Warm days in Ashton Market .... no.2

Now I don’t make any claims to the quality of the pictures.

They were taken in the days of smelly photography and sat as negatives in the cellar for 40 years.

This year I began to convert them into electronic images.

They were taken sometime around 1978 into 1980 and capture an Ashton which has changed.

Location; Ashton-Under-Lyne

Picture; Ashton Market, circa 1978-80, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Breaking news …… the past is back

Corny title perhaps but good news because after a break of many months the online catalogue of over 80,000 images of Manchester is back and up and running.

Down an alley, Tib Street, 2023

It has been a barren and empty time for those of us who have wanted to search out a Manchester  street or a building but today I got an email from Jane Parr, at Archives and Local History in Central Library telling me that the glitch has been sorted.

Angel Street, undated

And that is about it.

Other than to say I wish people who trawl and post images from the database would credit Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council and carefully add the date, location and photographer.

Apart from it being good manners to acknowledge the source of the picture it provides a context.

Otherwise all we have is "an old picture of Manchester, it looks different from now".

So for those unfamiliar with the service just follow the link and get looking.

Picture; Angel Street, S.L.Coulthurst, undated, m08543 courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass and Down an alley, Tib Street, Manchester, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A bottle from Chorlton and the search for Alfred Gordan Fineberg Leech

Now there is nothing more intriguing than a bottle dug out of the ground, which has sat in a disused refuse tip for perhaps a century.

And how much more intriguing when the bottle bears a name and came from Chorlton.

The bottle comes from  the collection of Jay Hurst who also has a number of porcelain jar tops from our own Harry Kemp.

Harry Kemp was a chemist with shops in Chorlton and Stretford, and this glass bottle also originated from a pharmacy, which belonged to Alfred Gordan Fineberg Leech.

But just where in Chorlton his shop was located has so far eluded me and to find it will involve a painstaking trawl of the directories.

I do know that he was born in 1887, that his father died and his mother remarried, and those two events occurred between 1891 and 1901 and like the location of the chemist shops, the exact dates will turn up.

That said I do know he married Hilda Walton in 1928 and died in 1977 in Aberconwy, Gwynedd, Wales, and left a substantial amount of money.

Alas at present that is all I have, except for the picture of the bottle, and a reference to him living in  52 Albert Road, Whalley Range in 1939.

Location; somewhere in Chorlton

Picture; chemist bottle, 2020, from the collection of Jay Hurst

A day of steam, fun and history ……………The Great Railway Exposition

I have no idea how I ended up on Liverpool Road, forty years ago.

I might have read about the event, or just followed the crowds.

Either way it was a wonderful day of steam, fun and history, and reminded me of growing up in the 1950s, and taking express trains pulled by steam powered locomotives.

Even now that mix of steam, warm oil, and clunking railway wagons is enough to transport me back to rail excursions, when electric and diesel traction was rare on our railways.

I am indebted to Paul Sherlock who sent me this cover of the souvenir booklet, which anchors the moment, because I had long forgotten just when it occurred.

It was an amazing day and left me with a portfolio of pictures.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; The Real Railway Exposure, 1980 courtesy of Paul Sherlock, and moment on the day, 1980 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Green Boxes on the Rec ………

It arrived today.

I knew it must have been on the way because yesterday a team were there in the Rec providing a platform to receive it.

And its purpose is to assist in the upkeep of this small but much loved Recreation Ground, which I have looked out on for 48 years and our kids have played on for a heap of time.

It will be home to all the tools and things the Friends of Beech Road Park need to maintain the open space.

All of which marks it as something to include in a history blog about Chorlton, given that the Rec has been a place to play, relax and meet up since the 1890s

Location; Becch Road

Picture; what’s hiding in the green box? 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

War Crimes ….. the historical perspective …. one to listen to

At a time when war crimes, and the calls for the prosecution of “war criminals” fills the news it is fitting to go back and review those  trials that arose out of the events of the Second World War.

The Verdict, 1953

These were the Nuremburg and Tokyo Trials followed by that of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963.

They were the subject of today’s BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week and consisted of a discussion by a group of academics, authors and journalists which explored the 

history of the trials the motives of the Victorious powers and the attempts at justification by the Nazi and Japanese accused. 

“The legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of ‘aggressive war’ came out of the international war crimes tribunals after WWII – in Germany and Japan. In Judgement at Tokyo the academic and writer Gary J. Bass retells the dramatic courtroom battles as Japan’s militaristic leaders were held accountable for their crimes. 

With prosecutors and judges drawn from eleven different Allied countries tensions flared, and justice in the Asia Pacific played out amidst the start of the Cold War, China's descent into civil war, and the end of the European empires.

Calling out Antisemitism, 2024

The political philosopher Hannah Arendt witnessed the end of the trial of the Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1963, coining the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ – a term that is often mistakenly believed to mean that evil had become ordinary. 

View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal 

In We Are Free To Change The World, the writer Lyndsey Stonebridge explores Arendt’s writings on power and terror, love and justice, and their relevance in today’s uncertain times.

As the world grows increasingly turbulent war crimes justice is needed more than ever, but it appears to be failing. Since the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands opened in 2002 it has jailed just five war criminals. 

The journalist and war reporter Chris Stephen looks back at its history and examines alternative options in The Future of War Crimes Justice.

Producer: Katy Hickman”.*

Of course, how each listener will judge the programme will in part be informed by their own perspective and political stance.  But a programme well worth the listen.

Producer: Katy Hickman

Pictures; Verdict, 1946, Low Visibility A Cartoon History, 1945-53, David Low, 1953, Calling out Antisemitism, 2024, Manchester, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, View from above of the judges' bench at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg.  Photograph | Photograph Number: 61332, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, 1945 October 18 - 1946 October 01

*War crimes Justice, Start the Week, BBC, Radio 4,https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001vktw

Waiting on platform 12 at Piccadilly for Royal Mail Parcels ........ 1980

I know I shouldn’t be surprised at just how much of the city has changed over forty years.

Part of that is because I just don’t think four decades have whizzed past.

But then that has encompassed nine General Elections, a brace of American Presidents, the birth of our four children and my gentle passage from a man in gainful employment to one who writes and blogs.

Still I was drawn up with a jolt when I uncovered this picture of platforms, 10, 11 and 12 at Piccadilly Station.

So much so that for a brief while I was puzzled as to which station I had been on.

Logic and the other images in the strip of negatives all pointed to Piccadilly, but the scene is worlds away from that moving staircase, brightly painted columns and air of commuter bustle of today.

I even consulted that old railway buff David Harrop, and he confirmed I was where I thought, on Piccadilly Railway Station a full thirty years before its makeover.

So that pretty much is that.

Location; Manchester

Picture; Manchester Piccadilly Railway Station,1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson