Memories of three Chorlton cinemas

Now I have always believed in that old saying that you can wait half an hour for a bus and then three come along at the same time, which pretty much sums up my research for the day because I have just been reading The Golden Years of Manchester Picture Houses by Derek Southall, from the History Press, 2010.


I was told it might be difficult to get hold of, but here it is on our kitchen table, and I would recommend it. As its name implies it is a short detailed description of the cinemas in and around Manchester, and of course includes three of our own.

For the first time I can confidently write that the Palais de Luxe opened in May 1914, could seat 1,200 and closed on December 4th 1957 with the Western the Lonely Man and the Lost Treasure of the Amazon. Neither film seems a fitting way to end what had been our first proper picture house. In Lonely Man an aging gunslinger Jacob Wade hopes to settle down with his estranged son, but his old enemies have other plans for him while Lost Treasure features a Brazilin jungle head hunters and that old stand by an unrequited love affair.

And there is more. The Savoy on Manchester Road opened in 1920 as the Picture House before being renamed the Savoy when it was leased to the Savoy Cinemas. And that the Rivoli having opened on November 20 1936 was damaged an air raid in December 1940 and had to be partially rebuilt before it began again on November 17th 1954.

There are also stories from people who remember sitting in the dark in all three and of the staff as well as something of the chequered history of subsequent owners.

Picture; late in the life of the Rivoli, after its name change from the Essoldo to the Classic and before it became the Shalimar, 1999, m17470, Courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

Spring and the film crews are back in Chorlton

Well it’s that time of year again, just as we head towards spring there will be a film crew somewhere in Chorlton and usually on Beech Road.
Now I know it is going on this week because the crew and the vans and equipment are there in the car park of the Irish Centre. Looking out across the Rec you can see the bus with all its lights on late into the night and listen to the sound of the generator, which starts up around six in the morning and can be clearly heard again in the quiet of the evening.

Sometimes it is for the television and sometimes it will be a film. I say this because every time we have family up from London and across from Italy we show them Looking for Eric, and one of us, usually me keeps up a running commentary of where the shots were taken, which is fine but also a little frustrating as from the park bench on the Rec you just miss out seeing our house.

So not even Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame then.

Now I have often wondered when the first crew appeared I can remember the shop front of what is now the Gallery on Beech Road but was then the barber’s being blown out in a scene from some long forgotten TV programme, and being puzzled by the London bus and hackney cab along with the name Bulman above the entrance to the building beside the Methodist Chapel, until it became clear they were shooting an episode of the show.

So being a historian I did begin to wonder when the first film crew appeared here in Chorlton. Now I am prepared to be proved wrong but I rather think it was in 1949 when Mancunian Films came down from their studio on Dickenson Road.

The film was Bella’s Birthday and was a short film made up of out-takes from School for Randle and they came down and staged a short clip of Frank Randle accompanied by Dan Young, Alec Pleon and Maudie Edwards who played Bella walking into the pub. You can read more about Mancunian Films at http://www.itsahotun.com/Mancunian_Shorts.html

Now I have no idea of what is being filmed but in the nature of these things I will be sitting at home one day and there will be a familiar location.

Pictures; from the collections of Tony Walker, Chris Lee and the North West Film Archive

The Great Storm of 1839 a talk by Eddie Little at the Chorlton History Group

“In the early hours of Monday 7th January 1839 the British Isles was struck by a destructive and severe hurricane. In the North-West of England it inflicted widespread damage on a scale that would not be seen until the German air raids of the 1940’s. Yet it remains a sadly neglected episode in the history of the North-West.”*

Eddie’s talk went a long way to bring that storm out of the shadows and what I particularly liked was the way he used documentary evidence from the 1953 floods to highlight the enormity of the natural disaster. Here were ordinary people recounting a night of fear and in some cases great heroism with Eddie making the point that much the same happened 173 years ago.
This as they say was a once in a generation event and one that had a profound effect on anyone caught in its path.

Now I am not going to repeat the story just point you toward his book which at £3.50 is a snip.

Instead I am going to reflect on how the group has grown over the last few years. We began very much as a small band of people sharing our local historical interests and attempting to make links with each other’s work. Along the way we also began to exchange the skills we had in researching local history.

And nothing succeeds like success so as we became more confident in talking about what we knew we began to attract more people, and this has led to a broadening of the scope of the group. So
the future programme will include the well known and respected historian Bill Williams speaking on “Black History in Manchester,” and Brian Hallworth on the life and times of George Formby. There will also be a walk aimed to recreate Beech Road as it was in 1840 and an examination of the history of Longford Hall.

Now Longford Hall was rebuilt in 1857 but the previous hall had been the home of the radical Thomas Walker who campaigned against the slave trade supported the French Revolution, lived at Barlow Hall and was buried in our own parish graveyard by the green. I guess with this as a backdrop it is fitting that we should also have Gurbir Singh talking on when “Yuri Gagarin come to Chorlton.” Of course it wasn’t just Chorlton which he passed through on his way to Trafford Park to visit fellow engineering workers which has been his trade before the military and his famous trip into space.

And it says much for that visit that at least three people in the room instantly admitted to having seen him. This is one of the strengths of the group that people bring not only their knowledge and interests but also their experiences. When Philip gave his talk on Chorltonville he drew on his own memories of the prototype which had been built at West End to give a vivid description of both.

Nor is it just that we have widened the subject matter there is also a growing confidence amongst members to come along and talk about things that are close to them.

So all in all and under Bernard’s gentle but efficient hand the group goes from strength to strength with our next meeting in a new venue Chorlton Good Neighbours, St Ninians Church, Egerton Road South on Tuesday May 1st 1.30 with Bill Williams.

Pictures; from the collection of Bernard Leach.

*The Great Storm of 1839, Eddie Little, Reword Publishers, 2002

British Home Children Another talk

If you followed the post yesterday on British Home Children, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/03/learning-more-about-british-home.html you will know that I was talking last night on the subject in the meeting room of the Co-op on Hardy Lane.

It went down well and like all these things you never know where it will lead, so I was pleased that after it was over, one of the audience asked if I could pass the power point on to a friend who couldn’t get to the meeting. She is a Canadian history teacher who had only recently become aware of BHC.

And that for me increasingly is the purpose of the talk and posts. Having almost given up on finding anymore about my own great uncle who went over in 1914 it is knowing that I am doing my own little bit to bring the story of BHC to people over here.

Picture; from the collection of Lori Oschefski

Learning more about British Home Children and another talk

Now I am going to state what on the surface seems blindingly obvious that history is the story of people. But it is easy to lose sight of this as you burrow away in an archive or ponder on the details of some diplomatic event that happened long ago. This is even more so when you begin to debate the rights and wrongs of a decision of one of those turning points in history.

True enough you start off with the question of how this played out on individuals but all too quickly it becomes hijacked by the desire to stay objective, weigh the facts, look for the balanced picture and somewhere along the way the person has been reduced to a statistic.

Which is how it can be with the story of British Home Children, who were the young people “rescued” from the streets, orphanages and homes of uncaring parents and transported to Canada, Australia and other out posts of empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

All of us who are descendants of these children start with an admission they knew little of the programme, even less that one of their relatives was involved and quickly slip into anger when stories of neglect, abuse and loneliness come to the surface. But then you try to be objective look for the reasons why it happened, trawl the motives of the organisers and ponder on whether it was all for the best.

So I would like to share these three photographs, all taken from the excellent web site British Home Children http://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/index.html run by Lori Oschefski.

George Everitt Green was sent to Canada by Barnado’s in 1895 and died 6 months later from a combination of neglect abuse and starvation, Frederick Cheesman was separated from his four siblings and never saw them again, Ralf Cheesman was born sometime around 1922, arrived in Canada in 1924 and fought for his adopted country in the Second World War and Rosa Dunn was sent by Barnado's in 1895.

Each has a part of the story of British Home Children, and I could have included many more like my own great uncle or Annie Geavaux who was taken over by Barnado’s in 1921 and made a new life in Canada marrying in 1940.
But the web site is more than just a collection of pictures but is a growing fund of information about the programme and the plight of these young people.

And for us over here I would also recommend British Home Children http://www.britishhomechildren.org/ which is a "site dedicated to the Descendants of British Home Children (BHC); Families of British Child Migrants and all home children and child migrants still living, no matter where in the world.”


Their story is still one that is not very well known in Britain but there is a growing interest and I will be speaking on the subject tonight at the Co-op hall above the Co-op store on the corner of Hardy Lane and Barlow Moor Road at 7.30.

Pictures; from the collection of Lori Oschefski

Where is this?

It is I think another of those pictures which is not easy to place and without the title at the bottom of the card would stump most of us for a little while. So I shall omit the name of the road and wait for someone to identify it. There are no prizes but as my old Maths teacher used to say “show me the working out” which led to your answer. Should I offer a date? No I don’t think so. Perhaps that could be the supplimentary question.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

Why I would like to sign the petition on British Home Children

It is a pity that I cannot sign the petition calling on the Canadian Government to offer an apology for the wrongs done to British Home Children.

Now I have written before about national apologies http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/who-will-speak-for-british-home.html and I remain of the opinion that the apology is more about bringing these young people out of the shadows than just a belated sorry.

Like many descendants of British Home Children I had no idea until recently that one of my family took part or the scale of the programme. I am indebted to my Canadian colleagues who have been working for years collating the lists of those who were sent and attempting to raise the profile of BHC.

But history is messy and sometimes the interpretation that people put on the story is not the one you expect. I was reminded of this when I picked up on the debate at one history group where the conversation centred on the opportunities that the programme offered for new lives in a new country.

And I suppose on one level it is the numbers game. For every child who experienced hardship loneliness and cruelty there were others who were lifted from poverty neglect and blighted lives. So is it possible to balance the two and come to a neat end sum of happiness versus sadness? Which I guess echoes that infamous discussion between Holly Martins and Harry Lime high above the streets of post war Vienna looking down on a crowd of people.
“Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”*

But this of course is the way that progress is measured in history. Ultimately the Industrial Revolution was a good thing because despite the awful conditions experienced in our cities and factories it transformed Britain from a rural economy and laid the basis for a modern country. The Great War was a disaster because the loss of life far outweighed the attempt to check the dominance of Germany in Europe.

On the other hand is there not a danger in dwelling on the negative side of the British Home Children project which in turn creates an image of these young people as victims? It was once put to me that in Holocaust studies the constant emphasis on the persecution of the Jewish people can be counterproductive and reinforces that anti-Semitic idea that here are a group of people different from the rest of us. In the camps and the ghettoes there was Jewish resistance and a culture that 2,000 years of persecution has not managed to destroy.

Likewise British Home Children made new lives for themselves helping to build their adopted country and are due that recognition so I hope this will also be a result of the petition. And even if I can’t sign I will make everyone tomorrow at my next talk above the Co-op rooms on Hardy Lane here in Chorlton aware of that petition and the story behind it.

Picture; from the collection of Lori OSchefski
*The Third Man 1949