

And of all the memories that crowd in it is of the return journey on a summers afternoon with the train taking the curve and the first sight of the woods on the hill.

All of which meant that I was home.

Now I was not born in Eltham and we only arrived from Peckham when I was just 14 but I embraced the place and like many a newcomer became fiercely attatched to it.

Fifty one years later and four decades in the North I still think of Eltham as home.

And that is about it.  If I carry on I shall no doubt slide into nostalgic tosh and that would never do.

After all I have written about the railway line and its history, so I will just thank Ryan who sent me the picture and reflect that where we grow up is often an accident but in my case Well Hall was one of the more welcome accidents in my life.

Picture;  Well Hall Station, date unknown, courtesy of Ryan Ginn

*One hundred years of the railway that served Eltham, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Eltham%20Trains

Mr. Foister …. some socks …… and a heap of history

So, this weekend we got our own bit of Leicester’s history, which started with a swish apartment in a former factory.

As a conversion the place worked well, and apart from a little tender care and attention the apartment was all that was promised.

Added to which just outside the door was a central atrium laid out with a variety of large plants and an equally impressive glass roof.

Now as a curious historian I wondered about the origins of the building, and the clue was in a large sign in the entrance which offered up the name Arthur Foister & Sons Ltd Hosiery Manufacturers.

The firm specialised in children’s clothing and traded under the name of “Cherub for Children”.

According to one source the business spanned the last century, starting up in 1903 and only closing at the beginning of this century.*

The firm may have moved into our building in the 1930s, and after its closure the property was converted into apartments in 2001.

And as you do, I went looking for more information and came up with two pictures of the building from 1953.**

So that is pretty much it.

Location; Charles Street

Pictures; the apartment, and the sign, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the factory in 1953, from Britain From Above, https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW052684

* Cherub Ltd Knitting Together,  The Heritage of East Midlands Knitting Industry, https://www.knittingtogether.org.uk/behind-the-scenes/the-companies/cherub-ltd/

** EAW052684 ENGLAND (1953). Arthur Foister & Sons Ltd (Cherub Ltd) Factory on Charles Street, Leicester, 1953. This image was marked by Aerofilms Ltd for photo editing. Britain From Above, https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW052684